From tstokely at att.net Fri Jan 1 09:39:39 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 17:39:39 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Klamath Basin agreements die in Congress References: <1231909486.4549660.1451669979368.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1231909486.4549660.1451669979368.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160101/klamath-basin-agreements-die-in-congress - Klamath Basin agreements die in Congress By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardThis Aug. 21, 2009, file photo shows the J.C. Boyle Dam on the Klamath River near Keno, Oregon. With no authorizing legislation in Congress, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar won?t be deciding next month whether to go ahead with removal of dams on the Klamath River to help salmon. Jeff Barnard ? ASSOCIATED PRESS Unapproved by Congress by the end of the 2015, the three Klamath Basin agreements are dead in the water. While only one of the three agreements ? the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement or KBRA ? expired on Dec. 31, the new year signaled several tribal governments to withdraw from the agreements. Rather than putting faith in Congress, the tribes are focusing on removing four hydroelectric dams in the Klamath Basin through other methods. ?The water quality is such a pronounced issue that it needs to be dealt with,? Hoopa Valley Tribal Fisheries Director Mike Orcutt said. ?We need action now.? Second District California Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) said the agreements have been in a ?slow motion crash? for several months, prompting him to begin looking at other methods outside of Congress to push the key elements of the agreements through. ?I will be pushing the Obama administration to do everything it can with its existing legal authority,? Huffman said. ?I will be pushing California to assert its water rights and water quality authority on the river in our state?s interests. And I?ll be pushing all of the parties to continue to try to work on difficult members of Congress who have stood in the way of progress.? Drafted between 2010 and 2014 following decades of water rights disputes on the basin between tribes and irrigators on the California-Oregon border, the three agreements encompassed in Klamath Basin Water Recovery and Economic Restoration Act of 2015 would have led the way to removing four hydroelectric dams, given water assurances to basin irrigators with junior water rights, and provided environmental protections to fish and basin tributaries. The bill contained all three agreements ? the KBRA, the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA), and the Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement ? which had been signed on by a coalition of about 45 government agencies, tribal governments, farmers, irrigators and environmental organizations. These signatories included the Yurok and Karuk tribes as well as the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors. While the bill passed the Senate, it sat in the House Natural Resources Committee until its death on New Year?s Day. Incoming Humboldt County Board of Supervisors Chairman Mark Lovelace said that the agreements showed how political idealogies could be set aside to solve common issues, but stated House Republicans on the committee ?were not able to get past their preexisting narrative, their political talking points that it?s jobs versus environment. Which is false.? ?The KBRA did not fail. The coalition did not fail,? Lovelace said. ?Congress failed.? NO DAMS, NO DEAL Supporters of the agreements said what caused the halt in the bill?s movement through Congress were the provisions of the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. ?I think the blame lies squarely with those whose dogma on the issue of dam removal led them to either sit on their hands for several years or actively oppose congressional action,? Huffman said. The KHSA would have had the Portland-based energy company PacifiCorp remove four of its hydroelectric dams ? Iron Gate, Copco 1 & 2, and J.C. Boyle ? on the river by 2020. With this proposed project being the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, Congress would limit PacifiCorp?s liability to $200 million should something go amiss as part of the agreement. Dam removal was key for maintaining the Karuk, Yurok and Klamath Tribes of Oregon?s support for the agreements, and was also supported by PacifiCorp which had signed on to the agreement. But others including House Republicans such as Congressman Greg Walden (R-Oregon) and 1st District California Congressman Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) were outspoken in their opposition to dam removal and its potential impacts on water supplies for agriculture. Walden introduced a draft bill earlier this month that included several provisions of the original agreements, but did not include the dam-removal agreements. ?That process is left up to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,? Walden wrote in a Dec. 3 news release. ?(The draft bill) also does not create federal liability from dam removal.? There were several other parties outside of Congress that did not support the agreements, including the Hoopa Valley Tribe. While the tribe fully supports dam removal, Orcutt said the other water sharing agreements would decrease flows on the lower Klamath River basin to those below what is needed to protect endangered coho salmon while limiting tribal water rights. DAM RELICENSING The Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement has not expired, but the tribes are now taking the issue of dam removal into their own hands rather than waiting on Congress. ?What hope is there?? Orcutt asked. ?Go back and keep knocking on the same door? The reality of it is that the river needs some type of relief. I think something we need to look at is the water quality.?Huffman does not blame the tribes for looking to other methods, and said he does not expect this Congress to change its mind any time soon. ?I don?t know why anybody would continue to place their faith in a framework that depends on congressional action when you have demonstrated hostility from congressional Republicans to the central element of the deal,? he said. PacifiCorp had been in the process of relicensing the four dams through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the first time since 1956 before delaying the process due to the signing of the KHSA in 2010. With the Klamath Basin bill?s expiration, PacifiCorp will resume the relicensing process, which is nearly completed. However, the dams must still obtain state Clean Water Act permits from California and Oregon and that is where the tribes see a chance to bring the dams down. ?This is not an end,? Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Policy Advocate Craig Tucker said. ?It?s a new beginning.? The California Water Resources Control Board would ultimately decide whether the company will get a Clean Water Act permit, and is set to hold a series of scoping meetings in California and Oregon in January ? including one in Arcata on Jan. 25 ? to seek comments as it prepares its Environmental Impact Report on the dam relicensing. During these meetings, the tribes are seeking to show that only through dam removal can the state mitigate low flowing conditions that have led to toxic blue-green algae blooms and warm water temperatures that have negatively impacted salmon. But Tucker said this new path likely result in litigation no matter what. Should the state grant the permit to PacifiCorp even with environmental protection measures, Tucker said the tribes would likely sue because the dams would not be removed. If the state denied the permit, Tucker said PacifiCorp could sue and could lead to legal challenges between state and federal water and energy laws.?That?s why we think the negotiated settlement is the best way to dam removal,? he said.But while the process could take several years, Orcutt said, ?We don?t have any other option.? ?The reality of it is that the river needs some type of relief,? he said.Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Jan 4 09:20:34 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 17:20:34 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Stockton Record: Tunnels fight changes venue References: <739324675.524285.1451928034027.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <739324675.524285.1451928034027.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.recordnet.com/article/20160103/NEWS/160109986/-1/A_BIZ By?Alex Breitler January 03. 2016 4:00PM Tunnels fight changes venue A water intake for the proposed Delta twin tunnels is planned for this spot on the Sacramento River just north of the town of Hood. CLIFFORD OTO/RECORD FILE 2013Ten years after the first seeds were planted for the proposed twin tunnels, the battle shifts to a new arena in 2016 ??a critical year for the controversial project.A small state agency will soon begin the daunting process of deciding whether to change the water rights for the state and federal water projects, allowing them to divert some of their water from the Sacramento River and bypass the Delta for the first time.The water rights must be changed before a shovelful of earth can be turned.But it won?t be simple. Months of hearings are expected, starting in April. The hearings will feature sworn testimony from witnesses in a setting almost as formal as a courtroom.?You?re going to have so many people involved ??it?ll be very, very complicated. The lawyers will go crazy on this thing,? said Craig Wilson, an attorney retired from the State Water Resources Control Board, which will oversee the hearings.Opponents are expected to challenge the process, arguing that the water rights cannot be changed until the state has completed a separate, long-overdue review of the Delta?s water quality and water flow needs. They will argue that it doesn?t make sense to put $15 billion pipes in the ground before knowing how much water they can safely divert from the sensitive estuary.Supporters will say there is an urgent need to start the process now.'Much more complex'In California, you can?t simply wake up one morning and decide you will take your water from a different location. You have to ask the state water board, to ensure there is no harm to any other water user or to the environment.The board routinely handles such requests ? for example, from a farmer who wants to pump the same amount of water from a different stream. But because of the sheer size of the water projects, which deliver millions of acre-feet of water each year to farms and cities as far south as San Diego, the latest request will be anything but routine.?This one is much more complex,? said Diane Riddle, an environmental program manager with the water board.Today, the water diverted by the state and federal projects flows through the Delta first, to giant pumps near Tracy. From there it is sent south in aqueducts and canals.As the water moves through the Delta, some channels flow backward toward the pumps, pulling in threatened fish and disrupting the ecosystem. The tunnels are supposed to reduce that problem by taking some of the water directly from the Sacramento, which could also safeguard a share of the state?s water supply should Delta levees fail.The tunnels are a spin-off of the old peripheral canal, which voters defeated in a 1982 referendum. The concept was revived by the Schwarzenegger administration in 2006.It took a decade to write the tunnels plan. A final version is expected this year.Cart before the horse?Now, enter stage right the state water board, which oversees water rights and ? until the drought ? stayed mostly under the radar in California. The board is supposed to be a kind of watchdog, balancing the diverse needs for water among cities, farms and the environment.To grant the projects? request to take water directly from the Sacramento River, the board will have to determine that other water users will not be harmed, and that fish and wildlife will be protected. Delta farmers are sure to argue that removing freshwater before it reaches the estuary will, indeed, harm water quality and threaten their livelihoods.Here's where it gets sticky: While considering the water rights questions, the board will simultaneously begin a separate, broader review of Delta flow standards. The standards are supposed to be reviewed every three years but haven?t been comprehensively updated since 1995. Fish species have crashed under the current rules, and scientists believe those rules to be inadequate for the Delta's environment.The flows study should come first, before tunnels water rights are decided, opponents say. If the tunnels come first, it is likely that political pressure will skew any new flow rules in favor of water exporters, those opponents say.?No state agency is going to approve a project and then gut it a couple of years down the road after it?s started,? said Bill Jennings of Stockton, with the environmental group California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. ?They?re not going to give the go-ahead and then stab it in the back.??In short, Delta water quality policy should come before plumbing decisions,? Jennings? group and other opponents, including Stockton-based Restore the Delta, penned in a letter to the state board.Risk factorEven if the plumbing decision does come first, the Delta won't be without protection, state officials say.Legislation approved in 2009 requires ?appropriate? flow standards before the water rights are changed. Temporary rules, at least, would be required until the more comprehensive flow study is done, perhaps in 2018, Riddle said.A decision one way or another on the tunnels won?t handcuff the board on its flow study down the road, she said. It?s possible that study could determine that less water will be available for the tunnels than expected.?That?s a risk those that are financing the project will have to consider,? Riddle said. ?That?s always a risk from any water development project, that you may not get the amount of water you expect to get.?Nancy Vogel, a spokeswoman for the state?s Natural Resources Agency, said it is important to start the process of changing the water rights now, because the flow study could take years.Vogel acknowledged the risk in proceeding before knowing exactly how much water will actually be available for diversion through the tunnels. ?But you have to think of the flip side,? she said. ?There?s a huge amount of risk involved in the status quo. If we do nothing about the reverse flows (in the Delta), we can assume the species populations are going to continue to deteriorate, and we can assume more regulatory restrictions on the projects.?Even with the tunnels, the possibility of such restrictions is a gamble for water exporters, said Jerry Meral, an environmentalist and tunnels supporter who formally served in the Brown administration as the governor's point man on water issues.Because the tunnels plan no longer includes 50-year guarantees for water deliveries, the larger risk for the projects comes likely not from any standards the water board will impose in the future, but from the possibility that fish and wildlife agencies could put the clamp down on water exports if fish aren't faring well.?(Tunnels proponents) are just betting that the construction and operation of the project will benefit those species, or at least not harm them further,? Meral said. ?They?re willing, apparently, to take that risk.?Coming soonThe water board?s hearings are scheduled to begin in earnest on April 7.Three months ahead of that date, a written notice explaining the process already makes it obvious just how complex this will be.?I got a headache,? quipped Wilson, the former water board attorney, ?just reading the thing.?? Contact reporter Alex Breitler at (209) 546-8295 or abreitler at recordnet.com. Follow him atrecordnet.com/breitlerblog and on Twitter @alexbreitler.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jan 5 16:59:37 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 00:59:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Do-or-Die_for_Jerry_Brown=E2=80=99s_Delta?= =?utf-8?q?_Tunnels_in_2016?= References: <1357188634.564001.1452041977953.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1357188634.564001.1452041977953.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.breitbart.com/california/2016/01/03/die-jerry-browns-delta-tunnels-2016/ Do-or-Die for Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels in 2016 DANIEL NUSSBAUM3 Jan 201691 For years, California Gov. Jerry Brown has advocated for a pair of pricey tunnels that would divert water from the Sacramento River south to boost state supplies?and some observers say that 2016 is shaping up to be the year of reckoning for the project. In a column?likening Brown to a salmon swimming upstream, the?Sacramento Bee?s Dan Morain details the?delicate balance the governor will have to strike?if he is to?seal the deal on the $15.5 billion tunnels?and ensure the beginning of their construction.?Given all the obstacles, Brown will need to do much more than offer derisive or dismissive comments,? Morain writes. ?He?ll need to sell Californians on the need for the project. Either that or come up with a Plan B, which would not surprise me.?Like any political battle, Brown must contend with two warring sides. On one side sit pro-business and farm groups, including organizations like?Californians for Water Security, who want to see the tunnels built to ensure an adequate supply of water for the southern portion of the state. The pro-tunnel lobby, which includes the California Chamber of Commerce, has reportedly spent ?well into the six figures? on advertising designed to sway public opinion. The Metropolitan Water District, supplier to 19 million Californians as the state?s largest water agency, also backs the tunnels.On the other side are environmental groups like?Restore the Delta, which argue that the tunnels? construction would harm the ecology of the Sacramento River and turn the Bay Delta area into an industrial wasteland.Complicating matters further for Brown, the roughly eight-year-old tunnel plan could still be derailed or delayed by mandatory California Environmental Quality impact reports, an?uncooperative Environmental Protection Agency, and?difficulty acquiring land?from Delta farmers to ensure the necessary space for the tunnels.There?s also the matter of an?upcoming ballot measure?that could limit the state?s ability to fund the project. The?Public Vote on Bonds Initiative, sponsored by wealthy Stockton-area farmer Dean Cortopassi, would require any infrastructure bonds exceeding $2 billion be subject to the approval of voters. Brown?s office has publicly called the measure, which qualified in November for inclusion on the 2016 ballot, a ?really bad idea.?The tunnels have been a priority for Brown since he took office in 2011, and tension between the dueling factions has increased over the past several years, along with the governor?s urgency to get a deal done. That tension came to a head earlier this year, when the governor, who has said he had spent ?millions of hours? poring over the details of the project, lashed out at the tunnel?s critics and?told them to ?shut up.??An aide quickly clarified that the governor?s remarks were made in ?jest,? but Brown?s tone underscored the level of contention?surrounding the plan. At an earlier news conference, the governor had called the project an ?imperative? that ?must move forward.?Restore the Delta had taken particular offense to Brown?s comment.?We will not go away, and we will not shut up,? the organization?s executive director Barbara Barrigan-Parilla said in a statement at the time. ?We can?t stand by and watch a project move forward that?s going to destroy the most important estuary on the West Coast of the Americas or completely destroy California?s largest watershed.?While the governor deals with the headache of trying to ensure a deal, California will also?contend with?more than 800 new laws?that will be implemented in 2016, some of which will impact the state?s water issues.And despite El Ni?o rains, the state?s crippling drought is nowhere near over, adding to Brown?s political burden. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Jan 5 18:32:43 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 18:32:43 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Delta Smelt and other fish species plummet to record low levels In-Reply-To: <1357188634.564001.1452041977953.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1357188634.564001.1452041977953.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1357188634.564001.1452041977953.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2898FF67-F082-4BED-8856-CD780854E4EA@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/05/1466156/-Delta-Smelt-and-other-fish-species-plummet-to-record-low-levels https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/01/05/18781526.php Photo of Delta Smelt courtesy of California Department of Water Resources. delta_smelt_-_dwr.jpeg Delta Smelt and other fish species plummet to record low levels by Dan Bacher Fish species ranging from endangered Delta Smelt to Striped Bass continued to plummet to record low population levels in 2015, according to the annual fall survey report released on December 18 by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). Only 6 Delta Smelt, an endangered species that once numbered in the millions and was the most abundant fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, were collected at the index stations in the estuary this fall. The 2015 index (7), a relative number of abundance, ?is the lowest in history,? said Sara Finstad, an environmental scientist for the CDFW?s Bay Delta Region. The Delta Smelt, a 2 to 3 inch fish found only in the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary, is an indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Delta, an estuary that has been dramatically impacted by water exports to corporate agribusiness interests and Southern California water agencies during the record drought, along with other factors including increasing water toxicity and invasive species. The Fall Midwater Trawl Survey, used to index the fall abundance of pelagic (open water) fishes most years since 1967, conducts monthly surveys from September through December. The 2015 sampling season was completed on December 11. ?In September, the only Delta Smelt collected were from index stations in the lower Sacramento River,? said Finstad. ?In October the only Delta smelt collected came from a non-index station in the Sacramento Deep Water Shipping Channel.? In November, no Delta Smelt were collected - and in December, the only Delta Smelt collected were from index stations in Montezuma Slough and the lower Sacramento River, according to Finstad. The population of striped bass, a popular gamefish, has also declined to record low levels. The 2015 abundance index (52) is the second lowest in history. Only 42 age 0 striped bass were conducted at the survey stations, noted Finstad. Likewise, Longfin Smelt, a cousin of the Delta Smelt, declined to the lowest abundance index (4) in the history of the survey. Only 3 longfin smelt were collected at the index stations throughout the three-month period. The abundance index (806) for Threadfin Shad, an introduced species from the East Coast that provides forage for larger fish, reached its eighth lowest level in survey history. The biologists collected 634 Threadfin Shad at the index stations. Finally, the 2015 abundance index (79) for American Shad, a relative of the Threadfin Shad that is pursued by anglers on Central Valley rivers every spring, is the lowest in history of the survey. Only 59 American shad were collected at the index stations. Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), said the fall survey shows the ?continuing collapse of the estuary caused by the failure of the state and federal regulatory agencies to comply with the law.? ?Every survey conducted, including the 20 mm Delta Smelt, spring Kodiak trawl, summer tow net, and the fall midwater trawl surveys, shows record low levels of the fish surveyed,? said Jennings. He emphasized that in spite of the continuing record drought conditions, that water exports south of the Delta through the state and federal pumping facilities averaged 7500 cubic feet per second (cfs) over the past week. ?The State Water Project pumps are averaging 5154 cfs, while the Central Valley Project Pumps are averaging 2360 cfs,? said Jennings. As fish populations continue to collapse, the California Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation are going forward with permit applications to the State Water Resources Control Board to change the point of diversion on the Sacramento River to implement Governor Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels Plan, the so-called ?California Water Fix.? Jennings and other public trust advocates point to these latest fish survey results ? and the state and federal water agencies? permit applications to divert more water from the Sacramento River at new diversion points ? as just more evidence of the ?capture of the regulators by the regulated.? The current collapse of Delta fish species occurs as part of a long- term decline. The operation of the state and federal water projects by the California Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation Reclamation has brought fisheries to historic lows. Since 1967, abundance indices for striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 97.8, 99.9, 91.9, 98.5 and 97.8%, respectively. according to Jennings. The natural production of Sacramento winter-run and spring-run Chinook salmon has declined by 98.2 and 99.3%, respectively, and are only at 5.5 and 1.2 percent of doubling levels mandated by the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, California Water Code and California Fish & Game Code. To make matters even worse, over 95 percent of endangered juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon perished in lethally warm water conditions on the upper section of the Sacramento River in 2014 and 2015, due to mismanagement by the state and federal water agencies. ?Fall Mid-Water Trawl 2015 by Dan Bacher Tuesday Jan 5th, 2016 8:55 AM fmwt_2015_annual_memo.pdf download PDF (127.0 KB) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: delta_smelt_-_dwr.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 61114 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: fmwt_2015_annual_memo.pdf_600_.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 141317 bytes Desc: not available URL: From Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov Thu Jan 7 16:02:17 2016 From: Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov (Cannata, Steve@Wildlife) Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2016 00:02:17 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Trapping Summary Update Jweek 1 Message-ID: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5AA5CE@057-SN2MPN1-043.057d.mgd.msft.net> HI All, Please see attached for the JWeek 1 update to the Trinity River trapping summary. Steve Steve Cannata Environmental Scientist Trinity River Project California Department of Fish and Wildlife 5341 Ericson Way Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-4230 steve.cannata at wildlife.ca.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2015 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW1.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 62744 bytes Desc: 2015 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW1.xlsx URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Jan 11 11:52:23 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 19:52:23 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Peter King: How an anonymous blogger stands out on California water policy References: <348745600.2735677.1452541944005.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <348745600.2735677.1452541944005.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-water-blogger-20160111-story.html How an anonymous blogger stands out on California water policy Peter H. KingContact ReporterOn a Thursday in February four years ago, the self-described "low-level civil servant" who produces?OnthePublicRecord.org, an anonymous blog about California water, posted an existential lament about life amid the policy wonks."Sometimes I wonder what terrible thing I did wrong in a previous lifetime that I must now spend so much of my time in windowless hotel ballrooms, listening to people read slides to me," wrote the blogger."I must have been Vlad the Impaler."With that, the nameless bureaucrat who goes by the initials OtPR provided those who follow the distinctive and well-informed blog an alternative handle: Vlad.California water policy can be an insular, jargon-ridden field. On most issues, the arguments and counter-arguments have been around so long that they can seem about as flexible as a concrete dam.A road trip with Times journalists through drought-stricken CaliforniaAmid the hydraulic brotherhood, as devotees of water are often called, recitation of a Mark Twain quote that whiskey is for drinking and water for fighting over ? one that, in all likelihood, the author never actually wrote or uttered ? passes for high humor, along with puns about water being a dry subject.In this arena, Vlad stands out.For seven years the blogger has been at it ? deciphering dense but important technical reports, slicing through foggy rhetoric, offering witty insights into the ways of bureaucrats and poking away at elected officials and industry leaders, and the journalists who cover them.See the most-read stories this hour >>"I see the vehement editorials calling for new dams and I grin," the blogger wrote in 2009, amid an earlier drought. "Every single time I wonder. Suppose your new dams are built, buddy. What will you put behind them? Root beer? The waters of the state are spoken for.""This is all we get, all the time," OtPR railed after attending a platitude-laden conference laced with expressions of positive intent and common purpose. "? We know. Bigger pies, power of collaboration, efficiency, the children are our future. We know.""I understand that almonds garner high prices worldwide and are profitable for Californian farmers," the blog noted in January 2014, addressing the rapid expansion of nuts grown for export in the Central Valley. "But maybe in an extreme drought, the governor could decide that he wants to spend our limited water on preserving our native species."That the author of these posts and hundreds more like them has managed to remain anonymous ranks as quite a coup, especially in the relatively small world of California water policy. Even Vlad can seem amazed the game's lasted so long."How anonymous am I?" the blogger wrote last year. "I don't know. ? Sometimes I wonder if everyone knows who I am and they're just humoring me."::The well-archived Vladian oeuvre leads one to imagine the author ? mid-40s, a bit pudgy from all those pre-conference Danishes, a fellow with rolled-up shirt sleeves and no-iron khakis, poring over NASA satellite images or the latest crop reports from the National Agricultural Statistics Service with tired eyes behind 2.50-magnitude readers.In fact, she looks nothing like the imagined Vlad.After numerous email conversations, the blogger agreed to meet in person on the promise of anonymity; this would be in exchange for confirmation that the "low-level civil servant" was not a mirage.FULL COVERAGE: El Ni?o in California >>As it happens, her gender already had leaked out a year ago, in a passing reference made in a lengthy national magazine article that many of those who wonder about Vlad's identity seem to have missed."People's assumptions that I'm a man," she said, "have helped me stay undercover, which I have appreciated."It's difficult to say with any precision how much influence is wielded by Vlad the Impaler ? or any commentator on water. When it comes to framing water policy, it's tough to trump Mother Nature, markets and, maybe, the water bar."I have decided moving the water conversation is like trying to nudge an aircraft carrier with a motor boat," said Phil Isenberg, the former state legislator and Sacramento mayor who remains engaged in California water issues and is a big fan of the blog.Isenberg is among the more than 110 regulars who registered to follow the?OnthePublicRecord.org?website ? a small audience, perhaps, but one that includes some notable academicians, well-known water warriors, state and federal legislative staffers and other water-related bloggers (there are many).The major attraction seems to be her edginess."I frequently think my role is to speak the taboo, so that others can offer more moderate versions," she explained in an earlier email.OtPR was years ahead of the mob that mid-drought discovered it takes water to grow almonds. As far back as 2008, she was raising questions about the then-early push to replace field crops with almonds and vines, crops that tend to harden demand for water, drought or no drought:"Really?" she asked. "What the world needs is more almonds? More wine? As we foresee another couple billion people and international famines, you think we should commit our world-class farmland to almonds?"More recently, the blog has raised some salient questions for those who would put a blind faith in markets to solve all things water. She suggested late last summer, following up on a federal survey of San Joaquin subsidence, that growers drilling the deepest wells be made to pay for the damage to canals and roads being caused by subsidence. Then she used NASA satellite images and Google Earth to demonstrate how to track down the culpable parties.And, from time to time, Vlad has raised the almost taboo topic of population limits: "This stuff gets brought up awkwardly at meetings, then we all retreat," she observed. "But controlling population has profound implications for California's resource use and climate. We should face it head on."::OtPR, who calls blogging "a compulsion," prefers to refer to her writing posture as pseudonymous, rather than anonymous."I love that my words stand on their own," she writes in the blog's "about me" entry. "They can't be weighted by an academic pedigree nor dismissed as the obvious thing someone of my background would say. They aren't shaded by what I am like in person, my age or my clothes or an accent or look. They must be considered alone."This is the high-concept rationale for blind blogging. In an email, Vlad offered a more pragmatic motivation."I want to keep writing OtPR," the government worker wrote, "and I want to keep my state job."So far, there doesn't seem to be any concerted effort to identify the blogger. Oh, there might be infrequent telephone speculation among the water bureaucrats, or quick trips through the bureaucratic warrens to see if OtPR's home page photograph of thick white binders stacked against a wall painted harvest gold can be matched.Nonetheless, advances in computer sleuthing don't seem to bode well for Vlad. And, somewhat surprisingly, identity clues are sprinkled throughout the posts.There are references, for example, to an eighth-grade history day project on Los Angeles water, to time spent at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, to two graduate degrees, to frolics with a dog in the American River, to a treasured copy of the California Water Atlas, an elegant encyclopedia published by the state in the 1970s."They're real big, bound in navy blue," she wrote on the blog post to a graduate student seeking advice about a water career. "All the cool kids have one. Don't know if it has information you couldn't find online these days, but having one in your office is part of the secret handshake."The self-evident downside of writing anonymously presents a mirror image of the upside: Nobody knows who you are. And that, as Vlad has observed, can become "a little lonely ? a bit like throwing stones into a quiet lake."In any event, she has posted, "I will be outed one day. It is inevitable. When I am, you guys will realize that knowing OtPR will tell you more about some bureaucrat with a name than knowing my name will tell you about OtPR."Being outed might not be a career buster, but it probably won't be a good day at the office, either ? all those impaled politicians and influential players, all those archives."I will keep blogging, I expect," the blogger blogged. "I don't think I can stop."peter.king at latimes.comTwitter:?@peterhking -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jan 12 08:28:45 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 16:28:45 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Jason Phillips new CEO for Friant Water Users References: <1053370749.3163271.1452616125306.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1053370749.3163271.1452616125306.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> AGRICULTURE ?JANUARY 11, 2016 1:54 PM Friant Water Authority names new chief executive Jason Phillips is currently a Bureau of Reclamation officialFriant board hopes Phillips can help restore water allocations to member agenciesThe Friant-Kern Canal below Friant Dam.?ERIC PAUL ZAMORA?Fresno Bee Staff PhotoBY LEWIS GRISWOLDlgriswold at fresnobee.com - - - - - LINKEDIN - GOOGLE+ - PINTEREST - REDDIT - PRINT - ORDER REPRINT OF THIS STORY The Friant Water Authority, which operates the Friant-Kern Canal, has hired Jason Phillips as its first chief executive officer in hopes of avoiding a third year of zero water deliveries in the California drought.Phillips is deputy regional director of the mid-Pacific region for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. His duties have included managing the San Joaquin River restoration program to bring a salmon run back to the river.Jason Phillips?Friant Water AuthorityPhillips was chosen because he has the background to make the case to the Bureau of Reclamation that it?s time to restore water flows suspended in the drought to satisfy environmental goals, said Eric Borba, a Porterville-area farmer and chairman of the Friant Water Authority.?This is a critical time for Jason Phillips to become Friant?s first chief executive officer,? Borba said. ?Friant is facing a third year of a zero allocation. We need a leader who will thrive in the highly dynamic environment of California water. He can lead us in the right direction, I believe.?The authority?s board of directors upgraded the job title to chief executive officer from general manager to reflect both increased expectations and modern business norms, he said.Borba said he wasn?t at liberty to disclose Phillips? salary as chief executive officer.WE NEED A LEADER WHO WILL THRIVE IN THE HIGHLY DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT OF CALIFORNIA WATER.Eric Borba, Friant Water Authority chairmanThe authority, representing 14 water districts on the San Joaquin Valley?s east side, works on legal and political issues as well as operating the massive Friant-Kern Canal.?Former general manager Ron Jacobsma stepped down in April last year after several irrigation districts split off from the Friant Water Authority to pursue differing visions of how to deal with the zero allocation problem in the drought.?Borba said the districts that left still are friendly with Friant, and ?there?s all the opportunity? to rejoin.?We all want the same thing ? we need water,? Borba said.?The Friant division of the federal Central Valley Project delivers San Joaquin River water to about 1 million acres of farmland and 15,000 farms on the east side of the Valley.Farmers who get water from both the 151-mile-long Friant-Kern Canal that extends from Millerton Lake to Kern County, and the Madera Canal that extends north of Milleton Lake into Madera and Merced counties, have received no water after farmers downstream exercised their exchange contractor rights when their San Joaquin River delta water supplies were curtailed.The Friant division also supplies water to several cities and towns, including Fresno.?Phillips has a bachelor?s degree in civil engineering from Portland State University. Before joining the Bureau of Reclamation in 2001, he worked as a civil engineer and project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers in both the Sacramento and Portland districts.Lewis Griswold:?559-441-6104,?@fb_LewGriswoldad more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/business/agriculture/article54157595.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jan 13 08:03:16 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 16:03:16 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fresno Bee: Westlands Settlement Bill Introduced References: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.fresnobee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article54372515.html Clashes on California water resume in DC with introduction of drainage bill Bill would codify an agreement that was announced in SeptemberUnder its terms, Westlands Water District?s federal debt would be forgiven?Westlands would assume responsibility for paying claims against federal governmentAgriculture drainage water to be treated enters the Panoche Drainage District?s Demonstration Selenium Treatment Plant via an irrigation ditch.?JOHN WALKER?Fresno BeeBY MICHAEL DOYLEmdoyle at mcclatchydc.com - - - - - LINKEDIN - GOOGLE+ - PINTEREST - REDDIT - PRINT - ORDER REPRINT OF THIS STORY WASHINGTON?U.S. lawmakers from California have more political turbulence ahead of them with the introduction Tuesday of a bill to settle a long-running San Joaquin Valley irrigation drainage dispute.The legislation by Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, would implement a sweeping drainage settlement reached between the Obama administration and the Westlands Water District. It also reignites some of the same regional and partisan conflicts that have dogged past water bills.?This legislation is necessary to approve and authorize the drainage settlement,? Valadao said, adding that it ?has the potential to save taxpayers billions of dollars.?The 19-page bill essentially matches the terms of a?legal settlement announced last September. It relieves the federal government of the obligation to provide irrigation drainage to Westlands farms. The government?s failure to provide the drainage as part of the Central Valley Project network of reservoirs and canals led to tainted soil and serious environmental problems.THE BILL INCLUDES CONCESSIONS MADE BY BOTH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND WESTLANDS WATER DISTRICT TO RESOLVE THE DISPUTE.?Office of Rep. David Valadao, R-HanfordIn return, the 600,000-acre Westlands district will retire at least 100,000 acres of farmland. The nation?s largest water district will also receive a potentially advantageous new type of contract and have its own remaining $375 million debt to the government forgiven, among other changes.Westlands would gain title to an array of canal facilities and buildings, under the bill, and would also assume responsibility for paying landowner claims?currently made against the federal government.?Ensuring taxpayer dollars go towards meaningful projects, such as increased water storage rather than fighting unnecessary litigation, is the responsible and most efficient use of taxpayer dollars,? Valadao said.But in a sign of clashes to come, as well as a reminder of perennial congressional vexations, Valadao?s bill drew immediate fire from Democrats in the House of Representatives who represent portions of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and who have long fought Westlands.?I oppose this bill, or any legislation, that would codify principles that benefit the nation?s largest water district at the expense of taxpayers and the environment,? said Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Stockton.Three other House Democrats?joined McNerney last September in criticizing the legal settlement, with Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, calling the agreement a ?bad deal.?The legal settlement, and the legislation introduced Tuesday, in turn, are the unanticipated progeny of water decisions made long ago.The federal Bureau of Reclamation began delivering water to Westlands in 1967, and up until the mid-1970s constructed some 70 miles of a planned 207-mile drain. Instead of reaching all the way to the Delta, it ended prematurely at Kesterson Reservoir.Federal officials now peg the constantly escalating cost of completing that drainage system at upward of $3.5 billion.The bill introduced Tuesday faces several hurdles. Though the Republican-controlled House could conceivably launch it relatively quickly, California water legislation often bogs down on Capitol Hill.After an 18-year legal battle, for instance, negotiators reached a deal in September 2006 to restore salmon to the San Joaquin River below?Friant Dam. Legislation implementing the settlement was first introduced in December 2007.In March 2009, the?San Joaquin River legislation?finally reached the White House as part of a larger package.For the past several years, California water legislation intended to address the state?s drought has foundered over disagreements between House Republicans and California?s Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.Neither Feinstein nor Boxer has yet introduced similar irrigation-drainage legislation in the Senate. On Tuesday, four months after the Justice Department and Westlands announced their settlement, both senators indicated they were still reviewing the ensuing legislation.?We . . . will be getting feedback from all the stakeholders,? Boxer?s spokesman Zachary Coile said.Michael Doyle:?202-383-0006,?@MichaelDoyle10Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article54372515.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jan 13 08:07:08 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 16:07:08 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Water Deeply: Federal Policies Add to Groundwater Strain References: <335197485.3660211.1452701228499.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <335197485.3660211.1452701228499.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.waterdeeply.org/articles/2016/01/9318/federal-policies-add-groundwater-strain/ Federal Policies Add to Groundwater Strain January 13th, 2016?by?Alastair Bland?????8 min read????? - Share ?- ? Tweet The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has supported additional groundwater extraction in the San Joaquin Valley, where aquifer depletion is already damaging vital infrastructure. A new water-exchange project may also be spreading toxic soil contaminationThe San Joaquin Valley floor has been sinking for decades. So much water has been pumped out of wells in this arid agricultural zone that the land?s surface has caved downward?almost 30 feet?in places. As groundwater pumping continues amid the ongoing drought, it?s still sinking as rapidly as two inches per month.On the surface, the subsidence is causing roads and canals to crack as the earth collapses. Below the surface, much of the aquifer space is being lost and can never be recovered.Yet the federal government is encouraging the use of even more groundwater in this severely impacted zone. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has used tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to drill new wells in the San Joaquin Valley. Such activity will likely contribute to further land subsidence and require more taxpayer money to fix damaged infrastructure.In June 2015, Reclamation also approved a?new water exchange project?allowing a wealthy San Joaquin Valley farming district to pump more groundwater, deliver it to other farmers using the California Aqueduct and replace that with water exported from the imperiled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.The so-called Canal Integration Program pushed by?Westlands Water District?allows the major almond-growing region to pump as much as 30,000 acre-feet of groundwater annually in years when Westlands? surface water deliveries are cut to 20 percent or less of its contracted allowance. This happened in 2015, and between July and October, Westlands pumped about 22,000 acre-feet of water under the new program from basins near the path of the California Aqueduct. The 400-mile canal is owned by the state of California, and its primary purpose is to distribute drinking water to 25 million people.The five-year water transfer plan, conservation groups say, threatens to accelerate subsidence-related damage to the canal that has already occurred.?This is the water supply for Los Angeles,? says Tom Stokely, director of the California Water Impact Network. ?There is already land subsidence in the area, and they?re just adding to the problem.?The project may also introduce selenium, a potentially dangerous natural element present at high levels in some Westlands soils, into the city of Los Angeles drinking water supply.Westlands had to apply with the Bureau of Reclamation for permission to undertake the exchange project, since it will involve transferring the water via a federally operated section of the state-run California Aqueduct, according to Shane Hunt, a Bureau of Reclamation spokesman.Gayle Holman, a Westlands spokeswoman, says the project will help Westlands farmers get through a very difficult time.?The plan allows growers without their own groundwater supply to survive through the zero-allocation years we?ve had two years in a row, and which we anticipate again this year,? says Holman. She adds that in 2014, an emergency arrangement through the California Department of Water Resources helped deliver groundwater to farmers in need. The arrangement ?is helping us offset the devastating effects of the drought.?Groundwater moved via the aqueduct, Holman says, will only be used to keep existing crops alive and not to expand planted acreage.In 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation approved a project allowing Westlands Water District to pump groundwater into the California Aqueduct in areas near Huron and Kettleman City where land subsidence of 7 to 9 inches was recorded over the last two years. The green dots show wells used in the project, while the yellow squares indicate where water is being pumped into the aqueduct. (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation)Worries About ContaminationEnvironmental groups are concerned because some of Westlands? groundwater is tainted with selenium.Hunt, with Reclamation, says the water transfer project will not harm the state?s water supply.?There is generally only selenium near the surface, in the shallow groundwater, but not in the deeper groundwater,? he says.The two subterranean layers are distinct and separated by a mostly impermeable clay layer. Even so, it is not certain that selenium near the surface remains isolated there.Michelle Sneed, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, says thousands of wells have pierced the floor of the San Joaquin Valley, creating ?communication between the shallow and the deeper? aquifer zones ? which could cause transfer of selenium in places. Sneed, however, emphasized that she does not study water quality and has not specifically looked at selenium levels in Westlands? water.Holman says the wells to be used in the water exchange project meet safe drinking water standards.?All the wells were tested before approval, and there will be regular testing afterward,? she says. ?All the wells pumped will be in compliance with water quality standards.?Hunt says approved wells will be monitored monthly.?If selenium goes above 2 parts per billion, the wells will be shut down,? Hunt says.The Safe Drinking Water Act names 50 parts per billion as the maximum limit for human consumption of selenium.Monitoring CriticizedPatricia Schifferle, director of Pacific Advocates, a resources consulting group, doesn?t believe monthly monitoring is frequent enough.?These industrial irrigators can game the system, discharging contaminated water without getting caught if they do it before the once-a-month monitoring schedule,? Schifferle said via email.Even if the water is perfectly safe for drinking, it could still kill wildlife by accumulating in higher densities in the food chain, says Felix Smith, a retired biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who spoke with?Water Deeply. In 1983, Smith saw firsthand the ecological effects that selenium can have on wildlife when he discovered deformed juvenile birds at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, which was fed by agricultural runoff from Westlands.He believes similar consequences may result if selenium is introduced regularly into the California Aqueduct, which also supplies Kern National Wildlife Refuge.?If this water was just going to a human use, there probably won?t be any problem, but if it goes to a wildlife area where it can accumulate in plants and animals, then it?s going to be a problem,? Smith says.He says maintaining drinking water standards in the California Aqueduct fails to safeguard fish, wildlife and people.?Testing the water itself gives you a wrong impression of what is really there, because selenium will go into the soil, it will go into roots and pass up the food chain,? Smith says. ?The water itself is only a medium in which [birds] live, and they can live there for years if the water is kept at 2 to 3 parts per billion and their food comes from another source. But their food doesn?t come from another source. It comes from the water, and that?s how the selenium builds up.?Selenium in the AqueductIn July, water sampling by the Department of Water Resources found 1 to 2 parts per billion of selenium in the California Aqueduct, well below the safe drinking water standard of 50 parts per billion.Smith says selenium can bioaccumulate in agricultural crops, too ? especially in the parts of plants that contain protein, like seeds.As for land subsidence, Reclamation officials don?t seem concerned.In an environmental assessment early this year, Reclamation considered the potential impacts of Westlands? plan and deemed that land subsidence would occur anyway. The assessment concludes: ?Groundwater pumping is known to be a leading cause of subsidence in the San Joaquin Valley ? the groundwater to be conveyed under the Proposed Action is within the range of historical pumping by the district, and would be pumped regardless of whether Reclamation allowed its conveyance in federal facilities.?Others argue the project adds to subsidence problems that are already severe.?Groundwater pumping creates cumulative impacts,? says Schifferle, at Pacific Advocates.?It?s just 30,000 acre-feet, but it?s on top of all the other water extraction.?Satellite surveillance in 2014 observed significant subsidence of the earth along the course of the California Aqueduct. A?report?from NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory released on August 19, 2015, stated the ground below the California Aqueduct in at least one location subsided 13 inches between May, 2014 and January, 2015.Tom Farr, co-author of the report, says a similar rate of subsidence has continued in 2015. While land can rise and fall for reasons other than water pumping, such as tectonic shifting, Farr says the subsidence observed in the western San Joaquin Valley is too great to be the result of anything other than well-water extraction.?The subsidence also correlates with the location of the wells,? he says.Damaging Vital InfrastructureTed Thomas, information officer at the California Department of Water Resources, says the state has spent ?tens of millions of dollars in the last 40 years to compensate for subsidence.? The California Aqueduct, and other canals, have cracked and buckled, he says, requiring repairs and various upgrades to the concrete lining of the canal walls.Sections of the Delta-Mendota Canal, another critical water conveyance structure connecting the Delta to the heart of the San Joaquin Valley?s farmland, have been damaged over the decades by subsidence, according to Hunt. The Delta-Mendota Canal is owned by Reclamation, and, ironically, was originally built in 1951 partly to reduce future groundwater extraction and the resulting land subsidence by bringing surface water to the region from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.In response to ongoing subsidence in recent years, Reclamation has had to raise the canal lining to offset subsidence ? as much as 18 inches in places ? to ensure water will continue flowing properly in the canal.Reclamation is well aware of the long-term groundwater depletion problem in the San Joaquin Valley and the importance of recharging groundwater reserves. In December, for example, the agency unveiled a?groundwater banking plan?aimed at putting almost 100 million gallons of water into a depleted basin near Tulare, California.However, Reclamation has also used taxpayer money to drill?dozens of new wells?in the San Joaquin Valley. Dipping into funding from the?American Recovery and Reinvestment Act?of 2009, the agency spent $42 million between 2009 and 2012 on drought relief projects ? mostly the drilling of 44 new production wells and refurbishment of 27 older ones in the San Joaquin Valley, according to Hunt.?Four of the wells we constructed supply water to wildlife refuges,? Hunt adds.The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is intended to bolster the economy and create jobs.?But tell me how drilling wells in an overdrafted region is benefitting the public,? says Stokely, of the California Water Impact Network.California passed landmark groundwater regulations in 2014 that will limit and monitor the extraction of groundwater and the drilling of new wells. However, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will not result in significant regulatory actions for more than 20 years. Even if the act took effect tomorrow, land subsidence can continue for decades after groundwater overdraft is halted.?There are places where they?ve essentially stopped allowing water levels to decline for, like, 40 years, but they?re still seeing steady rates of subsidence,? says Sneed.Alastair Bland is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. He can be reached via Twitter at?@allybland.Top image: Recent land subsidence caused by groundwater overdraft in the San Joaquin Valley can be measured in feet at some locations, such as this one at the Santa Rita Bridge along Highway 152. (U.S. Geological Survey) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Jan 13 09:26:59 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 09:26:59 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] American River Steelhead Run Up From Last Year, Still Below Good Years In-Reply-To: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/11/1468470/-American-River-Steelhead-Run-Is-Up-From-Last-Year-But-Still-Below-Good-Years American River Steelhead Run Up From Last Year, Still Below Good Years by Dan Bacher The number of steelhead showing now at Nimbus Fish Hatchery continues to be much better than last year, in spite of continuing low releases of 500 cfs from Nimbus Dam. If the El Nino storms continue, expect to see a lot more steelhead move into the river when the flows go up. Last season hatchery workers counted only 154 steelhead trapped at the facility from December through mid-March. In contrast, the hatchery has trapped a total of 320 adult steelhead to date. ??We also released two wild girls and one wild boy,? said Gary Novak, Nimbus Fish Hatchery manager. ?There are lots of steelhead in the hatchery now. We?re seeing about 80 fish in the trap every Tuesday before we spawn,? stated Novak. The hatchery has spawned 73 pairs and taken 491,717 eggs, well on the way to their goal of releasing 430,000 steelhead yearlings into the river system. However, to put the current steelhead run in perspective, banner years for steelhead on the American have seen up to 2,000 adult steelhead counted by this time of year. During the best seasons I?ve fished for steelhead ? 1980, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2011 and 2013 ? anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 steelhead have been counted at the hatchery. Novak?s working theory for the much larger numbers of steelhead seen this year is that many of the fish didn?t come back to the river and stayed out in the ocean for an extra year. Most of the fish seen at Nimbus are three-year olds in the majority of years. This year there appear a larger number of four-year-olds than usual, but we won?t know for sure until the scale samples of the fish are analyzed. Most of the fish this season range from 8 to 12 pounds. The hatchery workers continue to see larger amounts of eggs per steelhead female, 7,000 compared to around 6,000 eggs per fish last year. The hatchery last year was able to take only 192,278 eggs the entire season. To boost the numbers of fish they raised, they obtained 168,838 eggs from Coleman Fish Hatchery, Novak noted. This year CDFW staff will release 291,000 steelhead yearlings into the system. American River steelhead are the largest ones found in the Central Valley system, due to their Eel River ancestry and excellent forage conditions found on the America. A fisherman tossing out a Little Cleo in February 2002 caught and released a wild steelhead/rainbow weighing 24.02 pounds, the largest ever documented on the American. After just hundreds of the river?s native steelhead returned to Nimbus Fish Hatchery in the first few years after Folsom Lake was completed in the 1950s, the DFW introduced Eel River steelhead to the hatchery, boosting annual steelhead returns to the hatchery in the thousands every year. Genetic analyses conducted since then indicate steelhead from both the hatchery and the river are genetically more similar to Eel River steelhead than other Central Valley steelhead stocks. In a presentation before the Save the American River Association in December 2014, Dr. Ribert Titus, CDFW Senior Environmental Scientist, documented how steelhead in the lower American River may be the ?fastest growing trout? in the world. ?There is a lot of food in the American ? the fish average a growth rate of.82 mm per day. They grow really well,? he said. He contrasted a slide of steelhead from the American River with one from Secret Ravine Creek, a tributary of Dry Creek. Whereas the American River fish is plump and healthy looking, the fish from Secret Ravine looks skinny and undernourished. However, the same relatively warm conditions American River steelhead encounter every summer have spurred the outbreak, first documented in 2004, of an anal vent disease called ?rosy anus? according to Titus. The American River steelhead population, along with its Chinook salmon run, constitutes a unique urban fishery in the shadow of the State Capitol that we must fight to restore and preserve. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Jan 13 09:28:30 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 09:28:30 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] =?windows-1252?q?Governor_Brown=92s_budget_DOES_inc?= =?windows-1252?q?lude_=243=2E6_million_for_Delta_Tunnels?= In-Reply-To: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/01/08/governor-browns-budget-does-include-3-6-million-for-delta-tunnels/ Governor Brown?s budget DOES include $3.6 million for Delta Tunnels by Dan Bacher | posted in: Spotlight | 0 In a media teleconference on January 7, three Brown administration officials claimed that no money in the $122.6 billion General Fund budget for 2016-17 unveiled by Governor Jerry Brown would be used to implement the Delta Tunnels under the ?California Water Fix.? In response to a reporter?s question about whether any budget money would be used for the Delta Tunnels, John Laird, California Natural Resources Secretary said, ?California Eco Restore has been separated from the California Water Fix,? the conveyance plan. Likewise, Mark Cowin, Director of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), affirmed, ?There?s no money in the budget to advance the study of the California Water Fix or tunnels as you call it. Those activities are funded entirely by the state and federal water project contractors that benefit from the project.? Chuck Bonham, California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Director, noted that money allocated from the state?s cap-and-trade (carbon trading) program would be used restore wetlands through the California Eco Restore program. ?This program has nothing to do with the proposal to modernize conveyance infrastructure,? said Bonham. However, Restore the Delta (RTD) disagreed strongly with administration officials? contentions that no budget money would be used to fund the controversial conveyance project, pointing out the budget released today does include $3.6 million for the Delta Tunnels (California Water Fix). ?The money would come out of the General Fund to the Delta Stewardship Council and is intended to incorporate the Delta Water Tunnels conveyance project into the Delta Plan,? said Barbara Barrigan- Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD) ?The Delta Plan was originally written for incorporation of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) a plan that failed to meet Federal guidelines for water quality and fishery standards. The new plan for the Delta Tunnels (WaterFix) has already received a failing grade from the Federal EPA. The separated out and reduced conservation effort is now called ?EcoRestore,?? she said. She said the language at issue is located on page 107 in the budget summary pdf: ?Update of the Delta Plan?An increase of $3.6 million General Fund for the Delta Stewardship Council to implement the Delta Science Plan and incorporate the WaterFix Delta conveyance project into the Delta Plan.? (http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf) Laird, Cowin and Bonham apparently failed to read this language ? which very clearly states that the $3.6 million will be used ?incorporate the WaterFix Delta conveyance project into the Delta Plan.? Barrigan-Parrilla emphasized that the ?WaterFix? has not received any of the state or federal permits required to begin construction. ?The Governor is rushing the permitting process at the California State Water Resources Control Board despite the fact that the best available science needed to evaluate these permits is now more than 20 years old. The Bay-Delta Water Quality control plan is now 7535 days overdue,? she stated. Barrigan-Parrilla reminded Californians that the Governor promised Californians that no money from Proposition 1, the Governor?s controversial water bond passed in November 2014, would be used for the tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. ?Now the Governor?s budget is calling for $3.6 million for the Delta Stewardship Council to include the tunnels into the Delta Plan from these same bond funds that have been put into the General Fund. He has broken his promise to taxpayers,? she said. It?s easy to see why the Governor broke his promise to the taxpayers when you consider the $21.8 million that Big Money interests, including corporate agribusiness groups, billionaires, timber barons, Big Oil, the tobacco industry, and the California Chamber of Commerce, dumped into the Proposition 1 campaign. There is no doubt that these wealthy corporate interests are expecting a big return for their ?investment,? including the construction of the tunnels, in California?s play-to-pay politic system. For more information, read my article on the East Bay Express website: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2015/04/29/why-governor-brown-broke-his-prop-1-promise-big-money-interests-dumped-218-million-into-the-prop-1-campaign ?Governor Brown wants to waste more taxpayer money to prop up a hugely controversial project that was supposed to be paid for by the water exporters,? she said. ?It?s time for the madness to end. Let?s redirect available funding to projects that will make California water more resilient to climate change and extended droughts.? ?Water recycling, urban water conservation, groundwater recharging, and storm water capture are all projects that are desperately needed, as we see by the massive flooding in Southern California today. The tunnels fail to address those opportunities. The Delta Tunnels are a 20th Century fix to a 21st Century problem,? Barrigan-Parrilla concluded. The tunnels would divert massive quantities of Sacramento River water for export to corporate agribusiness interests irrigating drainage- impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California water agencies and oil companies conducting environmentally destructive fracking and other extreme oil extraction methods in Kern County. The tunnels would hasten the extinction of imperiled Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. Unfortunately, some species may become extinct even before Brown has a chance to build his ?legacy? project, the Delta Tunnels, due to abysmal state and federal government water management policies. Fish species ranging from endangered Delta smelt to striped bass continued to plummet to record low population levels in 2015, according to the annual fall midwater trawl survey results released by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) on December 18. Only 6 Delta smelt, an endangered species that once numbered in the millions and was the most abundant fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, were collected at the index stations in the estuary this fall. The 2015 index (7), a relative number of abundance, ?is the lowest in history,? said Sara Finstad, an environmental scientist for the CDFW?s Bay Delta Region. Likewise, longfin smelt, a cousin of the Delta smelt, declined to the lowest abundance index (4) in the history of the survey. Only 3 longfin smelt were collected at the index stations throughout the three-month period. For more information, go to: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/4/1466156/-Delta-Smelt-and-other-fish-species-plummet-to-record-low-levels -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jerry_brown.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 35359 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Jan 13 09:29:41 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 09:29:41 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] American River Steelhead Run Up From Last Year, Still Below Good Years In-Reply-To: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <938DA206-191E-4A0F-9BD5-129CC6FDA60B@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/11/1468470/-American-River-Steelhead-Run-Is-Up-From-Last-Year-But-Still-Below-Good-Years American River Steelhead Run Up From Last Year, Still Below Good Years by Dan Bacher The number of steelhead showing now at Nimbus Fish Hatchery continues to be much better than last year, in spite of continuing low releases of 500 cfs from Nimbus Dam. If the El Nino storms continue, expect to see a lot more steelhead move into the river when the flows go up. Last season hatchery workers counted only 154 steelhead trapped at the facility from December through mid-March. In contrast, the hatchery has trapped a total of 320 adult steelhead to date. ??We also released two wild girls and one wild boy,? said Gary Novak, Nimbus Fish Hatchery manager. ?There are lots of steelhead in the hatchery now. We?re seeing about 80 fish in the trap every Tuesday before we spawn,? stated Novak. The hatchery has spawned 73 pairs and taken 491,717 eggs, well on the way to their goal of releasing 430,000 steelhead yearlings into the river system. However, to put the current steelhead run in perspective, banner years for steelhead on the American have seen up to 2,000 adult steelhead counted by this time of year. During the best seasons I?ve fished for steelhead ? 1980, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2011 and 2013 ? anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 steelhead have been counted at the hatchery. Novak?s working theory for the much larger numbers of steelhead seen this year is that many of the fish didn?t come back to the river and stayed out in the ocean for an extra year. Most of the fish seen at Nimbus are three-year olds in the majority of years. This year there appear a larger number of four-year-olds than usual, but we won?t know for sure until the scale samples of the fish are analyzed. Most of the fish this season range from 8 to 12 pounds. The hatchery workers continue to see larger amounts of eggs per steelhead female, 7,000 compared to around 6,000 eggs per fish last year. The hatchery last year was able to take only 192,278 eggs the entire season. To boost the numbers of fish they raised, they obtained 168,838 eggs from Coleman Fish Hatchery, Novak noted. This year CDFW staff will release 291,000 steelhead yearlings into the system. American River steelhead are the largest ones found in the Central Valley system, due to their Eel River ancestry and excellent forage conditions found on the America. A fisherman tossing out a Little Cleo in February 2002 caught and released a wild steelhead/rainbow weighing 24.02 pounds, the largest ever documented on the American. After just hundreds of the river?s native steelhead returned to Nimbus Fish Hatchery in the first few years after Folsom Lake was completed in the 1950s, the DFW introduced Eel River steelhead to the hatchery, boosting annual steelhead returns to the hatchery in the thousands every year. Genetic analyses conducted since then indicate steelhead from both the hatchery and the river are genetically more similar to Eel River steelhead than other Central Valley steelhead stocks. In a presentation before the Save the American River Association in December 2014, Dr. Ribert Titus, CDFW Senior Environmental Scientist, documented how steelhead in the lower American River may be the ?fastest growing trout? in the world. ?There is a lot of food in the American ? the fish average a growth rate of.82 mm per day. They grow really well,? he said. He contrasted a slide of steelhead from the American River with one from Secret Ravine Creek, a tributary of Dry Creek. Whereas the American River fish is plump and healthy looking, the fish from Secret Ravine looks skinny and undernourished. However, the same relatively warm conditions American River steelhead encounter every summer have spurred the outbreak, first documented in 2004, of an anal vent disease called ?rosy anus? according to Titus. The American River steelhead population, along with its Chinook salmon run, constitutes a unique urban fishery in the shadow of the State Capitol that we must fight to restore and preserve. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Jan 13 09:29:41 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 09:29:41 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] American River Steelhead Run Up From Last Year, Still Below Good Years In-Reply-To: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1023101383.3619804.1452700996289.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <938DA206-191E-4A0F-9BD5-129CC6FDA60B@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/11/1468470/-American-River-Steelhead-Run-Is-Up-From-Last-Year-But-Still-Below-Good-Years American River Steelhead Run Up From Last Year, Still Below Good Years by Dan Bacher The number of steelhead showing now at Nimbus Fish Hatchery continues to be much better than last year, in spite of continuing low releases of 500 cfs from Nimbus Dam. If the El Nino storms continue, expect to see a lot more steelhead move into the river when the flows go up. Last season hatchery workers counted only 154 steelhead trapped at the facility from December through mid-March. In contrast, the hatchery has trapped a total of 320 adult steelhead to date. ??We also released two wild girls and one wild boy,? said Gary Novak, Nimbus Fish Hatchery manager. ?There are lots of steelhead in the hatchery now. We?re seeing about 80 fish in the trap every Tuesday before we spawn,? stated Novak. The hatchery has spawned 73 pairs and taken 491,717 eggs, well on the way to their goal of releasing 430,000 steelhead yearlings into the river system. However, to put the current steelhead run in perspective, banner years for steelhead on the American have seen up to 2,000 adult steelhead counted by this time of year. During the best seasons I?ve fished for steelhead ? 1980, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2011 and 2013 ? anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 steelhead have been counted at the hatchery. Novak?s working theory for the much larger numbers of steelhead seen this year is that many of the fish didn?t come back to the river and stayed out in the ocean for an extra year. Most of the fish seen at Nimbus are three-year olds in the majority of years. This year there appear a larger number of four-year-olds than usual, but we won?t know for sure until the scale samples of the fish are analyzed. Most of the fish this season range from 8 to 12 pounds. The hatchery workers continue to see larger amounts of eggs per steelhead female, 7,000 compared to around 6,000 eggs per fish last year. The hatchery last year was able to take only 192,278 eggs the entire season. To boost the numbers of fish they raised, they obtained 168,838 eggs from Coleman Fish Hatchery, Novak noted. This year CDFW staff will release 291,000 steelhead yearlings into the system. American River steelhead are the largest ones found in the Central Valley system, due to their Eel River ancestry and excellent forage conditions found on the America. A fisherman tossing out a Little Cleo in February 2002 caught and released a wild steelhead/rainbow weighing 24.02 pounds, the largest ever documented on the American. After just hundreds of the river?s native steelhead returned to Nimbus Fish Hatchery in the first few years after Folsom Lake was completed in the 1950s, the DFW introduced Eel River steelhead to the hatchery, boosting annual steelhead returns to the hatchery in the thousands every year. Genetic analyses conducted since then indicate steelhead from both the hatchery and the river are genetically more similar to Eel River steelhead than other Central Valley steelhead stocks. In a presentation before the Save the American River Association in December 2014, Dr. Ribert Titus, CDFW Senior Environmental Scientist, documented how steelhead in the lower American River may be the ?fastest growing trout? in the world. ?There is a lot of food in the American ? the fish average a growth rate of.82 mm per day. They grow really well,? he said. He contrasted a slide of steelhead from the American River with one from Secret Ravine Creek, a tributary of Dry Creek. Whereas the American River fish is plump and healthy looking, the fish from Secret Ravine looks skinny and undernourished. However, the same relatively warm conditions American River steelhead encounter every summer have spurred the outbreak, first documented in 2004, of an anal vent disease called ?rosy anus? according to Titus. The American River steelhead population, along with its Chinook salmon run, constitutes a unique urban fishery in the shadow of the State Capitol that we must fight to restore and preserve. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu Jan 14 18:37:12 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 18:37:12 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] UPDATED: Governor Claims Tunnels Are 'Absolutely Necessary' At California Water Agency Event In-Reply-To: <020b1194a8d54b49b4a3de1cf1bbbfe5@fwwatch.org> References: <020b1194a8d54b49b4a3de1cf1bbbfe5@fwwatch.org> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/14/1469954/-Governor-Claims-Tunnels-Are-Absolutely-Necessary-At-California-Water-Agency-Event Photo Credit: Joe McHugh, California Highway Patrol Governor Claims Tunnels Are Absolutely Necessary at California Water Agency Event by Dan Bacher In comments after his address at the ?CA Water 2.0 event? sponsored by the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) today in Sacramento, Governor Jerry Brown described the controversial Delta Tunnels plan as ?absolutely necessary? for California?s future and dismissed the growing number of project critics as a ?small group of people who absolutely hate it.? On his way out of the Sacramento Convention Center after he made his presentation, Brown dismissed the notion that the project is being built as part of his ?legacy? as Governor. ?Some of the people, particularly some of the press, think this is some kind of legacy or pet project. It has nothing to do with that,? Brown said. ?The only reason I'm working on this is I believe ? and the scientists and engineers that I've spoken to say ? it's absolutely necessary for California's future. And that's why I'm working on it,? said Brown. ?And although there are a small group of people who absolutely hate it, I know they're not right. We'll keep going forward and we'll get it done,? the Governor concluded. During his address, Governor Jerry Brown promoted ?conveyance? ? building the twin water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Water Delta ? as one of the key actions needed under the California Water Action Plan to ?solve? the state's water and ecosystem problems as the population grows. ?Our climate is rapidly changing, our population is growing and more extreme weather looms on the horizon. Now is not the time to shirk from responsibility,? said Governor Brown. ?Storage or conveyance alone will not solve all of our problems. Recycling, groundwater management and conservation, individually, won't get us there either. It will take all of the above. We must think differently and act boldly -- and that's exactly what California is doing.? ?California now has 39 million people,? he emphasized. ?That?s a fraction of the people that were here for 10,000 years. Not only are there 39 million people, but they own 32 million cars that use 18 billion gallons of gasoline and 4 billion gallons of diesel that create greenhouse gases and pollution.? To further the co-equal goals of ecosystem restoration and water supply for this growing population, Brown said the current water infrastructure is ?outdated? and needs to be modernized. ?We have to build things and make them work,? he said. He and his staff touted the 10 "primary actions" that the administration has taken and is continuing to take to address the ?challenges? of uncertain water supplies, drought, water quality, habitat loss, flooding and climate change, and to deliver a ?more reliable water supply.? Developing ?a more reliable and sustainable? water supply in the Delta? is primary action #3. ?In April, state and federal officials announced California WaterFix and California EcoRestore to meet the goals of water supply reliability and habitat restoration in the Delta. The purpose of California WaterFix is to end the current pattern of reversed water flows in the Delta caused by water pumps. EcoRestore is the state?s plan for restoring at least 30,000 acres of habitat,? according to the Governors Office. The other actions include ?making water conservation a way of life in California; increasing self-reliance and integrating water management across levels of government; protecting habitat for fish and wildlife; preparing for more frequent and severe droughts; delivering safe water for everyone; increasing flood protection; efficiently operating the State Water and Central Valley projects; and seeking new water resources funding sources.? For the complete list of actions, go to: www.gov.ca.gov/? Delta opponents: Californians don't like project and Governor knows it Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD), challenged the Governor?s comment that the tunnels opponents are a ?small group of people.? ?There were over 30,000 comments against the California Water Fix submitted to the state and federal water agencies challenging the tunnels project?s EIR by the end of October,? she said. ?While 30,000 people is a small number in terms of California?s total population, it is a huge amount for opposition to a project that with no public meetings or transparency. The numbers of people opposing the Delta Tunnels are growing daily. Californians don?t like the project and the Governor knows it,? she said. The coalition opposing the tunnels includes a diverse group of family farmers, Delta residents, Indian Tribe leaders, recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, businesspeople and elected officials, including Members of Congress. ?There is not one credible environmental group that supports the project; the only one that backs the tunnels is Jerry Meral?s Natural Heritage Institute,? said Barrigan-Parrilla. She also criticized the Governor?s claim that $100 million has already been spent on the Delta Tunnels, ?as if that is an accomplishment.? ?Spending a lot of money isn?t much of an accomplishment if you are re- proposing a project that still cannot meet the standards required under the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act,? she said. ?Federal and state agencies will still be required to approve it before any construction begins, and the EPA has already given the latest version of the Tunnels a thumbs down.? Barrigan-Parrilla also addressed comments by Mark Cowin, Director of the California Department of Water Resources, who claimed the Tunnels could be used on a day like today, even though outflows have been less in the past few weeks than during the drought due to so much pumping. ?How will the Delta ever recover if freshwaters are never allowed to flow through it, even in rainy seasons?? she asked. ?Clean water standards would not ever be met for the 4 million people who live, work, farm, recreate and drink water from the Delta. In addition, CA Water Fix documents show that the new pumps would decimate salmon smolts, so what the Governor is proposing is to save smelt while decimating our iconic salmon runs,? Barrigan-Parrilla concluded. Congressmembers ask Brown for detailed accounting of how $3.6 million for tunnels would be used As the Governor was speaking at the conference, six Northern California Congressmembers released a letter they sent to Brown asking for a detailed accounting of the $3.6 million allocated for incorporation of the California Water Fix into the Delta Plan. Congressmembers Jerry McNerney, Jared Huffman, Mark DeSaulnier, John Garamendi, Mike Thompson, and Doris Matsui signed the letter. ?We would like to know how the $3.6 million will be used and would appreciate a more detailed discussion with your administration as to why budgetary funding was deemed necessary for the regulatory review of the WaterFix tunnels at this time,? they wrote. ?Because the WaterFix tunnels has not received the state or federal permits to begin construction and there remains serious concerns about the design, efficacy, and cost of the tunnels, we believe assigning resources is premature and inappropriate,? they said. The letter also stated that the funding could be ?better spent on other solutions,? noting that if the tunnels are constructed ?not a single drop of new water will be added to California?s Water Supply.? You can read the full letter at: drive.google.com/... The language at issue in Brown's proposed budget is located on page 107 in the pdf: "Update of the Delta Plan?An increase of $3.6 million General Fund for the Delta Stewardship Council to implement the Delta Science Plan and incorporate the WaterFix Delta conveyance project into the Delta Plan." (www.ebudget.ca.gov) Tunnels threaten salmon, Delta smelt and other fish species Tunnels opponents say the project would hasten the extinction of imperiled Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. Delta advocates point out that some species may become extinct even before Brown has a chance to build his ?legacy? project, the Delta Tunnels, due to abysmal state and federal government water management policies. Fish species ranging from endangered Delta smelt to striped bass continued to plummet to record low population levels in 2015, according to the annual fall midwater trawl survey results released by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) on December 18. Only 6 Delta smelt, an endangered species that once numbered in the millions and was the most abundant fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, were collected at the index stations in the estuary this fall. The 2015 index (7), a relative number of abundance, ?is the lowest in history,? said Sara Finstad, an environmental scientist for the CDFW?s Bay Delta Region. Likewise, longfin smelt, a cousin of the Delta smelt, declined to the lowest abundance index (4) in the history of the survey. Only 3 longfin smelt were collected at the index stations throughout the three-month period. For more information, go to: www.dailykos.com/... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: acwa1.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 152503 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bgutermuth at usbr.gov Fri Jan 15 16:29:18 2016 From: bgutermuth at usbr.gov (Gutermuth, F.) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2016 16:29:18 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Jan 28 water rights workshop at Trinity County library Message-ID: FYI - - Salmonid Restoration Federation (SRF), Five Counties Salmonid Conservation Program, and Trout Unlimited will be hosting a Water Rights Workshop for rural residential landowners. The workshop will highlight California water law, including riparian and appropriative rights and related water laws. *When*: January 28, 2016 *Time*: 5:30-7:30pm *Where*: Trinity County Library Meeting Room, Weaverville, CA. *Registration*: The registration fee is $20 and advanced registration is recommended. You can also register at the door. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. *NEW! Water Rights Educational Curriculum* As part of our water rights education initiatives, SRF and Trout Unlimited also created a new curriculum called "Making Sure Your Water Use Complies with California Water Law." Thank you and hope to see you soon, Kate Rowe Project Assistant Salmonid Restoration Federation PO Box 784 Redway, CA 95560 calsalmon.org (707) 923 7501 -- Brandt Gutermuth Trinity River Restoration Program 530.623.1806 work 530.739.2802 cell http://www.trrp.net/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov Fri Jan 15 14:10:16 2016 From: Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov (Cannata, Steve@Wildlife) Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2016 22:10:16 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] 2015 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW2.xlsx Message-ID: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5BB461@057-SN2MPN1-041.057d.mgd.msft.net> Hi All, Please see attached for the Jweek 2 (Jan 8-14) Trinity River trapping summary update. Steve -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2015 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW2.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 62836 bytes Desc: 2015 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW2.xlsx URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Mon Jan 18 11:23:24 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2016 11:23:24 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] FW: State Water Board Issues its First Temporary Groundwater Storage Permit to Capture Rain Season High Flows Message-ID: <00a301d15225$b3fc50a0$1bf4f1e0$@sisqtel.net> For Scott Valley From: DiLuccia, Andrew at Waterboards [mailto:Andrew.DiLuccia at Waterboards.ca.gov] On Behalf Of WB-EXEC-news Sent: Friday, January 15, 2016 2:42 PM Subject: NEWS RELEASE: State Water Board Issues its First Temporary Groundwater Storage Permit to Capture Rain Season High Flows http://app.meltwaterpress.com/mpress/uploadedimages/2015/6/24/18196514351910 46211.png State Water Board Issues its First Temporary Groundwater Storage Permit to Capture Rain Season High Flows FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Jan. 15, 2016 Contact: Miryam Barajas miryam.barajas at waterboards.ca.gov SACRAMENTO - Today the State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) issued its first temporary groundwater storage permit to the Scott Valley Irrigation District to capture high winter and spring flows for local groundwater storage and recharge. The permit is the first in what is expected to be a series of temporary permits issued for this type of water diversion and use. The temporary permit application was submitted Jan. 13 by the District in coordination with staff at the University of California at Davis, the California Farm Bureau Federation, Scott River Water Trust and others. The District proposes to divert up to 5,400 acre-feet of water during high water events using existing diversion structures. Water will be diverted from the Scott River using the District?s unlined earthen canal system and spread onto as many as 3,475 acres of existing, dormant agricultural fields within the District?s service area for infiltration. ?The predicted high rainfall events associated with El Ni?o this year provide an opportunity for accelerating groundwater recharge that we so critically need,? said State Water Board Chair Felicia Marcus. ?This is the first of what we hope are many new opportunities for creative thinking and community effort to take advantage of storm flows everywhere we can. My thanks to everyone who helped allow us to turn this around in just a few days.? Such temporary permits can reduce downstream flood risk and alleviate the effects of heavy groundwater pumping in the short-term, as well as demonstrate the feasibility of using available high water flows to recharge local groundwater. The permit, consistent with water rights priorities and protections for fish and wildlife, is anticipated to enhance approximately 26 miles of habitat for fisheries downstream of the District?s diversion dam. The Scott River and its tributaries support runs of Upper Klamath-Trinity rivers Chinook, Klamath Mountains Province steelhead, and state and federally threatened Southern Oregon-Northern California Coast coho salmon. Adding spring and summer river flows for salmonids through winter diversion to underground storage will increase groundwater base flow to the Scott River and improve conditions for salmonids. A portion of the water diverted under this permit will be used to continue a study by researchers at UC Davis studying the infiltration effects of winter application of water on 15 acres of agricultural land in the Scott River Valley. The diversion season will last until the end of March. BACKGROUND On Nov. 13, 2015, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.?s Executive Order B-36-15 directed the State Water Board to prioritize temporary water right permits to accelerate approvals for projects that enhance the ability of a local or state agency to capture high precipitation events this winter and spring for local groundwater storage or recharge, consistent with water rights priorities and protections for fish and wildlife. To encourage these types of temporary permits, the State Water Board reduced the temporary permit application filing fee. For more information on the application process for groundwater recharge/storage visit the State Water Board webpage . ### http://app.meltwaterpress.com/mpress/uploadedimages/2015/6/24/18196514351911 25946.png -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 85995 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.png Type: image/png Size: 59210 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jan 19 09:50:47 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2016 17:50:47 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] New Study Finds the Idea of Logging for Water is All Washed Up References: <486633497.6011966.1453225847161.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <486633497.6011966.1453225847161.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://mavensnotebook.com/2016/01/18/news-worth-noting-state-water-board-issues-first-temp-permit-to-capture-rainy-season-high-flows-new-study-finds-the-idea-of-logging-for-water-is-all-washed-up-legal-alert-groundwater-pumping-fees/ New Study Finds the Idea of Logging for Water is All Washed Up ?Old wine in a new bottle? Environment Now released a new study today evaluating the idea of using logging to increase water flows from forests in California, and found extensive problems with this approach.?While the idea of using logging to increase water flows can seem enticing, especially during times of drought, time and again this claim has turned out to be ill-founded,? said Douglas Bevington, forest program director of Environment Now. ?The latest versions popping up in California are just old wine in a new bottle.?These claims are examined in the new study written by hydrologist Jonathan Rhodes and fisheries scientist Christopher Frissell, and funded by Environment Now, a family foundation that supports water and forest protection in California. The study, titled??The High Costs and Low Benefits of Attempting to Increase Water Yield by Forest Removal in the Sierra Nevada,??examines the effects of logging on water supply, the resulting harm to streams and wetlands, and alternative ways to improve water flows.Based on the results of more than 230 scientific studies and reports, Rhodes and Frissell show that the effects of logging on water flows are often negligible, nonexistent, or negative, and even in the more optimistic scenarios, the potential effects are small, short-lived, and ill-timed.Rhodes and Frissell analyze eleven ways that claims of increased water flows from logging are problematic or overstated. For example, Rhodes and Frissell found that in the majority of watersheds examined in a recent report by The Nature Conservancy touting water increases from logging, the available scientific information actually shows that the proposed logging would produce no increase in water yield (see p. 11 in Rhodes and Frissell?study).The findings of the Rhodes and Frissell study are particularly timely in light of recent efforts to have California water users pay for Sierra Nevada logging, based on the idea that it would increase water supplies. Rhodes and Frissell caution that ?Assessments of attempts to increase water yield on public lands have consistently noted that it is very unlikely that any potential changes in water yield would be measurable at the scale of larger watersheds? (p. 25).Furthermore, logging can produce substantial harms to downstream water users. As Rhodes and Frissell note, ?Forest removal would have several impacts that would incur significant costs for downstream water supplies and associated infrastructure and activities.? These costs would be pervasive and enduring? (p. 57). In total, they examine nine types of negative effects stemming from logging done to increase water flows, such as increasing siltation (dirty water) and contributing to downstream flooding during wet seasons.Finally, Rhodes and Frissell explore several alternatives to logging that can reliably contribute to improved flows during drier times when additional water is most beneficial; are self sustaining; do not incur high or enduring environmental costs; provide an array of ecosystem benefits; and contribute to watershed resiliency in the face of climate change.As Douglas Bevington summarized, ?If one genuinely seeks to improve water flows in the Sierra Nevada, rather than simply trying to find a new justification for logging, these alternatives offer a better way for us to direct our resources. Using logging to increase water flows is still a bad idea whose time has not come.?? The Rhodes and Frissell study is available at:?http://environmentnow.org/pdf/Rhodes-and-Frissell-water-logging-report.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jan 19 09:52:40 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2016 17:52:40 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] State Water Board releases draft resolution directing staff to develop beneficial uses pertaining to tribal traditional and cultural, and subsistence fishing References: <1785308263.5926719.1453225960063.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1785308263.5926719.1453225960063.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://mavensnotebook.com/2016/01/18/news-worth-noting-state-water-board-issues-first-temp-permit-to-capture-rainy-season-high-flows-new-study-finds-the-idea-of-logging-for-water-is-all-washed-up-legal-alert-groundwater-pumping-fees/ State Water Board releases draft resolution directing staff to develop beneficial uses pertaining to tribal traditional and cultural, and subsistence fishing >From the State Water Resources Control Board: At its February 16, 2016 board meeting, the State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) will consider adopting the draft resolution pertaining to?beneficial uses.The State Water Board?s adoption of the Resolution will not establish new?beneficial uses.? Attachment A to the resolution contains?beneficial use?categories proposed by a group of tribes and tribal and environmental justice representatives.? Through the resolution, the State Water Board would direct staff to consider the proposed?beneficial uses?as staff develops such?beneficial uses?as part of the amendment to the statewide Water Quality Control Plan for Inland Surface Waters, Enclosed Bays, and Estuaries (the Mercury Amendment).? The development of the Mercury Amendment, including the?beneficial uses, would utilize the public participation process applicable to the board?s development of a water quality control plan and seek input from all interested tribes, entities, and individuals.? The State Water Board would consider adopting the Mercury Amendment, including the?beneficial uses, no later than April 2017.? Click here for the draft resolution. If you have any questions about this notification, please contact Gita Kapahi, Director of Public Participation and Tribal Liaison, at (916) 341-5501 or?gita.kapahi at waterboards.ca.gov, or Stacy Gillespie, Senior Staff Counsel, at (916) 341-5190 or?stacy.gillespie at waterboards.ca.gov. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Tue Jan 19 14:53:16 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2016 14:53:16 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] NYTimes: New tactics to save California's salmon - Iron Gate Hatchery Message-ID: <011601d1530c$2fbccb70$8f366250$@sisqtel.net> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/19/science/new-tactics-to-save-californias-de cimated-salmon-population.html?login=email &emc=edit_th_20160117&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=4303215&_r=1 Cover Photo: Salmon eggs at the Iron Gate Hatchery in California. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times To Save Its Salmon, California Calls In the Fish Matchmaker At a hatchery on the Klamath River, biologists are using genetic techniques to reduce inbreeding, though some argue natural methods are more effective. By MATT RICHTELJAN. 15, 2016 HORNBROOK, Calif. - On a frigid morning in a small metal-sided building, a team of specialists prepared to orchestrate an elaborate breeding routine. The work would be wet and messy, so they wore waders. Their tools included egg trays and a rubber mallet, which they used to brain a fertile female coho salmon, now hanging dead on a hook. Diana Chesney, a biologist, studied a piece of paper with a matrix of numbers, each one denoting a male salmon and potential match for the female coho. "This is the bible," she said of the matrix. "It's what Carlos says." John Carlos Garza, a geneticist based a day's drive south in Santa Cruz, has become a key figure in California's effort to preserve its decimated salmon stocks. Using the latest genetic techniques, he and his team decide which individual fish should be bred together. At several major state conservation hatcheries, like the coho program here at Iron Gate, no two salmon are spawned until after Dr. Garza gives counsel - a "salmon mating service," he jokingly calls it. Slide Show: A Scientific Matchmaker CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times His painstaking work is the latest man-made solution to help fix a man-made problem that is about 150 years old: Dams, logging, mining, farming, fishing and other industries have so fractured and polluted the river system that salmon can no longer migrate and thrive. In fact, today, owing to the battered habitat, virtually all salmon in California are raised in hatcheries. Traditionally, the practice entailed killing fertile salmon and hand-mixing eggs and male milt, or sperm, then raising the offspring packed in containers or pools. When they were old enough to fend for themselves, they were released to rivers or sometimes trucked or ferried to release points to find the ocean on their own. This practice gave them a necessary transition before they hit saltwater and a semblance of the quintessential salmon experience of migrating to the sea and back. To that end, they eventually swam back to hatcheries, where they became the next breeders in the cycle. While hatcheries have helped propagate the species, they have also created new problems. The salmon they produce can be inbred and less hardy through domestication, hurting their chances for surviving and thriving in the wild. Dr. Garza hopes some high-tech ingenuity can help fix the salmon's troubles. When the fish return to a hatchery, scientists there separate them into individual tubes, clip their fins, then Fed-Ex the tissue samples to Dr. Garza and his team. They then analyze each salmon's DNA, and match breeding pairs that have no genetic relationship to each other. The goal is to avoid breeding siblings or cousins, a break from traditional methods of breeding the biggest fish (thought to be strong) without knowing if the fish were related. At some smaller hatcheries, 50 percent or more of salmon are inbred, Dr. Garza's work has shown. "We're not trying to create the biggest, best, most productive fish," said Dr. Garza, 51, who runs the molecular ecology and genetic analysis team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Those traditional methods led to homogeneity rather than the diversity that makes a species more able to survive myriad challenges in nature, including predators and disease. "We're trying to mimic what's going on in nature," he added. Photo: Unfertilized eggs scattered around salmon that were spawned at the Iron Gate Hatchery. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times His tactics, first used a decade ago and now used to breed half a million offspring each year, inspire strong reactions, and hopes, in the passionate community of scientists, environmentalists and commercial fish experts eager to see the species preserved. Underscoring the value of Dr. Garza's input, and of the genetic tools, he is one of only a few people who consult with all 11 major hatcheries in California. "Carlos may hold the keys to the future," said John McManus, the executive director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, an advocacy group for commercial and recreational fishermen. Perhaps the technology, Mr. McManus said, can be expanded from a small subset of conservation hatcheries that focus on the most endangered species to the bigger facilities relied upon by the fishing industry and "infuse wildlike diversity back into hatchery production." But others question whether the mating service is just another misguided step down a primrose path of human intervention. It is hubris, skeptics say, to think that natural selection can be recreated through technology. "It's a question of how much playing God will actually work," said Peter B. Moyle, a distinguished professor emeritus of biology at the University of California, Davis. "Anytime you get tech solutions to natural problems," he added, "it seems to me you wind up in trouble in the long run." Re-evaluating Hatcheries According to a Garza family story, Carlos was 4 years old when he first said he wanted to be a scientist. But he would face several major detours as a child. He, his younger sister and his mother lived in a rough Philadelphia neighborhood. Stubborn, angry and without his father around, Carlos battled gang members, and wound up requiring the intervention of social services. Photo: Bob Cook working with freshly fertilized salmon eggs at the Iron Gate Hatchery. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Life did not improve much when he was 13 and the family moved to San Diego. Carlos was kicked out of middle school for insolence and then dropped out of high school because of a lack of interest, clashed with his family and left home when he was 15. His sister, Mariel Garza, now an editorial writer for The Los Angeles Times, thought "he'd be a bum of some variety," she said with a laugh, knowing he is anything but. Reviving his childhood dream of becoming a scientist, he attended community college, then the University of California, San Diego, where he graduated magna cum laude. He began researching monkeys in Thailand in 1990 - "the dawn of molecular genetics," he said. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in integrative biology. When he took a job at NOAA studying fish in 1999, he remembered his Berkeley classmates being surprised he chose a job so practical, so applied, as some scientists who favor theoretical work say with derision. Dr. Garza did not care much about fish. "Maybe to eat," he said. But he did like solving real-world problems, even one involving the debate about salmon. "It's not for the faint of heart," he said, adding: "I grew up in that kind of environment." Dr. Garza summarized the disagreement as one between what he called purists and pragmatists. Purists want to see the tiny remaining population of wild fish segregated from hatchery fish so that a native group can thrive; pragmatists believe such segregation is impossible because of habitat loss and the fact that hatcheries have already created genetic commingling. Once the hatchery fish are released, the pragmatists say, you cannot control where they swim, making segregation unrealistic. The West Coast hatcheries, and the debates they inspire, date to the early 1870s. In 1875, Spencer Fullerton Baird, the first leader of the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, wrote to the authorities in Oregon, telling them that the way to preserve salmon was through hatcheries, said Jim Lichatowich, a salmon biologist and historian. At the time, the challenge to the salmon population was twofold: mining destroyed many rivers and the fish were a popular source of protein for pioneers. "Buy into these hatcheries and you will make salmon so abundant you won't need to regulate the harvest," Mr. Baird wrote in the letter, according to Mr. Lichatowich's description of its key message. Was that prediction accurate? "Not by a long shot," the historian said. Early hatcheries collected eggs from riverbeds, hatched them and released months-old fry. "They did that until, in some cases, the stream ran out of fish, and then moved on," Mr. Lichatowich said. Photo: Salmon being checked to see if they are ready to be spawned at the Iron Gate Hatchery. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times In some cases, fish were released hundreds of miles from their native streams. The fry lived in pools - early farms - over which a dead cow's head was hung. Maggots would collect to devour the carcass, fall into the water and become salmon food. It was the beginning of another self-defeating act: It taught hatchery fish to wait for food to drop from the sky, and short-circuited instincts that the shadows from above might be predators. Finally, in other cases, fish were picked at random to spawn, their eggs and sperm mixed in dishes, which led to inbreeding. As damming and other water diversions reduced the natural habitat, the hatcheries became indispensable. Today, in California, they produce 50 million offspring a year. Even so, the state has less than 10 percent of its historic population of natural salmon, leaving 32 different kinds of salmon and trout in the state as endangered, threatened or at risk, Dr. Moyle said. But in 2012, Dr. Garza and other scientists wrote a critical report about how hatcheries had done as much harm as good. Among its key recommendations: Fish should no longer be inbred, a particular problem for the most endangered species because dwindling populations leave few mating choices (and a higher prospect of inbreeding). "It's an extinction vortex," Dr. Garza said, "where inbreeding accelerates the process of decline." A Delicate Process The story of F12, a female coho, shows the frantic intervention in the life of an endangered salmon. It began on Nov. 23 when she swam into the trap at the Iron Gate hatchery. Her luck at having made it that far cannot be overstated. Each year, around 75,000 juvenile coho are released from the hatchery, which is at the base of a dam on the Klamath River. On their swim to the ocean and back, the coho face predatory birds, dry stream beds and disease. Most years, around 900 return in the coho salmon run. This year, fewer than 100 did. By the time F12 reached the trap, her time was running out. Female salmon, once they are ripe to spawn, typically drop their eggs in the gravel, then die within days. On the Monday morning when F12 was plucked from the trap, Ms. Chesney, the biologist, worked quickly. She clipped F12's fin with scissors, put the sample into a manila coin envelope and, along with clips from eight other fish, Fed-Exed it to Santa Cruz. Photo: Bob Cook squeezing eggs from a female salmon, top, and milt from a male salmon into a container of eggs, bottom. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times In the meantime, F12 was placed in a white tube and left in a round pool. The tube separated her from other fish, each in its own tube, so they would not become mixed up with one another when it was time to breed. F12's fin clip arrived at 10:30 the next morning at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz. Dr. Garza's team quickly processed the clip, given F12's ticking clock. When fin clips arrive, Dr. Garza said, "it pre-empts everything else." In a lab with some $2 million of equipment, Libby Gilbert-Horvath, a geneticist, put F12's clip into a solution to break the sample into molecular parts, like proteins and nucleic acids. Then, F12's molecules were processed by a machine that filters DNA. Next, a technique called enzymatic amplification made millions of copies of F12's DNA to allow further study. The next morning, Ms. Gilbert-Horvath used technology that allows fluids to be studied at a nano scale; in this case, it let the team identify markers at 96 of F12's individual gene sites. This technique, which Dr. Garza developed, allows individual fish to be DNA fingerprinted. Finally, F12's DNA was compared with that of the Iron Gate males to see which made the best breeding partners. At 5:07 p.m. on Nov. 25, the results were emailed to the hatchery. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, the breeding did not happen until Monday, Nov. 30. It was, in Ms. Chesney's words, "not romantic." F12's tube was pulled onto a stainless steel table. Ms. Chesney studied the mating matrix from Santa Cruz while hatchery staff members waited for directions. "Who's my home boy?" asked Bobby Cook, a staff member, wondering which males would be spawned with F12. Unfortunately, several top choices had died in their tubes over the long weekend. The team was nervous. "We just hope they're alive. This is the scary part," Ms. Chesney said. Two matrix-approved males, named 28MN and 17MJ, were alive. Each was pulled from its tube and smacked twice on the head with the mallet. Photo : The Scott River near Hornbook, Calif., a spawning spot for salmon. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times It was time to breed F12, who now hung by her gills, dead, on a hook. Mr. Cook stuck a needle into her side. This device forced air through F12's body and caused bright orange roe to spill from her vents, about 1,500 eggs. Mr. Cook divided them into two trays. Another staff member picked up each dead male and squeezed milt into the eggs. The dead fish were tossed on a conveyor belt for further study. "It's a slaughterhouse," said Morgan Knechtle, the lead biologist at Iron Gate, though he said the genetic sequencing tools provided a sharp contrast. "In many places in the world, this level of technology is not provided to humans." It was a bittersweet day for the team. The good news was that it had spawned four females, but, unfortunately, no new salmon returned to the trap. "That's a run, folks," Mr. Cook said as the trap came up empty. But Mr. Knechtle said he thought it would have been worse without the salmon matchmaker, maybe only 50 coho over all, rather than the 100 they had seen. Dr. Garza said he saw a bright future for this process. He wants to use genetic tools at large hatcheries - not to dictate every mating but to get DNA fingerprints and then track every hatchery fish from birth to death. That way, he said, the hatcheries could deduce which spawning and management techniques led to healthier fish. Others agreed that there was no choice but to put these powerful technologies to work. (They are also used in Idaho, Maine and Washington.) "I know it's disheartening to people who want this kind of pure fish that exists without us getting in the way of it doing its thing," said Jeanette Howard, the associate director of science for the Nature Conservancy of California. "But we're too far away from that." "It's the best chance for saving this species," she added of Dr. Garza's method. "He's created a great scientific enterprise." But Dr. Moyle, from the University of California, Davis, said that while he marveled at the technology, he feared that this may be another technological fix that could create its own unforeseen problems. "We think we can do better than Mother Nature," Dr. Moyle said. "You wind up getting hooked on that system." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jan 21 08:10:38 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 16:10:38 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] East Bay Express: Cap and Clear-Cut References: <1358470041.6943307.1453392638840.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1358470041.6943307.1453392638840.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Cap and Clear-Cut?-- California's cap-and-trade system, which has been touted as a model for reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, allows timber companies to clear-cut the state's forests.?Will Parrish?East Bay Express?-- 1/20/16 ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jan 21 09:10:56 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 17:10:56 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] River Activists and Tribes Prepare For Water Board Public Hearings in Orleans, Arcata and Yreka References: <269260306.6913430.1453396256984.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <269260306.6913430.1453396256984.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> River Activists and Tribes Prepare For Water Board Public Hearings in Orleans, Arcata and Yreka? By MALCOLM TERENCE, Two Rivers Tribune Contributing WriterOriginally published in Volume 22, Issue 2 (January 12, 2016) of the Two Rivers Tribune.Now that hopes for a settlement to Klamath River water issues have collapsed in Congress, dam removal proponents are shifting their attention to a series of four scoping meetings being sponsored by the State Water Resources Control Board.The downriver tribes, who were not all in accord on the settlement agreements, may travel much more parallel paths at this stage.The schedule includes a meeting Thursday, January 14, in Sacramento, then meetings in Arcata on Monday, January 25, and in Orleans and Yreka, both on Tuesday, January 26. The Orleans session is an add-on requested by the Karuk Tribe in their effort to encourage more input from people in the river communities. It is a step in the process open to both scientists and to locals who may want to make sure the Water Board does not overlook any issue dam opponents consider important.Mike Orcutt is director of fisheries for the Hoopa Tribe, which was not a signatory to the Klamath settlements, but which does oppose relicensing the dams. His tribe has challenged the authority of the Water Board in court because the board and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, called the FERC, have delayed a relicensing decision since the old set of licenses expired in 2006.The dam owner, PacifiCorp, was granted repeated license extensions because the settlement talks between irrigators, fishermen, tribes and other stakeholders were in progress. But Orcutt said he expected the Hoopa Tribe to enter input to the scoping because, even though there is currently litigation in progress, ?obviously we could lose.?He said all the tribes?Hoopa, Yurok and Karuk?were on parallel paths calling for dam removal and he expected all would enter scoping to the Water Board.Scoping is a step in the environmental assessment process where an agency is gathering issues to examine?concerns like costs and risks. These get studied and written-up into an Environmental Impact Report, an EIR, in the next stages. In the end the members of the Water Board will decide which alternative to accept, ranging from issuing the permits as requested to complete removal of the three lowest dams, the ones in California.The fourth dam, called J.C. Boyle, is in Oregon and falls under the authority that state?s Department of Environmental Quality, although the California agency still can address polluted water discharges from the upper dam that enter California. All this takes time and Orcutt said that PacifiCorp benefits financially from the delays.Glen Spain is Northwest Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations (PCFFA), the organization of commercial fishermen. He restated that the current meetings are to decide what needs to be analyzed.He said it is critical not to let the dam owner get away with too narrow a scope, ?not just the costs of change, but also the costs of doing nothing.?Spain encouraged locals to show up and talk to the Board?s representatives, but ?it is not enough to tell them to take the dams down. We need to tell them why.?He said the issue will later go to the California Public Utilities Commission, but that agency is limited to looking at the effects on power company ratepayers. The Water Board has to look at water quality, but Spain said the definition needs to be broadened.Your ads will be inserted here byEasy AdSense.Please go to the plugin admin page to Paste your ad code?OR Suppress this ad slot.He said presenters should testify about problems that could not be remedied by a quick fix, what writers of EIRs call ?mitigations.? As an example, he noted how the dams in the upper river stop the replacement of spawning gravels in the lower river.Mike Belchik, senior fisheries biologist with the Yurok Tribe, says the dam owner wants to show the impacts of the dams on fish survival are minimal, ?but I don?t think they can.?As example, he said the water warms when it is held behind Iron Gate, the lowest dam in the series, to temperatures not encountered before the dams were built. This is especially true of September releases, when spawning fish reach the upper reaches of the river. These earliest fish cannot find cold water refugia and either die from the heated water or deliver eggs which have died.This has created a run in the Klamath where the early-run fish populations have dwindled so this has left only a late run on the Klamath side. This run, Belchik said, ends up entering the river at the same time as the Trinity River run. Suddenly the cool water holes become over-crowded, and these fish densities, compounded by the warm water releases from Iron Gate Dam, promote the spread of fish diseases.Old cannery records from July in the Klamath estuary support this hypothesis about pre-dam populations and timing, he said.He said that the people gathering input at the scoping meetings are contractors, not necessarily the actual Water Board members who will make the final decisions, and he encouraged presenters to bring up issues such as tribal culture or climate change. ?It makes people feel good to make impassioned pleas,? he said, but said this was not the best tactic.A detailed list of the uses of the river that are the purview of the Water Board is available online at http://goo.gl/ImLpOS. It is a long list, but near its end are issues like Native American Culture, Subsistence Fishing, Commercial and Sport Fishing and Spawning, Reproduction, and/or Early Development.An academic with a long history of linking river health to other issues is Dr. Kari Norgaard, an Associate Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon. She wrote a paper 10 years ago titled ?The Effects of Altered Diet on the Health of Karuk People.? It received national media attention and represented the first time a Tribe had successfully illustrated how dams lead to artificially high levels of diabetes and heart disease.As preface to the scoping hearings, she wrote ?Any evaluation of water quality impacts must not only consider the nature of the degradation (for example. direct human health impacts of water temperatures, as well as the human health consequences impacts of degrading traditional foods), but that these impacts are occurring in a highly unequal manner. Degraded water quality is an issue of environmental injustice.?Craig Tucker, Natural Resources Policy Advocate for the Karuk Tribe, said the Karuk Tribe would submit written input to the scoping phase, but he also encouraged people to show up at the hearings.?Locals have come out before many times, and we want them to come out again,? he said. ?We want them tell the Water Board how these dams affect the fishery, water quality and their lives. We need it again. The reason why the Tribe demanded a hearing on the river was so local people could have access.?He said it was appropriate for people to express emotions, ?but the Water Board is not the agency to be mad at, at this point. It?s appropriate to be expressing yourself, but don?t take it out on the Water Board, at least not yet.?The Clean Water Act is a federal law, but authority to enforce it is handed out to the states, in the form of the Water Board in California. Tucker said there was no way continued operation of the dams can meet clean water standards, ?especially the TMDLs on toxic algae and temperature.?TMDL is shorthand for Total Maximum Daily Load, a regulatory term in the Clean Water Act, that describes the maximum amount of a pollutant that a body of water can receive while still meeting water quality standards.Tucker predicted that the Water Board might grant the dam owner a permit but with additional mitigations or conditions. ?They already have to add fish ladders and the Water Board may add more. That will get even more costly,? he said. A detailed explanation of the locations of the dams, their history and many links to earlier input, is available from the Water Board online at http://goo.gl/ahzJuj.- See more at: http://www.tworiverstribune.com/2016/01/river-activists-and-tribes-prepare-for-water-board-public-hearings-in-orleans-arcata-and-yreka/#sthash.16jSR1Zq.dpuf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jan 21 09:12:26 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 17:12:26 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Water rights workshop References: <862196661.6936517.1453396346603.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <862196661.6936517.1453396346603.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/environment/article_57d924c2-bf14-11e5-a066-6ba6ea63c39b.html Water rights workshop Posted: Wednesday, January 20, 2016 6:15 amThe Salmonid Restoration Federation, Five Counties Salmonid Conservation Program and Trout Unlimited will be hosting a Water Rights Workshop for rural residential landowners from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 28 at the Trinity County Library meeting room, Weaverville. The workshop will highlight California water law, including riparian and appropriative rights and related water laws.The registration fee is $20 and advanced registration is recommended. You may also register at the door. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.As part of their water rights education initiatives, SRF and Trout Unlimited also created a new curriculum called ?Making Sure Your Water Use Complies With California Water Law.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu Jan 21 18:58:34 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 18:58:34 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Delta advocates blast Governor Brown for pushing tunnels in State of the State/Three groups 'vehemently oppose" agribusiness-backed San Luis Drainage Resolution Act In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Good Evening Please check out my two latest posts, the first an article on the Governor's State of the State and the second a news release from C- WIN, CSPA and AquaAlliance "vehemently opposing" the San Luis Drainage Resolution Act Thanks Dan http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/21/1472991/-Delta-advocates-blast-Governor-Brown-for-pushing-tunnels-plan-in-State-of-the-State Photo of Governor Jerry Brown at the ACWA "Water 2.0" event in Sacramento by Dan Bacher. Delta advocates blast Governor Brown for pushing tunnels in State of the State by Dan Bacher In his State of the State Address at the State Capitol in Sacramento today, Governor Jerry Brown promoted building ?reliable conveyance? ? the controversial Delta Tunnels Plan proposed under the California Water Fix and California Water Action Plan ? and building ?storage? to supposedly achieve the goal of providing a reliable water supply for the state's residents. ?One of the bright spots in our contentious politics is the joining together of both parties and the people themselves to secure passage of Proposition 1, the Water Bond,? said Brown. ?That, together with our California Water Action Plan, establishes a solid program to deal with the drought and the longer-term challenge of using our water wisely.? ?Our goal must be to preserve California?s natural beauty and ensure a vibrant economy ? on our farms, in our cities and for all the people who live here. There is no magic bullet but a series of actions must be taken. We have to recharge our aquifers, manage the groundwater, recycle, capture stormwater, build storage and reliable conveyance, improve efficiency everywhere, invest in new technologies ? including desalination ? and all the while recognize that there are some limits,? he stated. He also uttered some of the ?achieving balance between conflicting parties? rhetoric that he has become known for, all while he continues to serve the interests of the corporate agribusiness, Big Oil, Big Timber and other corporate interests through his anti-environmental water policies that have brought Central Valley steelhead and salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon and other fish species to the brink of extinction under his administration. ?Achieving balance between all the conflicting interests is not easy but I pledge to you that I will listen and work patiently to achieve results that will stand the test of time," Brown claimed. ?Water goes to the heart of what California is and what it has been over centuries. Pitting fish against farmer misses the point and grossly distorts reality. Every one of us and every creature that dwells here form a complex system which must be understood and respected.? Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, immediately responded to the State of theState by saying, ?We are thrilled to hear Governor Brown?s commitment to protecting ecological systems. And we are glad he has committed to solving today's problems without making them worse.? However, she then blasted Brown for moving ahead with the Delta Tunnels project, considered by many to be potentially the most environmentally destructive project in California history. ?Unfortunately, Governor Brown insists on moving forward with the Delta tunnels project despite serious environmental concerns raised by numerous organizations including the Environmental Protection Agency which found the plan ?incomplete? with required analysis ?not yet done,?? Barrigan-Parrilla said. ?The tunnels will destroy the sole source of drinking water for one million Delta residents, the physical environment and the state's most magnificent fisheries and breathtaking habitat for birds on the Pacific flyway, not to mention the agricultural and related economies for an additional three million Delta area residents,? she stated. ?The Delta tunnels will cost $17 billion before cost overruns and interest, and will not make any new water for California. Perhaps the Governor should take his own advice and drop his bad Delta Tunnels plan,? Barrigan-Parrilla concluded. She also described a new video promoting the tunnels released by the Governor?s Office today as ?mockworthy.? The ?California WaterFix Video? is hyperlinked to the words "reliable conveyance" in the on line transcript of Brown?s speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAFaQ9D_joI Californians for Water Security, a group describing itself as a ?coalition supporting the plan to fix California?s aging water infrastructure, including business leaders, labor, family farmers, local governments, water experts and others,? also responded to the address in a statement. The group applauded Governor Brown?s comments in the State of the State address ?discussing the importance of fixing our state?s water infrastructure.? ?There is a strong political will to get this done now,? said Michael Quigley, Executive Director of the Alliance for Jobs. ?We desperately need to replenish groundwater basins, fill up reservoirs, and recharge our existing water supplies ? but without a reliable conveyance we cannot get water where it?s needed and too much water will be wasted out to sea that should be captured.? Delta Tunnels are one of Brown?s many anti-environmental policies. While Brown has posed as a ?climate leader? and ?green governor? at conferences and photo opportunities around the globe, he has overseen water policies that have brought Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and a host of other species to the edge of extinction, in addition to promoting the Delta Tunnels Plan, a project that will only cause further ecological and economic damage. His administration in 2011 presided over record water exports out the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ? and the killing of millions of Sacramento splittail, an imperiled native minnow, and other species at the Delta pumps. (www.truth-out.org/...) More recently, fish species ranging from endangered Delta Smelt to Striped Bass plummeted to record low population levels in 2015, according to the annual fall survey report released on December 18 by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). (www.dailykos.com/...) Only 6 Delta Smelt, an endangered species that once numbered in the millions and was the most abundant fish in the Delta, were collected at the index stations in the estuary this fall. The 2015 index (7), a relative number of abundance, ?is the lowest in history,? said Sara Finstad, an environmental scientist for the CDFW?s Bay Delta Region. Meanwhile, Brown promotes the expansion of fracking and other extreme oil drilling techniques in California and backs potentially genocidal carbon trading policies and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), according to indigenous leaders. (www.dailykos.com/...) In addition, Brown oversaw the ?completion? of ?marine protected areas,? created under the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, that don?t protect the ocean from fracking, offshore oil drilling, pollution, corporate aquaculture, military testing and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. And it was only after months of intense pressure from environmentalists, public health advocates and Porter Ranch residents that Governor Brown declared a state of emergency in the Aliso Canyon Gas Leak disaster that began on October 23. Meanwhile, Brown?s sister, Kathleen, plays a significant role at Sempra Energy, the corporation that owns SoCalGas, the company responsible for the gas blowout. She earned $188,380 in her position as a board member in 2014 and $267,865 in 2013. (www.dailykos.com/...) Conflicts of interest like this one abound in a state where the regulatory apparatus has been captured by the regulated, including Big Oil, corporate agribusiness, the timber industry and other corporate interests. 2. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/21/1472982/-Three-groups-vehemently-oppose-agribusiness-backed-San-Luis-Drainage-Resolution-Act Three groups 'vehemently oppose" agribusiness-backed San Luis Drainage Resolution Act In a press release issued today, three environmental groups ? the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) and AquAlliance ? announced they ?vehemently? oppose HR 4366, the San Luis Drainage Resolution Act sponsored by Rep. David G. Valadao (CA-21). The text of the press release is below: C-WIN, CSPA and AquAlliance vehemently oppose HR 4366, the San Luis Drainage Resolution Act sponsored by Rep. David G. Valadao (CA-21). This proposed legislation would approve the drainage litigation settlement between Westlands Water District and the federal government. The agreement will increase the federal deficit and lock in annual water subsidies forever. It also converts the district?s current two-year water contracts to a permanent contract for up to 890,000 acre-feet of water annually. For the sake of comparison, the City of Los Angeles uses only 587,000 acre feet in a typical year. For decades, the district ? which consists of fewer than 600 corporate farms -- has irrigated its holdings with taxpayer-subsidized water delivered by the federal Central Valley Project. The district?s croplands contain large amounts of selenium, a toxic element that leaches from the soil when farmers flush their lands with CVP water to remove excess salt. The district then discharges this tainted runoff to Central Valley waterways and aquifers. The high (or rather, low) points of the agreement include: - Forgiveness of $375 million owed by Westlands to the federal government for capital repayment of Central Valley Project debt, thereby increasing the federal deficit. - No additional land retirement. The amount of land Westlands already has retired will be credited to this final figure. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service previously recommended the retirement of more than 300,000 acres of this poisoned land. - A permanent CVP contract for up to 890,000 acre-feet of water a year (subject to the availability of water) - An exemption from the existing acreage limitations that were drafted to prevent oversized farms from receiving subsidized water. - No public input on the settlement other than urging Congress to change or reject it. - Gifting of federal facilities to Westlands, including buildings, canals, pipelines, pumps, headworks and related facilities. ?This deal can be equated with the bank bailout of 2008,? said C-WIN spokesman Tom Stokely. ?The wealthy and powerful corporate interests that caused the crisis are allowed to exit the burning aircraft with golden parachutes. It locks in the destructive practices of the district, it continues to subsidize south-of-Delta Big Agriculture with taxpayer money, and it poses a long-term threat to both California?s environment and the state?s water supply. It is crony capitalism at its worse, and it demonstrates once again the corrosive power of money and corporate influence in Washington.? Bill Jennings, the chairman and executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, observed the deal is not only bad for fisheries, water quality and the environment, its also bad for many water contractors. ?It would give Westlands a permanent water contract before all Endangered Species Act litigation is completed,? said Jennings. ?In effect, this gives Westlands an advantage over other south-of-Delta contractors.? Summing up the case against the pact, AquAlliance executive director Barbara Vlamis said congressional approval of the deal ?will create a permanent demand for northern California water that will be used to create devastating pollution from land that never should have been irrigated in the first place. It assures continuation of a policy that is destructive, beneficial only to the few and powerful, and ultimately unsustainable.? The three groups are promoting a better, cheaper, and more equitable alternative. Areport by EcoNorthwest, an independent economic analysis firm, confirms that 300,000 acres of selenium-tainted land in the Westlands Water District and three adjacent water districts could be retired at a cost of $580 million to $1 billion. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey have reached similar conclusions. Retiring this land and curbing the water contracts associated with it would result in a savings to California of up to 455,000 acre-feet of water, or enough for 2,600,000 urban water users. The Environmental Working Group estimated that annual subsidies to Westlands range from $24 million to $110 million a year. Further, land retirement is significantly less expensive than Governor Jerry Brown?s plan to build a massive tunnel system to divert water from the Sacramento River for the express benefit of western San Joaquin Valley agribusiness. Agriculture consumes 80 percent of California?s developed water while accounting for only 2% of the state?s economic output. Our water supplies are limited in the best of times, and drought and climate change are only exacerbating the crisis. Subsidizing corporate agriculture on impaired and toxic lands is hardly a wise and reasonable use of our water. Congress must not approve this catastrophically flawed agreement before it is implemented. Californians need to tell our federal legislators that we don?t want another egregious and inequitable corporate bailout. Contact information: Tom Stokely, C-WIN 530-926-9727 cell 530-524-0315 www.c-win.org Bill Jennings, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance 209-464-5067 cell 938-9053www.calsport.org Barbara Vlamis, AquAlliance 530-895-9420 cell 530-519-7468 www.aqualliance.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Big_Oil_Brown-1.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 201108 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.gif Type: image/gif Size: 43 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Jan 22 08:33:28 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 16:33:28 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Jonas Minton: Will state water resources board protect the Delta? References: <1074686647.7362645.1453480408444.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1074686647.7362645.1453480408444.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article55668240.html JANUARY 20, 2016 8:02 AMWill state water resources board protect the Delta?Board plans to consider Gov. Brown?s tunnel plan before updating water standardsDelta smelt population is in free fall, but it?s not just fish in dangerOutdated water quality standards do not recognize the risk of pathogens to human health"Gallery pre-roll turned off as page level is: story . Must be: gallery" A small tag is visible on one of three Delta smelt, left, at the UC Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Lab. Scientists are breeding a refuge population of Delta smelt in case the species goes extinct. Randy Pench Sacramento Bee fileBY JONAS MINTONSpecial to The Bee When a company sells tainted ice cream, we ask, ?When did the FDA know about the contamination?? When a train carrying crude oil derails, we ask, ?When did the NTSB know the safety equipment was not installed??We ask because those are the agencies that need to be held accountable for protecting us. But agencies are made up of individuals who make conscious choices about whether they will act. Most take their responsibility very seriously. The state Air Resources Board, for instance, helped uncover the Volkswagen diesel fraud.Now, we will find out if the five members of the State Water Resources Control Board will do their job to protect the San Francisco Bay Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast. Every independent scientist has confirmed that too much water has been diverted from the Delta. The board?s own scientific review in 2010 confirmed that more freshwater flows were needed to bring the Delta back to health, but the board chose not to act. California?s Department of Fish and Wildlife just completed its survey of Delta smelt, a native fish that lives only in the Delta. Only four were caught in September, none in October or November and only one in December. Because Delta smelt used to exist in the millions, scientists consider it a bellwether species for the ecological health of the entire Delta. Better-known fish such as California?s native salmon and steelhead, which also depend on adequate freshwater flows, are also in catastrophic decline that could lead to extinction. It is not just fish in danger. The outdated water quality standards do not recognize the risk of pathogens such as microcystis, commonly known as blue green algae, which reproduce in stagnant water. With half or more of the freshwater being diverted from the Delta, the spread of this organism is a growing health concern. Federal law requires the board to update Delta standards every three years, yet the board has not done so for more than 20 years. It has only granted exemptions from the already inadequate standards, allowing more water to be diverted. Incredibly, the board recently announced that even though it won?t update the standards until 2018 at the earliest, it will consider approving Gov. Jerry Brown?s massive tunnel project that could divert even more fresh water from the Delta. The permitting process for the Delta tunnels is to start Jan. 28. After approving new standards, it plans to place additional conditions on the amount of water the tunnels could divert. That does not make sense. After water contractors spend upward of $17 billion on the tunnels, they would exert overwhelming political pressure to ensure they get the water they were initially promised. Remember the saying, ?Water runs uphill towards money.? That is not a joke; it is California water history. The question for Water Resources Control Board members is whether they will do their job and establish meaningful standards to protect people and fish before considering approval of these massive tunnels. Or will they make decisions that will lead to the extinction of salmon and other fish and potentially put people?s health at risk? Jonas Minton, deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources from 2000 to 2004, is water policy adviser at the Planning and Conservation League. He can be contacted at jminton at pcl.org. Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article55668240.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Jan 22 11:31:37 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 19:31:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] PacifiCorp Pursues Dam Removal After Collapse Of Klamath Legislation References: <1628444517.7483867.1453491097594.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1628444517.7483867.1453491097594.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.opb.org/news/article/pacificorp-pursues-dam-removal-after-collapse-of-klamath-agreement/ PacifiCorp Pursues Dam Removal After Collapse Of Klamath Legislation by?Jeff Mapes?OPB | Jan. 20, 2016 4:28 p.m.The Klamath Basin spans northern California and southern Oregon and has seen frequent water crises between the farming, ranching, tribal and environmental?communities.Devan?SchwartzPacifiCorp is now trying to reach a quick deal with federal and state regulators to remove four aged dams on the Klamath?River.The aggressive action by the big western utility follows the failure of Congress over the last four years to pass sweeping legislation aimed at ending the water wars in the Klamath Basin that straddles the states of Oregon and?California.Supporters of restoring free flows on one of the West Coast?s biggest salmon rivers are cheered by the prospect of finally seeing the dams demolished. But Klamath Basin farmers say they?re worried they will be left behind without any of the water guarantees included in the federal?legislation. Searching For Klamath Water?Agreement - PacifiCorp still wants to remove four old dams on the Klamath River, despite failure of federal?legislation. - Oregon official says there should be provisions in the deal to help farmers and tribes in the Klamath?Basin. That legislation collapsed last month in large part because of Republican opposition to language that would have helped speed removal of the four PacifiCorp dams, three in California and one in?Oregon.But, ironically, it may be that a move toward dam removal is the first major result to come out the failure of of the?legislation.Bob Gravely, a PacifiCorp spokesman, said? removing the dams is ?still our preferred?path.?The utility is talking with officials from Oregon, California and the federal government on modifications to one of the key pacts ? the Klamath Hydropower Settlement Agreement ? aimed at ending the pitched fights over the river?s?future.Gravely said the utility wants to quickly reach a deal to access some $250 million from a California water bond approved by voters that could help pay for dam removal. The utility is also facing pressure from California?s decision to restart action on a new water quality permit for the dams, something that PacifiCorp could be hard-pressed to?win.?If we?re going to move forward? with a new version of the hydropower settlement agreement, Gravely said, ?we think it has to happen quickly ? I think?months.?Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California, whose coastal district includes the mouth of the Klamath River, said he?s optimistic that the congressional failure of the agreement puts new pressure on PacifiCorp to move toward removing the?dams.?Frankly, I?m more encouraged than I?ve been in a while,? Hoffman said in an interview with OPB. ?I see more possibilities for dam removal and restoration, without this paralysis that, frankly, this agreement had brought us to. Everything was hanging on a congressional action that wasn?t going to?happen.? RELATED?COVERAGE Klamath Agreement Supporters Will Decide Future Of?Compromise Richard Whitman, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown?s natural resources adviser, said the states and U.S.Department of Interior officials are close to reaching an agreement with PacifiCorp on how to move forward with dam removal. Ultimately, it could take the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission four years to issue an order allowing the demolition of the?dams.However, Whitman said officials in both states are determined to make sure irrigators and tribes are not left?behind.?Gov. Brown is very concerned about the stability of the communities in the basin, both irrigated agriculture and the Native American tribes,? he said, adding that they want to ensure that a hydropower agreement also include some assurances for the tribes and?farmers.Whitman said he is talking to Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, and other members of the state?s congressional delegation about moving forward with a bill that would deal with some of those issues. Among other things, the irrigators have been seeking reliable access to water while the Klamath tribes are seeking a large grant that would help restore their historic?lands.Greg Addington, a consultant for the Klamath Water Users Association, said he learned just in the last week about PacifiCorp?s determination to move ahead in cutting a deal on dam?removal.?It?s sort of our worst fear,? he said. ?We?re all worried about getting left?behind.?Addington said the water users have received assurances that they won?t be forgotten. But he said he thought they were unlikely to get an agreement as good as the one promised in the legislation that Congress failed to?enact.The Klamath water users have asked the other parties involved in the Klamath water pacts to meet in Sacramento on Feb. 3 to talk about plans to modify the hydropower settlement?act.Besides issues facing irrigators and the tribes, the utility has been particularly concerned with ensuring that it receives liability protection against lawsuits stemming from damage caused by dam removal, such as problems caused by sediment that has built up behind the?dams.Gravely, the PacifiCorps spokesman, said that if the utility can?t get agreement on a plan for dam removal, it will seek a new license allowing it to continue operating the dams. Critics of the dams, however, say they doubt the utility can meet new environmental standards ? including improved fish passage ? that have been put in place since the dams last received a license in?1956.Thomas Schlosser, a Seattle attorney representing the Hoopa Valley Tribe in in legal action aimed at speeding dam removal, said he thought the utility was fine with the long congressional inaction over ratifying the Klamath basin agreements because it could continue to operate the dams under the old?license.Now, said Schlosser, there?s an opportunity to get moving on the hydropower?settlement.??Dam removal is really key? to restoring the river, he said, ?and we?re finally close to?it.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Jan 22 12:00:23 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 20:00:23 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Triplicate: Public meetings on dams' certification coming up References: <588063496.635386.1453492823202.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <588063496.635386.1453492823202.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.triplicate.com/News/Local-News/Public-input-now-sought-on-Klamath-water-quality-after-failure-to-pass-dam-legislation Public meetings on dams' certification coming up By Adam Spencer, The Triplicate January 20, 2016 06:13 pm | The North Coast will get an opportunity to comment on the water quality certification process of the Klamath Hydroelectric Project at public scoping meetings in Arcata 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday. The process is believed to have potential to expedite removal of three dams on the Klamath River.For years California water quality regulators have stalled the certification process that would force the Klamath hydroelectric dams to operate in compliance with the federal Clean Water Act, giving Congress a chance to remove dams and settle basin conflict through legislation.But with that legislation collapsing at the close of 2015, tribes, fishing interests, and environmental groups are turning to the water quality certification process to restore the Klamath River and its once massive ? now diseased ? salmon runs.The State Water Resources Control Board is required to perform water quality certification under the Clean Water Act as the Klamath Project?s dams undergo relicensing to operate on the river. The licenses expired in 2006 but that process had been on hold for several years as Klamath Basin tribes, farmers, and irrigators lobbied Congress to pass legislation implementing settlement agreements hammered out among the basin stakeholders. ?Water quality certification under the Clean Water Act was never issued for the Klamath Project since the 50-year federal license permitting operation of the hydroelectric dams was issued in 1956, before the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws were on the books. ?The Klamath River?s water quality has suffered as a result: swimming in the river is considered dangerous during the late-summer and fall due to toxic algae blooms that are caused, in part, by the warm-water conditions in reservoirs behind Klamath dams; salmon runs are estimated to be 10 percent of historic numbers; and salmon that do return have been consistently found in recent years to be infected with disease as a result of the warm water.Attendance was light at the water board?s first scoping meeting held Jan. 14 in Sacramento.Water board staff said they expected more people to attend upcoming meetings in the Klamath Basin.?Those who did appear to give public comment hinted at the impatience building after nearly 10 years of the dams operating with expired licenses with no environmental protections.?This little dance has been going on for years and years ? when are we going to have quality water in our river?? asked Dania Rose Colegrove, a Hoopa Valley Tribal member and longtime activist for Klamath River dam removal. ?Our river is dying. It's like our lifeline and we can't do this forever.?Colegrove told water board staff to expect ?way more people? at scoping meetings in Arcata on Jan. 25 and Orleans on Jan. 26 ?so be prepared.?Russ Kanz, a former environmental scientist for the state water board who worked extensively on the Klamath Project?s water quality certification before leaving the agency four years ago, said his former employer?s ?record lately for getting certs issued is not good.??Kanz remarked how his teenage son, who accompanied him to the Sacramento meeting, was 2-years-old when Kanz first started the project that is still ongoing today. Kanz was present Thursday representing the Karuk Tribe.?The Karuk Tribe is somewhat significant in that they occupy the center part of the Klamath River. They occupy a place that is the center of the world. They've fished at Ishi Pishi Falls for at least 10,000 years,? Kanz said. Through his work on the water quality certification ?it became clear to me that what actions happen with this project will really affect the future of the tribes on the Klamath River.?Indeed, a scholarly article showed the collapse of salmon on the Klamath River ? crucial to the Karuk people?s diet ? coincided with a dramatic increase in obesity, diabetes and heart diseaseRon Stork, representing Sacramento-based nonprofit Friends of the River, said many feel this process has taken too long. He thanked the water board for ending the abeyance in 2013 that had put water quality certification completely on hold and ?getting on with the business it was expected to take quite a few years ago.?A current case filed by the Hoopa Valley Tribe in the U.S. Court of Appeals argues the state water board?s years-long shirking of its water quality certification responsibilities through the abeyance constitutes a ?waiver? of that responsibility under the Clean Water Act.?The suit contends the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) must move forward with the dam project relicensing process, which has ostensibly been on hold while FERC waits for the California and Oregon to complete water quality certification. ?After Thursday?s meeting, Parker Thaler of the state water board, said the agency frequently uses abeyances to provide more time for water quality certification ? not just for the Klamath Project ? in order to comply with the Clean Water Act?s clause of certifications taking a maximum of one year.Stork also commented on the alternative scenarios that will be researched by the water board through the water quality certification process. They range from continuing operating the PacifiCorp-owned Klamath dams as is to completely removing the facilities, with partial dam removal and other mitigation measures as the alternatives in between.Stork said an alternative that allows the dams to remain as long as fish ladders are installed to allow passage for salmon and other anadromous fish ?seems to be unlikely to meet the water quality requirements in this very hurt and injured river.?Commercial salmon fishing interests, which have been severely impacted throughout the West Coast by declines in Klamath River salmon, were represented by Tim Sloane of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations. ?Sloane said the water quality certification application submitted by PacifiCorp included several ?glaring deficiencies,? including a significant discussion of how leaving the dams in place would affect water quality as well as the lack of a ??significant analysis of the adverse impacts of lack of fish passage for salmon and other species,? nor a comparison of how salmon would be impacted by leaving the dams in (with FERC-mandated fish ladders) versus taking the dams out entirely.?Fish passage is a mandatory condition of the FERC license and cannot be ignored, and we would hope that the board analyze the social and economic impacts of each alternative on commercial fisheries downstream,? Sloane said.Tim Hayden, director of natural resources for the Yurok Tribe, reminded water board staff of the tribes? federally recognized fishing rights. He noted the tribe is ?the largest single harvester of Klamath-Trinity river fall chinook salmon and it?s a hugely important cultural resource for the tribe.? ?Hayden added that the Yurok Tribe is still committed to dam removal by 2020, the target date in the Klamath legislation that expired at the end of 2015.Representatives of PacifiCorp told the water board they are also still committed to dam removal, however, they are still hoping to do that through the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA). While many signatories to the Klamath settlement agreements have long maintained that the KHSA could not be separated from the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) due to connected bargained-for benefits in each agreement to get the parties on board, ?PacifiCorp?s Mary Wiencke disagreed. ?The KBRA, which would have provided water security to irrigators in the upper basin and allocated millions in restoration funding to the basin, expired when Congress failed to act by the end of the 2015 legislative session.?PacifiCorp remains fully committed to the KHSA, it hasn't expired or terminated, and if fully implemented would result in removal of the facilities that are the subject of this preceding,? said Wiencke, PacifiCorp?s director of environmental policy and strategy.Wiencke called the water board?s certification process ?premature? given the current status of the KHSA.?We will continue to work with our settlement partners over the coming months to explore alternative paths to implement the KHSA. ?What we request today is that the board allow the space for that to happen and allow the parties to work together to explore potential pathways that will allow for the implementation of the KHSA,? Wiencke said.While proponents of the KHSA explore options to grant PacifiCorp the liability protection the company hoped Congress would grant it, California?s water quality certification process will slowly continue, ultimately bringing the dams under Clean Water compliance. Scoping meetings for water quality certification of the Klamath ProjectArcataJanuary 25, 2016 (5:00 ? 7:00 pm)?D Street Neighborhood Center 1301?D Street Arcata, CA 95521? OrleansJanuary 26, 2016 (10:00 am ? 12:00 pm)?Orleans Karuk Tribe Community Room?39051 Hwy 96 Orleans, CA 95556? YrekaJanuary 26, 2016 (5:00 ? 7:00 pm)?Yreka Best Western Miner?s Inn ? Convention Center Auditorium?122 E. Miner Street Yreka, CA 96097 | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov Fri Jan 22 16:26:22 2016 From: Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov (Cannata, Steve@Wildlife) Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 00:26:22 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Trapping Summary JWeek 3 Message-ID: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5BD401@057-SN2MPN1-041.057d.mgd.msft.net> Hi All, Please see attached for the JWeek 3 (Jan 15-21) update to the Trinity River trapping summary. Steve Steve Cannata Environmental Scientist Trinity River Project California Department of Fish and Wildlife 5341 Ericson Way Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-4230 steve.cannata at wildlife.ca.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2015 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW3.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 62935 bytes Desc: 2015 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW3.xlsx URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sat Jan 23 13:49:01 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 13:49:01 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Assemblymember Eggman introduces bill to force vote on Delta Tunnels In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/23/1473956/-Assemblymember-Eggman-introduces-bill-to-force-vote-on-Delta-Tunnels https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/01/22/18782152.php eggman.png Photo meme of Assemblymember Eggman by Restore the Delta (RTD). Assemblymember Eggman introduces bill to force vote on Delta Tunnels by Dan Bacher Sacramento ? On the day after Governor Jerry Brown once again touted his Delta Tunnels Plan ("reliable conveyance") as a "solution" to California's water problems in his State of the State address, Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) announced the introduction of legislation to block the Governor?s controversial project unless it is approved by California voters on a statewide ballot. ?An enormous amount of time and energy has been wasted rebranding and repackaging the same old Peripheral Canal plan that voters rejected decades ago,? Eggman said. ?It?s tragic that despite our ongoing drought, this flawed plan is being forced on us without any true debate even though it will not add one drop of water to California?s supply, but it will raise the water rates and potentially property taxes of millions of Californians.? The California voters overwhelmingly defeated a measure to build the earlier version of the project, the Peripheral Canal, in November 1982. Jerry Brown opposes a public vote on the tunnels, as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger did before him. Eggman said the new bill will require approval via ballot initiative for "any infrastructure project that conveys water directly from a diversion point in the Sacramento River to pumping facilities of the State Water Project or the federal Central Valley Project south of the Delta." ?In 2012, the Governor was committed to asking the voters to approve a substantial tax increase. I?m hopeful he will be just as committed to seeking voter approval before embarking on a project that will cost tens of billions of dollars and greatly impact the Delta region,? Eggman said. Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis), a recognized leader on state water policy issues who has represented the Delta region in the State Legislature for 13 years, joined Eggman in announcing the introduction of the bill. ?California?s taxpayers and ratepayers should have the opportunity to weigh in on whether to commit billions of dollars to a project that economists say isn?t a good investment, scientists say is a disaster for the Delta?s ecosystem, and the water exporters? own studies show will not produce a single drop of new water supply," said Wolk. ?The proposed tunnels are the most expensive, most controversial water project proposed in half a century with the potential to permanently destroy the Delta?s ecosystem and community. Californians have the right to look at the facts and decide whether the tunnels are good for California, or whether we should drop this plan once and for all,? she concluded. The state and federal water agencies rebranded the Peripheral Canal/ Tunnels project as the ?California Water Fix? last summer after the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) failed to meet environmental standards required to obtain the necessary permits from the federal regulatory agencies. The agencies split the BDCP into two components ? the tunnels plan, the California Water Fix, and the habitat ?restoration? plan, California Eco Restore. The tunnels project would cost at least $15 billion to $25 billion, according to the administration's estimates, although the real cost of the tunnels could be over $67 billion. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has given the widely-contested project a failing grade, calling the new environmental impact report ?inadequate," according to a news release from Eggman's Office. Assemblymember Catharine Baker, Assemblymember Susan Bonilla, Assemblymember Jim Cooper, Assemblymember Jim Frazier and Assemblymember Kevin McCarty are joining Eggman and Wolk as co-authors of the legislation. While the Eggman bill focuses just on the Delta Tunnels, there is currently on the November 8 ballot a measure, the "No Blank Checks Initiative," that would force voter approval for public infrastructure bonds amounting to more than $2 billion and requiring new or increased taxes or fees. This initiative, if passed, would effectively force a vote on the tunnels and other similar projects. Dean Cortopassi, a Stockton region farmer and landowner, is spearheading the initiative. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/03/1444112/-Initiative-threatening-Delta-Tunnels-Qualifies-For-Ballot ) Environmental groups praise bill Representatives of environmental, fishing and anti-corporate groups praised the introduction of Eggman's legislation, since it will force a vote on a project that will hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species and will destroy the San Francisco Bay/Delta Estuary, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. The California Water Fix also imperils the steelhead and salmon run on the Klamath and Trinity rivers, fish populations that are an integral part of the culture and livelihood of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley Tribes. ?Restore the Delta supports fully Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman's legislation blocking the tunnels without a vote of the people," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD). "The tunnels will destroy the sole source of drinking water for one million Delta residents, the physical environment and the state's most magnificent fisheries and breathtaking habitat for birds on the Pacific flyway - not to mention the agricultural and related economies for an additional three million Delta area residents. The Delta is not California's sacrifice zone." Conner Everts, Executive Director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance, said, ?Given this so called Delta fix has grown in costs, lost any illusion of environmental mitigation, and doesn't provide Southern California with any new water, the time has come to know what the true cost-benefit ratio is and allow a vote. This legislation reinstates the legislature?s prerogative, and gives the entire state a voice, especially those in Southern California who would have to pay for the project. The drought has shown that people in Southern California want a say in how their water utility payments are invested and that local water strategies are the best result for each dollar spent." ?Food & Water Watch applauds Assemblymember Eggman for introducing legislation that empowers everyday Californians to vote on the wasteful Delta tunnels project," said Adam Scow, California Director of Food & Water Watch. "It?s only fair that Californians get to vote on a project that demands so much of our water and money, especially when we need to invest billions toward fixing our aging local water and wastewater systems." Jerry Brown pushes "reliable conveyance" in his State of the State During his speech in Sacramento on January 22, Brown promoted building "reliable conveyance" - the twin tunnels - and building storage as key components of his water "vision" for California. However, the Governor was not as brash in his promotion of the tunnels as he was last week when he told reporters after his address at the Association of Water Agencies (ACWA) event in Sacramento that the construction of the project was "absolutely necessary." ?Our goal must be to preserve California?s natural beauty and ensure a vibrant economy ? on our farms, in our cities and for all the people who live here,? Brown stated. ?There is no magic bullet but a series of actions must be taken. We have to recharge our aquifers, manage the groundwater, recycle, capture stormwater, build storage and reliable conveyance, improve efficiency everywhere, invest in new technologies ? including desalination ? and all the while recognize that there are some limits.? The Governor also proclaimed some ?achieving balance between conflicting parties? rhetoric, all while he continues to serve the interests of the corporate agribusiness, Big Oil, Big Timber and other corporate interests through his anti-environmental water policies. These policies have brought Central Valley steelhead and salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail, green sturgeon and other fish species to the brink of extinction under his administration. ?Achieving balance between all the conflicting interests is not easy but I pledge to you that I will listen and work patiently to achieve results that will stand the test of time," Brown claimed. ?Water goes to the heart of what California is and what it has been over centuries. Pitting fish against farmer misses the point and grossly distorts reality. Every one of us and every creature that dwells here form a complex system which must be understood and respected.? The Governor's Office also unveiled a new video promoting the tunnels, a video that Barrigan-Parrilla described as "mockworthy." The ?California WaterFix Video? is hyperlinked to the words "reliable conveyance" in the on line transcript of Brown?s speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAFaQ9D_joI Barrigan-Parrilla also said, "We are thrilled to hear Governor Brown?s commitment to protecting ecological systems," while blasting Brown for moving ahead with the Delta Tunnels plan, considered by many to be potentially the most environmentally destructive project in California history. ?Unfortunately, Governor Brown insists on moving forward with the Delta tunnels project despite serious environmental concerns raised by numerous organizations including the Environmental Protection Agency which found the plan ?incomplete? with required analysis ?not yet done,?? Barrigan-Parrilla said. Delta Tunnels are just one of Brown?s many anti-environmental policies While Brown has posed as a ?climate leader? and ?green governor? at conferences and photo opportunities around the globe, including the Paris Climate Talks in December, he has overseen water policies that have have brought once robust Central Valley salmon and steelhead and Delta fish populations to extinction?s edge, in addition to promoting the Delta Tunnels Plan, a project that will only cause further ecological, economic and cultural damage. As Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Tribe, said at a protest outside of a California Water Fix ?workshop? in Sacramento on July 28, 2015: ?Right now the existing water projects continue to damage our ecology. They have already harmed our fish and driven them to extinction. The tunnels will only complete the job. The tunnels that they want to build are large enough to divert the entire Sacramento River.? ?The tunnels are one key part of the plan that includes the Sites Reservoir, Shasta Dam Raise and Proposition 1, the water bond,? she said. She said the water for the tunnels would be provided by Shasta Lake and Sites Reservoir ? and that to fill Sites Reservoir, the Shasta Dam would be raised to hold more water from the Sacramento River. (http://nativenewsonline.net/currents/protesters-sing-wave-signs-and-blast-delta-tunnels-at-open-house/ ) The "green" Brown administration in 2011 presided over record water exports out the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ? and the killing of millions of Sacramento splittail, an imperiled native minnow, and other species at the Delta pumps. (http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/30452-the-extinction-governor-rips-the-green-mask-off-his-tunnels-plan ) More recently, fish species ranging from endangered Delta Smelt to Striped Bass plummeted to record low population levels in 2015, according to the annual fall survey report released on December 18 by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). (http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/22/california-fish-species-plummet/ ) Only 6 Delta Smelt, an endangered species that once numbered in the millions and was the most abundant fish in the Delta, were collected at the index stations in the estuary this fall. The 2015 index (7), a relative number of abundance, ?is the lowest in history,? said Sara Finstad, an environmental scientist for the CDFW?s Bay Delta Region. Meanwhile, Brown promotes the expansion of fracking and other extreme oil drilling techniques in California and backs potentially genocidal carbon trading policies and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), according to indigenous leaders. (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/9/1458504/-Indigenous-activists-challenge-Governor-Brown-for-backing-genocidal-carbon-trading-program ) In addition, Brown oversaw the ?completion? of ?marine protected areas,? created under the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, that don?t protect the ocean from fracking, offshore oil drilling, pollution, corporate aquaculture, military testing and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. And it was only after months of intense pressure from environmentalists, public health advocates and Porter Ranch residents that Governor Brown declared a state of emergency in the Aliso Canyon Gas Leak disaster that began on October 23. In an apparent familial conflict of interest, Brown?s sister, Kathleen, plays a significant role at Sempra Energy, the corporation that owns SoCal (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/12/19/1462031/-Jerry-Brown-s-ties-to-the-oil-and-gas-industry-highlight-regulatory-capture-in-CA ) Conflicts of interest like this one abound in a state where the regulatory apparatus has been captured by the regulated, including Big Oil, corporate agribusiness, the timber industry and other corporate interests. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: eggman.png Type: image/png Size: 298334 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jan 26 08:09:56 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 16:09:56 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Public at Arcata meeting unified in desire for Klamath dam removal References: <1242004295.325937.1453824596686.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1242004295.325937.1453824596686.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160125/public-at-arcata-meeting-unified-in-desire-for-klamath-dam-removal Public at Arcata meeting unified in desire for Klamath dam removal State water officials hear testimony on PacifiCorp relicensing By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardMonday, January 25, 2016Though coming from different backgrounds, professions, and cultures, the nearly 30 speakers at the California Water Resource?s Control Board meeting in Arcata on Monday evening were all unified by one goal: the removal of four Klamath River dams.?Allowing Klamath salmon to go extinct because these four dams were allowed to stand would represent one of the clearest and most egregious irretrievable commitments in the history of environmental analysis, in my opinion,? Klamath Riverkeeper Project Manager Erica Terence said, speaking as a private citizen.The State Water Board?s Monday scoping meeting at the D Street Community Center was held to gain input from the public as it prepares its environmental review of PacifiCorp?s Klamath Hydroelectric Project, which includes four Klamath River dams ? Copco 1, Copco 2, Iron Gate and J.C. Boyle ? once slated for removal by now failed Klamath Basin agreements. PacifiCorp is seeking to obtain a Clean Water Act permit from the state as part of a larger dam relicensing effort at the federal level through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The project has not been relicensed since 1956.Based in Portland and a subsidiary of American businessman Warren Buffett?s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, PacifiCorp had been undergoing the relicensing process for several years until delaying it after signing on to the first of the three Klamath Basin agreements, the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA). The KHSA called for the removal of the four PacifiCorp dams by 2020 in exchange for limiting PacifiCorp?s liability to about $200 million. The two other agreements ? the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement ? would have sought to resolve water rights issues between tribes and irrigators, provide environmental protections and ensure water certainty for Klamath Basin agriculture.However, after Congress failed to pass the agreements by Jan. 1 this year, PacifiCorp resumed its relicensing process. Having gone through much of the relicensing process already, the last major hurdles the company faces are obtaining Clean Water Act permits through the California Water Resources Control Board and from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.The California Water Board was in Arcata on Monday for a scoping meeting to hear from the public and stakeholders as it prepares its environmental impact report for the dam?s Clean Water Act permit. From tribal members to fishermen to environmentalists to politicians, every public speaker that attended the meeting stated the only way to protect water quality and resources as prescribed under the California Clean Water Act was through full removal of the four dams.California 2nd District Congressman Jared Huffman?s District Representative John Driscoll read a statement from Huffman, which acknowledged that the Klamath Basin agreements are now ?dead? and called upon the State Water Board to demand dam removal.?Nothing short of an aggressive approach will do here,? Huffman wrote in his statement.The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission evaluated six alternative actions in its own environmental review of the dams, ranging from leaving the dams as is or removing the four hydroelectric dams altogether. There were also alternatives that kept the dams in place, but with changes. PacifiCorp?s own proposal would include installation of fish ladders, oxygenation of Iron Gate Reservoir, flow alterations, and gravel replacement among nearly 40 other changes. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission?s environmental review of the dams shows that the company would lose more than $20 million per year if they reopened the dams with some of these conditions, but recommended the dams stay in place.Yurok Senior Fisheries Biologist Mike Belchik said the impacts the dams have on the river ? including temperature, flow, nutrients and sediment ? are having serious consequences on downstream salmonids, especially with disease and parasitic outbreaks like ich. Over 90 percent of diseased juvenile salmon the tribe surveyed in the river last year succumbed to their illness, Belchik said. Belchik said that the alternative options don?t go far enough to address these impacts and that there is no way to mitigate them except through full dam removal.?There is not enough cold water in the reservoir,? he said, referring to Iron Gate.Stillwater Sciences senior fish biologist Joshua Strange said the reservoirs behind the dams also affect spawning salmon upstream migration patterns in the river, with the fish now pausing their migration for about a week at the start of the fall season when they would normally still be moving. Strange said this is occurring because the reservoir water is warmed up as it sits behind dams like Iron Gate. Upon release downstream, the reservoir water is warmer than it normally would be during the start of fall, and the fish react by waiting for the cooler waters.?This is a big contributor in my mind as to why ich outbreak has occurred in the lower Klamath River,? he said. ?It?s the only place this disease has ever occurred in a migrating salmon population. Otherwise, it only occurs when fish are stationary.?Cultural impacts were also a major talking point, with several local tribal members explaining how the conditions of the river have made cultural ceremonies or activities difficult or impossible. Yurok tribal member and Cultural Resources Manager Rosie Clayburn said that part of praying is actually interacting with the water, but that people are now walking out of the water with rashes from irritants like algae.?We don?t even have the water flow to do that,? she said. ?We can?t even put a boat in to go down. We actually have to request water releases to have that done.?The State Water Board is set to hold another scoping meeting in Orleans this morning from 10 a.m. to noon at the Karuk Tribe Community Room. Written comments on the State Water Board?s environmental impact review preparations are due by 5 p.m. on Jan. 29.More information on the project and written comment submittals can be found online at?http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/water_quality_cert/klamath_ferc2082.shtml??URL: http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160125/public-at-arcata-meeting-unified-in-desire-for-klamath-dam-removal? 2016 Eureka Times-Standard (http://www.times-standard.com) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jan 27 07:30:28 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:30:28 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Redding.com: Siskiyou residents debate Klamath River dams References: <75519623.809439.1453908629003.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <75519623.809439.1453908629003.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.redding.com/news/local/Siskiyou-residents-debate-Klamath-River-dams-366666931.html Siskiyou residents debate Klamath River dams YREKA ? The debate about whether four Klamath River dams should be removed raged on Tuesday evening.State Water Resources Control Board officials came to Yreka on Tuesday to hear comments about what they need to include in an environmental impact report for issuing water quality permits for the dams.Instead, they mostly heard arguments from the public about whether four dams on the river should stay or be removed.Erin Ragazzi, an environmental program manager with the water board, said she and other officials are not for or against removing dams.?We are not advocating any position at this point in time,? Ragazzi said.However, the state believes the dams contribute to poor water quality in the river, harming fish and limiting the stream?s use for recreation.While removing dams on the Klamath River has been a divisive issue, PacifiCorp, which owns the dams, supports taking them out.A Klamath Hyrdroelectric Settlement Agreement signed by PacifiCorp, the U.S. Department of the Interior, as well as state agencies and Indian tribes, expired at the end of 2015 when Congress failed to pass a law approving the agreement.But Bob Gravely, a spokesman for PacifiCorp, said his company is working to implement key portions of the agreement without congressional approval.The most controversial portions of the agreement propose removing the J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1 and No. 2, and Iron Gate dams.?The settlement parties, including the company, have not completely given up on getting the settlement enacted,? Gravely said. Whether or not the agreements are implemented, PacifiCorp has to get permits from the state giving it approval to continue to operate the dams. The state?s permit is part of their relicensing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.The state?s approval hinges on whether PacifiCorp can ensure the water in the river will meet water quality standards while the dams continue to operate, Ragazzi said.The river is on the state?s list of impaired water bodies due to low levels of oxygen, high water temperature in the summer and fall, and high levels of mercury and microcystin, a liver toxin produced by blue-green algae.The high water temperatures and other problems were blamed for the deaths of some 35,000 fish in 2002. However, many at Tuesday?s meeting contended the dams do not contribute to water pollution. Rick Costales, a retired natural resources adviser to Siskiyou County, said removing the dams would hurt the county?s economy by eliminating jobs associated with the facilities.?I think short shrift has been given to the socioeconomic impacts of taking the dams out,? Costales said.But others who argued for the dams? removal, noted the economic benefits of taking them out.Regina Chichizola of the Hoopa Valley Tribe said the dams have hurt the commercial salmon fisheries by lowering the number of fish in the river. Removing the dams would help the industry, she said.?These dams are causing a giant impact,? Chichizola said. ?Commercial salmon fishermen want to see their way of life continue, just as the people in this room want to see their way of life continue.?But Mark Baird, who lives in the Scott Valley and has been a leader in the State of Jefferson movement, said much of the claims by state officials are untrue. He said the relicensing process is also illegal and unconstitutional.?This whole process has been filled with so many lies and cheating it?s hard to describe,? he told state water board officials during the public comment period. Ragazzi said dam removal is one of several alternatives evaluated in the environmental report.Some of the other options include improving fish ladders on the J.C. Boyle Dam and installing fish ladders on two other creeks.Other proposals include adding oxygen to Iron Gate Reservoir, altering river flows, removing only two of the dams, increasing fish and disease research, and doing habitat restoration on the river.Ragazzi said comments from the public Tuesday, as well as those from other public hearings on the issue, will be used to help guide what issues are considered when writing the environmental impact report.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jan 27 07:43:46 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:43:46 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] California water: Silicon Valley leaders express skepticism of Gov. Jerry Brown's Delta tunnels plan References: <608264299.815354.1453909426539.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <608264299.815354.1453909426539.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Yay!http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_29436145/california-water-silicon-valley-leaders-express-skepticism-gov?source=rss | | | California water: Silicon Valley leaders express skepticism of Gov. Jerry Brown's Delta tunnels plan | | By Paul Rogers progers at mercurynews.com San Jose Mercury News | | Posted:Tue Jan 26 20:06:13 MST 2016 | | | | SAN JOSE -- Three of Gov. Jerry Brown's top water lieutenants came to Silicon Valley on Tuesday to make the case for his $17 billion plan to build two huge tunnels under the Delta to more easily move water from north to south.But rather than embracing the idea, five of the seven board members of the Santa Clara Valley Water District -- whose support is considered critical to the controversial project -- instead voiced skepticism. Their concerns ranged from the price tag to environmental impacts to whether Santa Clara County property owners could be left with property tax increases without a public vote to pay for future cost overruns."For me there's a lot of uncertainty," said board Chairwoman Barbara Keegan. "I don't want urban water users to end up subsidizing rural water users."Vice Chairman John Varela added: "We are talking about potential decisions we could make that very possibly could create extinction of species. I don't want to do that. Not on my watch."Most of the water agencies supporting the tunnel plan are in Southern California and the Central Valley. The Santa Clara Valley Water District has so far been the Bay Area's largest supporter, which allows Brown to say the project isn't marked by the same north-south rivalry that resulted in a 1982 defeat at the ballot box of a similar "peripheral canal" plan he backed.Brown's current plan is to build two tunnels, each 40 feet in diameter and 35 miles long, under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The idea is to reduce reliance on the massive state and federal pumps at Tracy -- which are sometimes shut down to protect endangered salmon, smelt and other fish.But environmentalists, Delta farmers and some Northern California lawmakers are trying to kill the proposal. They call it a water grab by Los Angeles and large corporate farmers in the Central Valley that would harm the water quality of the San Francisco Bay and the Delta, a vast network of sloughs and wetlands.So far, the Santa Clara Valley Water District has contributed $13.7 million toward the $250 million the state has spent on reams of studies and analyses of the proposal. Other water agencies, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Westlands Water District in Fresno and the Kern County Water Agency, have contributed the rest.State officials finished a draft environmental study last year. After the final version is completed this summer, they plan to ask the local water agencies for another $1.2 billion to fund engineering and design studies, said Nancy Vogel, spokeswoman for the state Natural Resources Agency.The Brown administration says that the local water agencies who support the plan also would be expected to pay the $15 billion construction cost by raising their customers' water rates and property taxes.The water agencies, including the Santa Clara Valley district -- which provides drinking water and flood protection to 1.9 million people -- must decide soon whether to continue to fund the studies or pull out. Earlier this month, the district's board forced out CEO Beau Goldie, in part over his robust support for the project, which some board members said had exceeded their level of comfort at times.On Tuesday, Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources, urged the agency to support the twin tunnels.If built, Cowin said, the project would deliver about 4.9 million acre-feet of water a year from the Delta, enough for roughly 25 million people a year. That amount, he said, is roughly the same as what is being delivered now in an average year.Some agencies, particularly in farm areas, have asked why they would spend billions of dollars for a project that delivers no more water than they are getting now. But Cowin said that the tunnels are needed to help improve the system's reliability during earthquakes, in addition to offering flexibility so water can be taken out of the Delta at a new spot -- farther north on the Sacramento River near the town of Courtland. That, he said, would mean not having to rely as much on the Tracy pumps."This isn't a new water supply," Cowin said. "It's a modernization of an existing project."Cowin said the price is high, but it would cost only $5 a month for urban users.Two other top Brown officials, Chuck Bonham, director of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, and David Okita, director of ecosystem restoration for the Natural Resources Agency, highlighted the fact that the state also plans to restore 30,000 acres of wetlands and floodplains around the Delta."I'm thankful you are willing to take the time to look beyond the bumper stickers," Bonham told the board.More than a dozen people spoke, representing some of the largest environmental groups in California, along with the League of Women Voters. All came out against the project.Jonas Minton, a former deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources, said that Santa Clara Valley district will face costs of about $500 million if all the major water agencies now involved decide to move forward. If Kern County pulls out, that rises to $570 million. If only Metropolitan and Santa Clara Valley are left, the cost to Santa Clara ratepayers rises to $1.5 billion, he said."We haven't gotten an answer yet that they are putting the money up," he said, suggesting instead that Santa Clara partner with the Contra Costa Water District to enlarge Los Vaqueros Reservoir in eastern Contra Costa County and share the water.Other critics said the district should rely more on water recycling, conservation and stormwater capture. They argued that the tunnels are so large because Los Angeles and powerful farm agencies will eventually weaken environmental guarantees and drain more water from the north.?"This proposal will harm salmon. It's way too big," said John McManus, executive director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association.Two water district board members, Tony Estremera and Nai Hsueh, expressed support for the plan, noting that the district gets 40 percent of its water supply from the Delta."Cost should be one consideration," Hsueh said. "But it shouldn't be the entire consideration."Paul Rogers covers resources and environmental issues. Contact him at 408-920-5045. Follow him at?Twitter.com/PaulRogersSJMN. | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jan 27 13:02:19 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 21:02:19 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Correction to Redding article "Siskiyou residents debate Klamath River dams" References: <373082879.950932.1453928539531.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <373082879.950932.1453928539531.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Please note that the Redding Record Searchlight posted a correction to this article. ?Regina Chichizola was not representing the Hoopa Valley Tribe at last night's hearing in Yreka. ?It now reads: "Regina Chichizola of Orleans said the dams have hurt the commercial salmon fisheries by lowering the number of fish in the river. Removing the dams would help the industry, she said."? TS http://www.redding.com/news/local/Siskiyou-residents-debate-Klamath-River-dams-366666931.html | | | Siskiyou residents debate Klamath River dams By Damon ArthurPosted:?12:49 a.m.YREKA ? The debate about whether four Klamath River dams should be removed raged on Tuesday evening.State Water Resources Control Board officials came to Yreka on Tuesday to hear comments about what they need to include in an environmental impact report for issuing water quality permits for the dams.Instead, they mostly heard arguments from the public about whether four dams on the river should stay or be removed.Erin Ragazzi, an environmental program manager with the water board, said she and other officials are not for or against removing dams.?We are not advocating any position at this point in time,? Ragazzi said.However, the state believes the dams contribute to poor water quality in the river, harming fish and limiting the stream?s use for recreation.While removing dams on the Klamath River has been a divisive issue, PacifiCorp, which owns the dams, supports taking them out.A Klamath Hyrdroelectric Settlement Agreement signed by PacifiCorp, the U.S. Department of the Interior, as well as state agencies and Indian tribes, expired at the end of 2015 when Congress failed to pass a law approving the agreement.But Bob Gravely, a spokesman for PacifiCorp, said his company is working to implement key portions of the agreement without congressional approval.The most controversial portions of the agreement propose removing the J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1 and No. 2, and Iron Gate dams.?The settlement parties, including the company, have not completely given up on getting the settlement enacted,? Gravely said. Whether or not the agreements are implemented, PacifiCorp has to get permits from the state giving it approval to continue to operate the dams. The state?s permit is part of their relicensing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.The state?s approval hinges on whether PacifiCorp can ensure the water in the river will meet water quality standards while the dams continue to operate, Ragazzi said.The river is on the state?s list of impaired water bodies due to low levels of oxygen, high water temperature in the summer and fall, and high levels of mercury and microcystin, a liver toxin produced by blue-green algae.The high water temperatures and other problems were blamed for the deaths of some 35,000 fish in 2002. However, many at Tuesday?s meeting contended the dams do not contribute to water pollution. Rick Costales, a retired natural resources adviser to Siskiyou County, said removing the dams would hurt the county?s economy by eliminating jobs associated with the facilities.?I think short shrift has been given to the socioeconomic impacts of taking the dams out,? Costales said.But others who argued for the dams? removal, noted the economic benefits of taking them out.Regina Chichizola of Orleans said the dams have hurt the commercial salmon fisheries by lowering the number of fish in the river. Removing the dams would help the industry, she said.?These dams are causing a giant impact,? Chichizola said. ?Commercial salmon fishermen want to see their way of life continue, just as the people in this room want to see their way of life continue.?But Mark Baird, who lives in the Scott Valley and has been a leader in the State of Jefferson movement, said much of the claims by state officials are untrue. He said the relicensing process is also illegal and unconstitutional.?This whole process has been filled with so many lies and cheating it?s hard to describe,? he told state water board officials during the public comment period. Ragazzi said dam removal is one of several alternatives evaluated in the environmental report.Some of the other options include improving fish ladders on the J.C. Boyle Dam and installing fish ladders on two other creeks.Other proposals include adding oxygen to Iron Gate Reservoir, altering river flows, removing only two of the dams, increasing fish and disease research, and doing habitat restoration on the river.Ragazzi said comments from the public Tuesday, as well as those from other public hearings on the issue, will be used to help guide what issues are considered when writing the environmental impact report.? | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Jan 31 10:47:47 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:47:47 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] California almonds, partly blamed for water shortage, now dropping in price References: <968755235.2405579.1454266067733.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <968755235.2405579.1454266067733.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article57432423.html California almonds, partly blamed for water shortage, now dropping in price BY DALE KASLER, PHILLIP REESE AND RYAN SABALOWdkasler at sacbee.comThey were blamed for planting too many trees, using too much water and worsening the effects of California?s epic drought. The state?s almond farmers responded by expanding their orchards in a bold wager that the sky-high prices the world was paying for almonds justified both the water use and long-term investment.Now those farmers are dealing with a steep drop in prices ? and wondering if the great almond boom that transformed Central Valley agriculture is starting to fizzle.Almond prices in California have dropped significantly in the past few months. A farmer who could sell a pound of almonds for nearly $5 last summer is now getting as little as $3.10.Farmers say a downturn was inevitable after years of rising prices and an?explosion in production. Almond prices got so high that some consumers and food manufacturers started turning to other nuts they could use as substitutes. Recent developments in the global economy also have depressed prices, including the weakening of economies in key markets such as China.?We hit record price levels, and at some point the elastic breaks,? said Mike Mason, chairman of the Almond Board of California and a grower in Kern County, home to one-fifth of the state?s almond crop. ?Everybody expected that we would have a price correction.?The consequences extend beyond the livelihoods of the state?s 6,000 or so almond growers. Much of the Central Valley economy has come to depend on almond farming, as lower-value crops such as cotton and alfalfa have surrendered land to new orchards.??Land devoted to almonds jumped from 590,000 acres in 2005 to an estimated 890,000 acres last year, according to the Almond Board, a grower-supported association. Farmers added 20,000 acres of almond trees last year alone. This happened even as critics questioned the shift of massive acreage to a permanent crop ? and a relatively thirsty one ? while the state was ordering deep cuts in urban water use and struggling to juggle competing water demands.It?s not as if the price decline is bringing the almond industry to a screeching halt. Mason said prices have stabilized in recent weeks, and most experts say the industry?s long-term prospects remain strong. Even today?s lower prices are above the average for the past decade, and almond farming remains profitable for most growers, said farm economist Vernon Crowder, a senior vice president at Rabobank.Richard Waycott, chief executive of the Almond Board, said farmers who are expanding their orchards won?t reverse course. Trees have been ordered and fields have been cleared. ?A price correction here or there doesn?t necessarily have much of an immediate impact,? Waycott said. ?Most growers ... are looking at a 25- to 30-year horizon.?Daniel Bays is one of those?taking the long view. A third-generation almond grower in Patterson and Westley, near Interstate 5 west of Modesto, he replaced 80 acres of old trees last summer with a new orchard. Planting almond trees is expensive, and by the time Bays? babies are producing nuts in three or four years, the new orchard will have cost $800,000. He said he does not regret the investment.?The family?s been farming long enough that we know things go through cycles,? said Bays, whose family farms 600 acres of almonds and 900 acres of other crops.Bays said prices of many other commodities such as tomatoes have been slipping as well. ?There aren?t other crops at this point that are really looking all that much more appealing than almonds are, even with the decrease in price,? he said.?Still, the price drop is unsettling in much of the San Joaquin Valley, where almonds have become king. Buddy Mendes, chairman of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, said falling almond prices means less money spent on farm equipment, less sales tax revenue and other economic effects.?You?re going to see it trickle down,? he said.The decline also could influence whether farmers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta will agree to help pay for Gov. Jerry Brown?s Delta tunnels, the $15.5 billion plan to re-engineer the fragile estuary with the goal of improving reliability of water deliveries to Southern California cities and farms. Farmers have been questioning whether the?tunnels would pencil out?for them financially, and a sustained drop in nut prices could make the project an even tougher sell, said Ted Page, an almond grower and chairman of the Kern County Water Agency.Nancy Vogel, a spokeswoman for Brown?s Natural Resources Agency, said decisions on the tunnels will go beyond the ?daily fluctuations of commodity prices.?WE HIT RECORD PRICE LEVELS, AND AT SOME POINT THE ELASTIC BREAKS. EVERYBODY EXPECTED THAT WE WOULD HAVE A PRICE CORRECTION.Mike Mason, chairman, Almond Board of CaliforniaWhile no one?s predicting a major shift away from almonds, some experts say the decline in prices could bring a pause in the relentless planting that has seen almond acreage grow 50 percent in the past decade.?It will affect some planting decisions,? said Rocque Merlo of Merlo Farming Group, a farm-management operation based in Oroville. ?There are investors who will look at that. When we get into a free fall like we just experienced, that changes mindsets.?A slowdown would be welcome news for many environmentalists and other Californians who argue farmers have no business planting trees in regions of the state, particularly the San Joaquin Valley, that are naturally arid and rely on water delivered by canal from Northern California. The fact that almond orchards cannot be fallowed in a drought ? unlike, say, tomatoes or cotton fields ? just puts more pressure on state and federal agencies to keep pumping water through the Delta to keep valley orchards irrigated.?It hardens the demand for water exports from the Delta,? said Barbara Barrigan-Parilla, executive director of an advocacy group called Restore the Delta. ?Hopefully, (the price decline) will stop the rush to plant thousands more acres of almonds in desert areas where almonds should not be grown.?As government agencies have curtailed deliveries during the drought, almond farmers rushed to protect their $10,000-an-acre investments. They fallowed their tomato fields and other row crops to divert water to their almond orchards.They also increased their groundwater pumping to keep the trees alive. That contributed to the alarming depletion of aquifers and exacerbated the phenomenon known as subsidence, in which portions of the Central Valley are sinking.?You don?t really have a legitimate water supply for this crop in this part of the world,? said Adam Keats, a senior attorney and water expert at the Center for Food Safety in San Francisco. ?They?ve been stealing as much water as they can from elsewhere in the state to grow almonds.?Almond industry officials counter that farmers are using water much more efficiently than they did in the 1990s, when the almond boom in California began. While almonds are a comparatively thirsty crop, farmers say there are others that require more water per pound of production. Growers also say it makes a lot more sense to use scarce water supplies on a high-value crop such as almonds, which have soared in popularity in recent years, than a low-revenue crop such as alfalfa.?Farmers are just responding to what the consumers want,? said Paul Ewing, a grower and processor in Los Banos. ?You need a lot of water to grow any food. I think almonds got an unfair shake ... with all the press.?890,000?Number of acres devoted to almonds in California in 2015The?Almond Board?says California farmers?apply 3 million acre-feet of water?to their almond trees each year. That represents about 7 percent of the state?s ?developed? water consumption. Put another way, the state?s 6,000 almond farmers use roughly 35 times the volume of water consumed by the 466,000 residents of the city of Sacramento last year.The state?s almond crop, valued at $2.53 billion in 2005, peaked at $6.38 billion in 2013. It dropped off to $5.89 billion in 2014, the last year for which figures were available, as water shortages cut into yields. Still, almonds remain California?s No. 2 agricultural product, after the dairy industry, and are the state?s leading farm export, far and away. California?s climate is ideally suited for almond production, and the state is responsible for 80 percent of the world?s supply and 99 percent of the U.S. supply.Almonds? image as a healthy, nutritious snack has helped sales blossom in western Europe, China and elsewhere. Flexing its considerable marketing muscle, Sacramento?s Blue Diamond Growers became the ?official snack nut? supplier of the U.S. ski and snowboarding teams during the 2014 Winter Olympics, and the company?s Almond Breeze milk alternative will be the ?official almond milk? of the U.S. volleyball team at this year?s Summer Olympics.Blue Diamond declined comment for this story, referring questions about almond prices to the Almond Board.Almonds? growing popularity naturally drove prices upward. The average price paid to growers jumped from $1.45 a pound in 2008 to $3.19 in 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.USDA figures for 2015 are not yet available, but growers and processors say prices generally shot up to around $4.50 a pound last summer. Merlo Farming Group, which informally tracks industry prices, says nonpareil almonds, considered the premium variety, sold for as much as $4.98 a pound last July. Since then, Merlo said prices have fallen to $3.10 a pound for nonpareils. Some varieties are selling for less than $3 a pound.HOPEFULLY, (THE PRICE DECLINE) WILL STOP THE RUSH TO PLANT THOUSANDS MORE ACRES OF ALMONDS IN DESERT AREAS WHERE ALMONDS SHOULD NOT BE GROWN.Barbara Barrigan-Parilla, executive director, Restore the Delta?What happened? Some growers say prices simply got too high, prompting some consumers and food manufacturers to reduce demand or switch to alternatives such as walnuts.?When they get to $4.50 or four bucks (a pound), people aren?t going to buy them,? said Page, the head of the Kern water agency.Adding to that downward pressure: a surprisingly strong 2015 crop. Production was about 10 percent greater than expected despite water shortages, said Crowder, the bank economist.Crowder said international finance also played a role, a significant factor in a business that exports about two-thirds of its production. The strong U.S. dollar made almonds more expensive overseas, and China scaled back purchases as its economy faltered. Exports fell 14 percent in the last five months of 2015 compared with the year before, the Almond Board reported.One thing led to another: As prices tumbled, some importers in Dubai and India defaulted on purchases that had been locked in at earlier, higher prices.?We had some deals that fell apart overseas,? Crowder said. ?You have almonds sitting, waiting to find a place.?The price correction came faster than most analysts expected, but Crowder and others said the lower prices have customers warming up to almonds again.?Now it?s $2.75, $3,? Page said. ?I think that?s more normal. Then you have ... lots of use, lots of consumption at that level.?At $2.75, you?re still making money,? he said. ?You?re just not making an obscene amount of money.?Dale Kasler:?916-321-1066, @dakasler? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov Fri Jan 29 14:53:26 2016 From: Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov (Cannata, Steve@Wildlife) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2016 22:53:26 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Trapping Summary JWeek 4 update Message-ID: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5BE34C@057-SN2MPN1-041.057d.mgd.msft.net> Hi All, Please see attached for the JWeek 4 (Jan 22-28) update to the Trinity River trapping summary. Steve Steve Cannata Environmental Scientist Trinity River Project California Department of Fish and Wildlife 5341 Ericson Way Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-4230 steve.cannata at wildlife.ca.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW4.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 62990 bytes Desc: 2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW4.xlsx URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Jan 27 09:46:10 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 09:46:10 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Porter Ranch gas leak is one in series of CA environmental disasters In-Reply-To: <608264299.815354.1453909426539.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <608264299.815354.1453909426539.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <608264299.815354.1453909426539.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/01/27/porter-ranch-gas-leak-is-one-in-series-of-ca-disasters/ Photo courtesy of We Are Seneca Lake. Porter Ranch gas leak is one in series of CA disasters by Dan Bacher Hearing board action falls short of community demands to shut down Aliso Canyon Storage Facility Save Porter Ranch, the Sierra Club and Food & Water Watch on Saturday, January 23 released a joint statement accusing the South Coast Air Quality Management District Hearing Board (AQMD) of making a decision regarding the SoCalGas Leak that ?fails to adequately protect residents? of Porter Ranch and other surrounding communities. The gas blowout that continues as I write this is considered by many to be the worst disaster of its kind since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Over the past few months, thousands of residents have been displaced and sickened by the fumes that contain carcinogens including benzene and toluene. The gas leak has emitted methane at a rate of 50,000 kilograms per hour, equivalent to 25 percent of the state?s total emissions of this heat-trapping gas, according to the groups. The leak detected on October 23, caused by well integrity failure, is only the most recent of many such leaks caused in California by aging infrastructure ? and just one of the many environmental disasters that have ravaged California under the Brown and Schwarzenegger administrations. The leak has forced more than 12,000 residents to relocate and 1,800 more households are waiting for relocation assistance. According to the news release: After three weeks of hearings and deliberation, AQMD issued a ?Stipulated Order for Abatement,? but residents and local elected officials say the order, which does not require the permanent closure of the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility, falls short of what?s necessary to protect public health. The order also appears to contradict Governor Jerry Brown?s Executive Order to protect public safety. Gov. Brown?s order, issued January 6, requires state agencies to protect public safety and stop the leak by finding alternate supplies for natural gas and electricity; it also requires SoCalGas to maximize daily withdrawals of gas and to abide by a moratorium on gas injections in the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility. The AQMD Hearing Board engaged in a lengthy debate over whether a letter in which the executive director of the California Public Utilities Commission ordered SoCalGas to keep 15 billion cubic feet of natural gas in reserve at the facility undermined AQMD?s authority to shut down Aliso Canyon by requiring a complete draw-down of the storage facility ?This move by the California Public Utilities Commission doesn?t protect the health and safety of residents of Porter Ranch and neighboring communities. It protects SoCalGas? assets and it appears to violate Gov. Brown?s order to withdraw the maximum amount of gas from the field,? said Alexandra Nagy, Southern California Organizer with Food & Water Watch. ?SoCalGas has been unwilling protect residents because to drain its facility would harm its bottom line. Absent consistent leadership from Gov. Brown, SoCalGas and the CPUC are working together to keep as much gas in reserve as possible, threatening residents with further exposure to toxic emissions. Gov. Brown needs to clarify his order and demand the drainage and permanent shutdown of the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility.? The AQMD Hearing Board passed the Stipulated Order for Abatement instead of using its full authority to require SoCalGas to cease and desist operations at the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility by requiring the field to drawn down to the maximum extent possible. ?This is an ongoing disappointment and no one is managing this crisis situation. Without strong leadership from Governor Brown, state agencies are passing the buck and letting SoCalGas continue to pollute the air and poison our communities,? said Matt Pakucko, President of Save Porter Ranch after a decision was reached. ?Governor Brown needs to step in immediately to require the continued withdrawal of gas from Aliso Canyon until the field reaches equilibrium and is shut down.? Governor Brown?s Executive Order also calls for a moratorium on gas injection at the Aliso Canyon Storage Facility ?until a comprehensive review, utilizing independent experts, of the safety of the storage wells and the air quality of the surrounding community is completed.? This process has not been initiated, and residents are calling on Brown to make the moratorium on gas injections permanent. ?SQAMD?s failure to put Californians? livelihoods first is shameful, and Governor Brown should intervene swiftly,? said Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. ?There should be no other choice but to shut down the dangerous Aliso Canyon facility and look to close every urban oil and gas facility throughout California and our country, to ensure the health of our communities and our climate is never again sacrificed for corporate polluter profits.? As gas leak continues, California fish populations drop to lowest recorded levels While much has been written about the Porter Gas Leak in the mainstream and alternative media, reporters and editors have completely failed to explain that the methane blowout occurs within the larger context of California?s many other environmental disasters driven by the Brown administration?s questionable environmental policies. And these policies and subsequent disasters occur within the even larger context of the capture of the regulators by the regulated in California. While Governor Brown has posed as a ?climate leader? and ?green governor? at conferences and photo opportunities around the globe, including the Paris Climate Talks in December, he has overseen water policies that have have brought once robust Central Valley salmon and steelhead and Delta fish populations to extinction?s edge, in addition to promoting the Delta Tunnels Plan, a project that will only cause further ecological, economic and cultural damage. This an ecological disaster that will impact fish, wildlife and aquatic life populations up and down the West Coast. As Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Tribe, said at a protest outside of a California Water Fix ?workshop? in Sacramento on July 28, 2015: ?Right now the existing water projects continue to damage our ecology. They have already harmed our fish and driven them to extinction. The tunnels will only complete the job. The tunnels that they want to build are large enough to divert the entire Sacramento River.? ?The tunnels are one key part of the plan that includes the Sites Reservoir, Shasta Dam Raise and Proposition 1, the water bond,? she said. She said the water for the tunnels would be provided by Shasta Lake and Sites Reservoir ? and that to fill Sites Reservoir, the Shasta Dam would be raised to hold more water from the Sacramento River. (nativenewsonline.net/?) The ?green? Brown administration in 2011 presided over record water exports out the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ? and the killing of millions of Sacramento splittail, an imperiled native minnow, and other species at the Delta pumps. ( http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/30452-the-extinction-governor-rips-the-green-mask-off-his-tunnels-plan More recently, fish species ranging from endangered Delta Smelt to Striped Bass plummeted to record low population levels in 2015, according to the annual fall survey report released on December 18 by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). (ecowatch.com/?) Brown promotes expansion of fracking, carbon trading and REDD Meanwhile, Brown promotes the expansion of fracking and other extreme oil drilling techniques in California and backs potentially genocidal carbon trading policies and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), according to indigenous leaders. ( http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/9/1458504/-Indigenous-activists-challenge-Governor-Brown-for-backing-genocidal-carbon-trading-program) In addition, Brown oversaw the ?completion? of ?marine protected areas,? created under the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, that don?t protect the ocean from fracking, offshore oil drilling, pollution, corporate aquaculture, military testing and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. And it was only after months of intense pressure from environmentalists, public health advocates and Porter Ranch residents that Governor Brown declared a state of emergency in the Aliso Canyon Gas Leak disaster that began on October 23. In an apparent familial conflict of interest, Brown?s sister, Kathleen, plays a significant role at Sempra Energy, the corporation that owns SoCalGas, the company responsible for the gas blowout. She earned $188,380 in her position as a board member in 2014 and $267,865 in 2013. (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/19/1462031/-Jerry-Brown-s-ties-to-the-oil-and-gas-industry-highlight-regulatory-capture-in-CA ) Refugio Oil Spill disaster reveals Big Oil?s capture of regulatory apparatus And you remember the Refugio Oil spill disaster of last spring and summer off the California coast? Both the mainstream and the corporate media refused to report on the biggest scandal of the disaster: the fact that the very same person who oversaw the creation of four ?marine protected areas? that were fouled by the oil spill is the lobbyist for the pipeline company, Plains All American Pipeline. Yes, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, the most powerful corporate lobbying organization in Sacramento, chaired the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Blue Ribbon Task Force that created the alleged ?marine protected areas? on the South Coast! (http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/brtf_bios_sc.asp ) Conflicts of interest like this one abound in a state where the regulatory apparatus has been captured by the regulated, including Big Oil, corporate agribusiness, the timber industry and other corporate interests. (http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2015/07/29/californias-biggest-secret-oil-industry-capture-of-the-regulatory-apparatus ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 12524211_1664876807120895_7745050791923623108_n.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 120667 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Jan 29 12:37:55 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2016 12:37:55 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Pro-Tunnels Group Bars Journalist From Media Teleconference In-Reply-To: <8A7E223C-CD84-4456-8A72-9037300C54EF@fishsniffer.com> References: <8A7E223C-CD84-4456-8A72-9037300C54EF@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <0D49CFDD-BCC1-41BC-A1FB-C4E8E9D61D9A@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/29/1476847/-Pro-Tunnels-Group-Bars-Journalist-from-Media-Teleconference Governor Jerry Brown pushes his Delta Tunnels Plan at his opening address at ACWA's "Water 2.0" event in Sacramento on January 14, 2016. Photo by Dan Bacher. Pro-Tunnels Group Bars Journalist From Media Teleconference by Dan Bacher It appears that Californians for Water Security, the ?coalition? created by corporate agribusiness interests to promote the California Water Fix plan to build Governor Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels, does not want independent journalists to ask them any tough questions about the controversial water project. On January 27, I received a ?media advisory? from Inez Kaminski ofCalifornians for Water Security advising me of a teleconference the following day at 10:30 am to ?discuss the urgency of implementing California?s Water Fix.? The advisory originated out of the Sacramento- based Swanson Communications, the public relations firm promoting Californians for Water Security. The advisory stated: ?On Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., the day before the State Water Resources Control Board holds its initial meeting to consider issuing permits for the California Water Fix, supporters including water experts, environmentalists and business and labor interests will host a media teleconference to discuss the importance of implementing the Governor?s plan to update our aging water infrastructure. The California Water Fix has endured nearly a decade of extensive expert review, planning and scientific and environmental analysis by the state?s leading water experts, engineers and conservationists, and unprecedented public comment and participation. The coalition urges the Water Board to approve the petition as the only viable plan to protect the health and water quality of the Delta, while securing water supplies for nearly 2/3 of our state?s homes, farms and businesses. ? The speakers at the teleconference were Rich Atwater, Executive Director, Southern California Water Committee; Jerry Meral, California Water Program Director, National Heritage Institute; and Michael Quigley, Executive Director, California Alliance for Jobs. The pro-tunnels teleconference was apparently spurred by the Restore the Delta?s teleconference on Monday, ?The State Water Board and the Declining Health of the SF Bay-Delta Estuary.? That call featured a panel of experts who have followed the State Water Resources Control Board for decades. Their teleconference is available below: I had participated in the Restore the Delta teleconference on Monday, so I set aside the time on Wednesday to listen to ? and ask some hard questions of ? the tunnels proponents on Wednesday. However, when I called in on the teleconference phone number, four conference operators in a row told me I wasn?t on the ?approved credentialed media list.? I asked them all, ?So why did they send me a media advisory about the event (twice!) when they didn?t want me to get on the call?? Frustrated, I then sent the following email, with the advisory attached: Inez You sent me this media advisory, but four phone operators said I was not on the "approved list" of ''credentialed media." Then why are you sending me these press releases? I am requesting that the person in charge of this call inform me why you are sending me these press releases if I can't join the conference call. Thanks Dan Bacher, Editor, Northern California Angler Publications I am a dues-paying member of the Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, Local 39521 So far, I haven't received any response from Californians for Water Security. However, the following day, Thursday, I did receive another press release, headlined, "ICYMI: New PPIC Report Highlights Importance of CA WaterFix to Protect Water Supply.? So again the question: Why didn?t Californians for Water Security allow me call into their media teleconference? Were they afraid I would ask tough questions about the Delta Tunnels project that they couldn?t answer? The Brown administration and supporters of the California Water Fix have become infamous for their lack of openness and transparency about the widely-contested Delta Tunnels project. This refusal to allow an independent journalist to participate in a media teleconference is just typical of the lack of transparency that infests the California Water Fix fiasco. Below is the media advisory: Californians for Water Security View this email in your browser TODAY Media Advisory In Advance of State Water Resources Control Board Hearing to Consider Permit, Groups Hold Teleconference to Discuss Urgency of Implementing California Water Fix On Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., the day before the State Water Resources Control Board holds its initial meeting to consider issuing permits for the California Water Fix, supporters including water experts, environmentalists and business and labor interests will host a media teleconference to discuss the importance of implementing the Governor?s plan to update our aging water infrastructure. The California Water Fix has endured nearly a decade of extensive expert review, planning and scientific and environmental analysis by the state?s leading water experts, engineers and conservationists, and unprecedented public comment and participation. The coalition urges the Water Board to approve the petition as the only viable plan to protect the health and water quality of the Delta, while securing water supplies for nearly 2/3 of our state?s homes, farms and businesses. WHAT: Teleconference with water experts on CA Water Fix WHEN: Today, Wednesday, January 27th 10:30 a.m. WHO: Rich Atwater, Executive Director, Southern California Water Committee Jerry Meral, California Water Program Director, National Heritage Institute Michael Quigley, Executive Director, California Alliance for Jobs MEDIA ONLY: 1-800-285-6670 For more information on Californians for Water Security, visit:www.watersecurityca.com ### - Our mailing address is: Swanson Communications 1020 16th Street #31 Sacramento, CA 95814 Add us to your address book unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: open.php Type: image/gif Size: 35 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sun Jan 31 13:46:36 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2016 13:46:36 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Folsom Lake rises to 44% of capacity after reaching record low of 14% in 2015 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1133CCF6-EAE9-46EB-A3E8-081FA6DDAD3F@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/30/1477398/-Folsom-Lake-rises-to-44-of-capacity-after-reaching-record-low-of-14-in-2015 This decomposing granite rock formation that I photographed over a week ago is now under water at Folsom Lake. Photo by Dan Bacher. Folsom Lake rises to 44% of capacity after reaching record low of 14% in 2015 by Dan Bacher Folsom Lake, the Sacramento metropolitan area?s backyard landlocked king salmon, rainbow trout and black bass fishery, reached its lowest- ever water level in November 2015 when it plunged to only 140,523 acre feet of water, 14 percent of capacity. That surpasses the previous low water level of 140,600 acre feet reached in November 1977. However, over the past month the runoff from the long-anticipated El Ni?o storms in the American River watershed has improved water conditions at the reservoir dramatically. The lake is now holding 428,716 acre-feet of water, 44 percent of capacity and 84 percent of average. The water level has risen to 407.12 vertical feet in elevation, 58.88 feet from maximum pool. The reservoir has risen over 58 feet since November. Just to be clear, the record low level that the reservoir reached in the fall of 2015 was just not because of drought ? it was because of the abysmal management of the reservoir during the drought by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in conjunction with the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). During the past three years of drought, the Bureau and DWR systematically emptied Trinity, Shasta, Oroville and Folsom reservoirs to provide water to corporate agribusiness interests expanding their almond tree acreage, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies conducting water-polluting fracking and other extreme oil extraction methods in Kern County. Landlocked kings and rainbows get boost from rising water Fishing for salmon, bass and trout has been slow for the past month, due to cold, muddy water conditions, but it should get going strong after the water level stabilizes this spring and the water clears up. The rising water is expected to bring a lot of forage and nutrients into the reservoir, providing great conditions this winter and spring for king salmon, rainbow trout and black bass. Last spring produced some of the best king salmon and rainbow trout fishing at Folsom Lake in memory. In fact, trout fishing has been good for both holdover rainbows and big kings during the last couple of springs. For example, Rob Bundy, his five-year-old son Drew and James Netzel of Tight Lines Guide Service made a great trip to the lake last May. They caught their limits, including two kings weighing 4-1/2 and 7 pounds, and 13 beautiful holdover rainbows by 11 am. Both the kings and rainbows hit Speedy Shiners, a favorite of fishermen at Folsom, trolled at 20 to 35 feet deep in the South Fork. The king salmon in Folsom Lake now are a mixture of wild fish spawned in the South Fork of the American and fish planted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). This should be a good year for salmon fishing at Folsom, since decent numbers of the 99,990 inland Chinook fingerlings planted in 2014 and the 29,955 planted in 2015 should show in the catches. The number of salmon available for stocking this season is in question, due to the relatively low Chinook salmon returns on the Klamath River?s Iron Gate Fish Hatchery where the triploid (sterile) salmon are raised. ?Our target is approximately 100,000 Chinook for Folsom, but the inland program always comes secondary to the mitigation allotment for the Klamath and we have to split the fish with the rest of the inland waters,? said Jay Rowan, Acting Senior Hatchery Supervisor, North Central Region-CDFW ?So in addition to having to have the fish to make the egg allotment, there also isn?t a whole lot of information out there on triploiding Chinook like there is for trout,? he noted. ?The guys up at Iron Gate and the other facilities that are hatching and rearing these fish are doing a fantastic job writing the book on how to raise triploid Chinook, but as would be expected, there have been and will continue to be some ups and downs as they expand the science and refine techniques,? he explained. Rowan said some upcoming hatchery improvements at Iron Gate (filter and UV systems) aimed at improving water quality should make some significant improvements in egg to fry success. ?It wasn?t a fantastic year on the Klamath, so the numbers of fish available for the inland program are lower than normal,? he noted. ?I?m not yet sure what our share will be for Folsom, but we should receive some salmon. The good thing is those 2014 and 2015 fish should be up to size and entering the creel this year.? Chinooks spawn in South Fork of American River The lake also hosts a unique population of naturally spawning Chinooks, the progeny of salmon from the Nimbus Fish Hatchery. Rowan said successful salmon spawning was first documented in 2009, when anglers began bringing in some small king salmon that obviously were the progeny of fish spawning in the forks of the American River above the lake, since the lake hadn?t been planted since 2006, due to the presence of IHN virus in the planted fish. The CDFW did both snorkel and electroshocking surveys in 2010 that documented the king salmon going up the South Fork to spawn. ?We did a couple of electrofishing surveys on the South Fork and observed gravid (females headed upstream to spawn), ? he said. ?We also did snorkel surveys and saw around 90 salmon in the stretch from the Salmon Falls Bridge up to Lotus, although we observes only two fish on redds.? Rainbow trout plants planned in 2016, but numbers and timing in question The rainbow trout found in Folsom are mostly a mixture of holdover and planted rainbows, along with some wild fish from the South and Middle Forks of the American. From the fall of 2013 to the spring of 2014, the CDFW planted 14,900 lbs of catchables between 1.7 and 1.0 fish per pound. The majority were Eagle Lake Trout (ELT), plus 41,760 sub catchable ELTs. There were no plants in the fall of 2014, due to the evacuation of the American River Hatchery. From January 15 to June 15 of 2015, the Department also planted 6,000 lbs catchable Shasta rainbow trout strain between 3.6 and 1.5 fish per pound. Rowan expects Folsom to be planted with rainbows again this season, but when and how many fish are in question, due to the evacuation of the American River and San Joaquin River Fish hatcheries during the warm water and drought conditions last summer. ?With the evacuation of the American River and San Joaquin hatcheries, we had the Moccasin Creek Hatchery trying their best to hold 3 facilities worth of fish. Because of that and to some extent budgets, we?re short on overall numbers and particularly catchable size fish at American River Hatchery,? said Rowan. ?We were able to hold some 60,000 rainbows in the chilled water in the building and we transferred about 200,000 subcatchable and smaller fish up from Moccasin,? said Rowan. ?Some are small catchables right now (almost 4 fish to the lb), but most are still too small to put out as catchables.? ?We also obtained about 2,500 lbs of catchables from Moccasin for urban lakes and kids events for this month and we?re working on getting about 25,000 lbs from a couple of the SoCal hatcheries to help us out with the high use waters that need winter/spring catchables. Folsom will be included in that,? said Rowan. He added, ?If we don?t have to evacuate again this year we?ll try and get some of our Eagle Lake Trout (ELT) fingerlings up to size and plant them in Folsom this fall as subcatchables.? I have fished Folsom since I was 10-years-old. It was where I caught my first bluegill and largemouth bass when I was a child ? and I have caught hundreds of bluegill, rainbow trout, king salmon, spotted largemouth and spotted bass and channel catfish in the many years since I first fished the lake. Let?s hope that the El Ni?o storms continue in force and fill up the reservoir, resulting in great fishing and boating conditions this coming spring, summer and fall! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Folsom_Scenery_Shot.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 331588 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Feb 2 08:34:02 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2016 16:34:02 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Feds: Winter salmon run nearly extinguished in California drought References: <498011654.383698.1454430842359.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <498011654.383698.1454430842359.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article41684160.html WATER & DROUGHTOCTOBER 28, 2015 9:42 AMFeds: Winter salmon run nearly extinguished in California droughtEffort to save endangered Chinook may have failedPlan kept water behind Shasta Dam, angering farmersMore uncertainty looms for farmers, fishing industry BY RYAN SABALOW, DALE KASLER AND PHILLIP REESErsabalow at sacbee.com For the second straight year, huge numbers of juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon appear to have baked to death in the Sacramento River because of California?s drought-stretched water supplies, bringing the endangered species a step closer to extinction.The grim statistics released by federal officials Wednesday raise the specter of more water cuts for agriculture next summer and restrictions on next year?s commercial and recreational salmon fishing seasons. Even a strong El Ni?o winter might not be enough to prevent those outcomes.The disclosure by the National Marine Fisheries Service suggests a complicated and controversial effort to save this year?s run of salmon may have ended largely in failure, although officials said they wouldn?t have definitive numbers until late November or early December.?We try to be hopeful, but this is not good news,? said Maria Rea, the agency?s assistant regional manager, in a conference call with reporters.Federal officials sharply curtailed flows of water coming out of Lake Shasta this spring, delaying deliveries of irrigation water to hundreds of Central Valley farmers. Some who already had planted crops had to scrounge for water; others fallowed fields or saw smaller yields.It now appears to have been a futile effort to keep enough cold water in the system to keep as many of the fish alive as possible.If the preliminary figures are confirmed, it would be the second year running that nearly all of the juvenile winter-run Chinook succumbed because the water in the Sacramento River got too warm. Officials estimate that last year, only 5 percent survived long enough to migrate out to sea.Preliminary counts indicate this year?s situation is worse, Rea said. What?s particularly troubling is that a higher number of adult fish actually swam up the river to spawn compared to last year, raising hope that the population of offspring heading downstream toward the Pacific would be greater.Instead, Rea said, fish traps that biologists use to count young Chinook near Red Bluff have seen a nearly 22 percent drop from the same time last year.Salmon dropoff at Red BluffThe number of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon juveniles swimming to the sea has dramatically declined in recent years. Through Oct. 21 After Oct. 21Created with Rapha?l 2.1.220151,000,000After Oct. 212,000,0003,000,0004,000,0002009201020112012201320142015Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Get the dataThe Sacramento Bee?Chinook salmon are among the hardiest, most robust fish that we know of,? said Jon Rosenfield, a biologist with the nonprofit Bay Institute. ?Even if you don?t care about fish, the fact that Chinook salmon can?t survive in the Sacramento River is a testament to how poorly we treat our rivers.?Because the fish have a three-year spawning cycle, environmentalists and others fear the salmon could be on the brink of extinction as a species in the wild. The winter-run Chinook have been listed as endangered since 1994 by the federal government.A government-run hatchery below Shasta Dam breeds winter-run Chinook in captivity. Rea said the hatchery likely will play a critical role in preventing the outright extinction of the winter-run Chinook. With dams now blocking their access to cold-water tributaries, the only place for the wild fish to hatch in the heat of the blistering summer is along a short stretch of the Sacramento River near Redding.Rea said that the likelihood of another die-off adds urgency to plans to truck hatchery-born winter-run juveniles to the icy cold McCloud River above Shasta Dam. Those plans won?t be implemented until at least 2017.In the immediate term, the announcement adds to the uncertainty of how the state?s surface water supplies will get allocated next year. Rea was skeptical that a rainy winter would be enough to help the fish. The El Ni?o conditions are expected to bring warm storms and heavier rains across the state, particularly in Southern California. Most officials say a deep snow in the northern Sierra would be the best remedy for the drought.Rea said officials likely will ?have to be very conservative with Shasta reservoir next spring.?The drought cost farmers nearly 9 million acre-feet of water from the state and federal water projects this year, or nearly half the usual supply. Although they made up for much of the loss by pumping additional groundwater, they still fallowed some 540,000 acres of land, resulting in economic losses of $2.7 billion, according to a UC Davis study.Many farmers have complained that too much water has been devoted to fish, and have made repeated calls for an overhaul of the federal law that affords special protections for endangered species. Chris Scheuring, a water lawyer for the California Farm Bureau Federation, said the die-off is a clear indication that federal officials need to be more flexible in their approaches to managing fish and water supply.?There are multiple goals on the river right now, and we don?t seem to be meeting any of them,? he said. ?The Endangered Species Act has been administrated in a way that doesn?t appear to prevent fish die-offs ... All of that has come at the expense of ... water supply.?His sentiments were echoed by U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican whose family farms rice near Richvale. ?This development confirms that simply cutting water supplies to humans, which is the first and only step these agencies take, doesn?t solve the problem,? LaMalfa said in a prepared statement.Federal scientists thought they had a plan this spring to avoid a repeat of last year?s mass die-off. Generally speaking, they tried to keep temperatures at key points on the Sacramento River at 56 degrees or less to give the juveniles a chance to survive. But officials at the federal Bureau of Reclamation at one point realized their temperature-monitoring equipment was faulty, and the water coming out of Shasta was warming up more quickly than expected. They held water back in Lake Shasta to keep it cool.To compensate for reduced flows from Shasta, officials ramped up releases from Folsom Lake to help maintain water quality in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the estuary through which water is pumped to cities and farms in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. That has brought Folsom to record-low levels, raising anxiety among the suburban Sacramento water agencies that rely heavily on the lake for their primary supplies.Meanwhile, river temperatures frequently exceeded 56 degrees despite the cool-down plan. An official gauge on the Sacramento River upstream from Highway 44 in Redding ? a key point for spawning this year ? logs temperature readings every hour. From June 10 through Oct. 10, the gauge measured water temperatures above 56 degrees about 1,600 times.?By design, the Bureau of Reclamation, with State (Water Resources Control) Board approval, allowed temperatures to be much higher than they should be,? said Rosenfield, the Bay Institute biologist. ?They were trying to go with the cook the egg slowly approach. ... As I expected, as others expected, this year?s hatching success is even lower than last year?s.?The shrinking winter-run population signals troubles for the state?s $1.4 billion salmon-fishing industry. Although commercial fishermen mostly harvest hatchery raised fall-run salmon, the die-off could lead next year to more stringent regulation of commercial and recreational fishing to ward against accidental catches of winter-run fish. Salmon fishing could be restricted along much of California?s central coast and in the Sacramento River system. Rea said those decisions wouldn?t be made until next spring.John McManus, executive director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, said commercial and sport fishermen are bracing for more restrictions. As it is, the waters were closed to commercial fishing earlier this year at two key points along the coastline.In 2008 and 2009, fisheries officials shut down the salmon fishing seasons altogether because of poor returns of the fall-run Chinook. State officials estimate the closures those years led to a nearly $549 million hit to California?s economy.Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, said the law is clear: Dam managers, water regulators and fisheries officials are required to manage the dams to ensure the fish don?t die. Instead, he said they kowtowed to powerful agricultural interests and allowed more water to be released than they should have.?The bottom line is they ignored the law,? Jennings said. ?We?ve over-appropriated and over-promised, and this is the result.?Ryan Sabalow: 916-321-1264, @ryansabalowreprints Read more here: Feds: Winter salmon run nearly extinguished in California drought | ? | | ? | | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | Feds: Winter salmon run nearly extinguished in Californi...For the second straight year, huge numbers of juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon appear to have baked to death in the Sacramento River because of California?s dro... | | | | View on www.sacbee.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | ? | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tgstoked at gmail.com Tue Feb 2 18:58:58 2016 From: tgstoked at gmail.com (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2016 18:58:58 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Fwd: SF Chronicle editorial: Delta tunnel troubles In-Reply-To: <06887fa70084fef8e939fef632ca461c02c.20160202200409@mail209.suw14.mcdlv.net> References: <06887fa70084fef8e939fef632ca461c02c.20160202200409@mail209.suw14.mcdlv.net> Message-ID: In case you missed it! Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser . *In case you missed it? * *The San Francisco Chronicle Delta tunnel troubles* Published: January 30, 2016 Original article at SF Chronicle. Gov. Jerry Brown wants to spend $3.6 million to incorporate his goal to build 40-foot-wide, twin 35-mile-long delta tunnels into state planning. In the scheme of a proposed $17 billion (and probably more costly) project, the amount tucked into the state budget is tiny. If adopted, however, future spending and permitting would need to be consistent with its purpose ? to make a ?conveyance? part of the state?s Delta Plan. The Brown administration would say a conveyance plan is already part of the plan, but we disagree. Time is running out for the ill-advised Water Fix plan. Proponents ? state water contractors, labor and construction interests, the governor ? are seeing cracks in their coalition. The contractors association, which has footed the bills for the tunnel environmental studies, has tapped out its members. Without guarantees that the tunnels will mean more water to ship south, it will be difficult to raise more funds. Opponents ? delta agricultural interests and environmental groups concerned about the health of the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary ? are trying to squeeze spending and block legislative action. A bipartisan group of state senators and Assembly members, as well an allied congressional group, each has written the governor to argue against the $3.6 million expenditure. Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, has introduced a bill, AB1713 , requiring voters to approve any ?conveyance.? A wealthy Stockton farmer has put an initiative on the November ballot also requiring a vote of the people for bond-funded expenditures exceeding $2 billion. Those of us who live by the bay know its health relies on healthy flows of delta water. Tunnels are no fix for that, governor. *### Happy World Wetlands Day! Sign our petition. * *DONATE * | follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend *Copyright ? 2016 Restore the Delta, All rights reserved.* You are receiving this e-mail because you signed up for our mailing list to receive updates and news about Restore the Delta. *Our mailing address is:* Restore the Delta 42 N. Sutter Street, Suite 506 Stockton, CA 95202 Add us to your address book -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Feb 2 19:05:33 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2016 03:05:33 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] PacifiCorp Press Release: Parties Agree to New Path to Advance Klamath Agreement References: <1909290876.687253.1454468733610.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1909290876.687253.1454468733610.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.pacificorp.com/about/newsroom/2016nrl/klamath-agreement.html Parties Agree to New Path to Advance Klamath Agreement February 02, 2016SALEM, Ore. ? Today, the States of Oregon and California, PacifiCorp and the federal government ? through the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Commerce ? announced an agreement-in-principle to move forward with amending the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA).Under the agreement in principle, the parties to the KHSA will pursue its implementation through the administrative process governed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), using existing funding and on the same timeline. Members of the California and Oregon delegations introduced legislation in the past two Congresses to advance the hard-fought KHSA and two related Klamath agreements; however, the U.S. Congress adjourned last year without acting on legislation to authorize them.Though the agreement-in-principle focuses primarily on the dam removal portion of the broader pact, it states that the move is an important and necessary first step toward maintaining the broader Klamath settlements. The states and the U.S. are actively working with all Klamath Basin stakeholders ? Members of Congress, tribes, farmers and others ? on a comprehensive resolution to restore the basin, advance the recovery of its fisheries, uphold trust responsibilities to the Tribes, and sustain the region?s farming and ranching heritage.The agreement-in-principle states the four parties intend to work with each other and the more than 40 signatories to the KHSA in the coming weeks to develop terms of an amendment to the KHSA to implement its key provisions, including providing for facilities removal. The target date for signing an amended KHSA is February 29.The KHSA as amended would then be submitted for consideration through FERC?s established processes, which involve public comment. If approved, PacifiCorp would transfer title of the Klamath River dams to a non-federal entity that would assume liability and take the appropriate steps to decommission and remove the dams in 2020.?The Klamath agreements were the culmination of years of hard work and collaboration across a diverse and committed coalition of parties ? and we can?t let that local vision go unfulfilled,? said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. ?This agreement-in-principle is an important initial step as we work toward a comprehensive set of actions to advance the long term progress and sustainability for tribes, fisheries and water users across the Klamath Basin.?"The Agreement in Principle continues the momentum built by those who crafted the original Klamath Agreements,? said Kathryn Sullivan, Ph.D., assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. ?NOAA considers this the first step along a new path to secure the future of irrigated agriculture and tribal communities, and the fishery. We'll continue to work in close coordination with all the KBRA parties on a comprehensive plan. Too many people have worked too long to let this historical opportunity slip away."?Oregon is moving forward in the Klamath Basin. We can?t afford to sit back and wait for another crisis to batter these communities,? said Oregon Governor Kate Brown. "Congressman Walden took a step forward by drafting legislation late last year, and today's action is part of a broader movement to work with him and others to get the Klamath Basin agreements back on track.??This agreement marks an unprecedented coming together of parties to seek solutions to difficult problems,? said California Secretary for Natural Resources John Laird. ?California is committed to the implementation of the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement and to continued efforts to achieve a broad settlement of the issues that have plagued the Klamath Basin. This is an important first step toward both of those goals.??The certainty and protections provided by the Klamath settlement offer a fair way forward for our customers in Oregon, California and beyond,? said Stefan Bird, president and CEO of Pacific Power, a division of PacifiCorp. ?PacifiCorp is committed to continuing to work with our partners in the coming weeks and months to advance this important agreement.?The four PacifiCorp dams on the Klamath River are authorized for hydroelectric power generation. Regulations require that the dams need to be retrofitted to provide fish passage for salmon, steelhead and other fish. The Oregon and California public utility commissions found that the original KHSA was a prudent alternative for PacifiCorp?s customers.Read the?agreement-in-principle (PDF) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Feb 2 19:07:42 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2016 03:07:42 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Coalition_moving_to_demolish_Klamath_Rive?= =?utf-8?q?r_dams_without_Congress=E2=80=99s_assent?= References: <323696938.685102.1454468862359.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <323696938.685102.1454468862359.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.pacificorp.com/about/newsroom/2016nrl/klamath-agreement.html FEBRUARY 2, 2016 11:01 AMCoalition moving to demolish Klamath River dams without Congress?s assentStates seeking to remove four hydroelectric damsControversy over habitat restoration, water remains unsettledCalifornia water bond money could be used Congress has adjourned for another year without approving agreements that would have reshaped how people used water in the Klamath River system. The groups who signed off on the accords -- once enemies -- are frustrated that lawmakers didn't share their spirit of compromise. Ryan Sabalow The Sacramento BeeBY DAVID SIDERS AND RYAN SABALOWdsiders at sacbee.com Federal officials and the states of California and Oregon said Tuesday they will press forward with plans to demolish four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, despite resistance from Congress.The announcement comes after a set of demolition, water-sharing and habitat restoration agreements stalled in Washington. J.J. Reed, foreground, and Sonny Mitchell, both fisheries technicians with the Karuk Tribe, search for Coho salmon that they spotted in Aikens Creek the day before on Wednesday December 8, 2015, near Orleans, Calif. After years of wrangling over water rights and the removal of several dams on the Klamath River between farmers, ranchers and Indian tribes, a bill in Congress missed the December 31st deadline. Randy Pench rpench at sacbee.comBy separating dam removal from a broader pact, the states and power company that owns the dams, Portland, Ore.-based PacifiCorp, will seek to move forward with their own funding ? and without congressional approval.The new accord, however, sets aside other elements of restoration and water-sharing agreements designed to settle longstanding feuds over management of the river, which flows from southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California. Some proponents of those agreements said they will oppose efforts to demolish the dams alone.?It?s not OK for that to be happening absent the more comprehensive water settlement,? said Greg Addington, former director of the Klamath Water Users Association, which represents the interests of about 1,200 farms and ranches in the Klamath Basin. ?It?s not what was agreed to.?The agreements, reached by tribes, farmers and other groups, had promised habitat restoration and guaranteed Klamath Basin farmers a more reliable supply of water. But they hinged on removal of the four privately owned dams ? three in California and one in Oregon ? viewed as harmful to migratory fish.PacifiCorp said it will contribute $200 million to the cost of demolition. In addition, the water bond California voters approved in 2014, while not directly mentioning the dams, included language to ?remove barriers to fish passage.?Gov. Jerry Brown?s proposed budget, released in January, included $250 million ?to meet the state?s commitments under the Klamath Agreements.??We will move ahead as a group and start the process,? California Natural Resources Secretary John Laird told lawmakers at a committee hearing.The dams are used primarily for hydroelectric power and provide little water storage. Farmers in the area receive their water from sources upstream of the dams. But Republicans have blocked efforts to advance legislation that included the dams? removal.?Tearing down four perfectly good hydroelectric dams when we can?t guarantee enough electricity to keep your refrigerator running this summer is lunacy,? Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, said in a written statement in December.Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said Tuesday that project proponents were left with no choice but to separate dam removal from the broader agreement.?Allowing the politics of this situation to keep standing in the way of dam removal and river restoration was unacceptable,? he said.The management of the Klamath Basin area has long been contentious, with concerns about fish kill-offs and water for agriculture. Under the agreements, Klamath Basin farmers agreed to take less water in exchange for more reliability, with area tribes ? which hold senior water rights ? agreeing to share water with farmers in exchange for habitat restoration and the retirement of thousands of acres of agricultural land.?We hoped to implement a more ambitious plan to resolve Klamath water disputes between fishing and farming communities, but Congressional Republicans blocked our efforts,? Leaf Hillman of the Karuk Tribe said in a prepared statement.David Siders: 916-321-1215, @davidsidersreprints Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article57933983.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Feb 3 14:46:03 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2016 22:46:03 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] WaterDeeply OpEd Tom Stokely: Westlands Settlement Is Poor Deal for California References: <1794739505.1076965.1454539563132.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1794739505.1076965.1454539563132.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.waterdeeply.org/op-eds/2016/02/9493/westlands-settlement-poor-deal-california/ Westlands Settlement Is Poor Deal for California February 2nd, 2016?by?Tom Stokely?????2 min read????? - Share ?- ? Tweet The Obama administration and Westlands Water District recently came to an agreement that appears to be a wish list made reality for Westlands. But water policy analyst Tom Stokely argues that it will lead to ongoing water shortfalls for California?s communities, general economy and environmentA recent deal signed by the Westlands Water District and the Obama administration can be likened to the bank bailout of 2008: The wealthy and powerful corporate interests that caused the crisis are allowed to exit the burning aircraft with golden parachutes.In the deal, which requires congressional approval, the administration will forgive the district?s $375 million interest-free repayment obligation to taxpayers for construction of the federal Central Valley Project, the massive apparatus that delivers water from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta to the corporate farms of the western San Joaquin Valley. The agreement also converts the district?s current two-year water contracts to a permanent contract for up to 890,000 acre-feet (1.1 billion cubic meters) of water annually (subject to the availability of water). For the sake of comparison, the City of Los Angeles uses only 587,000 acre-feet in a typical year.Why is the Obama administration taking such a lopsided deal? The agreement would settle litigation over an unfulfilled federal requirement to provide drainage to the district, which farms lands laced with highly toxic selenium. When these lands are irrigated for crops and flushed with additional water to remove salt intruding into the root zone, vast quantities of selenium-contaminated water sluice into San Joaquin Valley aquifers and waterways, imperiling human health, fisheries and wildlife from Fresno to San Francisco Bay.While the agreement brings many benefits for Westlands, it will lead to continued water deficits in California. It will provide the district with permanent deliveries of subsidized water at low prices without imposing acreage limits. It will increase the stress on our scant water resources, penalize cities and small farmers and devastate the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay.There is a better, cheaper and more equitable way. A new?report?by EcoNorthwest, an independent economic analysis firm, confirms that 300,000 acres (120,000 hectares) of selenium-tainted land in the Westlands Water District and three adjacent water districts could be retired at a cost of $580 million to $1 billion. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey have reached similar conclusions. Retiring this land and curbing the water contracts associated with it would result in a savings to California of up to 455,000 acre-feet of water, or enough for 2,600,000 urban water users. Further, land retirement is significantly less expensive than Gov. Jerry Brown?s plan to build a massive tunnel system to divert water from the Sacramento River, designed for the benefit of western San Joaquin Valley agribusiness.Agriculture consumes 80 percent of California?s developed water while accounting for only 2 percent of the state?s economic output. Our water supplies are limited in the best of times, and drought and climate change are only exacerbating the crisis.Subsidizing corporate agriculture on impaired and toxic lands is hardly a wise and reasonable use of our water. Congress must not approve this catastrophically flawed agreement embodied in HR 4366 (Valadao). Californians need to tell our federal legislators, particularly senators Feinstein and Boxer, that we don?t want another egregious and inequitable corporate bailout.The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Water Deeply. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov Thu Feb 4 15:32:59 2016 From: Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov (Cannata, Steve@Wildlife) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2016 23:32:59 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Trapping Summary JWeek 5 Update Message-ID: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5BEBE4@057-SN2MPN1-041.057d.mgd.msft.net> Hi Everyone, Please see attached for the Trinity River trapping summary JWeek 5 (Jan 29-Feb 4) update. Steve Steve Cannata Environmental Scientist Trinity River Project California Department of Fish and Wildlife 5341 Ericson Way Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-4230 steve.cannata at wildlife.ca.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW5.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 63061 bytes Desc: 2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW5.xlsx URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Feb 4 16:07:04 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2016 00:07:04 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fresno Bee Opinion: "Westlands's new front group hides farmworker reality" and response from Johnny Amaral, WWD References: <1447087989.1666632.1454630824632.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1447087989.1666632.1454630824632.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> OPINION COLUMNS & BLOGSJANUARY 21, 2016 6:55 AMAmanda Ford and Janaki Jagannath: Westlands? new front group hides farmworker realityFarmworker communities experience truly perverse inequities with respect to access to waterWestlands Water District is home to among not only the poorest, but also the thirstiest, people in the stateWorkers cannot use agricultural irrigation water for bathing, drinking or cooking BY AMANDA FORD AND JANAKI JAGANNATH The New York Times recently reported and The Bee reprinted that the Westlands Water District has five lobbying firms under contract in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and a massive public relations budget to lobby for more taxpayer-subsidized water and to weaken laws that protect imperiled fish and wildlife.Westlands also has a new front group ? one masquerading as a voice for Latino residents who champion more water for Westlands? agribusiness giants. The campaign is called El Agua Es Asunto de Todos (Water Is Everybody?s Business). Westlands has already put $1.1 million into El Agua promotions and reportedly pays its $14,000-per-month operating expenses. Working through firms in New York and California, El Agua has saturated Spanish-language media in California with pleas for more water for these industrial irrigators, claiming it will lift farmworkers out of poverty.But the El Agua campaign is a distraction from the truly perverse inequities farmworker communities experience with respect to access to water.The stark reality is that the Westlands Water District is home to among not only the poorest, but also the thirstiest, people in the state. Residents of the small farmworker communities located just feet away from heavily irrigated fields are being used by Westlands for the El Agua campaign though they do not have access to safe, clean and affordable domestic water. Residents least able to do so must pay some of the highest (and least transparent) water rates in the nation right back into Westlands? pocket!These workers cannot use agricultural irrigation water for bathing, drinking or cooking. Increasing agricultural allocations would support agricultural business, while quality of life for farmworkers is on the decline.In the farmworker communities of Cantua Creek and El Porvenir, which the state considers among the most vulnerable water systems in the state, taxpayers subsidize Westlands? lowest income water recipients by providing residents a monthly delivery of state-funded bottled drinking water. The water provided by Westlands is contaminated by industrial agricultural byproducts and priced beyond reach. The trickle-down theory does not work for these residents.Westlands Water District is the nation?s largest agricultural irrigation contractor, controlled by some of the nation?s richest and most politically savvy corporate farmers. The district serves more than 1,000 square miles of arid land in western Fresno and Kings counties. Some 350 vertically integrated operations consume 1.5 times the volume of water needed to serve Los Angeles. As the subsidized water flow has been cut back during the drought, Westlands? irrigators have fallowed some fields, while intensifying the already alarming overdraft of groundwater, leading to the permanent loss of groundwater storage capacity, to grow what includes ever increasing acres of permanent tree crops, largely for export.Westlands? funding of El Agua was part of an unsuccessful lobbying effort in Congress last year to weaken laws and regulations that protect fish and wildlife in California waters that are exported to Southern San Joaquin Valley farms through the taxpayer-funded Central Valley Project. The battle has renewed since Congress returned this year. Threatening consequences at the ballot box, El Agua has urged the State Water Board to ignore public trust needs and send more water south of the delta.Yet, since the drought hit California in 2012, Westlands farmers have added more than 18,000 acres of thirsty, but high-value, nut trees. They replaced crops such as garlic and tomatoes that can be fallowed in periods of drought with perennial orchards that require constant watering and are highly mechanized, thereby increasing the demand for water and reducing the demand for field laborers.As drought conditions worsened in California, the state Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation continued to ship water south of the delta for export through the state and federal water projects. As a result, we?ve seen a collapse of delta fisheries, increasing water toxicity and invasive species.Water continues to flow toward larger and more intensive agricultural users rather than to the human beings who work the fields and whose health and safety are at once dependent on and threatened by it.Westlands and other south-of-the-delta exporters have reported record incomes during the drought. So why did these industrial giants not reallocate some of the millions they spent on lobbying and public relations to assist the thousands of farmworkers who have faced drought-related job-losses, unsafe and unaffordable domestic water, and homelessness?They prefer to install Astroturf. It can pass for the real thing and fake grass roots don?t require any water at all.Rev. Amanda Ford and Janaki Jagannath are with The Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, a statewide coalition of grass-roots groups and intermediary organizations advocating for clean, safe and affordable water for all. | Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article55703060.html#storylink=cp | # *More Cash Back Information VALLEY VOICESFEBRUARY 3, 2016 8:00 AMJohnny Amaral: Let?s work together to protect California agricultureSome activists would rather eliminate farming in San Joaquin Valley than solve water problemsWestlands farmers eager to grow nation?s and world?s food, help farmworkers prosperGrowers, in concert with university researchers, are on cutting edge of water technology and efficiency"Gallery pre-roll turned off as page level is: blog . Must be: gallery" Irrigated fields in Westlands Water District border Interstate 5 and the Diablo Range west of Tranquility on June 12, 2015. Westlands is the nation?s largest agricultural water district. DAMON WINTER The New York TimesBY JOHNNY AMARAL As a lifelong resident of the Central Valley, I was first dismayed, and then outraged, upon reading the recent commentary in The Bee from two self-proclaimed activists for clean, safe and affordable water.Make no mistake. Their mission is not to protect farmworkers or to promote a water solution. It is to demonize the family farms on the West Side in an effort to eliminate farming in the San Joaquin Valley. California policymakers need to reject their divisive agenda and work together to improve the lives of the people that live and work in this region.At Westlands Water District, our farmers are eager to embrace solutions that will enable us to grow more of the nation?s and the world?s food and help farmworkers prosper. For years, we have advocated for policies to bring balance to the way water is delivered, so that people, farms and the environment get water. Most recently, Westlands supported legislation in Congress that would have brought much-needed reliability to the operation of the Delta pumps, while not violating the Endangered Species Act. We will proudly continue to do so.WESTLANDS FAMILY FARMERS HAVE MADE HUGE INVESTMENTS TO MAKE THEIR PRODUCTION MORE EFFICIENT AND ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE, MUCH MORE THAN ANY OTHER REGION IN THE WORLD.The activists? concern for the ?perverse inequities? relating to access to water is itself perverse. Rather than helping farmworkers, these groups advocate for water policies that take farm jobs away. They ignore the impact their policies have on local businesses and fail to recognize that unemployment in agriculture creates many problems for local government, including the ability to provide needed services to the lowest-income families.These groups do not want to admit that their political agenda is in part responsible for the high levels of unemployment and poverty. By demonizing farmers, it is easy to advocate for reducing water to farms; it is much harder to look into the eyes of the families whose livelihoods depend on farming and tell them they no longer have jobs.These ?hit-and-run? political tactics are in stark contrast to efforts by Westlands farmers, community groups, and local, state and federal officials who are working on solutions. There is agreement that California communities, including those in the San Joaquin Valley, need a more stable source of water. We need improved infrastructure, the ability to capture water during periods of heavy rain and increased storage. Those tangible goals can help us weather drought and provide the means to get reliable water allocations that help all of us: farms, businesses, cities and farmworkers.Local farmers grow a host of products ? yes, including almonds ? that keep jobs and the agriculture industry viable during years when water allocations are withheld. It?s disingenuous to claim to support farming that produces ?acceptable? crops such as garlic and tomatoes but then advocate for federal and state water policies that prevent farmers from growing those crops.It?s irresponsible to advocate for less water to farms without addressing how the lost agricultural production will be handled. Presumably, they are willing to send the agricultural jobs and production outside of California, despite the devastating impact that would have on our local economy and our families.Westlands family farmers have made huge investments to make their production more efficient and environmentally sensitive, much more than any other region in the world. In fact, many of the advances in irrigation technology and efficiency were born here.We have the finest research institutions in the California State University and University of California systems, providing cutting-edge water conservation technologies and farm production innovations. It?s that cooperation that provides the world with new methods of farming and water management ? a success that should be protected, not chased out of state.It makes no sense to position our serious drought-related situation as ?fish vs. farming,? as if the two are mutually exclusive. Those of us who live in the San Joaquin Valley know that water policies over the last 10 years have devastated not only our agriculture-dependent local economy. Ironically, in what feels like the ultimate case of adding insult to injury, they have also resulted in near extinction of several fish populations.IT?S DISINGENUOUS TO CLAIM TO SUPPORT FARMING THAT PRODUCES ?ACCEPTABLE? CROPS SUCH AS GARLIC AND TOMATOES BUT THEN ADVOCATE FOR FEDERAL AND STATE WATER POLICIES THAT PREVENT FARMERS FROM GROWING THOSE CROPS.During this decade of ?biological experimentation,? Westlands farmers have routinely received a zero allocation. Despite the misleading claims, there is no water that is ?flowing toward larger and more intensive agricultural users.?But blaming farmers, rather than government policies, fits their political agenda. Their cynical strategy to divide keeps elected officials from agreeing on a water-management compromise. Perhaps if the so-called advocates spent more time helping to change the laws and regulations that starve the Valley of water, there would be an affordable, abundant water supply for the people they claim to care about.Farming is a way of life for many in our community. We need to continue to work with our elected officials and responsible groups seeking solutions. And, we need to step up our efforts to expose misinformation campaigns designed to eliminate farming.Johnny Amaral is deputy general manager of Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural water district in the United States. Read more here: Johnny Amaral: Let?s work together to protect California agriculture | ? | | ? | | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | Johnny Amaral: Let?s work together to protect California...As a lifelong resident of the Central Valley, I was first dismayed, and then outraged, upon reading the recent commentary in The Bee from two self-proclaimed activi... | | | | View on www.fresnobee.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | ? | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Feb 5 08:39:15 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2016 16:39:15 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Journal: Studies show poor fish returns, spawning in 2015 References: <232042441.1884819.1454690355267.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <232042441.1884819.1454690355267.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/environment/article_be765f44-ca16-11e5-8074-63301f00a21e.html Studies show poor fish returns, spawning in 2015 By AMY GITTELSOHN The Trinity Journal | Posted: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 6:15 am Fisheries Technician Chris Laskodi Fisheries Technician Chris Laskodi from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service marks a redd on foot near Junction City.Fisheries experts report that the 2015 fall chinook salmon run in the Klamath and Trinity river basins fell short of the forecast.A return of 119,000 adults ? both hatchery and wild fish ? had been forecast to enter the mouth of the Klamath at the ocean, headed farther up the Klamath or into the Trinity. That would have been about average. Instead, the preliminary estimate for the run is 83,862 adults and early-returning jacks, which ranks the run as the 11th lowest since 1978.DFW Senior Environmental Scientist Wade Sinnen said abnormally warm ocean conditions are thought to be the main factor.?We attribute the low returns to poor ocean conditions (poor survival) primarily, however, four years of drought may also have impacted freshwater production,? he said in an e-mail.Some of those returning fish were caught in the river, with the tribal harvest put at 28,513 and the in-river sport harvest at 9,405, both below the allocations.The ocean catch was also low, said Sinnen, an ocean sport fisherman himself. ?The fish just weren?t really out there.?Natural spawning will not meet the target set, and the Trinity River Hatchery had its sixth lowest return of fall chinook since 1977 at 3,460 fish.?It?s one of our down years,? Sinnen said. ?Down on the Trinity, down on the Klamath, probably down along the West Coast. Two or three more like this is a down cycle but we hope that isn?t the case.??But not record lows by any means,? he added, calling the numbers around the bottom third of the range.Regarding the natural spawning, fisheries workers floating down the Trinity River in boats in 2015 scanning for salmon carcasses and spawning nests had low counts.?It was a poor spawning year,? said Derek Rupert, fish biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who coordinates the surveys.To look at a stretch of the Trinity River, for example, from September through December crews mapped 2,162 nests, called redds, in reaches from Lewiston Dam to the confluence with the Klamath River at Weitchpec. That?s the lowest it?s been in the past 12 years using the current methodology, and about 40 percent of average for those years, Rupert said.That doesn?t necessarily mean that the resultant fish returns in a few years will be low, he said, noting that each female can lay 3,000 eggs.By examining the fish carcass nearby each redd, the researchers determined that 2,103 of the redds were from chinook salmon, with 331 of those built by hatchery chinook that had strayed. There were 59 redds from coho salmon.The teams from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Yurok and Hoopa tribal fisheries programs floated the upper 40 miles of the Trinity River from the dam every week and the section from Big Flat to the confluence with the Klamath River every other week during the survey, minus the Pigeon Point run and Burnt Ranch Gorge.Estimates are also developed for spawning in the Klamath River and in tributaries.From the Trinity River Restoration Program, acting Chief Executive Director Brandt Gutermuth said this has been ?a terrible year? for fish returns.?We?re not happy about that,? he said.As to why the numbers dropped as they did, Gutermuth said, ?that is the million dollar question? and the answer could relate to any of the four H?s: habitat, hydrology, hatcheries and harvest.Gutermuth and Rupert said one positive trend shown by the surveys is the rising proportion of wild fish redds to redds from straying hatchery fish in the river. More of those wild fish redds are being built downstream indicating better habitat, they said. The Trinity River Restoration Program has worked to improve habitat on the river.?For a long time the Trinity was dominated by hatchery fish,? Rupert said, adding that the fish are probably taking advantage of habitat from restoration projects.He also noted that the proportion of fish that died before spawning was low, indicating that the fish that did return were healthy prior to spawning. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Feb 5 08:45:05 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2016 16:45:05 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] TPUD to consider surcharge, rates References: <1029873734.1899643.1454690705051.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1029873734.1899643.1454690705051.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_c94ab54e-ca18-11e5-8002-1b197213583d.html TPUD to consider surcharge, rates By AMY GITTELSOHN The Trinity Journal | Posted: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 6:15 amWith above-average snow in the mountains and rainfall actually substantial enough to cause some landslides, Trinity Public Utilities District customers may be anticipating lower bills for hydroelectric power from the district.To the contrary, TPUD General Manager Paul Hauser said due to increasing costs not only will he recommend to the TPUD board that the drought surcharge remain in place, but the district will also need to look at some kind of rate increase in the near future.The drought surcharge is currently 1.3 cents per kilowatt hour, so for a household using 1,000 kilowatt hours in a month it adds $13 to the bill. It brings in approximately $1.3 million annually.As it is currently worded, the district?s drought relief surcharge tariff says that while the surcharge is triggered by back-to-back dry years, it is to be reviewed each April and automatically lifted after the first above-average water year for the North State, as determined by the state Department of Water Resources. If the season continues to be a wet one, the drought surcharge will be lifted in a few months under those parameters.However, Hauser said he will be recommending changes for the board to vote on and is working up better criteria for the drought surcharge.?There?s just no way we can remove the drought surcharge this year,? he said, adding that while the rainfall may seem impressive, ?anybody that goes out to the lake, it still looks really bad.?Although the lake is still low after four ?mega-drought years,? Hauser noted, ?If they get a lot of rain they?re going to release a lot of water? to the Trinity River.The low lake and higher river releases mean less hydroelectricity which raises the price the district pays for power from the federal Western Area Power Administration.Already, Hauser noted, the district this year is taking more than $2 million out of its reserves.The district reported its annual power costs have escalated from $2,131,000 in 2012 to $3,975,000 today, an increase of more than 86 percent.The drought isn?t the only issue affecting the TPUD?s costs, and Hauser expects the district will have to look at some type of rate increase as well.A TPUD news release cited high fixed costs due to the county?s rugged landscape in an area larger than the state of Delaware. The TPUD has more than 700 miles of power lines winding through the county, and roughly 500 of those miles are on federal lands surrounded by narrow tree clearance right-of-ways.?Accessing these remote lines and poles during outages, and even during normal maintenance, makes our maintenance costs some of the highest in the state,? the TPUD said.While the district is dedicated to mitigating these costs for customers, ?it is equally as important to maintain the financial health of the district so that we can provide electricity for decades to come,? the news release states. ?Given the continuous rising costs, it has become clear that soon the cost of providing power to our customers will outrun income.?In upcoming months, the TPUD will hold public forums to present its plan to cover the increasing cost of electricity and maintenance.The TPUD board is next slated to meet on Thursday, Feb. 11, at 2 p.m. at the TPUD community room at 26 Ponderosa Lane in Weaverville. The agenda is not available yet. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Feb 5 08:46:44 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2016 16:46:44 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Opinion: Tom Walz: Damn torpedoes, full speed ahead References: <1088494510.1889861.1454690804588.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1088494510.1889861.1454690804588.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_e4917750-ca1a-11e5-a618-7fc7230383a1.html Damn torpedoes, full speed ahead >From Tom Walz Weaverville | Posted: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 6:15 amAfter reading last week?s article that the Trinity River Restoration Program plans to implement the Record of Decision for springtime flows based on rain year categories and totally ignore the lake level recoveries had me shaking my head in disbelief. In real life when you have made a decision based on the best information available at the time, you implement that decision, until additional information is received that will allow a better outcome, then you modify your implementation. ?We now have new information that shows retaining higher lake levels throughout the summer is highly beneficial to fish, as a cold pool of storage at Trinity Lake will be necessary to offset the high in-stream temperatures of the lower Klamath River. The past two years have demonstrated that September and October cold water releases from Trinity Lake have saved countless fish from disease, reducing mortality. ?With that new information it should be a relatively simple public notice to amend the Record of Decision to include a minimum Trinity Lake storage level and to adjust projected spring releases to attain those levels. Retaining higher constant lake levels will also benefit Trinity County?s economy by increasing recreational use of the lake and allowing additional hydroelectric production, thus reducing TPUD customer surcharges. I would encourage our Trinity County Board of Supervisors to put this on their agenda and seek an immediate amendment to the Record of Decision. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Feb 5 10:55:26 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2016 10:55:26 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Cold, Dead Fish Awards for 2015: Jerry Brown wins Cold, Dead Fish Award for fourth year in a row! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <96702D47-80D8-4964-A1A6-E4E87F2DC8C0@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/4/1480082/-Cold-Dead-Fish-Awards-For-2015 Cold, Dead Fish Awards for 2015 by Dan Bacher The year 2015 will become infamous as the one when many California fish populations reached record low levels, largely due to poor water management by the state and federal governments. The Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Water Resources continued to drain Trinity, Shasta, Oroville and Folsom reservoirs to record low levels during a record drought to supply subsidized water to corporate agribusiness interests, Southern California water agencies and oil companies conducting fracking operations. The good news in an otherwise disturbing outlook is the first El Ni?o storms that arrived at the end of the year to start recharging reservoirs depleted due to mismanagement by the agencies. Folsom Lake dropped to a record low level of 14 percent by the end of November and early December ? and other reservoirs around the state were plagued by record low water conditions. Winter run Chinook salmon, a federal and state endangered species, suffered from the second disastrous year in a row in the low, lethally warm conditions on the upper Sacramento River as almond growers continued to expand their water-intensive almond tree acreage on the west side of the San Joaquin.. Only 318,000 juvenile winter-run salmon survived in 2015, or just 3 percent of nearly 10 million eggs, according to a dramatic graph released by NOAA?s National Marine Fisheries Service on February 1. In comparison, just 5 percent of the salmon survived the previous year and 41 percent in 2011. "I think everyone tried to make it work and despite everybody's best efforts it still was too warm," claimed Maria Rea, a deputy regional administrator with the service. For their failed plans to supposedly ?save? the winter run, Rea and David Murillo, the MidPacific Director of the Bureau of Reclamation, each receive an ?Extinct Winter Run Chinook? award. As the water agencies continued to drain Central Valley reservoirs, they also continued to export water through the Delta pumps during the drought, driving Delta fish species closer and closer to extinction. (https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/01/05/18781526 ) Fish species ranging from endangered Delta smelt to striped bass plunged to record low population levels in 2015 in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, as revealed in the annual fall survey report released on December 18 by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). Only 6 Delta smelt, an endangered species that once numbered in the millions and was the most abundant fish in the Delta, were collected at the index stations in the estuary this fall. The 2015 index (7), a relative number of abundance, ?is the lowest in history,? said Sara Finstad, an environmental scientist for the CDFW?s Bay Delta Region. Longfin smelt, a cousin of the Delta smelt, also declined to the lowest abundance index (4) in the history of the survey. Only 3 longfin were collected at the index stations throughout the three- month period. The population of striped bass, a popular gamefish, declined to the second lowest level in history (52) Only 42 age 0 stripers were conducted at the survey stations. The 2015 abundance index (79) for American shad is also the lowest in history. Only 59 American shad were collected at the index stations. Finally, the abundance index (806) for threadfin shad, an introduced forage species. reached its eighth lowest level. The biologists collected 634 threadfin shad at the index stations. For their continuing service to the water contractors at catastrophic expense to our fish populations, Natural Resources Secretary John Laird, DWR Director Mark Cowin, CDFW Director Chuck Bonham and State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus each receive the ?Delta Destruction Derby? award. While those folks did ?yeoman?s work? in their campaign to exterminate California fish populations, one individual, Ren Lohoefener, US Fish & Wildlife Service Regional Director, did more than anybody to sacrifice Delta smelt at the altar of corporate greed. Lohoefener allowed increased take of the smelt at the pumps in January 2015, due to a secret directive in December 2014. (http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/rewild/fish/feds-quietly-double-allowable-take-of-delta-smelt.html ) Just days after the CDFW reported the Delta smelt population plummeted to a record low level in the fall 2014 survey, Roeenfener granted permission for the Central Valley Project and State Water Projects to double their killing of the smelt at the pumps. For this unforgivable act, Ren Lohoefener is granted the ?Delta Smelt Killer? award. On May 19, a 9 mile long oil spill began off the Santa Barbara Coast after a badly corroded pipeline, carrying crude oil from offshore platforms deposited over 142,800 gallons (3,400 carrels) of crude onto one of the most biological diverse coastlines on the West Coast. The oil slick fouled four alleged ?marine protected areas? - Naples, Kashtayit, Campus Point and Goleta Slough ? created under the controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. The oil damaged the coats, skin, beaks, and appendages of hundreds of animals ? and workers eventually collected 202 dead birds and 99 dead mammals including at least 46 sea lions and 12 dolphins. However, the full impact on fish and smaller shellfish, barnacles and other small creatures in the food chain may not be known for decades. For their negligence in maintaining the grossly corroded pipeline, Plains American Pipeline CEO Greg. L Armstrong receives a ?Big Oil Destroyer? award. He is proudly bestowed this award along with Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, who provided oil industry PR response to the spill, since the pipeline company is a member of her association. To make matters even worse, the very same oil lobbyist CHAIRED the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force to create the marine protected areas that were fouled by the spill! Reheis-Boyd also gets another ?prestigious? award for last year?s record oil industry ?gusher? of lobbying expenses that ensured that no environmental bill opposed by Big Oil was able to make out of the Legislature unless it was amended, as in the case of SB 350, the green energy bill. The oil lobby broke its prior spending record, spending $22 million over the past year. WSPA spent a record $11 million on lobbying, making it the number one corporate lobbying spender in California for the fourth year in a row. Reheis-Boyd receives the?Captured California? award for her successful capture of the regulatory apparatus in the state. (http://www.cadelivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Oil-Industry-Lobbying-2015-update-4_2.1.16._FINAL.pdf ) Speaking of the MLPA Initiative, Ron LeValley, the former co-chair of the MLPA Initiative ?Science Advisory Team,? briefly hit the media spotlight when he got out of federal prison in the spring after serving 9-1/2 months for embezzling over $830,000 from the Yurok Tribe. ?The legal experience did cost me quite a bit and I would like to pay off my bills,? said LeValley in a email to supporters. ?So if you have a favorite photo, please order one from me! Many thanks to you all for the support I received while I was on ?sabbatical.'" (http://www.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/2016/01/01/2015-quotables ) For casually dismissing his prison sentence as a ?sabbatical,? LeValley is granted the?No Shame at All? award. A rotten drainage deal signed by the Westlands Water District, considered the ?Darth Vader? of California water politics, and the Obama administration in September can be likened to the bank bailout of 2008: ?The wealthy and powerful corporate interests that caused the crisis are allowed to exit the burning aircraft with golden parachutes,? quipped Tom Stokely of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN). In the deal that requires congressional approval, the administration will forgive the district?s $375 million interest-free repayment obligation to taxpayers for construction of the federal Central Valley Project, the massive apparatus that delivers water from the Delta to corporate agribusiness interests on the western San Joaquin Valley. The agreement also converts the district?s current two-year water contracts to a permanent contract for up to 890,000 acre-feet of water annually, subject to the availability of water, according to Stokely. For their successful effort to bail Westlands out, Tom Birminghman, the Westlands general manager, Secretary of Interior Sally Jewel, President Barack Obama and other administration officials are granted the ?Dirty Deal? award of 2015. Finally, there comes the most prestigious award, the ?Cold, Dead Fish.? For the fourth year in a row, I must give the award to Governor Jerry Brown, since no individual has done more in his power to destroy the fish, water and environment of California. As I mentioned already, 2015 California fish populations ranging from Delta smelt to striped bass dropped to record low levels under his watch. As Brown?s allies in the Obama administration continued to send winter run Chinook salmon, as well as the fall, late fall and spring runs, to the scaffold, Brown continued to promote anti-environmental policies that have surpassed those of any previous California administration. While Brown gushed about his "green energy" and carbon trading policies at the Paris Climate Conference in December and other photo opportunities throughout the year, he continued to enthusiastically support the expansion of fracking in California, rejecting calls to ban fracking from a coalition of over 200 environmental and public interests groups. He and his federal partners, after federal EPA scientists trashed the ?science? of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), instead divided the project into two components, the California Water Fix, the tunnels component, and the California Eco Restore, the ?habitat? conservation component, in July. And this new fast-tracked project allowed for no public meetings; the ?Fix was in? as many folks quipped. At this point, there are no environmental groups (with the exception of Jerry Meral?s Natural Heritage Institute), fishing groups or tribes that the support the project, but Brown continues to push this boondoggle forward, in spite of the fact that there is no example in U.S. or world history where a project that took more water out of a river resulted in ecosystem restoration. The project would hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter and spring run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish speciesm as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. Proper accounting for Brown?s other abysmal environmental policies would fill a very large book. Here are just a few: ? Brown supports carbon trading and REDD. REDD is the acronym for ?Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation,? but indigenous leaders throughout the world say REDD really means "Reaping profits from Evictions, land grabs, Deforestation and Destruction of biodiversity." ? His administration was beset with numerous environmental scandals, ranging from the resignation of his top oil regulator to the resignation of two Fish and Game Commissioners, Jim Kellogg and Jack Bayliss and the Commission?s Executive Director, Sonke Mastrup. ? Brown ?completed? the faux ?marine protected areas? developed under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. These ?marine protected areas, based on terminally flawed ?science? and the violation of the gathering rights of the Yurok Tribe and other Tribes, fail to protect the ocean from fracking, offshore oil drilling, pollution, oil spills, military testing, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. ? And it was only after months of intense pressure from environmentalists, public health advocates and Porter Ranch residents that Governor Brown declared a state of emergency in the Aliso Canyon Gas Leak disaster that began on October 23. In an apparent familial conflict of interest, Brown?s sister, Kathleen, plays a significant role at Sempra Energy, the corporation that owns SoCalGas, the company responsible for the gas blowout. She earned $188,380 in her position as a board member in 2014 and $267,865 in 2013. (http://redgreenandblue.org/2015/12/19/jerry-browns-big-bad-ties-to-oil-and-gas-industry/ ) For his unprecedented war on fish, water and the environment as he poses as a ?Green Governor? promoting ?green energy? and addressing ?climate change,? Brown recevies the ?Cold, Dead Fish Award? for the fourth year in a row. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: acwa1.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 132647 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Feb 5 11:17:45 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2016 11:17:45 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Cold, Dead Fish Awards for 2015: Jerry Brown wins Cold, Dead Fish Award for fourth year in a row! In-Reply-To: <20160205.082007.5346.1@webmail01.vgs.untd.com> References: <20160205.082007.5346.1@webmail01.vgs.untd.com> Message-ID: <45439C2D-6D08-4049-8E41-42F3C96CC806@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/4/1480082/-Cold-Dead-Fish-Awards-For-2015 For the fourth year in a row, Governor Jerry Brown has received the prestigious "Cold, Dead Fish" award. Photo of Jerry Brown by Joe McHugh, California Highway Patrol. Cold, Dead Fish Awards for 2015 by Dan Bacher The year 2015 will become infamous as the one when many California fish populations reached record low levels, largely due to poor water management by the state and federal governments. The Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Water Resources continued to drain Trinity, Shasta, Oroville and Folsom reservoirs to record low levels during a record drought to supply subsidized water to corporate agribusiness interests, Southern California water agencies and oil companies conducting fracking operations. The good news in an otherwise disturbing outlook is the first El Ni?o storms that arrived at the end of the year to start recharging reservoirs depleted due to mismanagement by the agencies. Folsom Lake dropped to a record low level of 14 percent by the end of November and early December ? and other reservoirs around the state were plagued by record low water conditions. Winter run Chinook salmon, a federal and state endangered species, suffered from the second disastrous year in a row in the low, lethally warm conditions on the upper Sacramento River as almond growers continued to expand their water-intensive almond tree acreage on the west side of the San Joaquin.. Only 318,000 juvenile winter-run salmon survived in 2015, or just 3 percent of nearly 10 million eggs, according to a dramatic graph released by NOAA?s National Marine Fisheries Service on February 1. In comparison, just 5 percent of the salmon survived the previous year and 41 percent in 2011. "I think everyone tried to make it work and despite everybody's best efforts it still was too warm," claimed Maria Rea, a deputy regional administrator with the service. For their failed plans to supposedly ?save? the winter run, Rea and David Murillo, the MidPacific Director of the Bureau of Reclamation, each receive an ?Extinct Winter Run Chinook? award. As the water agencies continued to drain Central Valley reservoirs, they also continued to export water through the Delta pumps during the drought, driving Delta fish species closer and closer to extinction. (https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/01/05/18781526 ) Fish species ranging from endangered Delta smelt to striped bass plunged to record low population levels in 2015 in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, as revealed in the annual fall survey report released on December 18 by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). Only 6 Delta smelt, an endangered species that once numbered in the millions and was the most abundant fish in the Delta, were collected at the index stations in the estuary this fall. The 2015 index (7), a relative number of abundance, ?is the lowest in history,? said Sara Finstad, an environmental scientist for the CDFW?s Bay Delta Region. Longfin smelt, a cousin of the Delta smelt, also declined to the lowest abundance index (4) in the history of the survey. Only 3 longfin were collected at the index stations throughout the three- month period. The population of striped bass, a popular gamefish, declined to the second lowest level in history (52) Only 42 age 0 stripers were conducted at the survey stations. The 2015 abundance index (79) for American shad is also the lowest in history. Only 59 American shad were collected at the index stations. Finally, the abundance index (806) for threadfin shad, an introduced forage species. reached its eighth lowest level. The biologists collected 634 threadfin shad at the index stations. For their continuing service to the water contractors at catastrophic expense to our fish populations, Natural Resources Secretary John Laird, DWR Director Mark Cowin, CDFW Director Chuck Bonham and State Water Resources Control Board Chair Felicia Marcus each receive the ?Delta Destruction Derby? award. While those folks did ?yeoman?s work? in their campaign to exterminate California fish populations, one individual, Ren Lohoefener, US Fish & Wildlife Service Regional Director, did more than anybody to sacrifice Delta smelt at the altar of corporate greed. Lohoefener allowed increased take of the smelt at the pumps in January 2015, due to a secret directive in December 2014. (http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/rewild/fish/feds-quietly-double-allowable-take-of-delta-smelt.html ) Just days after the CDFW reported the Delta smelt population plummeted to a record low level in the fall 2014 survey, Roeenfener granted permission for the Central Valley Project and State Water Projects to double their killing of the smelt at the pumps. For this unforgivable act, Ren Lohoefener is granted the ?Delta Smelt Killer? award. On May 19, a 9 mile long oil spill began off the Santa Barbara Coast after a badly corroded pipeline, carrying crude oil from offshore platforms deposited over 142,800 gallons (3,400 carrels) of crude onto one of the most biological diverse coastlines on the West Coast. The oil slick fouled four alleged ?marine protected areas? - Naples, Kashtayit, Campus Point and Goleta Slough ? created under the controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. The oil damaged the coats, skin, beaks, and appendages of hundreds of animals ? and workers eventually collected 202 dead birds and 99 dead mammals including at least 46 sea lions and 12 dolphins. However, the full impact on fish and smaller shellfish, barnacles and other small creatures in the food chain may not be known for decades. For their negligence in maintaining the grossly corroded pipeline, Plains American Pipeline CEO Greg. L Armstrong receives a ?Big Oil Destroyer? award. He is proudly bestowed this award along with Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, who provided oil industry PR response to the spill, since the pipeline company is a member of her association. To make matters even worse, the very same oil lobbyist CHAIRED the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force to create the marine protected areas that were fouled by the spill! Reheis-Boyd also gets another ?prestigious? award for last year?s record oil industry ?gusher? of lobbying expenses that ensured that no environmental bill opposed by Big Oil was able to make out of the Legislature unless it was amended, as in the case of SB 350, the green energy bill. The oil lobby broke its prior spending record, spending $22 million over the past year. WSPA spent a record $11 million on lobbying, making it the number one corporate lobbying spender in California for the fourth year in a row. Reheis-Boyd receives the?Captured California? award for her successful capture of the regulatory apparatus in the state. (http://www.cadelivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Oil-Industry-Lobbying-2015-update-4_2.1.16._FINAL.pdf ) Speaking of the MLPA Initiative, Ron LeValley, the former co-chair of the MLPA Initiative ?Science Advisory Team,? briefly hit the media spotlight when he got out of federal prison in the spring after serving 9-1/2 months for embezzling over $830,000 from the Yurok Tribe. ?The legal experience did cost me quite a bit and I would like to pay off my bills,? said LeValley in a email to supporters. ?So if you have a favorite photo, please order one from me! Many thanks to you all for the support I received while I was on ?sabbatical.'" (http://www.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/2016/01/01/2015-quotables ) For casually dismissing his prison sentence as a ?sabbatical,? LeValley is granted the?No Shame at All? award. A rotten drainage deal signed by the Westlands Water District, considered the ?Darth Vader? of California water politics, and the Obama administration in September can be likened to the bank bailout of 2008: ?The wealthy and powerful corporate interests that caused the crisis are allowed to exit the burning aircraft with golden parachutes,? quipped Tom Stokely of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN). In the deal that requires congressional approval, the administration will forgive the district?s $375 million interest-free repayment obligation to taxpayers for construction of the federal Central Valley Project, the massive apparatus that delivers water from the Delta to corporate agribusiness interests on the western San Joaquin Valley. The agreement also converts the district?s current two-year water contracts to a permanent contract for up to 890,000 acre-feet of water annually, subject to the availability of water, according to Stokely. For their successful effort to bail Westlands out, Tom Birminghman, the Westlands general manager, Secretary of Interior Sally Jewel, President Barack Obama and other administration officials are granted the ?Dirty Deal? award of 2015. Finally, there comes the most prestigious award, the ?Cold, Dead Fish.? For the fourth year in a row, I must give the award to Governor Jerry Brown, since no individual has done more in his power to destroy the fish, water and environment of California. As I mentioned already, 2015 California fish populations ranging from Delta smelt to striped bass dropped to record low levels under his watch. As Brown?s allies in the Obama administration continued to send winter run Chinook salmon, as well as the fall, late fall and spring runs, to the scaffold, Brown continued to promote anti-environmental policies that have surpassed those of any previous California administration. While Brown gushed about his "green energy" and carbon trading policies at the Paris Climate Conference in December and other photo opportunities throughout the year, he continued to enthusiastically support the expansion of fracking in California, rejecting calls to ban fracking from a coalition of over 200 environmental and public interests groups. He and his federal partners, after federal EPA scientists trashed the ?science? of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), instead divided the project into two components, the California Water Fix, the tunnels component, and the California Eco Restore, the ?habitat? conservation component, in July. And this new fast-tracked project allowed for no public meetings; the ?Fix was in? as many folks quipped. At this point, there are no environmental groups (with the exception of Jerry Meral?s Natural Heritage Institute), fishing groups or tribes that the support the project, but Brown continues to push this boondoggle forward, in spite of the fact that there is no example in U.S. or world history where a project that took more water out of a river resulted in ecosystem restoration. The project would hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter and spring run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish speciesm as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. Proper accounting for Brown?s other abysmal environmental policies would fill a very large book. Here are just a few: ? Brown supports carbon trading and REDD. REDD is the acronym for ?Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation,? but indigenous leaders throughout the world say REDD really means "Reaping profits from Evictions, land grabs, Deforestation and Destruction of biodiversity." ? His administration was beset with numerous environmental scandals, ranging from the resignation of his top oil regulator to the resignation of two Fish and Game Commissioners, Jim Kellogg and Jack Bayliss and the Commission?s Executive Director, Sonke Mastrup. ? Brown ?completed? the faux ?marine protected areas? developed under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative. These ?marine protected areas, based on terminally flawed ?science? and the violation of the gathering rights of the Yurok Tribe and other Tribes, fail to protect the ocean from fracking, offshore oil drilling, pollution, oil spills, military testing, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. ? And it was only after months of intense pressure from environmentalists, public health advocates and Porter Ranch residents that Governor Brown declared a state of emergency in the Aliso Canyon Gas Leak disaster that began on October 23. In an apparent familial conflict of interest, Brown?s sister, Kathleen, plays a significant role at Sempra Energy, the corporation that owns SoCalGas, the company responsible for the gas blowout. She earned $188,380 in her position as a board member in 2014 and $267,865 in 2013. (http://redgreenandblue.org/2015/12/19/jerry-browns-big-bad-ties-to-oil-and-gas-industry/ ) For his unprecedented war on fish, water and the environment as he poses as a ?Green Governor? promoting ?green energy? and addressing ?climate change,? Brown recevies the ?Cold, Dead Fish Award? for the fourth year in a row. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: acwa1.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 132647 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Feb 8 08:31:22 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2016 16:31:22 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Rep=2E_Ra=C3=BAl_M=2E_Grijalva=3A_Westlan?= =?utf-8?q?ds=E2=80=99_cynical_ploy_uses_farmworkers=E2=80=99_group_to_cur?= =?utf-8?q?b_environmental_laws?= References: <1016079849.739018.1454949082840.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1016079849.739018.1454949082840.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Westlands? cynical ploy uses farmworkers? groupto curb environmental laws Republicans, agribusiness using drought toundermine environmental laws Creating farmworkers group to benefit corporateagribusinesses is doubly cynical ? Irrigated fields in the Westlands WaterDistrict border Interstate 5 and the parched Diablo Range beyond. Westlands isa formidable political force bent on keeping water flowing to itself and tofarms across California?s agricultural heartland. DAMON WINTER The NewYork Times BY RA?L M. GRIJALVA Special to The Bee ? ? California is facing a fifth straight year ofdrought and struggling badly to meet the water demands of its farms, cities,fish and wildlife. We all know what an important role the state plays insustaining our national economy. This should be a time for Congress to put theusual special interest arguments aside to pass some needed relief measures. Unfortunately, congressional Republicans andpowerful agribusiness interests are using the drought as an excuse to underminethe state?s and the nation?s bedrock environmental laws. An unprecedentedlobbying effort by some of California?s biggest farmers is underway ? largelyhidden from public scrutiny ? to cripple the Endangered Species Act and otherenvironmental protections in the name of ?drought response.? ? Rep. Ra?l M. Grijalva As recent news reports have shown, theWestlands Water District has been the most active player in this lobbyingcampaign. Westlands is a $100 million-a-year water utility that distributeswater to some of the largest farming operations in the world and supplies someof our nation?s richest farmers. It employs no fewer than five lobbying firmsin Washington, D.C., and Sacramento. Its members spend massive sums each yearon lobbying, public relations and contributions ? most go to its Republicanallies. Westlands is trying to further itsanti-environment agenda by bankrolling a group called El Agua Es Asunto deTodos, a classic astroturf scheme that claims to represent farmworkers and theLatino community. The group has led a public relations and lobbying effort,funded by more than $1.1 million from Westlands, to weaken California?senvironmental laws ? and make it easier for big agribusiness interests to dowhatever they like. This is offensive, but not unique. For yearslarge agribusiness interests have bankrolled theso-called Latino Water Coalition, an organization that orchestrateshigh-profile protests against environmental protections. The group has beenrightly denounced by famed civil rights and farmworker advocate Dolores Huerta,among others, as the industry front group it is. ? Making farmworkers the face of ananti-environment campaign designed to benefit corporate agribusinessesinterests is doubly cynical because many of California?s biggest growers haveopposed farmworker interests for decades, blocking efforts to improve unsafeworking conditions and upgrade housing and wage standards. In a rare moment ofcandor, a Westlands farmer even admitted to one newspaper not long ago that ?BigAg polls poorly? in an attempt to justify Westlands? strategy. Even if the drought ended tomorrow,California?s farmworkers would still face numerous hardships. Big agribusinessinterests never talk about the rampant wagetheft suffered by California farmworkers, the farmworker joblosses caused by the industry?s switch to low-labor nut crops, orthe fact that one farmworkerdies on the job every single day in this country and hundreds more are injured.This fatality rate is seven times higher than the rate for all workers inprivate industry. Weakening the Endangered Species Act is not going to solvethese problems. California?s agribusinesses are making recordprofits even at the height of the drought. The state?s crop revenues in 2013and 2014 are the first and second highest revenue years ever recorded, reaching aneye-popping $33.8 billion in 2013 and $33.4 billion in 2014. Yetfarmworkers still face a poverty ratenearly double the national rate for wage and salary employees. There?s little evidence that Westlands or itsindustry allies will change any time soon, which is why Republicans have animportant choice to make. The American people know about the dishonesty andfinancial self-interest behind the industry?s anti-environment campaign. Thequestion now is whether that campaign?s Republican supporters will disavowthese tactics ? or double down. Rep. Ra?l M. Grijalva of Arizona is the rankingDemocrat on the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources. Read more here:http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article58354948.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Mon Feb 8 10:40:16 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2016 10:40:16 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] AFS Study: Intensive, Long-Term Monitoring Key To Determining Effects Of Habitat Restoration Message-ID: <016601d162a0$27d86ec0$77894c40$@sisqtel.net> THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN: Weekly Fish and Wildlife News www.cbbulletin.com February 5, 2016 Issue No. 780 * Study: Intensive, Long-Term Monitoring Key To Determining Effects Of Habitat Restoration Although billions of dollars have been invested in stream restoration projects to replace lost and degraded fish habitat across the United States since 1990, there is a lack of evidence that the projects have actually benefitted salmon and steelhead, according to a recent study published last week. The authors of the study have an answer to this paucity of information: intensively monitored watersheds. Some 17 watersheds throughout the Northwest, nine in the Columbia River basin, are already providing detailed and long-term insights into how investments in stream restoration - projects such as placing woody debris in streams or reconnecting habitat - are increasing smolt populations and adult returns. "All IMWs are experiments that are trying to answer the basic question 'is restoration of stream and estuary habitat working?'" said lead author Stephen Bennett, research scientist, Watershed Sciences Department, Utah State University in Logan, UT. "By 'working' we mean is restoration resulting in an increase in salmon and steelhead productivity in freshwater habitats," he said. "Although 100's of millions of dollars have been spent restoring stream habitat in (the Pacific Northwest), we do not have much data to support that more fish are being created." "This (IMWs) is the best method we have for understanding if restoration improves watershed scale productivity, how well it works, and how we can get better at it," Bennett said. According to information from NOAA Fisheries, IMW streams have systems to track salmon and steelhead from emergence at the fry stage to when the fish return as adults. In some cases, NOAA said, antennas are buried in stream bottoms to detect PIT-Tags in fish as they leave and return, documenting how many of the fish use the restored habitat. The information in the IMW stream is compared with separate control streams that have not had restoration projects. The study, "Progress and Challenges of Testing the Effectiveness of Stream Restoration in the Pacific Northwest Using Intensively Monitored Watersheds," was published online January 28, 2016, in the journal Fisheries, the monthly journal of the American Fisheries Society, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03632415.2015.1127805 For additional information about IMWs, including a case study and data accompanying the article, go to http://www.pnamp.org/imw/home. AFS is granting free access to the information through February. In addition to Bennett, authors are: George Pess, supervisory research fishery biologist, Chris Jordan, program manager, and Correigh Greene, research biologist, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA, Seattle, WA; Nicolaas Bouwes, aquatic ecologist, Eco Logical Research Inc., Providence, UT; Phil Roni, principal scientist, Cramer Fish Sciences, Sammamish, WA; Robert E. Bilby, senior science advisor, Weyerhaeuser Co., Federal Way, WA; Sean Gallagher, senior environmental scientist, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Fort Bragg, CA; Jim Ruzycki, Mid-Columbia Program Manager, Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, La Grande, OR; Thomas Buehrens, research scientist, Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, Vancouver, WA; Kirk Krueger, senior research scientist, and Joseph Anderson, senior research scientist, WDFW, Olympia, WA; William Ehinger, freshwater ecologist, Washington Department of Ecology, Lacey, WA; and Brett Bowersox, fisheries staff biologist, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Lewiston,ID. Simply implementing restoration and then monitoring the fish and habitat does not constitute an IMW, according to the study. The study says an intensively monitored watershed is "an experiment that uses a management action (restoration) as a treatment and intensive monitoring to detect whether a watershed-scale fish response to that action occurred." The intensive monitoring is well-suited to adaptive management, the study adds. The goals of such an approach are to determine the effectiveness of restoration actions at increasing salmon and steelhead productivity; determine why fish respond to the habitat improvements; and, ultimately, to replicate the results in other watersheds "where intensive monitoring is not possible due to limited budgets," the study says. And, yes, it can be expensive. Bennett said he does not know the cost of all IMWs, although the Asotin Creek IMW in the Columbia River basin, which he works on, has an annual operating budget of $200,000 and others could cost as much as twice that amount. And, it will take time to determine the benefits of habitat restoration projects, the study says. "We're looking for a long-term response to restoration from an animal that can vary widely from year to year," said NOAA Fisheries' Pess. He assisted with an IMW that tracked the return of salmon to Washington's Elwha River following the removal of two Elwa River dams in 2011. "You need sufficient time and detail to be able to say, yes, the fish are increasing and, yes, it's because of the improvements in the habitat," he said. According to the study, of the 17 IMWs, nine are in Washington, four are in Oregon. Nine of the IMWs are in the Columbia River basin. Among the IMWs in the Columbia River basin are the Entiat and Methow rivers in Washington's upper Columbia basin, the Lemhi and Potlatch rivers in Idaho, the lower Columbia River (Mill, German and Abernathy creeks) and the Wind River. IMWs are currently evaluating some seven common restoration actions across four states and eight ecoregions. The most common (13) is instream placement of woody debris, followed by habitat reconnection/improved access to tributary and floodplain habitats (8), and barrier removal (5). Multiple restoration actions are occurring in 12 IMWs. Some of the results already confirmed for IMW restoration projects are: -- a 250 percent increase in numbers of juvenile fish in areas of Asotin Creek in Washington with restored habitat compared to those without. --juvenile coho salmon survival in the Alsea River in Oregon increased 50 percent in summer and 300 percent in the winter after restoration improved rearing habitat. --when posts were installed on Bridge Creek, a tributary of the John Day River, in order to help beavers construct dams to reduce erosion and boost the water table, the production of juvenile steelhead increased 175 percent. --reconnection of side channels expanded available habitat on the Methow River in Washington and fish numbers increased 400 percent to 800 percent. --scientists have thought that coho salmon that migrate to the ocean in the fall of their first year do not survive, but IMW studies have revealed that the fall fish may be important contributors to adult returns, demonstrating that such diversity may be important to the long-term resilience of these fish. When establishing IMWs, the authors recommend establishing an adaptive management framework ahead of time. "It should be clear from the onset that the priorities of the IMW should be to test the effectiveness of restoration actions at the appropriate scale and to identify the causal mechanisms of the observed responses where possible," the study says. Long-term funding is necessary to quantify the response because "it will likely take years to decades for such responses to unfold." "These long term experiments are the best and arguably only way to definitively determine if restoration is working - and we will learn a lot about fish populations and watershed function in the process of conducting these experiments," Bennett said. "But people (funding agencies, the public) need to be patient - watershed-scale experiments are complicated, fish populations are difficult to study (due to high natural variability) - it will take 10 to 20 years of careful monitoring to answer the question 'is restoration working.'" Also see: -- CBB, Sept. 4, 2015, "Study: Habitat Restoration Projects Often Fail To Target Highest Priority Needs For Ecosystem, Salmon" http://www.cbbulletin.com/434882.aspx -- CBB, April 3, 2015, "Producing Salmon: Study Looks At Cost Effectiveness Of Habitat Restoration Compared To Hatcheries" http://www.cbbulletin.com/433567.aspx -- CBB, Nov. 7, 2014, "Adding Wood Structures To Streams Promotes Fish Recovery, But Do They Have To Cost So Much?" http://www.cbbulletin.com/432582.aspx -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Feb 9 09:49:38 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2016 17:49:38 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] WaterDeeply: Loophole in Water Law Opens Way for Bottling Plant References: <1674583144.1266622.1455040178930.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1674583144.1266622.1455040178930.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> This isn't about the Trinity River but is relevant to groundwater issues in mountain communities such as Trinity County.TS http://www.waterdeeply.org/articles/2016/02/9564/loophole-water-law-opens-bottling-plant/ Loophole in Water Law Opens Way for Bottling Plant February 9th, 2016?by?Alastair Bland?????7 min read????? - Share ?- ? Tweet Is a bottling company about to get unlimited groundwater when locals have been conserving during the drought? Some residents of Mount Shasta City are concerned a loophole in a new groundwater law means that a planned bottling operation by Crystal Geyser could dry up local groundwater wellsA large beverage bottling operation could receive a free pass to use all it wants of a small Northern California community?s groundwater supply, thanks to an obscure allowance in state water laws and a protective trade agreement.Crystal Geyser has plans to launch?a new beverage bottling operation?in the small northern California town of Mount Shasta. In response to California?s drought, locals here cut water use by about 40 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to officials. However, an exemption in newly drafted groundwater regulations could give the giant company leeway to use unlimited water from the community?s underground supply. The company has sworn it will take an insignificant volume of water from the ground and that local wells will not be affected. The concern among locals, however, is that there is nothing in the law that will curtail Crystal Geyser?s use. That?s because the city of Mount Shasta's groundwater supply is considered to be a ?volcanic basin,? not an ?alluvial basin? ? a geologic distinction that carries significant consequences under a set of new water use laws.The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the newly passed legislation celebrated as a potential fix to the state?s aquifer overdraft problems, only addresses alluvial basins. Alluvial basins occur mostly in low-lying valleys, where substrate like sand or gravel is saturated with large volumes of water that flows in from upslope sources. SGMA?s new regulations are based on?Bulletin 118?, a Department of Water Resources list that names several hundred of the state?s important groundwater sources. All are alluvial basins. Tim Godwin, an engineering geologist with the California Department of Water Resources, says there are two basic types of groundwater sources recognized by scientists ? alluvial basins in valley areas, where river sediments have accumulated for long periods of time, and aquifers in mountain regions, where the ground consists mostly of solid or fractured rock.?[The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act] only focuses on alluvial basins with lots of groundwater production,? he says.An alluvial basin is characterized by predictable ?radial flow in permeable, porous medium,? he says, adding that this flow pattern makes managing, predicting and limiting water use relatively easy.But groundwater in mountain areas is very different. It doesn?t move through the earth in the relatively homogeneous way that water generally seeps through the alluvial sand or gravel soils of valley regions.?It?s very difficult to understand connectivity and flow in these basins,? he says. ?So, as you start to enter into the fractured rock areas, like around Mount Shasta, you have combinations of conditions that make understanding how the groundwater behaves really challenging.?Fractures, porous volcaniclastic rock and tubes created by lava flows all serve as conduits for water, he explains. Groundwater in areas of solid bedrock flows in even less predictable ways.Godwin says that roughly 98 percent of the state?s groundwater use comes from alluvial aquifers, meaning few people will be affected by the exclusion of volcanic and fractured rock aquifers from SGMA.But for Californians who depend on mountain groundwater deposits, the exemption of such basins from the widely heralded new groundwater management laws seems an egregious omission. In the Mount Shasta region, the water that flows just below the surface ultimately winds up in the Sacramento River system ? an increasingly troubled ecosystem in which native species are vanishing and on which millions of people, and vast sprawls of farmland, depend.?Leaving the Sacramento River?s source region out of SGMA is like trying to cure peripheral vascular disease without addressing the heart,? says Vicki Gold, who lives just outside of the city of Mount Shasta.Godwin says that aquifers that won?t be covered by SGMA may still be monitored and regulated by county officials. But Gold says she and other locals don?t trust that county authorities will do so in a fair way.Crystal Geyser plans to operate a beverage bottling facility in Mount Shasta at a former bottling plant owned by Coca-Cola. (Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press)Even if Siskiyou County wishes to bar Crystal Geyser from pumping the region?s groundwater, the beverage giant may have its way with local water resources through a new business-friendly trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP has been drafted through years of negotiations between the United States and 11 nations surrounding the Pacific Rim, and it could be activated this year. The partnership will work as a boon to economic growth and will essentially allow multinational business ventures to skirt local regulations.Since Crystal Geyser is owned by a Japanese pharmaceutical firm called Otsuka, the Mount Shasta beverage bottling project could be protected from any restrictions imposed by state or county laws.Nancy Price, the national co-chair with the?Alliance for Democracy?, says the TPP will allow corporations to sue governments in a TPP-specific court if any laws infringe on the profits of foreign-owned ventures. ?What if groundwater sources are reduced or springs near Mount Shasta go dry after a really severe drought, and if the community decides that the amount of water taken for the bottling plant impacts these resources and needs to be reduced?? says Price. ?The Japanese corporation that owns Crystal Geyser could sue the county by taking a case to protect their ?investor rights? in a secret international trade court that bypasses our U.S. court system and allows for no appeal."According to Gold, when Coca-Cola operated the bottling plant now being resuscitated by Crystal Geyser, local groundwater supplies dwindled.?Wells went dry when Coca-Cola was pumping,? Gold says. ?People had gravel and sand in their pipes.?Raven Stevens, the community liaison for the Mount Shasta Gateway Neighborhood Association, moved to the area four years ago but has talked with many of her neighbors about groundwater quality and reliability in recent years. She says at least six wells within half a mile of the bottling plant went dry or almost dry between 2005 and 2009. In 2010, the beverage maker left town.?Then everyone?s water issues went away and didn?t even return through the worst drought in history,? she says.Stevens says that Coca-Cola representatives informed of the well issues at the time said that because only some local wells, and not all, were experiencing issues the problem must have been related to the landowners? pipes or the wells themselves.?But we?re in a volcanic aquifer,? Stevens says, explaining that the unpredictable movement of groundwater in such aquifers makes Coca-Cola?s straight-line conclusion much too simplistic to trust.Greg Plucker?, community development director with Siskiyou County, says no records exist of resident complaints about groundwater supplies during Coca-Cola?s use of the bottling facility. Moreover, he says a review by the Regional Water Quality Control Board in 2001 determined that extracting 450 gallons (1,700 liters) per minute from the aquifer below the plant would not negatively influence local groundwater water supplies. He says Crystal Geyser has plans to use much less than that. Steve Burns, with the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, which is representing Crystal Geyser, confirms this. He says the plan is to draw 80 gallons per minute ? or 115,000 gallons per day ? from the site?s production well and, perhaps in several years, if the project is successful, double that use. Never, he says, will water use on the Crystal Geyser site approach what Coca-Cola pumped from the ground.Stevens believes this is misinformation. She says that an additional domestic well on the property will have the capacity to take up to 320 gallons per minute. Eventually, she warns, Crystal Geyser?s project will be pumping at least the volume of water that allegedly drained locals? water supplies seven years ago.?There is nothing legally stopping them from taking all the water they want,? she says.According to Burns, the domestic well will take a fraction the water that the production well will produce. ?I don?t care how much water could come out of [the domestic well],? Burns says. ?How many toilets would you need to flush to even come close to matching that production level??Following a lawsuit filed last August by a citizens' group demanding a thorough review of Crystal Geyser?s proposed project, the company announced it would conduct an environmental review to ensure its bottling plant does no harm to the community. The first step in that process is submitting review applications to local agencies.At press time, Burns said the county application had been submitted months prior and another application would be turned in ?any day now? to the city of Mount Shasta. He says it may take the city and the Siskiyou County Air Pollution Control District another two months to determine whether or not an environmental impact report is actually needed. An EIR, he says, could take many months more.Plucker, with Siskiyou County, says that even though California?s incoming groundwater laws will have no effect on the volcanic basin beneath Mount Shasta, an environmental review could potentially derail or stall the project.Stevens feels the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will adequately serve communities in low valleys but fails communities like Mount Shasta.?The problem is that SGMA disregards areas like the top of the Sacramento River, where we are,? she says. ?It?s no wonder Crystal Geyser has left places like Calistoga and Bakersfield, because they know it will be 20 years, and maybe 40, before the state turns its eyes up here.?Alastair Bland is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. He can be reached via Twitter at?@allybland?. Top image: Mount Shasta in Northern California. Some residents of the nearby city of Mount Shasta are concerned about a loophole in a recent groundwater law that omits to regulate water from volcanic basins. (Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Feb 9 10:14:37 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2016 10:14:37 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] American River flows will rise to 3, 000 cfs as Folsom Lake reaches 61% capacity (Reclamation just revised releases) In-Reply-To: <50D3AFF2-1298-4244-9EF2-239DF383E179@fishsniffer.com> References: <95E76A81-4F24-44AC-8CAC-7C397B08675F@fishsniffer.com> <6FDBC63B-3A38-4722-9A85-656A3FC164E5@fishsniffer.com> <47009D89-820F-4FD6-BC01-A1E47A9A3BC3@fishsniffer.com> <4B6E9361-2542-405A-B9BE-0BA77137FC40@fishsniffer.com> <9191DC34-42BC-4353-86F1-2F503A9B26A5@fishsniffer.com> <0830B8B7-7D62-41B2-BDB7-032E5FE342AA@fishsniffer.com> <9994BF13-980C-431E-A0D5-4C4FD8AB0EA4@fishsniffer.com> <3D1FFD0A-8B70-4218-83CF-5B60A00C710C@fishsniffer.com> <74778640-ECA8-4F5E-800A-49430626EA52@fishsniffer.com> <0F662A69-A4F0-4B8A-813E-EDA2D818090F@fishsniffer.com> <5DD69B77-915B-4C2B-BF8C-DB208BBA3460@fishsniffer.com> <4170F608-4D8E-46BB-AC8C-1EA152A5997A@fishsniffer.com> <3AEB5440-788E-48E4-B283-8DF978D5AFD8@fishsniffer.com> <73FB7745-C79C-470F-9C77-C2B19BE1CDEC@fishsniffer.com> <50D3AFF2-1298-4244-9EF2-239DF383E179@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/9/1482235/-American-River-flows-will-rise-to-3-500-cfs-as-Folsom-Lake-reaches-61-capacity Winter steelhead like this one provide a unique urban fishery on Sacramento's American River. Photo by Dan Bacher. American River flows will rise to 3,000 cfs as Folsom Lake reaches 61% capacity by Dan Bacher Sacramento ? Anglers, rafters, kayakers and others who recreate on the Lower American River be advised ? the Bureau of Reclamation will increase releases below Nimbus Dam into the lower American from 1,750 cubic feet per second to 3,000 cfs for "storage management" in Folsom Reservoir beginning tonight. ?The increased releases are scheduled to begin Tuesday, Feb. 9, at 9 p.m. and will continue until further notice,? according to a news release from Shane Hunt of the Bureau of Reclamation. ?Folsom Reservoir, located 26 miles northeast of Sacramento, provides water for people, fish and wildlife, hydropower, the environment and salinity control in the Bay-Delta.? ?The releases are necessary to maintain required space in Folsom Reservoir during the rain and snowmelt season. The current storage is more than 130 percent of the 15-year average for early February. Should inflows into the reservoir continue at current levels or increase, additional increases in releases may be required,? Hunt said. ?People recreating in or along the lower American River downstream of Folsom Dam to the confluence of the American and Sacramento rivers can expect river levels to increase and should take appropriate safety precautions,? Hunt advised. Midnight Reservoir Elevation and Flows for Folsom may be found at Reclamation?s Central Valley Operations Office website at www.usbr.gov/.... Current American River conditions may be found at the Department of Water Resources? California Data Exchange Center website at cdec.water.ca.gov/.? Folsom Lake declined to its lowest recorded water level, 14 percent of capacity, in late fall of 2015, due to the draining of the reservoir during the drought by the federal and state water agencies to provide water to corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies conducting fracking and other extreme oil extraction methods in Kern County. Due to recent snow and rain, Folsom Lake is now 61 percent of capacity and 116 percent of average. The water level has risen to 428.49 in elevation, 37.51 feet from maximum pool. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: American_Steelie.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 282533 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Feb 10 14:50:53 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2016 22:50:53 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Feinstein Drought/Water Bill: Just Introduced/Announced/Released In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1286434824.1896780.1455144653838.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> | For Immediate Release February 10, 2016 | Contact: Tom Mentzer (202) 224-9629 | | ? Feinstein Introduces Revised Drought Relief Bill ? Long-term provisions invest in water storage, desalination, recycling ? Short-term provisions adhere to environmental laws, sunset after two years or when drought emergency ends, whichever is later ? Bill does not violate Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, biological opinions ? ???????????Washington?Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today introduced the California Long-Term Provisions for Water Supply and Short-Term Provisions for Emergency Drought Relief Act, an updated bill to provide both long- and short-term solutions to the historic drought in California. ? ??????????? ?The Central Valley Project and the State Water Project are the two key systems that move water from Northern California to Southern California?both were largely completed by the 1970s, when 16 million people lived in California. Today, the state is home to 40 million people, but we have essentially the same water system we had four decades ago. ? ??????????? ?Projects to store additional water in reservoirs and create new water through recycling and desalination have fallen woefully behind. Investments in these vital projects have lagged, which means communities and businesses throughout the state have felt the water pinch. ? ??????????? ?Finally, the biological opinions adopted several years ago to govern when and how much water can be moved through the water systems don?t reflect the most recent science. More water could safely be pumped during high-rainfall periods like winter storms, while continuing to protect fish if we were to employ regular monitoring of water turbidity and locations of fish. ? ??????????? ?Failure to apply this updated science means that extra water from high river flows?as we?re seeing during the current El Ni?o?is flowing into the ocean, water that could instead be safely pumped and stored for later use. ? ??????????? ?There?s no question that the drought has resulted in significant human suffering, from lost jobs to dried-up wells to families forced from their homes. ? ??????????? ?That?s why we need congressional action, and we need it now. California signaled that it?s ready by enacting a $7.5 billion water bond. It?s time Washington followed suit. ? ??????????? ?Drafting this bill has been difficult, probably the hardest bill I?ve worked on in my 23 years in the Senate. But it?s important, and that?s why we?ve been working so hard, holding dozens and dozens of meetings and revising the bill over and over again to incorporate feedback from stakeholder groups. ? ??????????? ?The revised bill I?m introducing today is the product of two years of work. It includes provisions from Democrats and Republicans alike. It reflects input from environmental groups, water districts, state agencies, cities, rural communities, fishermen, and the agricultural industry. There was also an extensive consultation process with federal agencies, all of which agree that the bill remains consistent with the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the biological opinions. This has been an open process, and I believe this bill is the best we can do. ? ??????????? ?This bill won?t be everything for everyone?candidly, that?s not possible with California water policy. But I believe the bill strikes the right balance. It invests $1.3 billion in defined long-term projects while making targeted, temporary changes to water operations that only last for the length of the drought or two years, whichever is longer, and which do not violate environmental laws. ? ??????????? ?Where we found opposition to the bill, it was most frequently with groups that want no legislation at all. But as a senator who represents the entire state of California, inaction is simply not an option. ? ??????????? ?I recognize that any bill in the Republican-led House will be far more aggressive on the short-term operational provisions and downplay the long-term provisions. But such a bill would never pass the Senate. What has become clear is that each region of the state and each stakeholder group has its own vested interest, and this makes consensus extraordinarily difficult. ? ??????????? ?The lesson is that we need a balanced bill that will help us get through the current drought and make long-term investments to modernize our water infrastructure and prepare for future droughts. And that?s what this bill does. ? ??????????? ?I?m hopeful that Chairman Lisa Murkowski and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell will hold a markup on this bill and the Senate will take it up for debate. The West is counting on us, and it?s time we take real action.? ? Consultation process ? ??????????? Over the last two years, hundreds of meetings and discussions took place to review every part of the bill. Feedback was incorporated into the bill from congressional Republicans and Democrats, environmental groups, water districts, cities, rural communities, fishermen, and farmers. As a product of these meetings, staff made more than 40 modifications to the bill in the past three weeks alone. ? ??????????? In addition to those groups, the bill was reviewed extensively by federal and state agencies to ensure it would remain within the bounds of environmental laws and biological opinions. Every suggestion or recommendation from these agencies was resolved and included in the final bill. The following is a list of agencies consulted during this process: ? ?????????Department of the Interior ?????????Department of Commerce ?????????Bureau of Reclamation ?????????U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ?????????U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ?????????NOAA Fisheries ?????????White House Council on Environmental Quality ?????????California Natural Resources Agency ?????????California Department of Water Resources ?????????California Department of Fish and Wildlife ?????????Office of the Governor Jerry Brown ? Support for bill ? ??????????? The following letters of support were received in advance of the bill?s introduction: ? ?????????Congressman John Garamendi ?????????Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District ?????????Monterey Peninsula Water Management District ?????????Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency ?????????North Bay Water Reuse Program ?????????Reclamation District 108 ?????????Ducks Unlimited ?????????South Valley Water Association ?????????Central Contra Costa Sanitary District ?????????Delta Diablo District ?????????Goleta Water District ?????????Irvine Ranch Water District ?????????Las Virgenes Municipal Water District ?????????Northern California Water Association ?????????Redwood City ?????????Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority ?????????West Bay Sanitary District ?????????Orange County Water District ? Summary of legislation ? ??????????? A summary of the bill follows: ? Assistance for drought-stricken communities ? ??????????? Many rural and disadvantaged communities throughout California are at risk of running out of clean water. Approximately 2,520 wells are already dry or will soon run dry, endangering an estimated 12,600 residents. As more wells and other water supplies dry up, the federal government has an obligation to step up and help affected communities and California families. ? ?????????Allows rural and disadvantaged communities with fewer than 60,000 residents to apply for grants through the Bureau of Reclamation to help stabilize their water supplies. Funds can be used for both short-term solutions such as emergency bottled water supplies as well as long-term solutions such as water treatment facilities, wells and connecting homes to centralized water distribution systems. ?????????Prioritizes State Revolving Funds for communities most at risk of running out of water. By directing funds to these communities most at risk, the bill provides the State with the tools necessary to provide water for public health and safety and to increase drought resiliency. ? Desalination ? ??????????? Major desalination projects like the $1 billion Poseidon plant in Carlsbad (which will soon generate enough water to supply 300,000 San Diego County residents) prove that new technology is quickly making desalination a viable option for many communities. The bill lists 27 desalination projects identified by California capable of producing more than 352,000 acre-feet of water per year. The bill would enable the federal government to help support desalination projects and research, with the goal of further reducing costs and environmental impacts. ? ?????????Reauthorizes the Desalination Act and authorizes $50 million over five years for feasibility and design for both sea and brackish water desalination projects. ?????????Reauthorizes the Desalination Act and authorizes an additional $50 million over five years for desalination research projects, such as improving existing reverse osmosis and membrane technology, reducing the environmental effects of seawater desalination and developing next-generation technologies to reduce the cost of desalination. ? Storage projects ? ??????????? Given the consensus that droughts will grow more severe and the storms that follow more devastating, storing water during wet years for use in dry years is vital. The severity of this drought has highlighted the inadequacy of California?s reservoir capacity. The bill takes steps to both promote the building of new reservoirs and increase the capacity of existing reservoirs. ? ????????? Establishes deadlines for the Bureau of Reclamation to complete feasibility studies to allow Calfed storage projects to compete for Proposition 1 bond funds. ????????? Authorizes $600 million for Calfed water storage projects, which may include both federal projects (Shasta) and non-federal projects (Sites, Temperance Flat, Los Vaqueros). ?????????Updates Army Corps dam operations to increase water supply while reducing flood risk. ? Water recycling, conservation and efficiency ? ??????????? Major advancements have been made in the field of water recycling. Orange County Water District, for example, recently completed an expansion of its water reuse facility to provide more than 100 million gallons per day. As communities continue to conserve water, more can be done to support these projects. ? ?????????Surveys conducted by the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, the Water Reuse Association, the Association of California Water Agencies, the Western Recycled Water Coalition and the California Association of Sanitation Agencies led to the identification of 110 potential recycling projects with the ability to produce 1.06 million acre-feet of water annually. ?????????Authorizes $200 million in increased funds for the Bureau of Reclamation?s water recycling and reuse program (Title XVI) to help fund projects to reclaim and reuse wastewaters and naturally impaired ground and surface water. This provision would also remove the burdensome congressional requirement for the authorization of specific projects. ?????????Authorizes an EPA program to label water-efficient products for consumers, similar to the popular Energy Star program. ?????????Authorizes a Department of the Interior program to establish an open system with data on water quality, climate and weather effects, and erosion, which would be accessible to the public online. ? Additional funding programs ? ??????????? By providing funds for the most cost-effective federal programs, Washington can help state and local agencies leverage existing dollars into larger projects. ? ?????????Loan guarantees: Authorizes $200 million for theReclamation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (RIFIA). This loan-guarantee program will allow water districts and municipalities to leverage loans and loan guarantees for water projects, reducing loan repayment costs by as much as 25 percent. This is modeled after TIFIA, a successful federal loan-guarantee program for transportation projects. ?????????WaterSMART: Authorizes $150 million in increased funds for the Bureau of Reclamation?s WaterSMART program to help finance water reclamation and reuse projects as well as water efficiency initiatives. This provision would also create a new grant program for integrated regional water management, reclamation and recycling, with a maximum federal contribution capped at $20 million or 25 percent of a project?s cost. ? Protecting endangered and threatened fish and wildlife ? ??????????? Authorizes $55 million for a number of short-term, low-cost proposals to protect and assist in the protection and recovery of fish populations, including Delta salmon and smelt. ? ?????????Trapping and barging: Authorizes $4 million to trap and barge fish to reduce mortality rates on migration through the Delta. ?????????Predator species: Addresses key stressors on fish populations including limiting invasive species like striped bass and removing predator habitat, to be paid for by participating water districts. ?????????Spawning habitat: Authorizes $21 million to assist in protection and recovery of fish, including the addition of improved spawning habitat. ?????????Water system management: Authorizes $20 million for federal agencies to manage the water system more precisely using updated science and tools, including smelt distribution studies. ?????????Actions to benefit refuges: Authorizes $2 million annually for five years for improved conveyance of water to refuges to help restore and protect critical wetland habitat for wildlife, one of the goals of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act. ? Provisions for emergency operations during the drought ? ??????????? The bill includes short-term operational provisions to take advantage of El Ni?o storms and provide urgently-needed water supplies during the drought. These provisions are limited to the duration of the governor?s drought declaration or two years, whichever is longer. ? ??????????? The operational language was carefully drafted over 18 months of close consultation with the federal agencies that implement the Endangered Species Act. The agencies agree that the bill?s provisions remain consistent with the ESA and related biological opinions. ? ??????????? Some critics say no operational reforms are necessary because water agencies are already pumping as much water as possible. A review of flow levels since the beginning of the year shows that is not the case. ? ??????????? Flows in the Sacramento River reached as high as 50,000 cubic feet per second in January 2016. Yet when flows were at their peak, pumping levels actuallydecreased to -2,500 cubic feet per second in the Old and Middle rivers, the low end of what is allowed. ? ??????????? One reason for reduced pumping levels was concern about a ?turbidity bridge? forming. This occurs when cloudy waters (which attract smelt) stretch from the central to the south Delta where pumps are located, increasing the threat to smelt. The cloudy water subsided, but agencies continued to restrict pumping without sufficient evidence of smelt near the pumps.The water system must be operated based on real-time monitoring information, not intuition, the goal of the bill that was introduced today. ? ? ??????????? The bill would increase real-time monitoring of turbidity and the location of threatened and endangered fish. The bill would also require agencies to take into account this improved data in explaining decisions to reduce pumping. These provisions will help make the water-delivery system more efficient during the drought, and do sowithout any mandated pumping levels. ? ??????????? The bill includes eight provisions to allow more water to be captured and stored during the drought. These provisions would last for the duration of the governor?s drought declaration or two years, whichever is longer. ? 1.?????Improved data to operate pumps at higher levels when no fish are present and reduce pumping levels when fish are nearby. ? ?????????Requiring daily boat monitoring to survey for smelt near the pumps when turbidity levels are high, so that pumping reductions are made based on the facts. ?????????Authorizing studies to identify smelts? location in the Delta on a real-time basis. ?????????Authorizing a Delta Smelt Distribution Study toidentify how many smelt are in different parts of the Delta in drier and wetter years. This is critical to know what limitations the agencies can impose on pumping. ? 2.?????Allow agencies to keep the additional water they are able to pump during winter storms. ? ?????????The bill authorizes agencies to increase pumping during winter storms, using their best judgment to determine when and by how much. ?????????Once the storms end, the agencies would no longer be required to ?payback? water already pumped unless there was an environmental reason, such as harm to fish. ?????????This so-called ?payback? has led to the loss of tens of thousands of acre-feet. Payback currently requires agencies to reduce subsequent water pumping by an equal amount of water as was captured during the storms, which means the loss of tens of thousands acre-feet of water that could instead be stored or transferred for use throughout the state. ? 3.?????Agencies must explain reductions in pumping under the Delta Smelt Biological Opinion. ? ?????????The bill does not impose any mandated pumping levels, instead leaving those pumping levels up to the discretion of the water agencies. Butthe bill does require officials to justify the levels at which they pump under the smelt biological opinion. ?????????By requiring written justification for the level of pumping, the bill attempts to maximize the amount of water pumped by directing officials to consider whether real-time monitoring justifies lowering pumping levels. The agencies must explain their decisions based on improved data, not just rely on their intuition. ?????????To be clear, the revised text does not include any pumping mandate. A provision was removed that would have mandated pumping at -5000 cubic feet per second in the Old and Middle Rivers, unless pumping at these levels would cause additional adverse effects on the Delta smelt. ? 4.????? Agencies must maximize water supplies consistent with applicable laws and biological opinions. ? ?????????Federal agencies should be capable of doing more than one thing at once: they should try to both protect species and provide reliable water supplies. ?????????The bill makes very clear that the agencies cannot harm the fish in violation of the biological opinions?butwithin this environmental protection mandate the agencies should try to increase water supplies. ?????????This requirement complements the additional requirement that agencies must explain any harm to fish that results from a reduction in water supplies. ? 5.????? Open Delta Cross-Channel Gates more often. ? ????????????The bill requires the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce to take actions to ensure the Delta Cross Channel Gates remain open to the greatest extent possible, consistent with state and federal law.? ????????????Keeping the gates open for longer helps both Delta farmers and communities and South of Delta communities. Keeping the gates open means that water from the Sacramento River is used to control salinity instead of releasing water from the Central Valley Project (like Folsom or San Luis) that would otherwise be pumped south. ????????????When the gates are closed, water no longer flows directly from the Sacramento River into the interior Delta. ????????????The gate?s closures means that the agencies must either reduce pumping or use stored water to ?flush? salty water back out through the Delta. ? ??????????? Given that California never has enough water, water transfers are a mechanism to use the voluntary, market process to move water to those who truly need it. The bill includes three provisions to increase water transfers. ? 6.????? Extending the time period for water transfers by five months. The bill extends by five months the time period when transfers may take place. The current transfer window of July through September is extended to April through November. This would allow water transfers to be available during the spring planting season. All transfers must remain consistent with the biological opinions and their adaptive management provisions. ? 7.????? The 1:1 transfer ratio. The strong El Ni?o means more water is likely to be available for voluntary transfers from willing sellers with extra water to buyers downstream who need water. This provision helps facilitate those transfers in April and May by allowing a 1:1 transfer ratio. In past years, agencies have reduced the likelihood of transfers by requiring water users to send more water downstream than can be pumped out (up to a 4:1 ratio). By allowing for a 1:1 ratio?while adhering to environmental law and biological opinions?more water transfers can be accomplished, providing water to users who truly need it. ? 8.????? Expediting review of transfers and the construction of barriers. Environmental reviews of water transfers and the installation of temporary barriers must be completed within 60 days, unless an environmental impact statement is required. ? ### | | ? | ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image004.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 32161 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Feb 11 08:23:58 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 16:23:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Chronicle: Feinstein water plan eases flow to farmers References: <987254923.2225058.1455207838112.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <987254923.2225058.1455207838112.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Feinstein water plan eases flow to farmers ADDRESS: BY CAROLYN LOCHHEADWASHINGTON ? Amid record-high farm revenue and record-low salmon counts in California?s historic drought, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation Wednesday that would make it easier to move more water from rivers to farms in the San Joaquin Valley.The long-awaited 184-page bill follows the California Democrat?s failed negotiations last year with the powerful House Republicans who represent valley farming interests, and several years of failure by the state?s congressional delegation to shape a federal response to the four-year drought.In a nine-page press release, Feinstein said the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, a complex maze of giant plumbing that moves water from northern rivers through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to cities and farms in the arid south, was completed by the 1970s when California had just 16 million residents, compared with the 40 million who live there now.Her bill would update this system by providing $1.3 billion in federal funds for new reservoirs, water recycling, desalination and other investments, which, though expensive, are the least controversial aspects of her plan.?Drought relief? provisionsThe flash point is what she calls short-term provisions to offer ?drought relief.?Farmers widely blame water cutbacks on what are called biological opinions issued in 2008 and 2009 to enforce the Endangered Species Act. The rules limit water deliveries to farmers in an effort to save the delta smelt, a tiny minnow, and native salmon. The rules already allow some flexibility in drought conditions, and this year and last, miscalculations by water officials left too little water in rivers, pushing several salmon species and a host of other native California fish to the edge of extinction.But in explaining her new drought-relief plan, Feinstein said better monitoring of fish and water conditions in the delta could permit higher pumping to farmers. The current biological opinions are several years old, she said, and ?don?t reflect the most recent science.?She said federal environmental agencies have assured her that her legislation does not violate the Endangered Species Act.Jon Rosenfield, a fish biologist with the Bay Institute, an environmental group, said Feinstein is ?completely incorrect? to say the biological opinions fail to reflect newer science.?Quite the contrary,? Rosen-field said. ?New science continues to demonstrate that fish, wildlife and water quality benefit when more water moves through the delta,? and if anything, current protections are too weak. This year, only 3 percent of native salmon survived, an even lower count than the 5 percent that survived last year, because water managers diverted too much water to human uses, leaving rivers too hot and shallow for fish to survive.The new bill no longer lists Feinstein?s Democratic colleague from California, Sen. Barbara Boxer, as a co-sponsor. The bill has also picked up a new supporter, Rep. John Garamendi of Walnut Grove (Sacramento County), who served as an emissary from Northern California Democrats to Feinstein?s water negotiations with House Republicans last year.Boxer is noncommittalBoxer, whose support would be a key signal of Democratic backing, issued a noncommittal statement through her spokesman, thanking Feinstein for her effort and saying she looked forward ?to getting feedback from all the major stakeholders.?Garamendi said the legislation would not lead to any more pumping than the current environmental restrictions allow. The bill ?basically confirms and follows what fish and wildlife agencies have been doing for the last two years,? Garamendi said.Garamendi said it would be wrong to pin all the blame on water managers for the salmon?s plight. ?It?s the drought. It is the demand on water both south and north of the delta and the fact that there?s very little water,? he said. ?It?s a bad time for California, period, all of California. Certainly for the fish, certainly for water users up and down the state.?Farm groups welcomed the legislation. Johnny Amaral, a spokesman for the Westlands Water District, a San Joaquin farming powerhouse, said the pumping provisions would for the first time require water managers ?to operate the system in a way that maximizes water supply. That doesn?t exist in current law.?Amaral said he hoped the Feinstein bill could clear the Senate quickly so that negotiations could start with House Republicans. He said that the two sides agree now that something has to be done and that both sides understand they have to compromise. ?The question is how you thread the needle to get there,? Amaral said. ?That?s what everybody will be watching.?Rep. Jared Huffman, a San Rafael Democrat who has battled Feinstein over water, dismissed as ?absolute nonsense? the idea that Congress needs to micromanage how the biological opinions are implemented, but welcomed the new investments proposed by Feinstein.?Simple modernization?Huffman said modernizing the protocol for operating dams so managers can use weather satellite data and climate models to tell them if big storms are coming is a better approach than following rigid 60-year-old rules that require water to be released on a certain date to protect against potential floods.?There?s a lot more water to be saved in that simple modernization, which is non-controversial, than there is in trying to compromise protections for species that are teetering on the brink of extinction in the delta,? Huffman said.Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicle?s Washington correspondent. E-mail:?clochhead at sfchronicle.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sat Feb 13 10:27:34 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2016 18:27:34 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Water takes center stage at logging conference References: <681604395.2968365.1455388054844.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <681604395.2968365.1455388054844.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.redding.com/business/local/water-takes-center-stage-at-logging-conference-2b6de945-bdc6-7196-e053-0100007f1b3b-368556611.html Water takes center stage at logging conference By David BendaTwo-thirds through Thursday's talk on forests and water yields at the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference, moderator Jim Ostrowski asked the audience about the governor's mandate for a 25 percent statewide water use reduction."Maybe we need to tell the governor we got a better a deal," Ostrowski said.He was referring to the PowerPoint just given by Rob York, a UC Berkeley adjunct professor who for years has been studying the role of sustainable timber harvesting as way to reduce fire risk, restore the forest and increase water available for agriculture and residential users.Reducing the forest canopy cover by 30 percent can mean an extra 6 inches of water, York said."When you think about it, 6 inches, that's a big storm," York said.Ostrowski, a consulting forester, said 75 percent of the state's drinking water comes from timberlands."When we look at what we do, we understand that. But does the public understand that?" Ostrowski told the audience. "People will say what do I care about the forests in Northern California? Well, next time you jump in the swimming pool, think about where the water comes from."York and Ostrowski were joined on Thursday's panel by Ray Haupt, a Siskiyou County supervisor who spent more than 30 years with the Forest Service; and Sara LaPlante, deputy district ranger on the High Sierra District of the Sierra National Forest.The afternoon presentation at the Shasta District Fair grounds was titled "Forestry and California's Water Supply ? Connections and Solutions."Both Haupt and Ostrowski have been involved in a research project on water yields in Siskiyou County.Haupt also has worked with North State Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, on forest management legislation."It's a tough hill to climb, and what is most difficult, I guess, is that we out here in the West are probably at the forefront of most of the (forest management and water) issues and the magnitude of those issues are really hitting us hard," Haupt said.York is the research stations manager for Berkeley's Center for Forestry.Drawing on pop culture and the Taylor Swift lyric "haters gonna hate," York said among the counter arguments that forest harvests can increase water yields are the yields are too small and they are short-lived.But channeling Swift again, York told the crowd you have to "shake it off" because the value of water is only increasing and the sustainable management of our forests is possible."When we talk about water yield, it's tough to convince people that (harvesting) alone" will get it done, York said.That's why you have to bring up how forest management with sustainable harvests can reduce fire risk and restore timberlands, York said.Meanwhile, also at Thursday's logging conference was education day. Fourth-graders from 13 schools toured the Shasta District Fair grounds to learn more about forest management and the timber industry.The conference continues Friday with the public exhibits opening at 9 a.m. Schedule Of Events What:?67th annual Sierra-Cascade Logging ConferenceWhere:?Shasta District Fair grounds in AndersonWhen:?Public exhibits open 9 a.m. Friday and Saturday.More info:?Full schedule at?sierracascadeexpo.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From GHughes at foe.org Mon Feb 15 11:09:36 2016 From: GHughes at foe.org (Hughes, Gary) Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2016 19:09:36 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Water takes center stage at logging conference In-Reply-To: <681604395.2968365.1455388054844.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <681604395.2968365.1455388054844.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <681604395.2968365.1455388054844.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <77A81C2AB01EE748A51B40A059517A11FD3437@maildag2c.NETWORKALLIANCE.NET> http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/rewater/drought/study-logging-forests-wont-increase-water-supply.html Study: Logging Forests Won't Increase Water Supply by Chris Clarke January 20, 2016 1:00 PM A controversial 2015 report that suggested logging California's forests could increase the state's water supply got it wrong, according to a new study released late last week. The 2015 report by the Nature Conservancy had suggested that thinning forests in the northern Sierra Nevada as a fire management strategy would also increase flows downstream, adding to the amount of water available to rivers and reservoirs. But that study was based on flawed assumptions, according to a review of more than 230 hydrological studies released Friday. The new study, conducted by veteran hydrologists Jonathan Rhodes and Christopher Frissell, concludes that any increases to water supply from logging would be localized and short-term, and that California would pay the price in water quality, forest biodiversity, and public safety. Rhodes and Frisell's study, "The High Costs and Low Benefits of Attempting to Increase Water Yield by Forest Removal in the Sierra Nevada," was commissioned by the Environment Now Foundation to examine the Nature Conservancy's suggestions from last year. Much of the work in the new study mirrors a 1998 study Rhodes wrote with hydrologist Michael Purser. The Nature Conservancy isn't the first group to suggest that logging or forest thinning -- which it refers to as "restoration" -- would increase Californians' access to water. Rhodes' 1998 survey was written to examine previous similar claims. "While the idea of using logging to increase water flows can seem enticing, especially during times of drought, time and again this claim has turned out to be ill-founded," said Douglas Bevington, forest program director of Environment Now. "The latest versions popping up in California are just old wine in a new bottle." The suggestion that logging would increase stream flows does have a certain logic to it: living trees can suck a significant amount of water from the soil and transpire it into the atmosphere through their leaves. If a watershed had fewer trees in it to suck the water out of the soil, that water could conceivably add to stream flows instead. In addition, the Nature Conservancy report suggested that a thinner forest canopy might allow greater snowpack accumulation on the ground, instead of holding fallen snow above ground in a dense tree canopy where the snow might sublimate directly to water vapor rather than melting. But according to Rhodes and Frissell, any gains in groundwater conserved by cutting trees would be quickly used up by the flush of new vegetative growth that usually follows forest thinning or clearcuts, as rapidly growing young trees and shrubs would increase demand on local soil water. In most watersheds studied, that actually led to a decrease in streamflows compared to flows before logging took place. Based on comparative studies of watersheds across the Western U.S. with and without logging or thinning projects, Rhodes and Frissell estimate that about a quarter of a given watershed would need to be logged every 10 years in order to keep ahead of regrowing vegetation's water consumption. What's more, even the most carefully conducted logging projects increase erosion into local watercourses, both by removing the vegetation holding the soil in place and due to the increase in roadbuilding required to remove timber. Increased erosion from logged hillsides can drastically decrease water quality, damaging both wildlife habitat and water pumps, and can also reduce water storage capacity by silting up reservoirs. According to Rhodes and Frissell, the amount of water freed up by logging would be minimal to none in dry years. That's not true for especially wet El Ni?o winters, where more water will indeed go into rivers and streams as a result of logging. But that extra water won't be flowing downstream during the late season, when it would do the most good. Instead, additional water discharged from recently logged landscapes comes during annual peak flows, meaning that a big, flood-causing storm will do more damage to communities downstream of a logged landscape. Rhodes and Frissell point out that there are ways to increase late-season runoff from California's mountains without adding to those dangerous peak flows. Reintroducing beavers, a species once common in California's mountains, is one step: as they build dammed pools on mountain streams, the rodents would help raise local water tables, and improve riparian vegetation and habitat for fish. Sediment trapped behind beaver dams would help build mountain meadows instead of running downstream to cause flooding and other problems. Reducing some of the Forest Service's inventory of roads in California forests would help as well, especially for those roads that cross riparian areas. And one of the greatest benefits to the state's water supply from its mountain forests would result from reducing livestock grazing, which now affects between 7 million and 8 million acres in 11 National Forests in the Sierra Nevada. Livestock grazing degrades streams and their fringing vegetation, compacts soil, pollutes water with fecal pathogens, and increases erosion and sedimentation. Rhodes and Frissell note that a combination of limiting grazing, reducing road milesa and encouraging beavers could also help make California's forests more resilient in the face of climate change. "If one genuinely seeks to improve water flows in the Sierra Nevada, rather than simply trying to find a new justification for logging, these alternatives offer a better way for us to direct our resources," said Environment Now Foundation's Douglas Bevington. "Using logging to increase water flows is still a bad idea whose time has not come." --- Gary Graham Hughes California Advocacy Campaigner Friends of the Earth - US Email: ghughes at foe.org Phone: +1-510-900-8807 --- From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Tom Stokely Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2016 10:28 AM To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: [env-trinity] Water takes center stage at logging conference http://www.redding.com/business/local/water-takes-center-stage-at-logging-conference-2b6de945-bdc6-7196-e053-0100007f1b3b-368556611.html Water takes center stage at logging conference By David Benda Two-thirds through Thursday's talk on forests and water yields at the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference, moderator Jim Ostrowski asked the audience about the governor's mandate for a 25 percent statewide water use reduction. "Maybe we need to tell the governor we got a better a deal," Ostrowski said. He was referring to the PowerPoint just given by Rob York, a UC Berkeley adjunct professor who for years has been studying the role of sustainable timber harvesting as way to reduce fire risk, restore the forest and increase water available for agriculture and residential users. Reducing the forest canopy cover by 30 percent can mean an extra 6 inches of water, York said. "When you think about it, 6 inches, that's a big storm," York said. Ostrowski, a consulting forester, said 75 percent of the state's drinking water comes from timberlands. "When we look at what we do, we understand that. But does the public understand that?" Ostrowski told the audience. "People will say what do I care about the forests in Northern California? Well, next time you jump in the swimming pool, think about where the water comes from." York and Ostrowski were joined on Thursday's panel by Ray Haupt, a Siskiyou County supervisor who spent more than 30 years with the Forest Service; and Sara LaPlante, deputy district ranger on the High Sierra District of the Sierra National Forest. The afternoon presentation at the Shasta District Fair grounds was titled "Forestry and California's Water Supply ? Connections and Solutions." Both Haupt and Ostrowski have been involved in a research project on water yields in Siskiyou County. Haupt also has worked with North State Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, on forest management legislation. "It's a tough hill to climb, and what is most difficult, I guess, is that we out here in the West are probably at the forefront of most of the (forest management and water) issues and the magnitude of those issues are really hitting us hard," Haupt said. York is the research stations manager for Berkeley's Center for Forestry. Drawing on pop culture and the Taylor Swift lyric "haters gonna hate," York said among the counter arguments that forest harvests can increase water yields are the yields are too small and they are short-lived. But channeling Swift again, York told the crowd you have to "shake it off" because the value of water is only increasing and the sustainable management of our forests is possible. "When we talk about water yield, it's tough to convince people that (harvesting) alone" will get it done, York said. That's why you have to bring up how forest management with sustainable harvests can reduce fire risk and restore timberlands, York said. Meanwhile, also at Thursday's logging conference was education day. Fourth-graders from 13 schools toured the Shasta District Fair grounds to learn more about forest management and the timber industry. The conference continues Friday with the public exhibits opening at 9 a.m. Schedule Of Events What: 67th annual Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference Where: Shasta District Fair grounds in Anderson When: Public exhibits open 9 a.m. Friday and Saturday. More info: Full schedule at sierracascadeexpo.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov Thu Feb 18 09:54:26 2016 From: Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov (Cannata, Steve@Wildlife) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 17:54:26 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Trapping Summary Update Jweek 6-7 Message-ID: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5CA4BC@057-SN2MPN1-042.057d.mgd.msft.net> Hello Folks, Please see attached for the Jweek 6 and 7 (Feb 5-18) Trinity River trapping summary update. Steve Steve Cannata Environmental Scientist Trinity River Project California Department of Fish and Wildlife 5341 Ericson Way Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-4230 steve.cannata at wildlife.ca.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW6-7.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 63205 bytes Desc: 2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW6-7.xlsx URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Feb 18 10:10:08 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 18:10:08 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Feinstein water bill introduced in Congress References: <1445844780.5026698.1455819008147.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1445844780.5026698.1455819008147.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_eb3b1a38-d515-11e5-b0d7-4f1c6e58063f.html Feinstein water bill introduced in Congress By AMY GITTELSOHN The Trinity Journal | Posted: Wednesday, February 17, 2016 6:15 amU.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has introduced a revised water bill to Congress addressing how to divide and increase the available water during the historic drought in California.Feinstein called the 184-page measure the result of numerous meetings and input from an array of stakeholders.Some of the provisions raise red flags for environmental organizations concerned with the impacts on fish, including salmon in the Trinity River.From the California Water Impact Network, Water Quality Coordinator Tom Stokely pointed out that one section of the bill pertaining to allocations for Sacramento Valley water service contractors requires mandated deliveries depending on water year type.?That will be a disaster for salmon on the Trinity as well as the Sacramento River,? he said. ?By mandating deliveries regardless of storage in the reservoirs it will assure significant negative impacts to both salmon and to people, especially during extended drought.?Calling it ?a recipe for dead pools,? he said, ?then nobody gets any water.?Feinstein?s bill introduced Feb. 10, the California Long-Term Provisions for Water Supply and Short-Term Provisions for Emergency Drought Relief Act, would invest $1.3 billion in long-term projects such as in water storage, desalinization and recycling. Feinstein, D-Calif., says it does not violate laws such as the Endangered Species Act. Short-term provisions such as easing water transfers would sunset after two years or when the drought emergency ends, whichever is longer.Feinstein noted that the Central Valley Project and State Water Project, ?the two key systems that move water from Northern California to Southern California,? both were largely completed when 16 million people lived in the state which is now home to 40 million.?Projects to store additional water in reservoirs and create new water through recycling and desalination have fallen woefully behind,? she said.She also claimed that biological opinions adopted several years ago to govern when and how much water can be moved through the water systems don?t reflect the most recent science.?More water could safely be pumped during high-rainfall periods like winter storms while continuing to protect fish if we were to employ regular monitoring of water turbidity and locations of fish,? she said.She said dozens and dozens of meetings and revisions took place to incorporate feedback from stakeholder groups, Democrats, Republicans, environmental groups, water districts, state agencies, cities, rural communities, fishermen and the agricultural industry. There was also extensive consultation with federal agencies.For the long-term, the bill would authorize $600 million for CALFED water storage projects, which may include both federal projects (Shasta) and non-federal projects (Sites, Temperance Flat, Los Vaqueros). There would also be increased funds for recycling and reuse of water, desalinization, for loan guarantees for water districts and municipalities for water projects.There are short-term, low cost proposals to protect and recover fish populations including Delta salmon and smelt.The bill includes ?short-term operational provisions? for the duration of the governor?s drought declaration or two years, whichever is longer.Those include increased monitoring of the location of endangered and threatened fish in the Delta and use of that information, ?not intuition,? for increasing and reducing pump operations. The agencies would have to justify the levels they pump at and explain reductions for smelt.Agencies would be allowed to keep additional water they pump during winter storms for storage or transfer and not have to pay it back unless there was an environmental reason.However, a provision from an earlier bill that would have mandated pumping of the Bay Delta at the higher levels of the authorized range has been deleted. House Republicans have said mandated pumping levels are necessary.The shorter-term measures would also extend the time period for water transfers by five months from July through September to April through November. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Feb 18 15:01:02 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 23:01:02 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Rescheduling of Klamath River Fish Health Workshop 2016 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1873646396.1781735.1455836462860.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Thursday, February 18, 2016 2:40 PM, "Hetrick, Nick" wrote: I apologize if you've already rec'd this info but we wanted to ensure the information was widely distributed. ? Please note Sasha's message announcing the rescheduling of the 2016 Klamath River Fish Health Conference for Wed. March 16th from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm at the Windsor Best Western Motel in Ashland, OR.? Note that Sasha was able to reserve a block of rooms on-site ?@ $81/night under the code "fish health". ? ? The following morning we will host a half day meeting of the Klamath Fish Health workgroup, consisting of one-two reps per tribe/agency, to reengage in discussions on the parasite/host life cycle of Ceratonova shasta and associated data gaps and uncertainties, management needs and triggers, and study collaboration.? We will follow with a tentative agenda for the workgroup discussion and will redistribute materials from the group's last gathering. It may also be beneficial to engage in a discussion on the recent outbreaks of Ich. ?? nicholas j hetrick ? ? ? ? ? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Hallett, Sascha Date: Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 11:25 AM Subject: ..... Hello Everyone -? Based on those of you who completed the poll, the main annual Klamath River Fish Health Workshop (presentation of 2015 research and associated discussion) will be rescheduled to Wed March 16th from 8:30am - 5pm with a second, smaller Fish Health Workgroup meeting the following day, Thursday 18th from 8:30-1pm. Both meetings will take place at the Best Western Windsor Inn in Ashland. I have reserved a block of rooms at the hotel for $81 plus tax/night and if enough of us lodge onsite, the conference venue will be comped (so please consider staying on site!). The group booking ID is '"Fish Health" meeting; please associate your reservation with that group ID so that we get credit. Presenters - those of you who haven't done so already, please send me your abstract. I'll distribute the revised agenda and abstracts closer to the meeting date. Thank you,Sascha. On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 5:15 PM, Hallett, Sascha wrote: Hello Everyone -? We're looking at rescheduling the Fish Health meeting for either March Wed 16th or 17th with a smaller workgroup meeting the next half day.? Note that the location will now be Ashland. I've been able to secure the conference room at the Windsor Best Western for those dates. I've reserved a block of rooms for $81 plus tax/night and if enough of us lodge onsite, the venue will be comped. Please go to the following Doodle poll link and indicate your availability: http://doodle.com/poll/8cghd69ri2v9kd5v Thank you,Sascha. --? Sascha Hallett, PhD Research Associate Dept Microbiology Nash Hall 226 Oregon State University Corvallis Oregon 97331 USA Office:?541-737-4721 http://microbiology.science.oregonstate.edu/content/sascha-hallett -- Sascha Hallett, PhD Senior Research Associate Dept Microbiology Nash Hall 226 Oregon State University Corvallis Oregon 97331 USA Office:?541-737-4721 http://microbiology.science.oregonstate.edu/content/sascha-hallett -- Nicholas J. HetrickFish Program LeadArcata Fish and Wildlife OfficeArcata, CA 95521office (707) 822-7201 fax (707) 822-8411 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Feb 22 09:25:30 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:25:30 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley References: <1860027527.851841.1456161930834.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1860027527.851841.1456161930834.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> This is an unprecedented move by Reclamation to cut Sacramento River Settlement Contractors 60%!TS http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article2591987.htmlFEBRUARY 26, 2014 11:00 PMFeds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento ValleyThe strain on water supplies in this serious drought year was evident this week, as major landowners in the Sacramento Valley protested the federal government?s forecast that it will deliver only 40 percent of usual water supplies. By Matt Weiser - mweiser at sacbee.com The strain on water supplies in this serious drought year was evident this week, as major landowners in the Sacramento Valley protested the federal government?s forecast that it will deliver only 40?percent of usual water supplies.That 40 percent allotment for the so-called Sacramento River settlement contractors is only a forecast by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, based on drought conditions that are expected to deplete snowmelt. Such a low allocation has never been made before, and it is well below the 75 percent that the settlement contractors say is the minimum they should receive under any conditions.The protests are coming from a range of interests: the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, which distributes water to farmers in the Sacramento Valley; the Conaway Preservation Group, which owns farmland in the Yolo Bypass; and the city of Redding.?This 40 percent allocation flies in the face of what our contracts say,? said Stuart Somach, the Sacramento attorney representing the three groups. ?I think protest is a weak term for what we?re doing. We do consider this to be serious.? The Bureau of Reclamation operates the Central Valley Project, the federal system of dams, canals and pumps that moves water from Shasta and Folsom reservoirs, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and on to farm and urban areas as far south as Mendota in Fresno County.Somach said he suspects Reclamation is planning to reduce deliveries to his clients to ensure water can be diverted south of the Delta to the urban areas and wildlife refuges that the agency also is obligated to serve, but which have legally inferior access to water.Reclamation spokesman Louis Moore said his agency is merely trying to juggle a lot of demand for very limited water this year.?We know this is unprecedented,? Moore said. ?We know that it is difficult. But we really just don?t have the resource available.?The conflict highlights important differences between water rights and water contracts in California.Somach?s clients hold water rights that predate construction of Shasta Dam. These rights represent a legal entitlement to divert water from a stream. His clients are called ?settlement contractors? because, when the dam was completed in 1945, it effectively blocked their access to water that once flowed freely in the river. They agreed to ?settle? their objections to this blockage so Reclamation could operate the dam. In return, Reclamation promised to serve their water rights in perpetuity using water stored at the dam.Their contracts with Reclamation, Somach said, require the agency to provide a minimum of 75 percent of their usual contract deliveries, even in the driest of years.Water contractors, on the other hand, generally have no water rights. Instead, a water contract represents an opportunity to buy water from Reclamation when it is available. The range of availability under these contracts is generally much greater than the terms governing the settlement contracts.?We?re senior water rights holders, and quite frankly have the ability to pump whatever we want to pump out of the river if we believe Reclamation has breached its relationship with us,? Somach said.Reclamation has a variety of other obligations to meet, however. Although it primarily serves agricultural interests, its contractors include some urban agencies and wildlife refuges, including cities such as Coalinga and Avenal and refuges such as the Mendota Wildlife Area in Fresno County. In severe droughts, these usually are considered a priority over agriculture, because many farm fields can be left unplanted in a drought.In its allocation forecast on Feb. 21, Reclamation warned all its agricultural contractors they could receive zero water deliveries this year, except settlement contractors, which would get 40 percent. Farm groups say that scenario would result in thousands of acres of farmland being taken out of production this year.Urban contractors and wildlife refuges, meanwhile, would get 50 percent and 40?percent of their contract allocations, respectively.?We are not unmindful of the fact that this is an extreme drought situation,? Somach said. ?But those uses of water are junior to our contracts. They are junior to our underlying water rights.?Somach and his clients met with Reclamation officials Tuesday to ask why the allocation appears to conflict with their contracts. He said Reclamation promised some answers within a week.Moore also said Reclamation will strive to update its water allocation forecast on a weekly basis, if possible, based on weather conditions, rather than waiting for the usual monthly cycle.?We are trying to operate for now, but also think about what (would happen) if we don?t receive any additional precipitation for the rest of the year,? Moore said. ?It would become even more of a strain.?reprints Read more here: Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley | ? | | ? | | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Va...Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley | | | | View on www.sacbee.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | ? | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Feb 22 10:53:56 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 18:53:56 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley In-Reply-To: <1860027527.851841.1456161930834.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1860027527.851841.1456161930834.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1699580617.949397.1456167236229.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Oops! ?This article was from 2014. ?Please disregard it! ? Sorry for the confusion!?Tom Stokely, Director?California Water Impact Network?V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315 tstokely at att.net?http://www.c-win.org On Monday, February 22, 2016 9:25 AM, Tom Stokely wrote: This is an unprecedented move by Reclamation to cut Sacramento River Settlement Contractors 60%!TS http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article2591987.htmlFEBRUARY 26, 2014 11:00 PMFeds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento ValleyThe strain on water supplies in this serious drought year was evident this week, as major landowners in the Sacramento Valley protested the federal government?s forecast that it will deliver only 40 percent of usual water supplies. By Matt Weiser - mweiser at sacbee.com The strain on water supplies in this serious drought year was evident this week, as major landowners in the Sacramento Valley protested the federal government?s forecast that it will deliver only 40?percent of usual water supplies.That 40 percent allotment for the so-called Sacramento River settlement contractors is only a forecast by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, based on drought conditions that are expected to deplete snowmelt. Such a low allocation has never been made before, and it is well below the 75 percent that the settlement contractors say is the minimum they should receive under any conditions.The protests are coming from a range of interests: the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, which distributes water to farmers in the Sacramento Valley; the Conaway Preservation Group, which owns farmland in the Yolo Bypass; and the city of Redding.?This 40 percent allocation flies in the face of what our contracts say,? said Stuart Somach, the Sacramento attorney representing the three groups. ?I think protest is a weak term for what we?re doing. We do consider this to be serious.? The Bureau of Reclamation operates the Central Valley Project, the federal system of dams, canals and pumps that moves water from Shasta and Folsom reservoirs, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and on to farm and urban areas as far south as Mendota in Fresno County.Somach said he suspects Reclamation is planning to reduce deliveries to his clients to ensure water can be diverted south of the Delta to the urban areas and wildlife refuges that the agency also is obligated to serve, but which have legally inferior access to water.Reclamation spokesman Louis Moore said his agency is merely trying to juggle a lot of demand for very limited water this year.?We know this is unprecedented,? Moore said. ?We know that it is difficult. But we really just don?t have the resource available.?The conflict highlights important differences between water rights and water contracts in California.Somach?s clients hold water rights that predate construction of Shasta Dam. These rights represent a legal entitlement to divert water from a stream. His clients are called ?settlement contractors? because, when the dam was completed in 1945, it effectively blocked their access to water that once flowed freely in the river. They agreed to ?settle? their objections to this blockage so Reclamation could operate the dam. In return, Reclamation promised to serve their water rights in perpetuity using water stored at the dam.Their contracts with Reclamation, Somach said, require the agency to provide a minimum of 75 percent of their usual contract deliveries, even in the driest of years.Water contractors, on the other hand, generally have no water rights. Instead, a water contract represents an opportunity to buy water from Reclamation when it is available. The range of availability under these contracts is generally much greater than the terms governing the settlement contracts.?We?re senior water rights holders, and quite frankly have the ability to pump whatever we want to pump out of the river if we believe Reclamation has breached its relationship with us,? Somach said.Reclamation has a variety of other obligations to meet, however. Although it primarily serves agricultural interests, its contractors include some urban agencies and wildlife refuges, including cities such as Coalinga and Avenal and refuges such as the Mendota Wildlife Area in Fresno County. In severe droughts, these usually are considered a priority over agriculture, because many farm fields can be left unplanted in a drought.In its allocation forecast on Feb. 21, Reclamation warned all its agricultural contractors they could receive zero water deliveries this year, except settlement contractors, which would get 40 percent. Farm groups say that scenario would result in thousands of acres of farmland being taken out of production this year.Urban contractors and wildlife refuges, meanwhile, would get 50 percent and 40?percent of their contract allocations, respectively.?We are not unmindful of the fact that this is an extreme drought situation,? Somach said. ?But those uses of water are junior to our contracts. They are junior to our underlying water rights.?Somach and his clients met with Reclamation officials Tuesday to ask why the allocation appears to conflict with their contracts. He said Reclamation promised some answers within a week.Moore also said Reclamation will strive to update its water allocation forecast on a weekly basis, if possible, based on weather conditions, rather than waiting for the usual monthly cycle.?We are trying to operate for now, but also think about what (would happen) if we don?t receive any additional precipitation for the rest of the year,? Moore said. ?It would become even more of a strain.?reprints Read more here: Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley | ? | | ? | | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Va...Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley | | | | View on www.sacbee.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | ? | _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kierassociates at att.net Mon Feb 22 11:23:41 2016 From: kierassociates at att.net (Kier Associates) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 11:23:41 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley In-Reply-To: <1699580617.949397.1456167236229.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1860027527.851841.1456161930834.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> <1699580617.949397.1456167236229.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004301d16da6$8abf0bf0$a03d23d0$@att.net> Heck of a good article, tho?, Tom ? my hat?s off to Matt Weiser for his well-parsed distinction between water rights and water contracts Confusion over the two fuels a lot of the water debate in California today ! ?Best, Bill From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Tom Stokely Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 10:54 AM To: Tom Stokely; Env-trinity Subject: Re: [env-trinity] Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley Oops! This article was from 2014. Please disregard it! Sorry for the confusion! Tom Stokely, Director California Water Impact Network V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315 tstokely at att.net http://www.c-win.org On Monday, February 22, 2016 9:25 AM, Tom Stokely wrote: This is an unprecedented move by Reclamation to cut Sacramento River Settlement Contractors 60%! TS http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article2591987.html FEBRUARY 26, 2014 11:00 PM Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley The strain on water supplies in this serious drought year was evident this week, as major landowners in the Sacramento Valley protested the federal government?s forecast that it will deliver only 40 percent of usual water supplies. By Matt Weiser - mweiser at sacbee.com The strain on water supplies in this serious drought year was evident this week, as major landowners in the Sacramento Valley protested the federal government?s forecast that it will deliver only 40 percent of usual water supplies. That 40 percent allotment for the so-called Sacramento River settlement contractors is only a forecast by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, based on drought conditions that are expected to deplete snowmelt. Such a low allocation has never been made before, and it is well below the 75 percent that the settlement contractors say is the minimum they should receive under any conditions. The protests are coming from a range of interests: the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, which distributes water to farmers in the Sacramento Valley; the Conaway Preservation Group, which owns farmland in the Yolo Bypass; and the city of Redding. ?This 40 percent allocation flies in the face of what our contracts say,? said Stuart Somach, the Sacramento attorney representing the three groups. ?I think protest is a weak term for what we?re doing. We do consider this to be serious.? The Bureau of Reclamation operates the Central Valley Project, the federal system of dams, canals and pumps that moves water from Shasta and Folsom reservoirs, through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and on to farm and urban areas as far south as Mendota in Fresno County. Somach said he suspects Reclamation is planning to reduce deliveries to his clients to ensure water can be diverted south of the Delta to the urban areas and wildlife refuges that the agency also is obligated to serve, but which have legally inferior access to water. Reclamation spokesman Louis Moore said his agency is merely trying to juggle a lot of demand for very limited water this year. ?We know this is unprecedented,? Moore said. ?We know that it is difficult. But we really just don?t have the resource available.? The conflict highlights important differences between water rights and water contracts in California. Somach?s clients hold water rights that predate construction of Shasta Dam. These rights represent a legal entitlement to divert water from a stream. His clients are called ?settlement contractors? because, when the dam was completed in 1945, it effectively blocked their access to water that once flowed freely in the river. They agreed to ?settle? their objections to this blockage so Reclamation could operate the dam. In return, Reclamation promised to serve their water rights in perpetuity using water stored at the dam. Their contracts with Reclamation, Somach said, require the agency to provide a minimum of 75 percent of their usual contract deliveries, even in the driest of years. Water contractors, on the other hand, generally have no water rights. Instead, a water contract represents an opportunity to buy water from Reclamation when it is available. The range of availability under these contracts is generally much greater than the terms governing the settlement contracts. ?We?re senior water rights holders, and quite frankly have the ability to pump whatever we want to pump out of the river if we believe Reclamation has breached its relationship with us,? Somach said. Reclamation has a variety of other obligations to meet, however. Although it primarily serves agricultural interests, its contractors include some urban agencies and wildlife refuges, including cities such as Coalinga and Avenal and refuges such as the Mendota Wildlife Area in Fresno County. In severe droughts, these usually are considered a priority over agriculture, because many farm fields can be left unplanted in a drought. In its allocation forecast on Feb. 21, Reclamation warned all its agricultural contractors they could receive zero water deliveries this year, except settlement contractors, which would get 40 percent. Farm groups say that scenario would result in thousands of acres of farmland being taken out of production this year. Urban contractors and wildlife refuges, meanwhile, would get 50 percent and 40 percent of their contract allocations, respectively. ?We are not unmindful of the fact that this is an extreme drought situation,? Somach said. ?But those uses of water are junior to our contracts. They are junior to our underlying water rights.? Somach and his clients met with Reclamation officials Tuesday to ask why the allocation appears to conflict with their contracts. He said Reclamation promised some answers within a week. Moore also said Reclamation will strive to update its water allocation forecast on a weekly basis, if possible, based on weather conditions, rather than waiting for the usual monthly cycle. ?We are trying to operate for now, but also think about what (would happen) if we don?t receive any additional precipitation for the rest of the year,? Moore said. ?It would become even more of a strain.? reprints Read more here: Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley Description: Image removed by sender. image Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Va... Feds challenged on proposed water cuts in Sacramento Valley View on www.sacbee.com Preview by Yahoo _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 662 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Feb 23 13:32:00 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2016 21:32:00 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Siskiyou Daily: City of Weed fears water shortage References: <140792363.1561767.1456263120566.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <140792363.1561767.1456263120566.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.siskiyoudaily.com/article/20160223/NEWS/160229949By Sarah Kirby skirby at siskiyoudaily.comFebruary 23. 2016 7:39AM City of Weed fears water shortage The mayor of Weed has declared the need for an emergency city council meeting that is scheduled for Feb. 24 at 5:30 p.m. at Weed City Hall, 550 Main St.; the meeting is an opportunity for discussion regarding the city of Weed's lease with Roseburg Forest Products for the city's use of the of the Beaughan and Little Beaughan Springs water that will discontinue as of June 29.The mayor of Weed has declared the need for an emergency city council meeting that is scheduled for Feb. 24 at 5:30 p.m. at Weed City Hall, 550 Main St.; the meeting is an opportunity for discussion regarding the city of Weed?s lease with Roseburg Forest Products for the city?s use of the of the Beaughan and Little Beaughan Springs water that will discontinue as of June 29.? The 50 year long lease that began in 1966 allowed the city of Weed to use 2.0 cubic feet per second of the Beaughan Springs water for the city?s principal water source. According to a press release from the city, in 1959? the lumber mill was owned by International Paper.? The release states that International Paper wanted to subdivide the town of Weed to sell off lots for homes to be created for residents; however, the State of California required International Paper to provide a water source and a sewer service to the homes cause International Paper was a wholly-owned subsidiary, which means that the company was completely owned by a parent company. As such, International Paper created the California non-profit Weed Water Company states the press release, and the California Public Utilities Commission ran the charges of the company and regulated the Weed Water Company rates. Weed became a city in 1961.? In 1966 the Weed Water Company sold to the City of Weed all of its assets; nonetheless, this agreement did not include the water rights and particular spring rights, which includes the Beaughan Springs, on the land, the release states.? Yet, in order to persuade the City of Weed to continue with the purchasing of the company, the Weed Water Company provided the City of Weed with a 50 year lease to use 2.0 cubic feet per second from the Beaughan Springs for domestic and municipal purposes.? According to an article titled, ?Roseburg Forest Products files suit in water rights case? published in the Siskiyou Daily News on August 24, 2014, the spring produced 4.07 cubic feet per second in 1932.? ?The story began before 1914 with the Long Bell Lumber Company procuring an appropriative right to 4.07 cubic feet per second from the Beaughan Waters, an amount identified in a 1932 judicial decree with the Siskiyou court that was 4 cubic feet of water,? the article states. Since obtaining this lease, International Paper was bought by Roseburg Forest Products, which is now the owner of the mill and the spring. Roseburg Forest Products still uses the spring water for their own production purposes, and Roseburg has sold a share of their 2.0 cubic feet per second of the Beaughan Springs to the Crystal Geyser Roxane company for their water bottling needs. An article published on Nov 20, 2014 in the Mount Shasta Herald titled, ?Roseburg and Weed see water rights from separate shores,? mentions that Roseburg Forest Products noticed that the Beaughan Spring was producing less water than before. ?The company?s Beaughan Spring water flow has dropped 25 percent, according to Hultgren, forcing Roseburg to adjust its consumption,? states the MSH article. The 50 year lease for the city of Weed will be up at the end of June, and while the city has gone through at least five years of negotiations with Roseburg Forest Products and nine months of formal mediation, the city has been unable to reach a compromise with the company, according to the release. As such, as of June 29, the City of Weed must discontinue use of the Beaughan Springs water by law.? If such events transpire, then the City of Weed is considering declaring that it will be in a state of emergency in relation to water, since the city will not be able to provide municipal and domestic water to residents who live or work north of Division Street, according to the City of Weed?s Press Release. ? The areas that will be affected include the Weed Elementary School and Weed High School, according to the press release. The city was aware of negotiations going awry, and as a preparatory measure has already engaged in a contract with PACE Engineering to find alternatives. Citizens are invited to attend the city council meeting to share their viewpoints regarding the matter.? City of Weed??? ??? ??? (530) 938-5020??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? (530) 938-5096 (FAX) WATER SITUATION FOR THE CITY OF WEED - SUMMARY AND TIMELINE The Mayor of Weed has called a special meeting for February 24, 2016 to discuss an issue that threatens to create conditions of extreme peril to the health and safety of the citizens and property within the City. The contract between the City of Weed and its principal water source expires June 29, 2016. The City has negotiated in good faith for more than five years for an extension of the lease or, as an alternative, has offered to purchase the water rights. The City has also participated in formal mediation for more than nine months. The City has been unable to secure an extension of the lease.? On June 29, the City will discontinue the use of Beaughan Springs water as required by law. TIMELINE OF EVENTS:1905?- The principal water source for the City of Weed is established, 2 cubic feet per second adjudicated for municipal and domestic purposes from Beaughan Springs. 1959?- International Paper, the owner of the lumber mill, seeks permission from the State of California to subdivide the town of Weed and sell off the lots and homes to the residents.? The State requires that International Paper create a wholly-owned subsidiary to provide water and sewer service to these homes as a condition of approval for subdivision.? International Paper then creates the Weed Water Company, a California non-profit company, and the rates and charges of this company are regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission. 1961?- The City of Weed is formed. 1966?- The Weed Water Company sells all of its assets to the City of Weed.? The sale agreement specifically excludes from the sale ?all water rights and certain springs and land on which the springs were located.? ?However, the seller, for consideration and to affect the sale of assets, grants to the City of Weed a fifty (50) year lease on the 2 cubic feet of water in Beaughan Springs adjudicated for municipal and domestic purposes. 2011?? Negotiations for lease extension begin. 2015?-- Formal mediation occurs for a period of more than nine months for an extension ???????????????of the lease. 2016?? February 24, Emergency Declaration considered by City Council. 2016?? June 27 (anticipated), cases of drinking water will be provided at the City Maintenance???????????Facility 2016?-- June 29 (anticipated), the City will discontinue the use of Beaughan Springs water as????????????required by law. 2016?? June 29 and July 2 (anticipated), drinking water will be distributed door-to-door in the???????????North.? Additional distributions will occur weekly thereafter. MOVING FORWARD:When the City loses access to these water rights, the City will be unable to provide domestic and municipal water to its residents living and working North of Division Street, including the High School and the Elementary School. In addition, although the City may maintain adequate water for basic needs for those residents living and working North and East of I-5 and the Central Business District, the City will be unable to provide sufficient water pressure for firefighting. The City has some modest, additional water resources South of I-5 due to the assistance of the State in drilling a new water well in 2015.? However, the City has no way to transport these water resources to the City?s water tanks on School House Hill. Even if the City were able to transport its excess water resources to these tanks, the City has insufficient water resources to fully meet the needs of citizens and customers. The City, in anticipation of the failure of negotiations, has previously contracted with PACE Engineering to look at alternatives. ? IMMEDIATE NEXT STEPS:1.? Adopt the Emergency Declaration to provide the City?s leadership with sufficient authorization to deal with the pending health and safety crisis. 2.? Authorize the City Administrator to lease five to seven water trucks to transport water from the South to the North. The average daily consumption in the North half of the City?s system is 350,000 gallons a day. The capacity of a water truck is 4,000 gallons. Therefore, if the City obtains authorization from the County to divert some water from the Carrick Subdivision, it is estimated that there will be a need for 45 truckloads of water to be delivered from the South to the North on a daily basis. 3.? Authorize the City Administrator to lease a water truck to be prepositioned in the Central Business District to provide sufficient water to fight a structure fire. 4.? Authorize the Public Works Director to employ temporary employees as truck drivers during this immediate response period. 5.? It is anticipated that the City will be required to post a boil water notice for the North system due to the potential for contamination of the water supply (multiple handling), thus the City Council will be asked to authorize the Public Works Director to purchase and distribute bottled water at no cost to City residents in the North.? Cases will be provided at the City Maintenance Facility beginning Monday, June 27th?and will be distributed door-to-door in the North on Wednesday, June 29th, and Saturday July 2nd.? Additional distributions will occur weekly thereafter. 6.? The Emergency Declaration authorizes the Mayor to impose strict water restrictions throughout the City.? It is anticipated by June 1stthat these water restrictions will be imposed.? Because the City will not have sufficient water resources to meet every need, these water restrictions will limit water usage to human consumption.? In other words, City water can be used for laundry, bathroom, and kitchen uses, and to water a vegetable garden, but water cannot be used to irrigate lawns, to wash cars, or to operate a co-generation plant. 7.? Approve a contract with PACE Engineering in the amount of $55,000 to submit a grant application for $1.5M from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund to construct the pipeline bypass between Bel Air and the Hillside Pressure Zones, the recommended temporary emergency construction proposed in PACE?s letter of February 10th. ? 8.? Authorize the City Administrator to contract with Enplan to complete the documentation necessary to support a CEQA Exemption and authorize the Mayor to sign the Declaration of Exemption for recording. 9.? Authorize the City Administrator to submit the $1.5million grant and execute any and all documents necessary to obtain funding. 10.? Authorize the City Administrator to submit a grant application for funding from the Proposition 84 Emergency funds in an amount of $250,000 to pay for the bottled water distribution and the water trucks necessary for temporary service. 11.? Authorize the City Administrator to negotiate with Cal-Trans and the Railroad to place the pipeline bypass under Highway 97, I-5, and the Rail Line. 12.? Authorize the City Administrator to negotiate and acquire an easement to construct the pipeline bypass up the hill. 13.? Authorize the Mayor to execute a contract to construct the pipeline bypass on a time and material basis without competitive bid. FUTURE ACTIONS:As these steps only provide a temporary solution, an alternative water supply equal to 2 cubic feet per second needs to be developed or acquired by the City.? This is likely to take years, if even possible, and the severe water restrictions will have to remain in place until such time as an alternative water supply is developed or acquired.? There is no guarantee that an alternative water source other than the Beaughan Springs water can be developed or acquired. ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Fri Feb 26 11:06:57 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2016 11:06:57 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Study: Changes to Genetics of Hatchery Steelhead Occur in Just One Generation Message-ID: <02c101d170c8$de1bd0b0$9a537210$@sisqtel.net> THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN: Weekly Fish and Wildlife News www.cbbulletin.com February 26, 2016 Issue No. 782 Study: Changes To Genetics Of Hatchery Steelhead Occur In Just One Generation It takes just one generation for the DNA of steelhead domesticated in hatcheries to be altered and to be significantly different than steelhead whose parents are wild, according to a recent study by Oregon State University. In fact the study found that in just one generation there were 723 genes that differed between the offspring of wild steelhead and the offspring of first-generation hatchery steelhead. Further, the study found through gene enrichment analysis that adapting to the hatchery environment involves responses by the steelhead in wound healing, immunity and metabolism, suggesting the adaptation is due to crowding in hatcheries. "We found hundreds of genes were expressed differently between the offspring of first-generation hatchery fish and the offspring of wild fish, and that the difference was heritable from their parents," said lead researcher Michael Blouin, professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at OSU. Although over 700 genes are just a small fraction of the total number of genes in the genome, Blouin said it is a surprisingly high number to show a difference after just one generation of selection. The results show that hatchery fish can be genetically different from wild fish after only a generation of selection in a hatchery, he said, and "more importantly, it allows us to generate hypotheses about what types of traits are under selection in hatcheries." "For example," he continued, "the fact that many of the differentially expressed genes are involved in immune-related functions, such as wound repair, suggests the hypothesis that hatchery fish might be selected for their ability to tolerate injuries. This is actually consistent with the idea that crowding is a selective factor, given juvenile steelhead can be pretty aggressive with each other in captivity." Blouin cautioned that the hypothesis still needs to be tested, "but data such as these may eventually lead us to the traits under selection, and thus to ideas on how we might want to modify hatchery culture practices." The study, "A single generation of domestication heritably alters the expression of hundreds of genes," was published online February 17, 2016, in the journal Nature Communications, http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160217/ncomms10676/full/ncomms10676.html. The article is open access and is free to download. In addition to Blouin, co-authors are Mark Christie, a post-doctoral student at OSU at the time of the study and now an assistant professor at Purdue University; Melanie Marine, research assistant at OSU; Samuel Fox, a post-doctoral student at OSU at the time of the study and now an assistant professor at St. Martin's University; and Rod French, district fish biologist, Lower Columbia River, at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. According to the study, steelhead is one of the few fish species considered to have been fully domesticated and the responses to selection routinely occur in steelhead within less than ten generations of captive breeding. This is the first study to demonstrate that the earliest stages of domestication are characterized by large changes in heritable patterns of gene expression. "We hypothesize that adaptation to crowded conditions may drive much of this early domestication. Regardless of the mechanism, it is remarkable that a single generation of domestication can translate into heritable differences in expression at hundreds of genes," the study says. This is the second study about crowding in hatcheries and the domestication of hatchery steelhead Blouin and others have published recently. "The effects of high rearing density on the potential for domestication selection in hatchery culture of steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss)," was published online August 5, 2015, in the Canadian Journal of Aquatic Sciences (http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfas-2015-0233#.VjEBjberTI U.) (See CBB, October 30, 2015, "Study Looks At Whether Crowded Hatcheries Push Steelhead To Domestication, Small Body Size," http://www.cbbulletin.com/435426.aspx) Blouin said the overall goals of the two studies are similar. "Substantial evidence suggests that salmonid fish rapidly adapt to hatcheries in ways that make them less fit in the wild," he said. "But we don't know what traits are under selection in the hatcheries or what environmental conditions of the hatchery cause such strong selection pressures." He added that the goal of his research is to answer those two questions - what traits and what conditions - to discover ways to modify hatchery rearing practices in order to reduce the selection pressures, thereby producing hatchery fish that are more like wild fish. The first study, he said, was to test a hypothesis about how crowding can increase the rate of domestication, while this more recent study looks at DNA level changes after selection "in order to generate hypotheses about what traits might be responding to selection." "Our goal here is not to bash hatcheries," Blouin said. "Our goal is to figure out how to improve them. If one could modify hatchery practices in order to produce hatchery fish that are more like wild fish, then that would reduce concerns about genetic impacts of hatchery fish on wild populations." The modification could be as simple as changing the way hatchery fish are fed or housed, or it may be that the goal of making hatchery fish more like wild fish is not feasible. "We won't know until researchers tackle the question," Blouin said. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov Fri Feb 26 15:47:05 2016 From: Steve.Cannata at wildlife.ca.gov (Cannata, Steve@Wildlife) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2016 23:47:05 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Trapping Summary Update JWeek 8 Message-ID: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5CE045@057-SN2MPN1-042.057d.mgd.msft.net> Greetings All, Please see attached for the JWeek 8 (Feb 19-25) update to the Trinity River trapping summary. There are a couple more weeks left in this year's trapping at the TRH. However, this is my last update to you as I will retire from CDFW at the end of this month. Sending the trapping summaries to everyone was always a pleasure. Weekly updates will continue to be sent until the year's trapping season is over. Please contact Wade Sinnen if you have any questions or comments. Thanks, Steve :) Steve Cannata Environmental Scientist Trinity River Project California Department of Fish and Wildlife 5341 Ericson Way Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-4230 steve.cannata at wildlife.ca.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW8.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 63228 bytes Desc: 2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary update JW8.xlsx URL: From bob at michaels-inc.com Sat Feb 27 20:06:09 2016 From: bob at michaels-inc.com (Bob Paget) Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2016 04:06:09 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Trapping Summary Update JWeek 8 In-Reply-To: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5CE045@057-SN2MPN1-042.057d.mgd.msft.net> References: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5CE045@057-SN2MPN1-042.057d.mgd.msft.net> Message-ID: Thank you Steve. Enjoy retirement! - Bob Michael's Office Furnishings 5138 Caterpillar Road, Redding, CA P: 530.221.3310 F: 530.221.3454 C: 530-356-0494 From: Cannata, Steve at Wildlife Sent: Friday, February 26, 3:47 PM Subject: Trinity River Trapping Summary Update JWeek 8 To: Sinnen, Wade at Wildlife Cc: 'env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us' (env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us) Greetings All, Please see attached for the JWeek 8 (Feb 19-25) update to the Trinity River trapping summary. There are a couple more weeks left in this year's trapping at the TRH. However, this is my last update to you as I will retire from CDFW at the end of this month. Sending the trapping summaries to everyone was always a pleasure. Weekly updates will continue to be sent until the year's trapping season is over. Please contact Wade Sinnen if you have any questions or comments. Thanks, Steve J Steve Cannata Environmental Scientist Trinity River Project California Department of Fish and Wildlife 5341 Ericson Way Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-4230 steve.cannata at wildlife.ca.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Mar 1 08:52:43 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 08:52:43 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Anglers brace for restrictions in 2016 salmon season In-Reply-To: <01f501d16d9a$a9bc5be0$fd3513a0$@gmail.com> References: <1860027527.851841.1456161930834.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1860027527.851841.1456161930834.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> <01f501d16d9a$a9bc5be0$fd3513a0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: <634BA52A-58E1-4AEC-8EFF-1D1D3B8C874B@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/1/1493866/-Anglers-brace-for-restrictions-in-2016-salmon-season Anglers brace for restrictions in 2016 salmon season by Dan Bacher The federal government last week released its data on the projections for the upcoming ocean and river salmon seasons in California and Southern Oregon ? and it?s not looking good. Commercial and recreational anglers are bracing for further fishing restrictions this season, based on low abundance estimates for Sacramento River and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon, the two drivers of the West Coast fishery. The Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC), a quasi-governmental body that crafts the seasons and regulations for salmon, groundfish and other fisheries, forecasts an ocean abundance of approximately 300,000 (299,600) Sacramento River adult fall run king salmon off the California and Oregon coast this year. This compares to forecasts above 600,000 the past several years. ?When coupled with poor 2015 Klamath salmon returns and concern for federally protected winter run, the forecast points to a restricted 2016 fishing season,? said John McManus, Executive Director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association (GGSA). ?The lower than normal forecast is caused by drought conditions and water management decisions that harmed salmon the last four years in the Central Valley. These have greatly decreased survival of wild salmon eggs and juveniles.? The numbers were released prior to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife?s annual Salmon Fishery Information Meeting scheduled for Wednesday March 2, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Sonoma County Water Agency, 404 Aviation Blvd. in Santa Rosa (95403). McManus pointed out that that relatively low forecast for 2016 salmon comes as two federal bills in Congress ?threaten to take even more of the water needed to keep our salmon runs healthy.? ?The projection for 2016 salmon makes clear the damage done by water diversions and drought the last several years," said McManus. ?The 2016 salmon number means more protections are needed in the Delta and Central Valley salmon habitat, not less. Any politician proposing more water diversions now from the Delta needs to look at the salmon numbers and stop proposing more harm to salmon and our coastal communities.? McManus said the PFMC forecast comes as fishery managers begin work on an ocean fishing season in 2016 with adequate protections for low numbers of Sacramento River winter run Chinook salmon, an endangered species under state and federal law, and Klamath salmon. ?A low projected number of adult Klamath River salmon, which is used as a surrogate to protect north coast stocks, could mean further restrictions will occur on salmon fishing north of Point Arena in what?s known as the Fort Bragg cell,? he stated. ?This is most likely to affect commercial salmon fishermen who have made the bulk of their catch in this area the last several years.? North Coast fishermen, like those further south, are bracing for further restrictions this season to allow enough Klamath River salmon to return to the river to spawn. The 2016 Klamath River Fall Chinook potential spawner abundance forecast is 41,211 natural-area adults, according to the PFMC Preseason Report 1. (www.pcouncil.org/...) ?This potential spawner abundance forecast applied to the KRFC control rule results in an allowable exploitation rate of 0.25, which produces, in expectation 30,909 natural-area adult spawners,? according to the PFMC. ?Therefore, fisheries impacting KRFC must be crafted to achieve, in expectation, a minimum of 30,909 natural-area adult spawners in 2016.? The 2016 forecast is based on the number of two-year-old Chinook salmon, called ?jacks and jills,? that returned to spawn in 2015. McManus said the 2015 forecast of 652,000 salmon ?didn?t come near the post season total of less than 300,000 prompting managers to modify the formula used to forecast this year?s number.? McManus said one semi bright spot in another discouraging outlook is that salmon fishing in 2016 should be a ?little bit better? than it was last year due to the extra trucking that occurred in 2014 following a campaign by GGSA to avert drought disaster. ?Salmon numbers could creep up a little more in 2017 due to the 100 percent trucking of juvenile hatchery fish at GGSA?s urging in 2015,? he noted. He said an additional two million hatchery fish produced after a GGSA campaign with state officials and support from the Commercial Salmon Stamp committee will be released in the next several months and are expected to add to the 2018 fishery. ?We?d almost certainly be looking at a fishing closure in 2016 but for the work of GGSA that got more hatchery fish trucked to safe release sites starting in 2014,? said GGSA founder and treasurer Victor Gonella. ?The trucking made the difference in survival for many of the fish now out in the ocean. The forecast isn?t great, but it should allow for a responsible fishing season while leaving enough fish to reproduce this year.? ?Commercial salmon fishermen are coming off a very poor 2015 fishing season followed by a shutdown of the crab fishery, which most rely on to make ends meet,? added McManus. ?Prospects of another poor commercial salmon season is causing concern in harbors and ports from Morro Bay all the way up into Oregon where 60 percent of the ocean salmon catch are Central Valley salmon.? California?s salmon industry is currently valued at $1.4 billion in economic activity annually and about half that much in economic activity and jobs again in Oregon For more information about the Golden Gate Salmon Association, go to: www.goldengatesalmonassociation.org Tomorrow?s Ocean Salmon Information Meeting in Santa Rosa marks the beginning of a two-month long public process used to establish annual sport and commercial ocean salmon seasons. A list of additional meetings and other opportunities for public comment is available on CDFW?s ocean salmon webpage, www.wildlife.ca.gov/..... The meeting comes at a critical time for salmon ,crab and other fisheries. Legislators, members of commercial fishing families, fishing group representatives and Brown administration officials testified about the dire situation that the salmon and crab fishery is in during the 43rd Annual Zeke Grader Fisheries Forum of the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture held at the State Capitol in Sacramento on February 11. ?This forum works, but the fishermen are not,? said Senator Mike McGuire, Chair of the Committee, in his opening comments. ?The salmon and crab fisheries are threatened by a historic crisis. We?re facing a fishery disaster that will impact many families.? As California?s salmon fisheries are hammered by poor management of Central Valley reservoirs and the continuing export of water from Delta during the drought, Governor Jerry Brown continues to promote his California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels. The construction of the tunnels would hasten the extinction of Sacramento winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and green sturgeon, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Klamath and Trinity rivers. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pcatanese at dhscott.com Tue Mar 1 09:31:13 2016 From: pcatanese at dhscott.com (Paul Catanese) Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 17:31:13 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Trapping Summary Update JWeek 8 In-Reply-To: References: <80DEC27EBD72E1499BC575089F328C570C5CE045@057-SN2MPN1-042.057d.mgd.msft.net> Message-ID: Ditto steve: enjoy retirement you lucky dog Paul J. Catanese, Partner [cid:image001.gif at 01D1739B.0C28A350] D.H. Scott & Company O: 530.243.4300 | F: 530.243.4306 900 Market St, Redding, CA 96001 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This communication (including any attachments) may contain privileged or confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this communication and/or shred the materials and any attachments and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this communication, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. Thank you. Disclaimer: Any accounting, business or tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. If desired, D.H. Scott & Company would be pleased to perform the requisite research and provide you with a detailed written analysis. Such an engagement may be the subject of a separate engagement letter that would define the scope and limits of the desired consultation services. From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Bob Paget Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2016 8:06 PM To: steve.cannata at wildlife.ca.gov; wade.sinnen at wildlife.ca.gov Cc: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: Re: [env-trinity] Trinity River Trapping Summary Update JWeek 8 Thank you Steve. Enjoy retirement! - Bob Michael's Office Furnishings 5138 Caterpillar Road, Redding, CA P: 530.221.3310 F: 530.221.3454 C: 530-356-0494 From: Cannata, Steve at Wildlife Sent: Friday, February 26, 3:47 PM Subject: Trinity River Trapping Summary Update JWeek 8 To: Sinnen, Wade at Wildlife Cc: 'env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us' (env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us) Greetings All, Please see attached for the JWeek 8 (Feb 19-25) update to the Trinity River trapping summary. There are a couple more weeks left in this year's trapping at the TRH. However, this is my last update to you as I will retire from CDFW at the end of this month. Sending the trapping summaries to everyone was always a pleasure. Weekly updates will continue to be sent until the year's trapping season is over. Please contact Wade Sinnen if you have any questions or comments. Thanks, Steve J Steve Cannata Environmental Scientist Trinity River Project California Department of Fish and Wildlife 5341 Ericson Way Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-4230 steve.cannata at wildlife.ca.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.gif Type: image/gif Size: 3419 bytes Desc: image001.gif URL: From unofelice at gmail.com Wed Mar 2 15:38:17 2016 From: unofelice at gmail.com (Felice Pace) Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 15:38:17 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Important report on groundwater-surfacewater interaction in the Central Valley. Message-ID: The Nature Conservancy has released an important *report on groundwater-surfacewater interaction* in the Central Valley. Summary: Groundwater is intimately connected to surface water, which has profound implications for sustainable water resource management. California has historically overlooked this important interaction and as a consequence, decisions about groundwater extractions have generally failed to address the resulting impacts to aquatic ecosystems such as rivers, wetlands and springs. This has contributed to a loss of approximately 95 percent of the historical wetlands and river habitat in California?s Central Valley. In February 2016, the Conservancy published a study that uses an integrated hydrologic model to reconstruct the historical impacts of groundwater use on groundwater levels and stream flow conditions in California?s Central Valley. The results illustrate how rivers and streams that historically gained surface flows from groundwater now lose surface flows to groundwater. As a consequence, Central Valley rivers are now losing almost 1.5 billion gallons of water each day ? that is enough water to supply 2.5 times the water needs for Los Angeles?than they did in the 1920s. In addition, groundwater aquifers contain 6.5 trillion gallons less water now than they did at the start of the study period. Groundwater sustainability agencies across the state will soon be required to manage groundwater resources to avoid causing undesirable results to groundwater levels and interconnected groundwater and surface water. These groundwater levels and areas of interconnection support groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs). Therefore, an important first step in sustainable groundwater management is to understand how groundwater pumping impacts surface water and GDEs, both of which include streams. A summary report and the full technical document are available here: http://scienceforconservation.org/downloads/groundwater_and_stream_interaction -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Mar 3 07:47:16 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 15:47:16 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Journal Editorial: Water plan offers no protection for Trinity References: <1038578772.2353953.1457020036686.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1038578772.2353953.1457020036686.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/opinion/editorials/article_18e6934c-e018-11e5-9d03-6fec46b373fb.html Water plan offers no protection for Trinity Posted: Wednesday, March 2, 2016 6:15 amSen. Dianne Feinstein?s most recent water legislation, introduced last month, attempts to tackle California?s outdated, much-maligned, semi-dysfunctional, vastly over-allocated water system.The 184-page bill has plenty of things in it to like and dislike.On the plus side, it provides $1.3 billion in federal funds for new reservoirs, desalinization, recycling, storm-water capture and other projects. It calls for modernizing the protocol for operating dams to allow for more thoughtful storage and releases based on real-time data.It allows rural and disadvantaged communities with fewer than 60,000 residents to apply for grants through a new Reclamation program to help stabilize their water supplies. And it seeks to expand the current WaterSense program, seeking out the most efficient water-use appliances for households.But make no mistake, the thrust of this legislation is to move more water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to agricultural interests in the San Joaquin Valley. From real-time monitoring of fish populations near the giant Tracy pumps, to guaranteed water deliveries in all but the driest years.What Feinstein?s legislation is lacking is any protections for the areas of origin. There are no minimum reservoirs pools for Trinity Lake, no protection from drastic draw-downs. In fact, you?ll find the word ?Trinity? mentioned just once in the entire legislation, under the definition section for Central Valley Project. Any guess where some of the water for these guaranteed water deliveries is going to come from?No one debates the California water system is broken. Completed in the 1970s when California?s population was just 16 million residents, the state now boasts a population of near 40 million.Agriculture continues to expand, often with orchards that require constant water vs. row crops which can be fallowed when water supplies are limited. Resources are so over-allocated it is impossible to get full appropriations to everyone.There?s no one big fix available. Once perfected, desalinization will ultimately solve most of the problem. But that?s a ways off. Until then it will take a number of small steps adding up to improve California?s water situation. But one of those small steps can?t be draining the North State dry.Until some North State ? and let?s be parochial here, Trinity ? protections are included in the legislation, we can?t support it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Mar 3 07:58:08 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 15:58:08 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] LaMalfa criticizes dam removal process References: <876382115.2415755.1457020688398.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <876382115.2415755.1457020688398.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.redding.com/news/local/lamalfa-criticized-dam-removal-process-2cf81491-89a6-2e3c-e053-0100007f8293-370868711.html# LaMalfa criticizes dam removal process FILE - This Aug. 21, 2009 file photo shows the J.C. Boyle Dam diverting water from the Klamath River to a powerhouse downstream near Keno, Ore. The U.S. Department of Interior on Thursday, April 4, 2013, issued a final environmental impact statement recommending this and three other dams be removed from the Klamath River to help struggling wild salmon runs. (AP Photo/Jeff Barnard)Posted:?Yesterday 6:00 p.m.10 CommentsSHARE????By?Damon Arthur?of the Redding Record SearchlightA North State Congressman accused the federal government this week of creating a "shell corporation" to disguise its role in removing dams on the Klamath River.U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa also said there are meetings being held in secret to work out details of a dam removal plan, and leaders of the negotiations are forcing those who attend to sign nondisclosure agreements."We're seeing an administration that claims to be the most transparent in history engaged in closed meetings, neck-deep in a shell corporation and requiring stakeholders to sign nondisclosure agreements just to learn how they'll be affected," LaMalfa said in a news release."This seems like a front company in a process designed to avoid public scrutiny and avoid open government laws. The (Obama) administration is moving forward with its goal of dam removal while ignoring the water supply issues that impact thousands of residents," he said.LaMalfa was referring to an agreement struck last month among Oregon, California, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the dams' owner, PacifiCorp, to remove four dams on the Klamath River.The agreement includes creating a private nonprofit corporation to apply for a permit to remove the dams from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.PacificCorp spokesman Bob Gravely said the nonprofit corporation will take over ownership of the dam so the federal government isn't involved. A previous agreement to remove the dams died at the end of last year after Congress failed to pass legislation approving dam removal.Because Congress didn't authorize funding to take out the dams, Oregon, California and PacifiCorp are paying the bill, Gravely said.But during a Congressional committee hearing Monday, LaMalfa questioned Deputy Interior Secretary Mike Connor about spending money on the project without Congressional approval.As to the nondisclosure agreements, Gravely said the agreements are routine for negotiations. He said it would be unusual not to ask for a nondisclosure agreement.But Kevin Eastman, a spokesman for LaMalfa, said negotiations involving public projects should be held in public."If it's common, then it's inappropriate on a regular basis," Eastman said.LaMalfa believes that because the dams are private property the federal government should not be paying to have them removed, Eastman said.But dam removal proponents say taking out the dams would improve conditions in the river for salmon and other wildlife.Craig Tucker, a natural resource policy advocate for the Karuk Tribe, said LaMalfa did not participate in the first agreement and did not advocate in Congress for a law to pay for removing the dams, but is now criticizing the current negotiations."Where has he been all these years? We've been working on this for 10 years," Tucker said. "There's nothing shady, secret or unprecedented about any of this."LaMalfa also said he was concerned that because the agency will be a nongovernment entity, it would not be subject to federal Freedom of Information Act or California Public Records Act laws. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Mar 3 08:02:27 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 16:02:27 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Oregon lawmaker says new Klamath dam removal plan may be illegal References: <1396689947.2357936.1457020947299.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1396689947.2357936.1457020947299.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.capitalpress.com/Oregon/20160302/oregon-lawmaker-says-new-klamath-dam-removal-plan-may-be-illegal Oregon lawmaker says new Klamath dam removal plan may be illegal As Oregon, California and federal officials seek to revive the Klamath Basin agreements, an Oregon state senator argues that their plan to work around Congress to remove four dams from the Klamath River may not be legal.Tim HeardenCapital PressPublished on March 2, 2016 1:13PM As signatories to the original Klamath Basin water agreements try to reassemble their team, an Oregon state senator says he doesn?t think their new plan for removing dams from the Klamath River is legal.State Sen. Doug Whitsett, R-Klamath Falls, says he believes a plan by PacifiCorp and four government agencies to set up a private entity to handle the four dams? removal would still need congressional approval. Under PacifiCorp?s plan, the entity would seek a go-ahead from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to remove the dams.Whitsett?s argument is based on a legal opinion he received from Oregon Legislative Counsel Dexter Johnston, who told him in a letter that ?any interstate compact that creates a joint entity, or that affects matters explicitly reserved to the federal government ? is unconstitutional unless approved by Congress.?If the agreements fail, any modified or later compact or other agreement providing for facilities removal would still require congressional approval,? Johnston wrote.?PacifiCorp and the government agencies appear poised to manipulate the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission?s administrative process in order to bypass congressional approval of the agreement,? Whitsett said.However, PacifiCorp spokesman Bob Gravely said most dam-removal proposals are handled by FERC and that the Klamath project was unique in seeking approval from Congress because it was thought that the project would need federal funding.PacifiCorp has been collecting a surcharge from ratepayers to raise $200 million for dam removal and now plans to cover any further costs with non-federal funds. A ?non-federal? private entity is being formed to obtain permits, insurance and contracts for removing the dams in 2020, Gravely said.?We?ve tried to involve Congress in this for the last six years and they apparently don?t want to be involved in dam removal at all, which has put us on this course,? Gravely said. ?As a result, the way we?re looking at doing it now is the formation of a non-federal entity, a private corporation. PacifiCorp and the private entity would jointly file with FERC this summer for transfer of the license from PacifiCorp to the new entity.?PacifiCorp, the states of Oregon and California and the U.S. Departments of Interior and Commerce outlined their plan in an agreement in principle unveiled last month. Since then, the company and agencies have been crafting an amendment to the 2010 Klamath agreements and hope to have the 42 original signatories on board by the end of this month, Gravely said.The parties ?are making good progress and on track to reach an agreement? with the larger group, Department of the Interior press secretary Jessica Kershaw said in an email.The Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement and Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement expired at the end of 2015 after failing to win approval from Congress ? a key element of the pacts. Various bills to authorize removal of the dams have languished in Congress since 2011.Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., a longtime opponent of dam removal, unveiled an eleventh-hour draft bill in December to move forward on other aspects of the agreements while putting the approval of dam removal in the lap of FERC. However, the bill received a cool reaction from proponents of the agreements, and no efforts were made to merge it with one by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., which included dam removal.?As Gov. (Kate) Brown said when the agreement in principle was first announced, Congressman Walden took a step forward by drafting legislation late last year, and the dam removal plan is part of a broader movement to work with him and others to get the Klamath Basin agreements back on track,? Chris Pair, the Oregon governor?s press secretary, said in an email.Whitsett said it?s politically ?poisonous? for any politician in the Klamath Basin to be seen as embracing dam removal.?I think what (Walden) was attempting to do was remove the dam removal part ? so the rest of the issues could be quite easily resolved,? Whitsett said. ?If you want to lose an election in Klamath County or Siskiyou County, support taking the dams out.?Proponents of the agreements say they?re fundamentally a legal settlement that aims to resolve long-standing differences and grievances. Over the years, the parties have sought to identify solutions and build goodwill throughout the basin, they argue.While he would prefer that the dams remain in place, Whitsett said he understands that PacifiCorp has a right as a property owner to remove them.?What I have a problem with,? he said, ?is trying to force the ratepayers and taxpayers to pay for it.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sat Mar 5 08:10:08 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2016 16:10:08 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Nonprofit created to take hold of Klamath dams targeted for removal References: <1147360059.3219412.1457194208043.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1147360059.3219412.1457194208043.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/environment-and-nature/20160304/nonprofit-created-to-take-hold-of-klamath-dams-targeted-for-removal?? Nonprofit created to take hold of Klamath dams targeted for removal Congressman voices opposition to fed involvement in dam removal efforts By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardFriday, March 4, 2016After nearly five years of defeat on Capitol Hill, proponents of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history have turned to a new vehicle to resurrect the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement ? a nonprofit private corporation.The new California-based Klamath River Renewal Corporation is planning to take control of four hydroelectric dams ? three in California and one in Oregon ? currently owned by the Portland-based energy company PacifiCorp, and will work to decommission the dams through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by 2020.??It turns out we don?t need Congress to remove dams,? Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Policy Adviser Craig Tucker said. ?Congress has already passed the Federal Power Act and that gives us the power to remove dams without congressional approval.?PacifiCorp spokesman Bob Gravely said that the nonprofit?s board of directors and staff is expected to be filled within the next few weeks. The board members will likely include signatories of the original 2010 agreement as well as other entities, according to Gravely.?We?re comfortable with the amendments that have been negotiated,? Gravely said. ?We?re hopeful as many of the original signatories to the agreement and maybe some others will sign. We believe we have found a workable way forward to enact the agreement we?ve supported for nearly 10 years now.?Gravely said PacifiCorp would not be represented on the board. Congressional opposition The Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement and two other related Klamath Basin agreements ? the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement ? proposed to restore habitat quantity and quality to threatened basin fish species.?The agreements also proposed to give water sharing assurances for Native American tribes as well as agriculturists and irrigators in southern Oregon following decades of water rights disputes.?However, the agreements failed to pass through the House Natural Resources Committee by the end of 2015, causing the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement to expire and prompting several tribes to withdraw their support.In early February, the U.S. Department of Interior and states of California and Oregon?announced a new effort to revise the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement.If implemented, the new agreement would remove the dams through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rather than through Congress, where dam removal had met stiff Republican opposition.?California?s 1st District Congressman Doug LaMalfa, who sits on the House Natural Resources Committee, has been an adamant opponent of dam removal, with three of the dams ? Copco 1, Copco 2, and Iron Gate ? located in his district.?LaMalfa questioned U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Interior Mike Connor?earlier this week about the federal agency?s role in creating the nonprofit.?We?re seeing an administration that claims to be the most transparent in history engaged in closed meetings, neck-deep in a shell corporation, and requiring stakeholders to sign nondisclosure agreements just to learn how they?ll be affected,? LaMalfa said to Connor during a Tuesday hearing in Washington, D.C.?This seems like a front company in a process designed to avoid public scrutiny and avoid open government laws,? LaMalfa continued. ?The administration is moving forward with its goal of dam removal while ignoring the water supply issues that impact thousands of residents.?In response, Connor said that the nonprofit is not a creation of his administration, but rather a creation of PacifiCorp and the states of California and Oregon.?The desire here is to have the federal government removed from the whole dam removal process,? Connor said.LaMalfa voiced his intention to file a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain documents related to the meeting.?It is entirely inappropriate for public employees to participate in secret meetings and force those who lives could be impacted to sign nondisclosure agreements,? LaMalfa said to Connor.Signatories of the agreement are set to hold a public meeting in Sacramento on March 16 to discuss the new draft of the agreement and hear public input. ?We haven?t walked away? Three local tribes including the Yurok, Karuk and Klamath Tribes of Oregon have supported the agreement since its creation, but now they may be joined by the Hoopa Valley Tribe. The Hoopa tribe had originally opposed the agreement due its tether to Congress as well as the water sharing agreements that were attached to it in the other two basin agreements.Hoopa Tribal Fisheries Director Mike Orcutt said tribal representatives have been participating in the negotiations, but said the ultimate decision to support the new draft will be decided by the tribal council.?We would have an opportunity, if it?s acceptable, to sign the new agreement,? he said.Tucker said not all the parties in the negotiations are entirely satisfied, specifically representatives of basin irrigator interests who Tucker said have been advocating for the water sharing provisions in the now expired Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and Upper Klamath Basin Agreement.?As a result of this, some of the original signatories of these agreements such as the Klamath Water Users Association have grown uncertain.?We certainly have concerns, but we haven?t walked away,? Klamath Water Users Association Executive Director Scott White said. ?... We signed on to a package deal. Our bargained for benefits were part of that package. For those to be severed from dam removal is concerning.?The ongoing negotiations are still addressing the idea of creating a new Klamath Basin plan that would include some of the provisions of these other two agreements.?(Irrigators) worked with us for a long time on a more comprehensive package,? Tucker said. ?That kind of failed due in large part because of LaMalfa. I do just want to acknowledge at least from Karuk Tribe?s perspective, we still have to work with agriculture to solve the water piece.?Calls to the Klamath Water Users Association, which represents irrigators and was one of the original signatories of the agreement, were not returned by Friday evening.The target goal for dam removal is still 2020, Gravely said, and will be covered by the $450 million already set aside for the project and liability insurance. PacifiCorp?s ratepayers are contributing $200 million to the project with California contributing $250 million through the 2014 water bond, Proposition 1.Tucker said their hope is to have a new agreement signed by as many of the original signatories and new signatories by April when they plan to submit it to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Humboldt County had originally signed on to the agreement in 2010.Once the agreement is signed, Tucker said he expects opponents will file a lawsuit to challenge it.?I just know that some folks are going to fight us as we try to fix this river,? Tucker said.Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504.??URL: http://www.times-standard.com/environment-and-nature/20160304/nonprofit-created-to-take-hold-of-klamath-dams-targeted-for-removal? 2016 Eureka Times-Standard (http://www.times-standard.com) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Mar 4 18:10:10 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2016 18:10:10 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Sacramento & Klamath salmon ocean abundance forecasts are down/Tunnels Opponents Say 'Fix LA & Santa Clara Valley First'/Karuk Tribe and conservation groups file lawsuit In-Reply-To: <0a750ad260ee4e62b01033f2071c42c7@fwwatch.org> References: <0a750ad260ee4e62b01033f2071c42c7@fwwatch.org> Message-ID: Good Evening. Here is my latest article, a piece about the CDFW Salmon Fishery Information Meeting in Santa Rosa on Wednesday, followed by a piece about Delta opponents challenging the "wisdom" of funding the tunnels when the Santa Clara Valley and LA water infrastructure is deteriorating. That article is followed by a press release by the Karuk Tribe and conservation groups about a federal lawsuit they filed against a post-fire logging plan in the Klamath National Forest yesterday. Thanks Dan http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/03/sacramento-and-klamath-river-salmon-ocean-abundance-estimates-are-down-in-2016/ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/4/1495852/-Sacramento-and-Klamath-River-salmon-abundance-forecasts-are-down-in-2016 Photo: Chinook salmon moving up Blue Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River. Photo by Thomas Dunklin. Sacramento and Klamath River salmon ocean abundance forecasts are down in 2016 by Dan Bacher | posted in: Spotlight | 0 Hundreds of people, including commercial fishermen, charter boat skippers and recreational anglers, packed a large room at the Sonoma County Water Agency offices in Santa Rosa on Wednesday, March 2, to hear the discouraging news from state and federal scientists about the prospects for this year?s ocean and river salmon seasons. Low ocean abundance forecasts for Sacramento River and Klamath Chinook fall-run Chinook salmon point to restrictions in the recreational, commercial and tribal fisheries this upcoming season, according to data released in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife?s annual salmon fishery information meeting. Agency scientists estimate that there are approximately 299,600 adult Sacramento River fall Chinook salmon and 142,200 Klamath River fall Chinooks in the ocean this year, based on the returns of two-year-old salmon, called ?jacks? and ?jills,? The salmon from these two rivers comprise the majority of salmon taken in California?s ocean and inland fisheries. ?The forecasts are lower than in recent years and suggest that California fisheries may see salmon seasons in 2016 that have reduced opportunities over last year,? said Brett Kormos, a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and the moderator of the meeting, in a news release issued right after the meeting. ?We?re in an unprecedented situation where fishermen face constraints both in the north (Klamath) and the south (Sacramento),? said Dr. Michael O?Farrell of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). These forecasts, in addition to disturbing information on endangered Sacramento River winter Chinook salmon, will be used over the next couple of months by federal and state fishery managers to set sport and commercial fishing season dates, commercial quotas and size and bag limits. A total of 112,434 Sacramento River fall adult salmon and 19,554 jacks returned to spawn in the river in 2015, according to Vanessa Gusman, CDFW environmental scientist. Seventeen percent of these fish were from the American Basin, 32 percent from the Feather and 49 percent from the Upper Sacramento. The Upper Sacramento Basin saw a total of 59,507 fish, including 15,712 hatchery fish and 43,795 natural spawners. Of these fish, 54,711 were adults and 4,796 were jacks. In the Feather River Basin, a total of 47,333 fish came back, including 20,200 hatchery fish and 27,073 natural spawners, returned to spawn. 38,710 were adults and 8,623 were jacks. In the American River Basin, 25,548 salmon, including 11,762 hatchery fish and 13,786 natural spawners, returned in 2015. 19,913 were adults and 11,167 were jacks. The total escapement fell short of the targeted escapement of at least 122,000 salmon, according to O?Farrell. This lower return of fall-run Chinooks is unlikely to constrain the 2016 fisheries, however. ?If the 2015 regulations were in place this year, there is a preliminary escapement prediction of 153,300,? said O?Farrell. The winter run?s impact on the regulations are a different story, even though only two coded wire-tagged winter-run Chinook ? one caught by a recreational angler and one taken by a troller ? were reported in the ocean fishery last year. O?Farrell said the winter run?s precarious status is ?likely to constrain the fisheries below Point Arena.? ?The maximum allowable age 3 impact rate of winter run is 19.9 percent,? explained O?Farrell. ?If the 2015 regulations were in place, there is a preliminary prediction of 17.1 percent impact rate.? Approximately 95 percent of winter run juveniles in 2014 and 97 percent of winter Chinook juveniles in 2015 perished in the Sacramento River above Red Bluff, due to warm water conditions spurred by widely- contested water management practices by the Brown and Obama administrations. Anglers are prohibited from targeting winter Chinooks on the ocean and on the Sacramento River. Dan Kratville of the CDFW explained his hypothesis for the massive mortality of winter run Chinook eggs and juveniles in 2014 and 2015. ?In 2014, we think that the loss of temperature control by the US Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) was the major cause of the loss from egg to juvenile life stages. In 2015, While the USBR never fully lost control of the temperature, we believe that the average temperatures were too high, resulting in similar losses as 2014,? said Kratville. Leaders of fishing groups, Indian Tribes and environmental organizations have criticized the Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Water Resources for draining Trinity, Shasta, Oroville and Folsom reservoirs during three years of a record drought to export water south of the Delta to agribusiness, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies conducting fracking operations. The abundance of Klamath River fall Chinook salmon is looking worse than for the Sacramento stocks. O?Farrell said the 2016 abundance forecast for Klamath River fall Chinook is 93,393 for age 3, 45,105 for age 4 and 3,671 for age 3, a total of approximately 142,200 adults. ?Our potential spawner abundance forecast is 41,211 and we must target an escapement of at least 30,909 fish,? he said. ?That?s a 25 percent exploitation rate.? If the 2015 regulations were in place this year, the natural area spawner prediction would be only 14,540, a 65 percent exploitation rate, and natural spawner target would not be met, according to O?Farrell. The allocation of fish to the Yurok and Hoopa Valley Tribes is always 50 percent of the total harvest, so the river recreational allocation would be 32.4 percent of the non-tribal harvest. ?This no doubt will constrain the fisheries south of Cape Falcon, Oregon,? he concluded. After the abundance forecasts and harvest model results were reviewed, anglers asked questions and made suggestions to the California Salmon Management Panel, comprised of Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), CDFW, NOAA Fisheries, and fishing group representatives. The suggestions included were delaying the opening of salmon season north of Pigeon Point to avoid winter run impacts; using the 24-inch size limit throughout the recreational fishing season; and the use of sportfishing gear and downriggers by commercial fishermen to minimize fishery impacts. After the meeting anglers commented about the prospects for the recreational and commercial salmon seasons. ?I?m concerned about the 2016 season,? said Dick Pool, President of Water for Fish. ?We have looked at the environmental conditions in 2013 when the juveniles were trying to make their way down the river through the Delta. We know a lot of fish didn?t make it.? ?I?m not optimistic that we?ll get much improvement in the salmon harvest in 2016. The biggest problem is that we need to get to work on salmon recovery projects as soon as possible,? noted Pool. ?I heard two great ideas proposed by fishermen today ? the first being the 24 inch size limit to reduce impacts on winter run Chinook,? commented Mike Hudson, commercial salmon fisherman and President of the Small Boat Commercial Salmon Fisherman?s Association. ?The second is the concept of commercial anglers using sport gear to minimize impacts upon the winter run.? Dan Wolford, President of the Coastside Fishing Club, said, ?Both sport and commercial fishermen will have an opportunity to fish, but it will be less than last year. There are two things we don?t know yet ? how much ? will we be restricted a lot or a little. Second, if we have a season, will there be fish there to catch?? He noted that although the trucking of salmon, as evidenced by the high return of Feather River hatchery salmon to fishing ?is good for catching fish, I?m not so sure it?s good for the fish themselves with the straying data we have. It does clearly help the ability of us to harvest fish. John McManus, Executive Director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association (GGSA, emphasized that the projection for 2016 salmon ?makes clear the damage done by water diversions and drought the last several years.? ?The 2016 salmon number means more protections are needed in the Delta and Central Valley salmon habitat, not less. Any politician proposing more water diversions now from the Delta needs to look at the salmon numbers and stop proposing more harm to salmon and our coastal communities,? concluded McManus. In addition to the salmon suffering from poor river conditions over the past three years, the CDFW noted the fish, once in the ocean, experienced El Ni?o conditions that ?are not favorable for salmon or its prey.? Season dates and other regulations will be developed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and California Fish and Game Commission over the next few months. For more information on the salmon season setting process or general ocean salmon fishing information, please visit the Ocean Salmon Project website or call the salmon fishing hotline at (707) 576-3429. As recreational, commercial and tribal fishing families face restrictions this year, Governor Jerry Brown continues to promote his ?California Water Fix? plan to build the Delta Tunnels. The project, estimated to cost up to $68 billion, would hasten the extinction of Sacramento winter Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species. The tunnels would also imperil the salmon and steelhead fisheries of the Klamath and Trinity rivers. 2. http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/04/delta-tunnels-opponents-say-fix-la-santa-clara-valley-first/ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/3/1495292/-Delta-Tunnels-Opponents-Say-Fix-LA-Santa-Clara-Valley-First Delta Tunnels Opponents Say 'Fix LA and Santa Clara Valley First' by Dan Bacher As local water pipes and infrastructure in the Santa Clara Valley and Los Angeles continue to leak and burst, opponents of Governor Jerry Brown?s massive Delta Tunnels on Thursday, March 3 questioned the ?wisdom? of state water districts investing another $1.2 billion in the controversial project that could cost up to $68 billion to taxpayers and ratepayers. ?Silicon Valley's largest water provider will have to spend at least $20 million to drain, test and repair a critical water pipeline that failed last summer and may have more hidden problems,? the San Jose Mercury News reported on Wednesday, March 2. (http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_29582505/california-drought-failure-key-water-pipeline-into-silicon ) The ruptured 8-foot-high, 31-mile-long concrete pipe brings up to 40 percent of the drinking water to Santa Clara County?s 1.8 million residents from the San Luis Reservoir in Merced County, according a a news release from Restore the Delta (RTD). A 10-foot section of the pile ruptured on August 1, 2015, sending 14 millions of water into a cow pasture near Casa De Fruta along Highway 152, the Pacheco Pass Highway. "This pipe is only 30 years old. I would not have expected it to fail so quickly," Barbara Keegan, chairwoman of the Santa Clara Valley Water District board, told Paul Rogers of the Mercury News. "It's not like there was a unique situation. The fact that it cracked and the wires corroded, how extensive is this? But the Santa Clara Valley is not the only place where water infrastructure is corroding, bursting and leaking. In Los Angeles, leaking water mains and pipes lose eight billion gallons of water each year. (http://graphics.latimes.com/la-aging-water-infrastructure/ The repairs to the Los Angeles water system will cost rate payers at least $1.3 billion and take at least a decade to fix, RTD noted. Meanwhile, Nancy Vogel, spokeswoman for the state Natural Resources Agency and former reporter for the Sacramento Bee and LA Times, has told both urban and agricultural water districts she will soon request from them, after environmental studies are completed this summer, another $1.2 billion to fund ?engineering and design studies? for the proposed Delta Tunnels project. (http://www.montereyherald.com/article/NF/20160126/NEWS/160129792 ) The project that Vogel and the Brown administration promote would not create one single drop of new water, but it would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other species and woud imperil the salmon and steelhead populations of the Klamath and Trinity rivers. This is the last thing we need now, considering that the low 2015 returns of fall-run Chinook salmon to the Sacramento and Klamath rivers, spurred by drought and water diversions from both systems, point to salmon fishing restrictions on the ocean and rivers this year. (http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/03/sacramento-and-klamath-river-salmon-ocean-abundance-estimates-are-down-in-2016/ ) "It's absurd that the Santa Clara Valley Water District would even consider moving forward with raising millions of dollars from ratepayers to advance the Delta Tunnels project when they cannot maintain their own existing water infrastructure," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. ?The tunnels project, misnamed California Water Fix, and their propaganda arm, Californians for Water Security, sell the Delta Tunnels as needed to save California's water supply when, in truth, the Delta is not the weak link in the water delivery system. Californians lose 10 to 15 percent of our water supply each year due to water main breaks and leaky pipes in urban areas.? ?It is also ironic that pipes laid just 30 years ago by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation are already corroded and breaking apart. If we cannot build and maintain an 8-foot pipe in the Santa Clara Valley Water District, what can we expect with two Delta tunnels, 40 feet wide, built in peat soil?" she pointed out. ?Let?s instead spend precious ratepayer dollars to fix the decaying LA and Santa Clara Valley Water infrastructure before considering a massive new proposal with an Environmental Impact Report the EPA has already issued a failing grade of ?inadequate?," Barrigan-Parrilla concluded. 3. http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/04/1357/ Photo of Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River by Dan Bacher. Karuk Tribe, Conservationists File Suit to Protect Klamath Wild Salmon, Rural Communities The Karuk Tribe and conservation groups yesterday filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging a post-fire logging plan in the Klamath National Forest. The press release was issued just a day after federal and state fishery managers releasef data showing a low return of fall- run Chinook salmon on the Klamath River system this year - and pointing to restrictions on the recreational, Tribal and commercial fisheries this year. We must do everything we can to restore our imperiled salmon populations, including supporting Klamath River Dam removal and challenging timber management plans that harm fish and their habitat. Below is the news release from the Tribe and environmental groups: Tribe, Conservationists File Suit to Protect Wild Salmon, Rural Communities Happy Camp, CA ? On March 3, the Karuk Tribe, along with the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild), Center for Biological Diversity, and Klamath Riverkeeper, filed suit in federal court challenging a massive post-fire logging plan in Klamath National Forest that will increase fire danger, degrade water quality, and harm at-risk salmon populations. The Tribe leads a diverse plaintiff group united by a common interest in restoring healthy relationships between people, fire, forests and fish. The groups seek to protect rural communities from fire risks, restore watershed health, and provide economic opportunities for locals. The coalition is challenging a post-fire timber sale, the Westside Project, which fails rural river communities by implementing the same management practices that have for decades resulted in a landscape prone to dangerous fire events, degraded water quality, and contributed to declining salmon populations. The suit alleges the Klamath National Forest Plan, as approved by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, illegally increases the risk of extinction for threatened populations of coho salmon. The Westside project would clear-cut 5,760 acres on burned forest slopes above tributaries of the Klamath River. This aggressive approach would fail to resolve long-term fire management issues and exacerbate wildfire impacts to recovering watersheds. The steep and rugged terrain contains old-growth forests and nurtures some of the most important salmon habitat on the West Coast. NOAA Fisheries is required to review Forest Service logging plans to determine if such projects will have harmful effects on ESA listed coho. In this case, NOAA Fisheries green lighted the Forest Service plan despite the obvious harm to coho spawning and rearing habitat. ?This project was ill-conceived from the start and failed to adequately take into account the input of the Karuk Tribe which has managed these forests since the beginning of time,? said Karuk Chairman Russell ?Buster? Attebery. ?We will not allow the Forest Service to further degrade our fisheries, water quality, or sacred sites while ignoring our call for community fire protection.? The Tribe?s alternative proposal ensures that future fire events will be healthy for the environment and safe for local residents while providing marketable timber. The Forest Service did not analyze the Karuk Alternative because it rushed the environmental review process under the pretense of a ?public emergency.? ?Unlike the massive Forest Service clear-cutting plans, the Karuk Alternative focuses on restoration,? explains George Sexton of the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. ?It recognizes the need to restore watersheds and the natural fire regime while protecting homes and communities.? ?The Klamath River and its tributaries are strongholds for struggling salmon populations; they are also home to many rare and endemic species. Logging these steep slopes would only increase the perilous position our fisheries and wildlife are facing,? said Kimberly Baker of EPIC. ?The Forest Service plan to clear-cut thousands of acres above the Klamath River disregards the reasonable Karuk Alternative and hurts at-risk salmon and river communities,? said Kerul Dyer of Klamath Riverkeeper. ?A healthy Klamath River requires sensible forest restoration that addresses the needs of both fish and people, like that laid out in the Karuk plan.? "We have a chance right now to restore healthy relationships among people, fire and forests," said Jay Lininger, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. "It requires a fundamentally different approach from what the Forest Service put forward." The groups are challenging the illegal harm to fish and watersheds that will result from the proposed post-fire clear cutting timber sales in hopes that the federal government will change course. Initial arguments will likely be heard by the District Court in the very near future. The Western Environmental Law Center represents all of the plaintiffs and EPIC is represented by in-house counsel. The full complaint can be found here: http://www.karuk.us/images/docs/press/2016/Complaint.pdf For more information: Craig Tucker, Natural Resources Policy Advocate, Karuk Tribe, 707-839-1982 George Sexton, Conservation Director, Klamath Siskiyou Wild, 541-778-8120 Kimberly Baker, Public Lands Advocate, EPIC, 707-822-7711 Jay Lininger, Senior Scientist, Center for Biological Diversity, 928-853-9929 Susan Jane Brown, Staff Attorney, Western Environmental Law Center, 503-914-1323 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: klamath.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 348256 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Mar 8 08:19:57 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 16:19:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Courthouse News Service: California Logging Will Hurt Salmon, Tribe Says References: <875920081.4660143.1457453997635.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <875920081.4660143.1457453997635.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/03/04/california-logging-will-hurt-salmon-tribe-says.htm | California Logging Will Hurt Salmon, Tribe Says By REBEKAH KEARN? | | | | ShareThis | ? | ?????SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A federal plan to open 2,000 acres of the Klamath River watershed to logging will harm threatened coho salmon and degrade its critical habitat, in violation of the Endangered Species Act, the Karuk Tribe and four environmental groups claim in court. ?????The Karuk Tribe, the Center for Biological Diversity et al. sued the National Marine Fisheries Service and its regional administrator William Stelle in Federal Court on Thursday. ?????With more than 6,000 members, the Karuk are one of the largest tribes in California. Karuk means "upriver people" in their language, a branch of the Hokan language group. Their homeland is along the Klamath River. Early Anglo ethnologists described them as a sophisticated democratic society with great knowledge of medicinal uses of plants. They were the only California tribe to grow tobacco. ?????They challenge the NMFS biological opinion that logging and "incidental take" of salmon associated with the U.S. Forest Service's Westside Fire Recovery Project would not harm threatened and endangered salmon in the Klamath River watershed. ?????Coho, also known as silver salmon, typically grow to about 28 inches and 7 to 11 pounds at maturity, though some have been recorded at 36 pounds. They are anadromous, spawning in fresh water but living their lives in the Pacific Ocean. They are silver with dark-blue sides in the ocean, and change color in freshwater to feature bright red sides, blue-green heads and dark spots on their backs. ?????They spawn in November and December. Smolts, or young fish, live in their freshwater habitat for up to 15 months, then migrate to the ocean in spring. To avoid predators and reach adulthood, smolts need a "complex stream morphology of pools, riffles, and backwaters created by large downed trees in the stream channel," according to the 16-page complaint. ?????Coho are found from Hokkaido, Japan in the North Pacific Ocean south to Monterey Bay, California. They feed on plankton and insects in freshwater, switch to small fish when they enter the ocean, and typically have a three-year life cycle. ?????The Fisheries Service has divided West Coast coho into six evolutionary significant units, including the South Oregon/Northern California Coasts (SONCC), which is comprised of 41 populations. Once numbering 150,000 to 400,000 naturally spawning fish in the mid-twentieth century, populations have declined to a mere 10,000. In light of this trend, the Fisheries Service in 1997 listed the SONCC coho unit as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. ?????It designated critical habitat for the unit in 1999 that included all accessible river areas and estuaries between the Mattole River in California and Elk River in Oregon after studies indicated that logging threatened the SONCC's unit's populations by removing vegetation, smothering eggs with sediment, altering stream oxygen levels, and increasing water turbidity, among other things. ?????After wildfires scorched 183,500 acres of private and public land in the Klamath River watershed in 2014, the U.S. Forest Service proposed the Westside Project to clear thousands of acres of trees and reforest the area. This commercial logging will produce around 75 million feet of "merchantable timber" that will take 15,000 logging trucks to haul away, according to the complaint. ?????The U.S. Forest Service is not a party to the complaint. ?????The contested portions of the project area encompass 187,100 acres of public land in the middle of the Klamath River Basin, in the Karuks' aboriginal territory. ?????Under the plan, 5,760 acres of standing dead trees will be salvaged and 3,700 acres will be opened to commercial logging. The plan also authorizes creation of 6.2 miles of temporary roads, 75 new landing areas for hauling, reforestation, and legacy sediment treatments to keep sediment from polluting streams, the complaint states. ?????Since all the watersheds in the project area serve as habitat for SONCC coho salmon populations, all of which are at moderate to high risk of extinction, the Endangered Species Act required the Forest Service to consult with the Fisheries Service to determine the Westside Project's environmental impact before work on it could begin. ?????The Fisheries Service found that logging and salvaging in the watersheds would increase sediment erosion and landslide risk, alter water body size and temperature, decrease habitat availability for coho salmon, degrade water quality, and retard watershed recovery, resulting in "adverse effects to individual SONCC coho salmon for approximately ten years," according to the complaint. ?????Nevertheless, the Fisheries Service issued a no-jeopardy finding on the coho salmon for the project. The plaintiffs call the opinion arbitrary and capricious, as it ignores the obvious harm to coho salmon in the project area, and "because it is based on uncertain and speculative measures related to restored habitat." ?????They say the incidental take statement was improper because it did not calculate take of coho from project activities, but "used as a surrogate for take quantification the amount of generated fine sediment delivered to streams," as estimated by project models. ?????Despite acknowledging that logging may slow natural restoration and that money from timber sales will not cover the costs of replanting, the Fisheries Service did not analyze the increased risk of landslides should replanting be delayed by the need for more money, according to the complaint. ?????Nor does the biological opinion consider species recovery for coho salmon in the project area or address how the project will affect coho conservation efforts, the complaint states. ?????The Fisheries Service could not be reached for comment after work hours Thursday. ?????Joining as plaintiffs are the Environmental Information Center, the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, and Klamath Riverkeeper. They seek declaratory judgment that the biological opinion and incidental take statement violate the Endangered Species Act and an injunction preventing any work from being done on the Westside Project until consultation has been reinitiated and completed. ?????They are represented by Tom Wheeler with the Environmental Protection Information Center in Arcata, who could not be reached for comment Thursday.? | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Mar 8 08:32:10 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 16:32:10 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Capital Press: Public meeting on new Klamath agreement set in Sacramento References: <1617152269.4700702.1457454730982.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1617152269.4700702.1457454730982.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.capitalpress.com/California/20160307/public-meeting-on-new-klamath-agreement-set-in-sacramento Public meeting on new Klamath agreement set in Sacramento Agencies and groups proposing the removal of four dams from the Klamath River will hold a public meeting on their latest agreement March 16 in Sacramento. The meeting comes after complaints from Rep. Doug LaMalfa and others that the process hasn't been public.Tim HeardenCapital PressPublished on March 7, 2016 10:46AMTIM HEARDEN/CAPITAL PRESSKlamath Basin rancher Becky Hyde, third from right, stands with fellow Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement proponents (from left) Chuck Woodward, Belinda Scales and Steve Kandra during a rally in 2011. Hyde vehemently disputes charges by Rep. Doug LaMalfa and others that the latest agreement is being developed in secret.Buy this photo?TIM HEARDEN/CAPITAL PRESSU.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., has been complaining about what he sees as secrecy in the way the new Klamath Basin agreement has been put together. Proponents have scheduled a public meeting on the latest proposal for March 16 in Sacramento. SACRAMENTO ? After complaints from U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa and others that their latest agreement was being crafted in secret, agencies planning the removal of four dams from the Klamath River announced a public meeting for March 16 to discuss the plan.The Klamath Basin Coordinating Council will consider formally amending a set of 2010 agreements on the future of the Klamath Basin and take public comments during a 1 p.m. meeting at the California Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Sacramento.The meeting comes after PacifiCorp, the states of California and Oregon and two federal agencies announced plans in February to set up a private entity to handle the four dams? removal by seeking a go-ahead from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.The new pact drew vocal complaints from LaMalfa, R-Calif., after two of his staff members showed up at private meetings scheduled to discuss the proposal and were asked to sign confidentiality agreements, which they refused to do.LaMalfa criticized the Klamath proponents for scheduling their meeting in Sacramento rather than the Klamath Basin or Yreka, Calif., which is near where three of the four dams operate.?Thanks a lot for having it six hours away from the people who are affected by it,? LaMalfa said. ?It makes me furious that they haven?t had any public meetings at all and now their best effort is to have it in Sacramento at the highly guarded EPA building.?They need to have it in Yreka,? he told the Capital Press. ?We?ll press for that. It doesn?t end there.?Ed Sheets, the meeting?s coordinator, did not immediately return an email seeking comment.LaMalfa has ruffled feathers in recent days after grilling Deputy Secretary of the Interior Mike Connor during a hearing in Washington, D.C. about the agency?s role in the latest dam removal proposal, which was crafted after Congress? failure to pass an authorization bill caused the original agreements to expire at the end of 2015.When asked if he believes his complaints prompted the public meeting, LaMalfa said, ?It couldn?t have hurt because I know they?re not very pleased that we?re publicizing what they?ve been up to.?LaMalfa?s gripes follow those of Oregon state Sen. Doug Whitsett, R-Klamath Falls, who said the plan to set up the private entity to handle dam removal should still require congressional approval because it?s an interstate compact.Whitsett?s argument is based on a legal opinion he received from Oregon Legislative Counsel Dexter Johnston, who told him in a letter that ?any interstate compact that creates a joint entity, or that affects matters explicitly reserved to the federal government ? is unconstitutional unless approved by Congress.?The senator also complained about the proponents? perceived secrecy.?I am at a total loss for how the staff for the governors of Oregon and California and the Department of the Interior can meet behind closed doors? to discuss policy, Whitsett told the Capital Press.Proponents of the agreements say they?re fundamentally a legal settlement that aims to resolve long-standing differences and grievances over various issues, including tribal rights, water rights and the fate of PacifiCorp?s private assets.?These settlement meetings have always had confidentiality agreements that the parties have signed,? said Beatty, Ore, cattle rancher Becky Hyde, who represents the Upper Klamath Water Users and has worked on the pacts since their beginning. ?That?s just the way these settlements work.?It is about my water rights, and how my water rights are affected by somebody else who has legal rights,? she said. ?Personally I could care less about a confidentiality agreement, but these are people?s legal rights. ? At some point PacifiCorp is trying to figure out what to do with a very big part of its portfolio.?Such agreements ?are common and even expected in all sorts of settlement discussions,? PacifiCorp spokesman Bob Gravely said in an email, noting that new parties who joined the discussions recently have agreed to abide by the same rules.Hyde vehemently rejects the notion that the process has been secretive, noting that LaMalfa chief of staff Mark Spannagel and field representative Erin Ryan were welcomed into two of the planning group?s meetings. During the second meeting in Portland, Ryan was texting updates to LaMalfa on the proceedings, Hyde said.She said charges of secrecy have long been part of the playbook for those in the Klamath Basin who?ve resisted settlements over water.?There has been this thing I?ve watched play out in the last 18 years that?s starting to just replay itself over and over again, and I don?t trust it anymore,? Hyde said. ?People who are not focused on finding a settlement in the Klamath Basin and Siskiyou County ? have repeatedly played this card of closed-door, secret meetings.?We?re tired, and frankly my water is going to get shut off this summer again if I don?t have an agreement with the Klamath Tribes,? she said. ?My community is already going broke and I?ve had it with these people ? I am fine with their point of view, but it is no longer fine to just lie.?The latest controversy continues more than a decade of division in the Klamath Basin over the agreements, which were first unveiled in 2010 and whose 42 signatories included Oregon and California officials, federal agencies, local water districts, water users? groups, environmental groups, tribes and other entities.Continued opposition from LaMalfa and other House of Representatives Republicans caused authorization bills to languish in Congress since 2011. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., a longtime opponent of dam removal, unveiled an eleventh-hour draft bill in December to move forward on other aspects of the agreement while putting approval of dam removal in the lap of FERC, but no efforts were made to merge it with one by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., which included dam removal.PacifiCorp has been collecting a surcharge from ratepayers to raise $200 million for dam removal and now plans to cover any further costs with non-federal funds, including money from California?s Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion water bond passed in 2014.The March 16 meeting will be held in the Sierra Hearing Room on the second floor of the California EPA Building, 1001 I St. Visit http://www.klamathcouncil.org?for details. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Mar 8 08:43:53 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 16:43:53 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Times Standard: Poor season forecast for Klamath Chinook salmon References: <775759825.4681761.1457455433427.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <775759825.4681761.1457455433427.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/environment-and-nature/20160305/poor-season-forecast-for-klamath-chinook-salmon Poor season forecast for Klamath Chinook salmon A population estimate for Chinook salmon (pictured) from the Klamath River for the upcoming fall run is the second lowest since at least 1996, according to the state. About 142,200 Klamath River Chinook salmon are estimated to be in the ocean, with fewer expected to return to the river to spawn.?Times-Standard fileBy?Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardPOSTED:?03/05/16, 10:15 PM PST?|?UPDATED: 2 DAYS AGO0 COMMENTSA dismal crab season may soon be followed by a poor turnout of fall run Chinook salmon in the Klamath River this year.The California and Oregon Departments of Fish and Wildlife estimate there to be 142,200 Klamath River fall run Chinook salmon in the Pacific Ocean this year, which is nearly a third of last year?s estimate and the second lowest predicted run size since at least 1996.For Stillwater Sciences senior fish biologist Joshua Strange, the low prediction is yet another indicator of the combined effects of climate change and the ongoing California drought.??In the last year or two, ocean productivity in our area was still good,? Strange said. ?It was essentially compensating for the drought and the poor river conditions and the fish diseases. Now that the ocean has shifted into a cycle of poor productivity for our coast, it has now exacerbated the effects of the drought and increased fish disease.?It?s also a clear warning sign that we need to do more to protect salmon and restore our rivers,? he continued.During the next few months, the Pacific Fishery Management Council and California Fish and Game Commission will use the predictions and other data to set salmon fishing season dates and catch restrictions. The Fish and Game Commission is set to make its final decision on April 18.The Hoopa Valley Tribe?s Fisheries Director Mike Orcutt said that even if more fish turn up than were predicted to, it does not mean that these fish will be swimming up the Klamath and Trinity Rivers.?The bottom line of it all is well under what we have seen in recent years,? Orcutt said ?It will meager in terms of harvest.?The Yurok and Hoopa tribes are entitled by the federal government to harvest at least 50 percent of the surplus Klamath River Chinook salmon that return to spawn. Orcutt said their harvest numbers could be drastically reduced by the state, which also has the power to close the fishery altogether as is currently occurring with the Dungeness crab seasonSince 1996, only the 2006 run of Klamath fall-run Chinook salmon had a lower predicted run size than this year?s. The 2006 prediction prompted the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to declare a salmon fisheries disaster for California and Oregon in order to open up federal relief funds.?From 2001 to 2005, drought conditions in the upper Klamath Basin resulted in very low flow conditions in the Klamath River and its tributaries,? a 2013 Congressional Research Service report states. ?Low flows likely contributed to substantial mortality of juvenile and adult Chinook salmon by creating an environment in which they become more susceptible to endemic diseases.??AdvertisementWhile the 2006 population size ended up being slightly higher than predicted with about 159,000 salmon recorded, the fishery was strictly curtailed between May and August that year.?Although a complete closure of the fishery was avoided, landings decreased in 2006 by 81 percent when compared to the average of the preceding five years,? the 2013 Congressional Research Services report states.While there recently have been some ?power broods? for Klamath River Chinook, such as the 2012 record-breaking population of nearly 880,000, Orcutt said the returns have dropped steadily throughout the years.Within the next few weeks, Orcutt said they?ll be able to estimate how many salmon will likely swim upriver, though his expectations aren?t very high.?There is not going to be a whole lot of fish,? Orcutt said.Jim McCarthy, the southern Oregon Program Manager for the environmental organization WaterWatch of Oregon, stated in an email sent to news media that these forecasts have, in the past, been lower than the actual population sizes.?But since 1996, only seven predictions for Klamath fall run Chinook were lower than the actual population size as opposed to the 12 predictions that overestimated the population, according to the state data.?However, it is important to note that because of the complexity in the salmon season setting process and number of factors considered, this 2016 Klamath run number doesn?t mean that we will see an exact repeat of 2006,? McCarthy wrote. ?However, it will mean that coastal communities will most likely take a big economic hit this year.?Strange said it?s hard to pinpoint an exact cause of the low salmon population, but said it comes in the midst of several other marine creature maladies, including high concentrations of neurotoxins found in Dungeness crab and record die-offs of sea lion populations in southern California.?Whether it?s carbon sequestration raising the acidity of the ocean waters, abnormally warm ocean waters or radiation from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, Strange said the base of the marine food chain is collapsing under the strain.?Salmon are not going to be able to escape that level of disturbance in the marine environment,? Strange said. ?There are a lot of serious indicators.?Similar to the 2006 salmon run, this year?s run is also preceded by several years of drought conditions which led to outbreaks of deadly fish pathogens, juvenile fish death, barred passage to essential spawning tributaries throughout the last few years.Strange said that humans have more control over freshwater environments than the oceans, which if properly protected could lessen the burden on the fish.?One method of doing this that Strange and Orcutt support is the removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River as part of the renewed Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement project.?The clock is ticking with Mother Nature,? Strange said. ?We don?t have an endless amount of time to remove the dams on the Klamath River. The salmon really need that to happen as soon as possible to help compensate for some of the negative impacts of global warming, which includes impacts to the marine environment as well as freshwater.?By removing the dams, Orcutt said that it would give the salmon access to cold, disease-free water supplies.?The health of the population is driven by the health of the habitat in the (Klamath River) basin,? he said. ?We?re not doing all that great in terms of survival.?Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Mar 8 15:14:18 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 23:14:18 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] TRRP Science Program Coordinator Job Opening References: <660045319.4928565.1457478858511.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <660045319.4928565.1457478858511.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> The Arcata Fish and Wildlife Office (AFWO) is advertising for a?Science Program Coordinator for the Trinity River Restoration Program.? The position is supervised out of Arcata, CA and duty stationed in Weaverville, CA.? The position is open to all US Citizens and closes on?March 14.? Please share this email with all potential candidates. https://www.usajobs.gov/ GetJob/ViewDetails/429751800/? ? MERIThttps://www.usajobs.gov/ GetJob/ViewDetails/429758500/? ? DEU -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Mar 9 08:50:38 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 16:50:38 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Agenda for TRRP Science Symposium March 29-31, Weaverville. References: <1884564285.5267405.1457542239164.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1884564285.5267405.1457542239164.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> See attached agenda. ??Tom Stokely?V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315?tstokely at att.net? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRRP DSS Wkshop Agenda.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 225913 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Mar 9 10:02:41 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 10:02:41 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Metropolitan Water District Authorizes Purchase of Delta Islands In-Reply-To: <1884564285.5267405.1457542239164.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1884564285.5267405.1457542239164.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1884564285.5267405.1457542239164.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <65E093C5-4226-449B-8976-F806CE1F1C92@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/09/metropolitan-water-district-authorizes-purchase-of-four-delta-islands/ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/8/1498357/-Metropolitan-Water-District-Authorizes-Purchase-of-Delta-Islands Photo of Delta smelt courtesy of Department of Water Resources Metropolitan Water District Authorizes Purchase of Delta Islands by Dan Bacher As Delta smelt and other fish species reach record low population levels and fishermen and fisherwomen brace for salmon restrictions this season, the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California authorized the purchase of four islands in the San Francisco Bay-Delta for an undisclosed sum at a closed session of their Board of Directors meeting on the morning of Tuesday, March 8. The Metropolitan Water District is a ?regional wholesaler that delivers water,? according to the MWD website: www.mwdh2o.com. MWD, Southern California?s most powerful water agency, is one of the strongest proponents of Governor Jerry Brown's California Water Fix to build the controversial Delta Tunnels. MWD?s 37-member Board of Directors represents 26 agencies in Southern California. ?The deal is highly controversial in Northern California, as it would put Southern California?s most powerful water agency in control of a group of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta islands that can serve as water storage areas or entry points for the proposed $15 billion Delta Tunnels projects,? observed Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. For months, MWD has been considering the purchase of islands now used for farming. ?The islands mirror the path of the plan for the Delta Tunnels proposal," said Barrigan-Parrilla. The four island deal includes Bouldin Island, Webb Tract, Holland Tract, and Bacon Island, covering approximately 20,369 acres of the Delta, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Southern-California-water-giant-agrees-to-buy-6878573.php ) Here is a map of the islands in the path of the Delta Tunnels: http://www.restorethedelta.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/tunnel_overlay9-18-15_S-1.pdf ?It is troubling for the Delta region that Metropolitan Water District is going to acquire such a significant portion of Delta land and Delta water rights,? said Barrigan-Parrilla. ?They have the resources to change law and policies statewide to maximize their access to Delta water in their favor. They will own two islands that are directly in the path of the proposed Delta Tunnels project, eliminating eminent domain concerns for that portion of tunnels construction.? ?We believe that having MWD as a neighbor is an existential threat to the future of the Delta and Delta communities,? Barrigan-Parrilla emphasized. Barrigan-Parrilla noted that after nine years and a quarter of a billion dollars spent on the proposal, Delta Tunnels backers have still has not produced a ?legally acceptable plan that can pass environmental standards.? On October 30, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the California Water Fix Draft Environmental Impact Report a failing grade of ?Inadequate? due to lack of science about the impacts on the Delta ecosystem and endangered species. This report came on the heels of critical scientific reviews of the report by the Delta Independent Science Board and other panels of scientists. The ?existential threat? to the future of the Delta and its communities that this MWD purchase represents is the last thing that the Delta needs now, considering that the population of Delta smelt has plunged to its lowest level in recorded history, according to the California Fish and Wildlife?s Spring Kodiak Survey. The January trawl survey produced only seven fish, while the February survey yielded only just seven fish. The Delta smelt, an indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Delta Estuary, was once the most abundant fish on the estuary, numbering in the millions. (http://www.capradio.org/articles/2016/03/07/delta-smelt-populations-plummet-2nd-year-in-a-row ) As Delta smelt populations near extinction, recreational, tribal and commercial salmon fishermen face restrictions this year, due to the low abundance estimates for Sacramento and Klamath River Chinook salmon. As is the case with the Delta smelt, salmon populations have plummeted due to massive water exports out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system and the Trinity River, the largest tributary of the Klamath, along with poor management of northern California reservoirs by the state and federal governments and declining water quality. ( http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/03/sacramento-and-klamath-river-salmon-ocean-abundance-estimates-are-down-in-2016/) The construction of the Delta Tunnels facilitated by MWD's purchase of the Delta islands would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other species, along with imperiling the salmon and steelhead populations of the Klamath and Trinity rivers. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: delta_smelt_-_dwr.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 61114 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Mar 9 13:07:03 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 21:07:03 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] SEC Fined Westlands for Misleading Bond Investors In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <494689342.5523320.1457557623667.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> | | | | Contact:?SEC Office of Public Affairs ??news at sec.gov, 202-551-4120 SEC Order:?http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2016/33-10053.pdf Defense Counsel: Kenneth Herzinger at?Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe -?415-773-5409 | | | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | 2016-43 | | | CALIFORNIA WATER DISTRICT TO PAY PENALTY FOR MISLEADING INVESTORS ? Washington D.C., March 9, 2016 ? The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged California?s largest agricultural water district with misleading investors about its financial condition as it issued a $77 million bond offering. ? In addition to charging Westlands Water District, the SEC charged its general manager Thomas Birmingham and former assistant general manager Louie David Ciapponi. According to the SEC?s order instituting a settled administrative proceeding: - Westlands agreed in prior bond offerings to maintain a 1.25 debt service coverage ratio, which is a measure of an issuer?s ability to make future bond payments. - Westlands learned in 2010 that drought conditions and reduced water supply would prevent the water district from generating enough revenue to maintain a 1.25 ratio. - In order to meet the 1.25 ratio without raising rates on water customers, Westlands used extraordinary accounting transactions that reclassified funds from reserve accounts to record additional revenue. - Birmingham jokingly referred to these transactions as ?a little Enron accounting? when describing them to the board of directors, which is comprised of Westlands customers.? - When Westlands issued the $77 million bond offering in 2012, it represented to investors that it met or exceeded the 1.25 ratio for each of the prior five years. - Not only did Westlands fail to disclose that wouldn?t have been possible without the extraordinary 2010 accounting transactions, but also omitted separate accounting adjustments made in 2012 that would have negatively affected the ratio had they been done in 2010.? - Had the 2010 reclassifications and the effect of the 2012 adjustments been disclosed, Westlands? coverage ratio for 2010 would have been only 0.11 instead of the 1.25 reported to investors. - Birmingham and Ciapponi improperly certified the accuracy of the bond offering documents. Westlands agreed to pay $125,000 to settle the charges, making it only the second municipal issuer to pay a financial penalty in an SEC enforcement action.? Birmingham and Ciapponi agreed to pay penalties of $50,000 and $20,000 respectively to settle the charges against them. ?The undisclosed accounting transactions, which a manager referred to as ?a little Enron accounting,? benefited customers but left investors in the dark about Westlands Water District?s true financial condition,? said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC Enforcement Division.?? ?Issuers must be truthful with investors and we will seek to deter such misconduct through sanctions, including penalties against municipal issuers in appropriate circumstances.? The SEC?s order finds that Westlands, Birmingham and Ciapponi violated Section 17(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933 and must cease and desist from future violations. The SEC?s investigation was conducted by Brian P. Knight, Creighton L. Papier, Monique C. Winkler, and Deputy Chief Mark R. Zehner in the Municipal Securities and Public Pensions Unit with assistance from John Yun in the San Francisco office. | | | | | | ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 36689 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 49820 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ema.berol at yahoo.com Wed Mar 9 13:40:48 2016 From: ema.berol at yahoo.com (Emelia Berol) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 13:40:48 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] SEC Fined Westlands for Misleading Bond Investors In-Reply-To: <494689342.5523320.1457557623667.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <494689342.5523320.1457557623667.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <860F4F72-F17C-4776-A258-83FFE05C4861@yahoo.com> Very entertaining, looks like they took a lesson from one of Maxxam's old rule books! Sent from my iPhone > On Mar 9, 2016, at 1:07 PM, Tom Stokely wrote: > > > > > Contact: SEC Office of Public Affairs ?? news at sec.gov, 202-551-4120 > > SEC Order: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2016/33-10053.pdf > > Defense Counsel: Kenneth Herzinger at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe - 415-773-5409 > FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE > 2016-43 > CALIFORNIA WATER DISTRICT TO PAY PENALTY FOR MISLEADING INVESTORS > > > Washington D.C., March 9, 2016 ? The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged California?s largest agricultural water district with misleading investors about its financial condition as it issued a $77 million bond offering. > > In addition to charging Westlands Water District, the SEC charged its general manager Thomas Birmingham and former assistant general manager Louie David Ciapponi. > According to the SEC?s order instituting a settled administrative proceeding: > Westlands agreed in prior bond offerings to maintain a 1.25 debt service coverage ratio, which is a measure of an issuer?s ability to make future bond payments. > Westlands learned in 2010 that drought conditions and reduced water supply would prevent the water district from generating enough revenue to maintain a 1.25 ratio. > In order to meet the 1.25 ratio without raising rates on water customers, Westlands used extraordinary accounting transactions that reclassified funds from reserve accounts to record additional revenue. > Birmingham jokingly referred to these transactions as ?a little Enron accounting? when describing them to the board of directors, which is comprised of Westlands customers. > When Westlands issued the $77 million bond offering in 2012, it represented to investors that it met or exceeded the 1.25 ratio for each of the prior five years. > Not only did Westlands fail to disclose that wouldn?t have been possible without the extraordinary 2010 accounting transactions, but also omitted separate accounting adjustments made in 2012 that would have negatively affected the ratio had they been done in 2010. > Had the 2010 reclassifications and the effect of the 2012 adjustments been disclosed, Westlands? coverage ratio for 2010 would have been only 0.11 instead of the 1.25 reported to investors. > Birmingham and Ciapponi improperly certified the accuracy of the bond offering documents. > Westlands agreed to pay $125,000 to settle the charges, making it only the second municipal issuer to pay a financial penalty in an SEC enforcement action. Birmingham and Ciapponi agreed to pay penalties of $50,000 and $20,000 respectively to settle the charges against them. > ?The undisclosed accounting transactions, which a manager referred to as ?a little Enron accounting,? benefited customers but left investors in the dark about Westlands Water District?s true financial condition,? said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC Enforcement Division. ?Issuers must be truthful with investors and we will seek to deter such misconduct through sanctions, including penalties against municipal issuers in appropriate circumstances.? > The SEC?s order finds that Westlands, Birmingham and Ciapponi violated Section 17(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933 and must cease and desist from future violations. > The SEC?s investigation was conducted by Brian P. Knight, Creighton L. Papier, Monique C. Winkler, and Deputy Chief Mark R. Zehner in the Municipal Securities and Public Pensions Unit with assistance from John Yun in the San Francisco office. > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > env-trinity mailing list > env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From victoria7 at snowcrest.net Wed Mar 9 16:19:01 2016 From: victoria7 at snowcrest.net (Vicki Gold) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 16:19:01 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Urgent! Support Water for Weed Thursday March 10th ~WATER IS LIFE!!! References: <236267446.5639815.1457568142863.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > > > >> From: Vicki Gold >> Subject: Urgent! Support Water for Weed Thursday March 10th ~WATER IS LIFE!!! >> Date: March 7, 2016 6:56:02 PM PST >> To: Vicki Gold >> >> Hello Friends of Mount Shasta and Protectors of our Source Waters, >> >> You are requested to attend the Weed City Council Meeting on Thursday March 10th at 5:30 pm. City Hall 550 Main Street Weed. There will be a Rally for our Shasta water as a Public Trust from 3-5pm before the hearing. Bring your signs and warm clothing. The press will be invited. The important issue of water as a public trust~the commons will be addressed again and there will be an opportunity to comment on the very adverse proposal offered by Roseburg Forest Products. >> >> This will be the 2nd reading of the Memorandum of Agreement between the City of Weed and Roseburg Forest Products (RFP) involving a $97,500 annual fee to supply 1.5 cubic feet/ second (less than the required municipal need of 2.0 cfs). We will be protesting the signing of any Memorandum of Agreement implying that the City and citizens admit that the Beaughan Springs water is owned by RFP!!!~Many of us feel that signing this contract jeopardizes the City in their future attempt to assert their legal water rights. >> >> If there are not 3 votes to continue, and thus delay a decision for 2 additional weeks, (which we anticipate will not be the case), perhaps the City Council can at least add language asserting that there is nothing in the signing of this agreement that acknowledges that RFP actually has title to these water rights. The City Council must be aware of the many costs to the city and the county because of the truck traffic, damage to the roads, the sewer usage by both Crystal Geyser for 20 years and RFP for over 50 years. It is time for a reckoning. The citizens must not subsidize the extensive expenses and damage incurred by RFP and CG Roxanne's operations. This is corporate welfare, which a poor county and city cannot afford. All of Mount Shasta including the City of Mt. Shasta and the township of McCloud must take note. We have been here before with Nestle and Coca Cola. >> >> This is a complex issue. If it is true that Crystal Geyser Roxanne approached the City of Weed in 1995-96 offering to represent the City in a suit under eminent domain in order to acquire the rights from RFP, then this is now indeed a very incestuous relationship among the two corporations and the City of Weed. Churchwell White (attorney Barbara Brenner as representative of RFP and of CG) now claims that the City has no rights . This defies logic. We encourage the City to consider investigating this further. Roseburg cannot have it both ways. >> >> Here is a draft of an article that may be published online next week: >> Water privatization in Weed CA >> At the base of Mount Shasta a poor community, having traded its resource rich timberlands for jobs for over 140 years, is now facing another issue~ this time control of its municipal and domestic water source by the same company, Roseburg Forest Products (RFP). When under ownership of Kenneth Ford there was a very benevolent and compatible relationship with the City of Weed. He would be turning over in his grave if he was aware of the sad situation that is now unfolding. We are sure he would be on the side of the citizens of Weed. The new management and ownership is clearly not as generous and compassionate as was their founder. >> >> This is a clear example of the extreme threat to a community when their water is not under public control. While Flint is an example of public control abandoned and gone awry, this is the exception. See links to articles covering the threat to the City by RFP. To further complicate the picture, Crystal Geyser Roxanne (French and Japanese Otsuka Pharmaceutical parent companies) cut a deal with RFP in 1996 for a large share of the water for bottling and shipping to Japan and the US. As the source springs diminished in flow in 2014 by 25%, CG was still rumored to be using 1.5 -2 million gallons per day as the citizens cut back drastically. The City of Weed wants to assert that they have legal water rights; we are especially concerned in light of the TPP. See links: >> >> From my research I discovered that in 1996 CG Roxanne offered to represent the City in exchange for access to 1.0 cfs of water for 200 years paying only $.00019 per gallon. That is a windfall! This is an echo of the same deal Nestle offered in McCloud. Apparently these water privatization companies think they are dealing with country bumpkins. Time to set things right. Here are the recent articles covering the Weed water crisis: >> http://www.siskiyoudaily.com/article/20160303/NEWS/160309891 >> >> http://www.mtshastanews.com/article/20160302/NEWS/160309917 >> >> http://ijpr.org/post/weed-faces-water-woes#stream/2 >> >> http://vp.telvue.com/preview?id=T01498&video=267132 >> >> http://www.siskiyoudaily.com/article/20140825/News/140829843/?Start=1 >> >> http://www.siskiyoudaily.com/article/20160223/NEWS/160229949/2025/NEWS >> Please attend this important meeting: >> >> Mount Shasta is beaming energy to all of us to protect her water which must flow free. Come and support Weed on Thursday afternoon and evening. >> >> Always in Profound Gratitude for our Amazing Community, >> >> Vicki >> Water Flows Free > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Mar 9 18:57:05 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 02:57:05 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?b?Rnc6IFtOZXcgcG9zdF0gSW5zdGVhZCBvZiDigJhT?= =?utf-8?q?upermarket_to_the_World=E2=80=99=2E?= In-Reply-To: <5769585.3318.0@wordpress.com> References: <5769585.3318.0@wordpress.com> Message-ID: <104978987.5685866.1457578625489.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Wednesday, March 9, 2016 5:05 PM, On the public record wrote: #yiv6309267771 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv6309267771 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv6309267771 a.yiv6309267771primaryactionlink:link, #yiv6309267771 a.yiv6309267771primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv6309267771 a.yiv6309267771primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv6309267771 a.yiv6309267771primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv6309267771 WordPress.com | onthepublicrecord posted: "When I was just a little girl, the Archer Daniels Midland price-fixing scandal broke.? Forever after, my father and I would mutter "bunch of crooks" in? unison when?we heard their ads on NPR.? Today, wonderful people at the SEC?tell us that Westlands Wate" | | Respond to this post by replying above this line | | | | | New post on On the public record | | | | | | Instead of ?Supermarket to the?World?. by onthepublicrecord | When I was just a little girl, the Archer Daniels Midland price-fixing scandal broke.? Forever after, my father and I would mutter "bunch of crooks" in? unison when?we heard their ads on NPR.? Today, wonderful people at the SEC?tell us that Westlands Water District lied to investors to disguise the fact that they'd rather sell?bonds they can't afford to?pay back?than raise their water rates.? Evidence shows that General Manager Tom Birmingham?advised to his board?to do some "Enron accounting" and then verified the?financial lies?in their Official Statement.? For this he was personally fined $50K.My thoughts: - The SEC holding is very clear, very clean writing.? If you can follow this blog, you can read the holding itself.? You might enjoy that as much as I did. - Mr. Birmingham should be disbarred for perjury. - Westlands Water District is broker than it looks from the outside.? Without "Enron accounting", they can barely afford their debt service.? I have occasionally wondered how they could afford their very pricey stable of politically connected managers, plus the tens of millions they've shoveled into BDCP.? Apparently they can't, not without raising their water rates. - I wonder how the SEC found this crime and why they pursued it.? If you know, please do email me.? I would love to hear the story. My father sent me the breaking article about the SEC fining Westlands and two of their managers.? I am sure he'd be happy to append "couple of crooks" to their name, as a cozy father-daughter activity.? onthepublicrecord | March 9, 2016 at : | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pocVP-Rw | Comment | ???See all comments | | | | Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from On the public record. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://onthepublicrecord.org/2016/03/09/instead-of-supermarket-to-the-world/ | | | | | | Thanks for flying with WordPress.com | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Mar 10 07:18:58 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 15:18:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] "...A LITTLE ENRON ACCOUNTING...." In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2143621500.5916024.1457623139140.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> And the federal government is planning on giving Westlands a $375+ million bailout... Largest California water district fined for misleading investors Fox News?- ?5 hours ago? FRESNO, Calif. ? Federal regulators issued a rare fine Wednesday to the nation's largest agricultural water district for misleading bond investors about the district's financial circumstances. ADVERTISEMENT. Thomas Birmingham, general manager of... SEC Issues Record Fine to California's Largest Agricultural Water District Wall Street Journal?- ?12 hours ago? LOS ANGELES?California's sustained drought has set another record, this time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC on Wednesday fined California's largest agricultural water district $125,000 to settle civil charges that it misled?... ? ? A Little Enron Accounting Puts Water District in Hot Water Bloomberg?- ?14 hours ago? California's largest agricultural water district misled investors who bought $77 million of municipal bonds by using accounting tricks to mask how much its finances were being squeezed by a drought gripping the state, the U.S. Securities and Exchange?... California's largest water district, accused of misleading investors, settles with the SEC Los Angeles Times?- ?13 hours ago? A sprawling Central Valley water district run by some of the state's wealthiest growers papered over its drought-related financial struggles and misled investors, federal regulators said Wednesday. The Westlands Water District shifted about $8.3... Westlands Water District, Nation's Largest Agricultural Water District, Hit With Rare Federal Fine International Business Times?- ?5 hours ago? california central valley The California Aqueduct and farm fields are seen in the Central Valley in Coalinga, California, May 6, 2015. Photo: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday levied a $125,000 fine on?... ? | UPDATE 1-SEC imposes rare, record penalty on municipal bond issuer Reuters?-?14 hours ago? (Adds Westlands statement). By Jonathan Stempel. March 9 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday fined a municipal bond issuer for only the second time, accusing California's largest agricultural water district of overstating its?... Westlands Water District fined by SEC for misleading investors of financial circumstances Lawyer Herald?-?3 hours ago? BAKERSFIELD, CA - MAY 08: Carlos Garcia, a Kern County ditch tender, adjusts a canal gate on May 8, 2008 near Bakersfield, California. Opening of the Kern County reserve wells began earlier this week. Urgent calls for California residents to conserve?... Regulators fine major California water district, saying it overstated its finances OCRegister?-?10 hours ago? Jean Errotabere checks the flow of water provided by the Westlands Water District in this Feb. 27, 2001, file photo taken at Errotabere's ranch in Riverdale. Westlands encompasses 600,000 acres on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in Fresno and?... In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to those already displayed. If you like, you can | | | ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 2548 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1626 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image006.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1345 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Mar 10 08:39:51 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 16:39:51 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Capitol Journal Pouring bullet train money into water development could backfire References: <500111701.5973312.1457627991429.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <500111701.5973312.1457627991429.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-bullet-train-20160310-story.html Capitol Journal? Pouring bullet train money into water development could backfire George SkeltonContact ReporterCapitol Journal?At first glance, the idea is appealing: Scrap Gov. Jerry Brown?s troubled bullet train project and pour the money into water development.Voters have soured on the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail line after authorizing it eight years ago.It?s way behind schedule. Projected costs and routes keep changing. It needs tons more money. But private investors aren?t interested and the Republican Congress is hostile.The time seems ripe for a ballot initiative to shift what?s left of the bullet bonds ? $8 billion remaining from the original $10 billion ? to needed water projects.In fact, a recent poll by the Hoover Institution found that 53% of Californians favored the notion and only 31% were opposed.But hold on. This proposal isn?t as simple as just trading the train for water. There?s a lot more to it.Court rejects key lawsuit against California high-speed rail systemIt would shuffle California water law with questionable results for taxpayers, the environment and many farmers.Interests you?d think would herald the proposal ? some agriculture groups and water agencies ? are forming coalitions to fight it.Voter signatures?are being collected to qualify the initiative for the November ballot. The sponsors are two Republicans: state Sen. Bob Huff of San Dimas, who?s running for Los Angeles County supervisor, and George Runner, a member of the state Board of Equalization. The campaign is being run by the California Water Alliance, funded with San Joaquin Valley agriculture money.But not all San Joaquin farmers and officials like the idea.?Don?t be fooled,? wrote Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League, in a Fresno Bee op-ed piece. ?Unfortunately, this initiative will not advance water projects, but instead set us back years and possibly kill projects.?The Bee reported growing opposition among San Joaquin Valley agriculture, government and water leaders.They?re not defending the bullet train. But they object to one key provision of the initiative: The grabbing of $2.7 billion in storage money from a delicately negotiated $7.5-billion water bond measure approved overwhelmingly by voters in 2014.The $2.7 billion combined with the bullet train?s $8 billion would provide $10.7 billion for water projects. The money would be doled out by a newly created body composed of regional water managers.It would replace the California Water Commission, which already is considering new dams on the San Joaquin River at Temperance Flat near Fresno, and close to the Sacramento River at sites in Colusa County. Cunha says creating a new bureaucracy ?will put us back maybe a whole decade.?The initiative also seems to be a full employment act for lawyers. It messes with long-established water rights.It would amend the state Constitution to make domestic use the No. 1 priority for stored water and crop irrigation No. 2. And those would be the only listed priorities. Salmon runs, endangered species and waterfowl habitat? Not priorities. The environment would take a bath.This, of course, has been the dream of some San Joaquin agriculture corporations for decades.In the Sacramento Valley ? the northern expanse of the Central Valley ? there?s growing opposition.?To say that all farmers believe the environment should come last in water priority is just not true and is insulting,? says Tim Johnson, president and chief executive of the California Rice Commission. ?Farmers in the north who work closely with the environment find that offensive.?For starters, rice farmers oppose the measure because they believe it could delay construction of Sites Reservoir.?We?d have to start over from scratch,? Johnson says. Now, a concrete proposal is expected next year.Also, because of the initiative?s tinkering with water law, rice growers are worried it could curtail their flooding of harvested fields to host migratory waterfowl.The fall flooding is mutually beneficial: It breaks down rice straw and allows farmers to replant the next spring. And it produces a delicious soup of leftover rice and insects for migrating ducks and geese.This isn?t crop irrigation ? a priority under the initiative ? but crop cleanup and bird feeding. Before the flooding began around 1990, crops were burned, badly fouling Sacramento Valley air. Now the flooding provides a paradise for hunters, waterfowl and bird lovers.?We?re providing 60% of the food for 3 to 5 million geese and ducks,? Johnson says. ?We flood 200,000 acres. Farmers get very excited about all the great stuff in our fields: sandhill cranes, bald eagles, egrets, great blue herons. Right now, lots of snow geese.??Californians historically care a lot about rivers and fish and wildlife,? says Jay Ziegler, policy director for the Nature Conservancy. ?It?s part of our natural legacy and quality of life. This measure really puts at risk the balance we?re trying to protect.?California politics updates: DeLe?n wades into air quality fightDavid Guy, president of the Northern California Water Assn., said his organization is ?frustrated that folks are out gathering signatures and flat-out misleading people. This is a foolhardy initiative we can?t ignore.??It?s deceptively appealing, but unfortunate,? said Republican state Sen. Jim Nielsen of Gerber in the Sacramento Valley. ?It?s opening a can of worms.?Aubrey Bettencourt, who heads the sponsoring California Water Alliance, calls the initiative ?a commonsense effort to provide water for people first? and says it is ?a rare chance for the people ? to tell the state to get its priorities straight. High-speed rail is an unpopular boondoggle.?Should we shift rail money to water? That?s a legitimate argument. But this initiative also has other agendas that reach too far.george.skelton at latimes.comTwitter:?George Skelton @ LAT (@LATimesSkelton) | Twitter | ? | | ? | | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | George Skelton @ LAT (@LATimesSkelton) | TwitterThe latest Tweets from George Skelton @ LAT (@LATimesSkelton). Political columnist George Skelton has covered government and politics for The Los Angeles Times... | | | | View on www.twitter.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | ? | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Mar 11 08:36:56 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 16:36:56 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] LA Times: Hiltzik FEDS SLAM (WESTLANDS) FOR COOKING ITS BOOKS, "...SEC Action Casts A Shadow Over $200 Million in Bonds Issued By Westlands..." In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <620008382.378282.1457714216754.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> The implications of all this are serious. For one thing, it shows that Westlands management is willing to mislead investors simply to save money for its users. It raises the question of whether a district that behaves this way is a suitable partner for the federal government in other deals, including the huge litigation settlement last year that was negotiated in secret, and that amounted to a huge federal giveaway to the district. And it could affect a congressional debate over that settlement. It should.? The SEC action casts a shadow over $200 million in bonds issued by Westlands and a neighboring district, which have been placed on negative credit watch by the rating agency Moody's. ?But the darkest shadow is cast over the cause of good governance. As long as senior officials can boast about doing "Enron accounting" and then, when they're caught, get off without admitting their wrongdoing for the record, there's little hope that the public interest will be protected. Los Angeles Times ? Michael HiltzikColumnist BUSINESSMichael Hiltzik The feds slam a big water agency for cooking its books -- but they didn't go far enough Canal cuts through the giant Westlands Water District (AP) By Michael Hiltzik The Westlands Water District is the biggest of big shots in the water world of California's?Central Valley -- so big that it was able late last year tobeat the federal government in a secret deal to secure a reliable water supply for its member almond and pistachio growers in perpetuity -- despite the fact that the deal makes a hash of efforts to produce an overall state water policy.? But on Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled another aspect to Westlands' way of doing business:cooking the books. The SEC slapped the district and two officers with a total of $195,000 in penalties for faking financial records in connection with a 2012 bond issue.? A little Enron accounting. Westlands General Manager Thomas Birmingham describes the financial finagling caught by the SEC As my colleague Geoffrey Mohan?reports, the SEC?is crowing about this being its largest settlement ever in a case against a municipal bond agency.?Sadly, however, the agency's action is just another slap on the wrist for white collar wrongdoers. Nothing in the settlement, big as it is, will deter either Westlands or any other municipal bond issuer from trying to pull the same stunt in the future.? What's especially disturbing is that the SEC, despite calling this a case of "negligence," had evidence that the district and its officers, General Manager Thomas Birmingham and former Treasurer Louie Ciapponi, knew exactly what they were doing. When questioned by a Westlands board member about the transaction at issue, Birmingham joked that they were engaging in "a little Enron accounting."? Yet no one admitted to wrongdoing in the settlement, making this another case of something being done illegally, yet without any?human being actually being identified as the wrongdoing party. What's left unsaid in the SEC action is why Birmingham or Ciapponi should be henceforth permitted to hold any official office with an agency issuing bonds to the public. Also escaping scot-free, at least for the moment, is the "independent auditor" who told Westlands that the financial maneuvers the SEC found improper were "permissible."? ---------------------- Related: How a rich water district beat the government in a secret deal A huge water district defends a secret handout ---------------------- The auditing firm isn't identified in the SEC documents, but the firm whose 2012 Westlands audit is attached tothe bond circular at the heart of the SEC's case is Clovis-based?Sampson, Sampson & Patterson. We've asked the firm to comment, but have not received a response.? Let's look at what they were up to. In 2009, the district discovered that its revenues would fall $10 million below what it needed to meet bond covenants requiring it to collect 25% more each year than it had to pay in principal and interest on its debt. In fact, because of the drought, its coverage ratio wasn't 1.25, but as little as 0.11. Had that happened, it would have been in technical default on some of its bonds.? Whoops: the circled figure in this Westlands bond offering was fake, according to the SEC. Instead of bringing revenue up by raising rates to its users by 11.6%, which would have done the job, Westlands reclassified some of its cash holdings as revenue and moved some other money around. It did so, the SEC says, "solely" to meet the covenant.? What concerns the SEC is that the misstatement made it into the official offering for a $77-million refunding bond issue in?2012. That misled buyers of those bonds into thinking that the district invariably collected enough money to cover its bonds, when the truth is it had fallen hugely short in 2010. That would have made a difference to many investors, who might have decided to stay away. The implications of all this are serious. For one thing, it shows that Westlands management is willing to mislead investors simply to save money for its users. It raises the question of whether a district that behaves this way is a suitable partner for the federal government in other deals, including the huge litigation settlement last year that was negotiated in secret, and that amounted to a huge federal giveaway to the district. And it could affect a congressional debate over that settlement. It should.? The SEC action casts a shadow over $200 million in bonds issued by Westlands and a neighboring district, which have been placed on negative credit watch by the rating agency Moody's. ?But the darkest shadow is cast over the cause of good governance. As long as senior officials can boast about doing "Enron accounting" and then, when they're caught, get off without admitting their wrongdoing for the record, there's little hope that the public interest will be protected. ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image002.png Type: image/png Size: 257059 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Mar 11 08:48:35 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 16:48:35 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] LA Times A huge water district defends a secret handout References: <1263348666.404059.1457714915142.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1263348666.404059.1457714915142.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> I had missed this article from September, but it's still relevant. http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-a-huge-water-district-defends-a-secret-handout-20150929-column.html A huge water district defends a secret handout Michael HiltzikContact ReporterThe Economy Hub9/29/15The?Westlands Water District, which reached a legal settlement with the federal government earlier this month after months of confidential negotiations, takes issue with?my description of the deal?as a secret arrangement that guarantees?the district?a permanent water supply while?hamstringing policy-makers' ability?to plan for drought and climate change.In a?letter to the editor?published Tuesday in The Times, Westlands President?Don Peracchi says the deal wasn't "secret" and doesn't immunize Westlands--the largest public water district in the?country--from cutbacks. In fact, he?says, the deal "reduces the government's obligation to Westlands by 25%, even in wet years when full allocations will be available to other contractors."Let's take a closer look at Peracchi's defense.?First,?was this deal, which settled lawsuits being overseen by a federal?court in Sacramento, a "secret"? Peracchi writes: "The federal district court, Congress and interested nongovernmental organizations were regularly updated on the status of negotiations, and the terms of a potential settlement were shared in December 2013."?This is true as far as it goes, but it doesn't tell the whole story.?The fact is that members of Congress and environmental organizations received updates on general principles, not on the actual terms being negotiated.Westlands is not immunized from cutbacks; the government may still impose environmental or drought restrictions as before.? Westlands Water District President Don PeracchiWe know this because when the actual settlement terms were filed with the court on September 16, one major provision was brand new to all onlookers. This was a provision?turning over?what could be hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of federally funded water infrastructure to the district, without compensation or even a formal appraisal.In any case, there's a big difference between revealing the principles underlying interim talks, and the specific terms being discussed. If they were identical, Westlands and the government could have signed the deal in December 2013. A lot more was worked out after that--behind closed doors.How a rich water district beat the federal government in a secret dealPeracchi says "Westlands is not immunized from cutbacks; the government may still impose environmental or drought restrictions as before."This is true, but misleading. Nothing prevents the government from cutting back Westlands' water supply when the water isn't there, because of drought or other restrictions. The question is what will happen?when there is water, but government planners decide there are better uses for it than watering the almond or pistachio trees of Westlands farmers.In?that event, the planners have to stand down; under?the deal's terms, they can't divert water from Westlands to some other, potentially more beneficial, use. That's a hugely valuable?benefit for Westlands and yes, an important "immunization." And it's almost never granted. For Westlands, it's permanent, ?lasting from now to the end of recorded time.Finally, while it's true that the government's guarantee of water for Westlands is reduced in the settlement from about 1.2 million acre-feet a year to about 895,000 acre-feet--a 25% cut--but most of the difference is mythical, "paper water" in the jargon of environmental experts. Because of drought, climate change, and competing water rights, Westlands' own projections were that its guaranteed supply from the government would average only about 500,000 acre-feet a year in the future. Giving up the putative?rights to some 300,000 acre-feet a year it wasn't going to get anyway isn't much of a sacrifice.?Peracchi's defense doesn't change the bottom line of this deal for the public: it's a boon for Westlands, at the expense of suitable planning for a future water supply in California that will be much different from?the past. Protecting Westlands behind an insurmountable wall is the wrong deal, and the fact that public advocates were?largely excluded from the negotiations doesn't make it any better. What we said in our original analysis still applies: Congress should reject it.Keep up to date with the Economy Hub. Follow?@hiltzikm?on Twitter, see our?Facebook page, or email?michael.hiltzik at latimes.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Fri Mar 11 10:56:38 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 10:56:38 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Poor Ocean Conditions For Anadromous Fish To Linger / Warmer Ocean, Smaller Salmon Message-ID: <013a01d17bc7$c4ad38d0$4e07aa70$@sisqtel.net> THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN: Weekly Fish and Wildlife News www.cbbulletin.com March 11, 2016 Issue No. 784 Salmon/Steelhead Returns Forecasted For Another Decent Year; Yet, Poor Ocean Conditions For Anadromous Fish To Linger The infamous warm-water ocean "blob" has evolved into a more coastal phenomenon - the region is now at the trailing edge of a warm El Nino weather pattern, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is in a very warm period, according to Brian Burke, research fisheries biologist at NOAA Fisheries' Northwest Fisheries Science Center. By next year, he said, the physical effects of the El Nino will be gone, but the warm PDO will likely last a lot longer, as will the poor ocean conditions, continuing the decline in abundance and nutritional value of food for salmon. The so-called "blob" of warm ocean waters has gripped the West Coast and shaken up its marine ecosystems in the past two years. While that warm water has cooled somewhat this winter, its effects are now having more of an impact on systems along the northwest coast of North America. (See CBB, April 10, 2015, ''Warm Blob' Of Water Off West Coast Linked To Warmer Temps, Disruption Of Marine Food Web" http://www.cbbulletin.com/433648.aspx) The PDO is a pattern of climate variability in the North Pacific identified by sea surface temperatures. The warm phase has been in evidence since 2014. Research has shown that when warm phase PDO settles in, the zooplankton community structure in the northern California Current becomes more sub-tropical in nature and becomes dominated by lipid-poor species. This bodes ill for West Coast salmon. More lipid-rich species are available to provide fatty nourishment for salmon when water temperatures are cooler. Burke and other fisheries managers laid out their forecasts for salmon and steelhead at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting Tuesday. While ocean conditions will continue to be poor for anadromous fish, the fisheries managers are predicting relatively good returns in 2016. Still, while ocean conditions vary from year to year, it seems that the huge swings in the ocean's impact on the numbers of salmon and steelhead that return to freshwater may be tempered at least somewhat by better freshwater habitat and by operations of the Columbia River basin dams to aid salmon. "I think all of our hard work in the freshwater environment is showing progress," Bill Tweit, special assistant with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the Council. "The total returns this year are predicted to be well above average -- not quite the eye-popping numbers we've seen in the previous years but still very healthy, driven again by fall chinook," he said. The overall return of salmon and steelhead will hit 2.1 million fish, he said, the eighth highest on record. Last year's total run of 2.9 million fish was the third highest on record. Tweit said that optimism for another good year should be tempered with the understanding that salmon productivity is cyclical depending on conditions in the ocean, where salmon spend most of their lives. "We know things won't stay as good as they currently are, but for now we certainly are enjoying the harvests and the numbers," he said. The spring chinook salmon returning to the Columbia River this year entered the ocean in 2014 when ocean conditions were bad, Burke said. He predicts that 142,000 spring chinook will return to Bonneville Dam between March 15 and May 31 this year. The fish that entered the ocean one year later, when ocean conditions were even worse, he said, will return in 2017 when he predicts a return of 94,000 fish. The returns in each year are still better than the 10-year average. Tweit presented to the Council forecasts developed by the US v Oregon Technical Advisory Committee. Fall chinook salmon again will lead with returns of 951,200 fish, with 756,300 of those fish upriver fall chinook. The 2015 return of 1,305,400 fish was the largest since at least 1980. TAC predicted 925,200 fish would return in 2015. TAC forecasted the 2016 upriver spring chinook return at 188,800 fish at the Columbia River mouth. Some 56 percent of the run returned to the Snake River in 2015, but TAC is forecasting that percentage to be higher this year at 66 percent. In 2015, TAC predicted 232,500 fish would return, but that actual return of the upriver spring chinook was higher at 289,000. "This year continues to be above average productivity," Tweit said. TAC forecasted Upper Columbia River spring chinook at 26,500 fish in 2016, 127 percent of the 10-year average. Wild fish were 15 percent of the return. The 2015 forecast was 27,500 and the actual return was 37,500, the second highest return since at least 1979. The 2016 wild forecast is 164 percent of the 10-year average of 3,000 fish and represents 18 percent of the expected return. Upper Columbia River summer chinook are forecasted this year at 93,300 fish, projected to be the second highest return since at least 1980 and 132 percent of the 10-year average of 70,800 fish. The 2015 forecast was 73,000, while the actual return was 126,900, a record return since at least 1980. After a record number of fish in 2015, the forecast for upper Columbia River sockeye salmon in 2016 is just 101,600 fish. Last year's forecast was for 394,000 sockeye, but the return was much higher at 512,500 fish. Many of the sockeye died in the warm waters of the Columbia River. Returns to the Wenatchee River with its coldwater refuges fared better than to the Okanagan River where there are almost no cold water refuges, Tweit said. Some 265,400 upriver summer steelhead (92 percent of the 10-year average) will pass Bonneville Dam this year (April through October), compared to the 2015 run of 261,400, Tweit said. The TAC forecast was 312,200 fish, while the actual run was lower at 261,400. Wild winter steelhead appear primarily below Bonneville Dam, Tweit said. TAC forecasts 16,900 fish will return this year to the Columbia River mouth. The 2015 return was 20,100 and the forecast was 16,100 fish. Columbia River coho salmon reflect ocean conditions along the Oregon and Washington coasts more than the other salmon species, Tweit said. TAC is forecasting low returns for 2016 at about 300,000 fish, with about 30 percent of those fish migrating upstream of Bonneville Dam. The 2015 actual return (171,400) was much less than forecasted (539,600), which held true for most all Washington, Oregon and California stocks. That is likely due to ocean conditions that may have effected both juvenile and adult survival, Tweit said. Upriver and lower river stocks are equally impacted. The 2016 forecast for wild fall chinook at Lower Granite Dam is 12,200 fish. Forecasted hatchery origin fall chinook is 20,600 fish. The forecast in 2015 was 26,000 fish and the actual passage of hatchery fall chinook at the dam was 42,000 fish, according to Paul Kline, assistant chief of fisheries at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Sockeye, he said, are just half-way home when they reach Lower Granite Dam on their way to the Stanley Basin in Idaho. Only 10 percent of the 4,000 sockeye that crossed Bonneville Dam actually made it to Lower Granite, Kline said. The forecast this year is about 750 fish. Summer steelhead are doing much better. IDFG is still counting wild fish for the 2015 year, tallying about 33,000 fish. The 2016 forecast is for 49,000 fish, nearly twice the 10-year average of 28,000 steelhead. Hatchery summer steelhead are forecasted at 98,300 fish this year. The 2015 forecast of summer hatchery steelhead was 100,000 fish and the actual count was 96,800. The wild spring/summer chinook count in the Snake River is forecasted to be 18,600 fish, still above the 10-year average of 17,000. The forecast of hatchery spring/summer chinook is 98,300. The 2015 actual count was 96,800, while the forecast last year was 100,000 fish. The 2015 return was a relatively large run of fish, Kline said. Warmer Ocean, Smaller Salmon: Researchers Producing Data To Better Understand Reasons, Management Implications Scientists who study the northern Pacific Ocean are finding some disturbing, if not alarming trends: the ocean has been warming for several years and salmon sampled in 2015 from Alaska to California were smaller than normal. So says a report by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council on a meeting last week of the Council's Ocean and Plume Science Management Forum. Ocean researchers with NOAA Fisheries' Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle reported their latest findings and discussed the implications with state and tribal fish managers. The Council established the forum several years ago to encourage coordination between ocean researchers and state and tribal fish managers who produce and protect salmon in the hatcheries and freshwater streams where they reproduce. Warmer water affects the types and distribution of food species for salmon - in general, there is less nutritious food, and that's bad news for juvenile salmon as they enter the ocean. At the same time, though, some salmon runs boomed last year, notably those in Alaska. Others crashed, notably Columbia River coho. Why? No one can say with certainty, but research is producing data that will help further understand the ocean environment and inform salmon management in fresh water, says the Council account of the forum. Laurie Weitkamp, a research fisheries biologist at the Science Center, noted the apparent effects of the warming ocean on Columbia River salmon: high returns in 2015 of adult chinook and sockeye, which entered the ocean in 2013 or earlier when the sea was cooler, and low returns of coho adults and jacks, and chinook jacks, which entered later when it was warmer. Doug Olson, a supervisory biologist with the Columbia River Fisheries Program Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said it appears that when ocean conditions are poor, salmon tend to return in greater numbers as adults when fewer are released as juveniles. If this is true, he said, the implication is a huge paradigm shift in hatchery management, which traditionally focuses on releasing large numbers of juvenile fish. He said that if hatchery managers knew two years in advance what ocean conditions will be, hatchery production could be adjusted - some salmon spend up to two years in hatcheries before being released to go to the ocean. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict conditions that far in advance with much certainty, the scientists said. There is a lot to learn about all of the ocean and freshwater variables and how they interact. Models based on ocean indicators developed today may not be best for predicting future conditions, Weitkamp said. It could be true that the size and success of salmon in the ocean is influenced by their sheer numbers and competition for a food base that also may fluctuate in quality and abundance. But trawl data suggests the density of salmon in the ocean already is pretty low, which could be the result of insufficient prey species or some other factors. "It appears we need to look at this more closely; clearly something is going on, but we haven't had the resources to look at it in depth," she said. -- Ocean and Plume Science Management Forum: http://www.nwcouncil.org/fw/ocean/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sun Mar 13 21:24:58 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:24:58 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] SEC Charges Westlands Water District with 'Enron Accounting'/Tom Birmingham: "In a worst case scenario, we file for bankruptcy" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Good Evening Here is my piece revealing how the SEC charged the Westlands Water District with "Enron accounting" - and how Westlands General Manager Tom Birmingham said, "In a worse case scenario, we file for bankrupty," in response to a question at a district board meeting in January 2014, according to a meeting transcript. Thanks Dan http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/10/1499271/-Federal-SEC-Charges-Westlands-Water-District-for-Enron-Accounting https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/03/11/18783904.php Photo of protest by the Yurok, Hoopa Valley, Karuk and Winnemem Wintu Tribes against a lawsuit by Westlands Water District blocking the release of Trinity River to save Klamath River salmon in Sacramento in August 2014. Photo by Dan Bacher. 800_westlands_sucks_the_t... SEC Charges Westlands Water District with 'Enron Accounting' by Dan Bacher Westlands Water District, considered to be the ?Darth Vader? of California water politics by leaders of fishing groups, Indian Tribes and environmental organizations, is in boiling hot water with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC on Thursday, March 10 charged Westlands, California?s largest agricultural water district, with ?misleading investors about its financial condition as it issued a $77 million bond offering,? according to a statement from the Commission. In addition to charging the district, the SEC also charged its general manager Thomas Birmingham and former assistant general manager Louie David Ciapponi with misleading investors about its financial condition. ?Birmingham jokingly referred to these transactions as ?a little Enron accounting? when describing them to the board of directors, which is comprised of Westlands customers,? the SEC reported. Located on drainage-impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the water district has been one of the biggest promoters of Governor Jerry Brown?s California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels until recently when they told FOX News in Los Angeles that they can no longer afford to pay for the project. The project to build two giant tunnels to divert Sacramento River water under the Delta, designed to facilitate the export of water to Westlands and other corporate agribusiness interests, Southern California water agencies and oil companies conducting fracking operations, could cost ratepayers and taxpayers up to $67 billion - and won't create one drop of new water, critics charge. According to the SEC?s order instituting a settled administrative proceeding: ? Westlands agreed in prior bond offerings to maintain a 1.25 debt service coverage ratio, which is a measure of an issuer?s ability to make future bond payments. ? Westlands learned in 2010 that drought conditions and reduced water supply would prevent the water district from generating enough revenue to maintain a 1.25 ratio. ? In order to meet the 1.25 ratio without raising rates on water customers, Westlands used extraordinary accounting transactions that reclassified funds from reserve accounts to record additional revenue. ? When Westlands issued the $77 million bond offering in 2012, it represented to investors that it met or exceeded the 1.25 ratio for each of the prior five years. ? Not only did Westlands fail to disclose that wouldn?t have been possible without the extraordinary 2010 accounting transactions, but also omitted separate accounting adjustments made in 2012 that would have negatively affected the ratio had they been done in 2010. ? Had the 2010 reclassifications and the effect of the 2012 adjustments been disclosed, Westlands? coverage ratio for 2010 would have been only 0.11 instead of the 1.25 reported to investors. ? Birmingham and Ciapponi improperly certified the accuracy of the bond offering documents. The SEC said Westlands agreed to pay $125,000 to settle the charges, making it only the second municipal issuer to pay a financial penalty in an SEC enforcement action. Birmingham agreed to pay a penalty of $50,000 and Ciapponi agreed to pay a penalty of $20,000 to settle the charges against them. ?The undisclosed accounting transactions, which a manager referred to as ?a little Enron accounting,? benefited customers but left investors in the dark about Westlands Water District?s true financial condition,? said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC Enforcement Division. ?Issuers must be truthful with investors and we will seek to deter such misconduct through sanctions, including penalties against municipal issuers in appropriate circumstances.? The SEC?s order finds that Westlands, Birmingham and Ciapponi violated Section 17(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933 and must cease and desist from future violations. You can read the SEC decision here: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2016/33-10053.pdf In response to the SEC action, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, said, ?Westlands Water District has been fined for doing Enron-style accounting on the sale of water bonds in 2012. Portions of those bonds were used to finance planning of the Delta tunnels project.? ?Westlands leadership, however, recently told Fox News in Los Angeles that they can no longer afford to pay for the Delta tunnels project. Clearly, they are no longer in a position to sell bonds for paper water -- because the Delta tunnels will not provide any new water to water exporters,? she said. She said the vote on Tuesday, March 8 by the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California to purchase Delta islands in order to have a staging site for construction of the Delta Tunnels ?indicates that water exporters are so desperate to push the project through that they will continue to push it forward even without a viable funding plan.? ?The question now is if Southern California and Santa Clara Valley ratepayers are willing to pay not only their share for dry tunnels, but for Westlands growers as well,? Barrigan-Parrilla concluded. Tom Birmingham: "In a worst case scenario, we file for bankruptcy" Tom Stokely of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) noted that the SEC action ?reminded me of a transcript from a Westlands board meeting where Birmingham, in response to a question, said the district would declare bankruptcy and default on bonds for BDCP, the predecessor to the California Fix, if necessary, and the landowners would not be held financially responsible.? The transcript from the Westlands Water District Board meeting of January 15, 2014, states: Q: If the District goes broke, will the bondholders not come back [and go after the Westlands landowners?]. A: The security on the bonds is the [Westlands] district?s revenue, not the landowner?s land. In a worst case, we file for bankruptcy. That?s what the District could do. The landowners? land is not security. You can read the transcript of the meeting here: http://www.c-win.org/webfm_send/434 Stokely said that it is clear from the SEC action, as well as from the Westlands board meeting transcript, that "anybody who would buy bonds through Westlands for the Delta Tunnels or anything else is taking a huge risk.? ?The federal government has appoved a court settlement that would forgive Westlands $375 million in interest-free debt they owe the federal government for their share in the construction of the Central Valley Project facilities that deliver their water. It?s clear that urban ratepayers of California would have to pick up Westlands? tab for the Delta Tunnels,? said Stokely. ?Westlands contribution to the Delta Tunnels project is 40 percent, according to the California Water Fix,? explained Stokely. ?At 40%, how much debt can MWD and the Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) reasonably take on? The tunnels are going to deliver water for everyone south of the Delta, so water will still be physically delivered, but MWD and SCVWD rate payers and property tax payers will take on even more of the bill.? Westlands is well-known for its attacks on state and federal laws protecting fish and the environment. The water district sued the federal government over the past several summers in unsuccessful attempts to stop supplemental releases from Trinity Reservoir to prevent a massive fish kill on the lower Klamath River, prompting protests by members of the Hoopa Valley, Yurok, Karuk, Winnemen Wintu and other Tribes in 2013 and 2014 against Westlands? litigation. ?Central Valley water users have made untold billions of dollars at the expense of Trinity River salmon and communities," said Danielle Vigil-Masten, then the Chairwowman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, before a protest organized by the Tribe in Fresno in August 2013. ?The greed and aggression represented by this lawsuit and the hypocrisy of the plaintiff?s exploitation of environmental protection laws both stuns and saddens us." (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/8/20/1232633/-Hoopa-Valley-Tribal-Members-Protest-Westlands-Lawsuit ) In response to the settlement, Fitch Ratings, one of the three nationally recognized statistical rating organizations (NRSRO) designated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 1975, placed a "negative ratings watch" on $193.6 million in Westlands Water District debt and $28 billion in bonds issued by the San Luis and Delta Mendota Authority, according to the New York Times. (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/11/us/california-water-district-fined-by-sec-over-enron-accounting.html ) A call to the Westlands Public Affairs Office regarding a comment on the SEC decision has not been returned. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 800_westlands_sucks_the_trinity_dry_1.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 400568 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Mar 14 19:03:37 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 02:03:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] For PacifiCorp, separate dam removal entity less costly, risky References: <632223373.1403141.1458007417813.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <632223373.1403141.1458007417813.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.capitalpress.com/Oregon/20160308/for-pacificorp-separate-dam-removal-entity-less-costly-risky For PacifiCorp, separate dam removal entity less costly, risky For the power company PacifiCorp, setting up a separate entity to remove dams from the Klamath River is cheaper and less risky in terms of liability than keeping the dams operating or trying to remove them itself, a spokesman says.AP FILE PHOTOThe J.C. Boyle dam near Klamath Falls, Ore., shown in this April 1, 2003 photo, is a piece of PacifiCorp?s hydroelectric project on the Klamath River in Southern Oregon and Northern California.?For PacifiCorp, setting up a separate entity to handle the removal of four dams from the Klamath River would be cheaper and less risky for ratepayers than other options, the company?s spokesman says.The revised Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement ? under which a ?non-federal entity? would apply to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to decommission the dams ? caps the company?s costs at $200 million, spokesman Bob Gravely said.By contrast, relicensing the dams and keeping them operating would cost more than $400 million just for improvements such as fish ladders, plus any other costs for measures imposed by the California Water Resources Control Board to obtain Clean Water Act permits, he said. Environmental groups would likely challenge the relicensing application in court, he said.For PacifiCorp to simply handle the decommissioning itself would cost about $292 million, according to government estimates. The third-party entity would enable PacifiCorp to cap its costs while assuming liability and responsibility for the facilities? removal, Gravely said in an email.?So we have certainty in terms of cost and risk,? he said, ?and have concluded that the KHSA is both less costly and less risky than relicensing under our known terms and conditions or pursuing removal on our own.?The non-federal entity ? a key component of a new agreement that Pacificorp and state and federal agencies unveiled last month ? has come under criticism from dam-removal opponents such as Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., who accused the agencies of setting up a ?shell corporation ? designed to avoid public scrutiny? of the decommissioning process.Oregon state Sen. Doug Whitsett, R-Klamath Falls, opined that the agreement between PacifiCorp, the states of Oregon and California and the U.S. departments of the Interior and Commerce to set up the dam-removal entity amounts to an interstate compact that must legally be approved by Congress.However, Gravely has asserted that dam removals are normally handled by FERC and that congressional approval was sought in the Klamath dams? case so that the Department of the Interior could handle ? and provide funding for ? their removal. Bills to authorize the Klamath agreement have languished in Congress since 2011, so having a non-federal entity handle the decommissionings was an alternative, he said.Such an arrangement is not unprecedented, he said. In Maine, a trust operated jointly by a tribe, conservation groups, hydropower companies and state and federal agencies purchased three dams on the Penobscot River in 2010. The trust has removed two of the dams and is decommissioning and building a bypass around the third.PacifiCorp had planned to relicense its Klamath River dams but agreed to decommission them under certain conditions, including the cost cap, liability protection and not being the entity to carry out the dams? removal, Gravely said. Those terms were in the original agreements in 2010 and carried over to the pacts unveiled in February.?The parties that want dam removal get dam removal, but under terms and conditions that also protect PacifiCorp and its customers and make it a better outcome for customers than relicensing,? Gravely said. ?That?s the essence of the KHSA.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Mar 15 15:03:47 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 15:03:47 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Karuk Tribe, Conservationists Add Klamath National Forest to Westside Lawsuit In-Reply-To: References: <0a750ad260ee4e62b01033f2071c42c7@fwwatch.org> Message-ID: <81A1941A-455B-4877-9388-C95D0689EE17@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/15/1501728/-Karuk-Tribe-Conservationists-Add-Klamath-National-Forest-to-Westside-Lawsuit Karuk Tribe, Conservationists Add Klamath National Forest to Westside Lawsuit by Dan Bacher The Karuk Tribe and four environmental groups today expanded their complaint challenging the Westside Post Fire logging plan to include the United States Forest Service and Klamath National Forest over allegations that they violated federal law protecting imperiled salmon and their watersheds. The groups filing the complaint include the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild), Center for Biological Diversity, and Klamath Riverkeeper. The lawsuit alleges the Klamath National Forest Plan, as approved by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, ?illegally increases the risk of extinction? for threatened populations of coho salmon.? The plaintiffs allege the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of NOAA Fisheries violated the Endangered Species Act (?ESA?) when it issued a Biological Opinion (?BiOp?) and Incidental Take Statement (?ITS?) for the Westside Fire Recovery Project (?Westside Project?) on Forest Service lands in the Klamath River watershed. NOAA Fisheries is an agency that the late Zeke Grader, the longtime Executive Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations (PCFFA), nicknamed ?No Fisheries? for its many failures to protect salmon and other fish over the years. Coho salmon, now listed under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, were historically one of the most abundant fish species on the Klamath, Trinity and other California rivers. The coho population has declined dramatically after decades of bad forestry practices, water diversions and habitat degradation. ?The Klamath National Forest proposal will increase fire danger, degrade water quality, and harm at-risk salmon populations,? according to a statement from the Tribe and their allies. ?An alternative to the Project developed by the Karuk Tribe would result in about 33% of the logging that the Forest Service proposed, but would be far more protective of fisheries, water quality, and communities at risk of wildfire.? ?The Westside proposal short changes our community by denying us an opportunity to restore the forest, manage wildfire, and put locals back to work,? said Karuk Chairman Russell ?Buster? Attebery. ?There is no way that the Forest Service plan will pass a legal challenge. The Karuk alternative on the other hand has the support of local conservation groups, provides significant opportunities for bringing timber to market, and complies with applicable state and federal law.? According to the groups, ?The Tribe?s alternative proposal ensures that future fire events will be healthy for the environment and safe for local residents while providing marketable timber. The Forest Service did not analyze the Karuk Alternative because it rushed the environmental review process under the pretense of a ?public emergency.?? The litigation occurs at a critical time for imperiled Klamath River and West Coast salmon and steelhead populations. Agency scientists estimate that there are only approximately 142,200 Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon in the ocean this year, based on the returns of two-year-old salmon, called ?jacks? and ?jills,? The salmon from the Klamath and Sacramento River make up the majority of salmon taken in California?s ocean and inland fisheries. The low numbers of Klamath and Trinity River fish expected to return to the river and tributaries this year will result in more restricted seasons for both the recreational and commercial fisheries on the ocean and recreational and Tribal fisheries on the rivers in 2016. ?The Forest Service plan to clear-cut thousands of acres above the Klamath River disregards the reasonable Karuk Alternative and hurts at- risk salmon and river communities,? said Kerul Dyer of Klamath Riverkeeper. ?A healthy Klamath River requires sensible forest restoration that addresses the needs of both fish and people, like that laid out in the Karuk plan.? The Tribe and groups are challenging the ?illegal harm to fish and watersheds? that they say will result from the proposed post-fire clear cutting timber sales in hopes that the federal government will change course. The fish play a major role in the culture, religion and food supply of the Karuk and other Klamath River Tribes. ?The Karuk Tribe has occupied lands along the Klamath River since time immemorial,? the complaint states. ?The Klamath, Salmon, and Scott rivers are within Karuk ancestral territory, and are the lifeblood of the Karuk people. Before Europeans entered these lands, these waters provided the Karuk Tribe with a bountiful supply of anadromous fish, including coho and chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Today, in the Klamath River watershed, coho salmon are listed as threatened with extinction under the ESA.? Initial arguments will likely be heard by the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in the ?very near future,? the groups said. The Western Environmental Law Center represents all of the plaintiffs and EPIC is represented by in-house counsel. To read the full complaint, go to: http://www.karuk.us/images/docs/press/2016/Complaint.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: klamath.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 348256 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Mar 16 16:54:52 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 23:54:52 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Karuk Tribe, Conservationists Add Klamath National Forest to Westside Lawsuit In-Reply-To: <009601d17fd3$a162f8a0$e428e9e0$@sisqtel.net> References: <009601d17fd3$a162f8a0$e428e9e0$@sisqtel.net> Message-ID: <838586736.1192131.1458172492422.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Sari had a hard time sending this to the list (undeliverable message), so I am sending for her. TS From: Sari Sommarstrom [mailto:sari at sisqtel.net] Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 3:16 PM To: 'Dan Bacher'; 'undisclosed-recipients:' Subject: RE: [env-trinity] Karuk Tribe, Conservationists Add Klamath National Forest to Westside Lawsuit ?NMFS concluded that:?The average change in sediment delivery as a result of the Proposed Action is about 0.5%, indicating that the magnitude of the adverse effects to critical habitat is small.? (p.75)?The likely increase in long term sediment delivery from the 2014 fires that contributes to the currently degraded baseline conditions will be reduced from pre-project levels as a result of reforestation and legacy sediment site treatments. Therefore, the fully-implemented project will actually improve the baseline conditions in the Action Area and increase the conservation value of the habitat in the long term.? ? ?From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces+sari=sisqtel.net at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Dan Bacher Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2016 3:04 PM To: undisclosed-recipients: Subject: [env-trinity] Karuk Tribe, Conservationists Add Klamath National Forest to Westside Lawsuit ?http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/15/1501728/-Karuk-Tribe-Conservationists-Add-Klamath-National-Forest-to-Westside-LawsuitKaruk Tribe, Conservationists Add Klamath National Forest to Westside Lawsuit ?by Dan Bacher ?The Karuk Tribe and four environmental groups today expanded their complaint challenging the Westside Post Fire logging plan to include the United States Forest Service and Klamath National Forest over allegations that they violated federal law protecting imperiled salmon and their watersheds. ? ?The groups filing the complaint include the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild), Center for Biological Diversity, and Klamath Riverkeeper.? ?The lawsuit alleges the Klamath National Forest Plan, as approved by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, ?illegally increases the risk of extinction? for threatened populations of coho salmon.? ?? ?The plaintiffs allege the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of NOAA Fisheries violated the Endangered Species Act (?ESA?) when it issued a Biological Opinion (?BiOp?) and Incidental Take Statement (?ITS?) for the Westside Fire Recovery Project (?Westside Project?) on Forest Service lands in the Klamath River watershed.? ?NOAA Fisheries is an agency that the late Zeke Grader, the longtime Executive Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations (PCFFA), nicknamed ?No Fisheries? for its many failures to protect salmon and other fish over the years. ?? ?Coho salmon, now listed under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, were historically one of the most abundant fish species on the Klamath, Trinity and other California rivers. The coho population has declined dramatically after decades of bad forestry practices, water diversions and habitat degradation.? ??The Klamath National Forest proposal will increase fire danger, degrade water quality, and harm at-risk salmon populations,? according to a statement from the Tribe and their allies. ?An alternative to the Project developed by the Karuk Tribe would result in about 33% of the logging that the Forest Service proposed, but would be far more protective of fisheries, water quality, and communities at risk of wildfire.?? ??The Westside proposal short changes our community by denying us an opportunity to restore the forest, manage wildfire, and put locals back to work,? said Karuk Chairman Russell ?Buster? Attebery. ?There is no way that the Forest Service plan will pass a legal challenge. The Karuk alternative on the other hand has the support of local conservation groups, provides significant opportunities for bringing timber to market, and complies with applicable state and federal law.? ?According to the groups, ?The Tribe?s alternative proposal ensures that future fire events will be healthy for the environment and safe for local residents while providing marketable timber. The Forest Service did not analyze the Karuk Alternative because it rushed the environmental review process under the pretense of a ?public emergency.?? ?? ?The litigation occurs at a critical time for imperiled Klamath River and West Coast salmon and steelhead populations. ? ?Agency scientists estimate that there are only approximately 142,200 Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon in the ocean this year, based on the returns of two-year-old salmon, called ?jacks? and ?jills,? The salmon from the Klamath and Sacramento River make up the majority of salmon taken in California?s ocean and inland fisheries. ?The low numbers of Klamath and Trinity River fish expected to return to the river and tributaries this year will result in more restricted seasons for both the recreational and commercial fisheries on the ocean and recreational and Tribal fisheries on the rivers in 2016. ?? ??The Forest Service plan to clear-cut thousands of acres above the Klamath River disregards the reasonable Karuk Alternative and hurts at-risk salmon and river communities,? said Kerul Dyer of Klamath Riverkeeper. ?A healthy Klamath River requires sensible forest restoration that addresses the needs of both fish and people, like that laid out in the Karuk plan.? ?The Tribe and groups are challenging the ?illegal harm to fish and watersheds? that they say will result from the proposed post-fire clear cutting timber sales in hopes that the federal government will change course. ?The fish play a major role in the culture, religion and food supply of the Karuk and other Klamath River Tribes. ??The Karuk Tribe has occupied lands along the Klamath River since time immemorial,? the complaint states. ?The Klamath, Salmon, and Scott rivers are within Karuk ancestral territory, and are the lifeblood of the Karuk people. Before Europeans entered these lands, these waters provided the Karuk Tribe with a bountiful supply of anadromous fish, including coho and chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Today, in the Klamath River watershed, coho salmon are listed as threatened with extinction under the ESA.?? ?Initial arguments will likely be heard by the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in the ?very near future,? the groups said. The Western Environmental Law Center represents all of the plaintiffs and EPIC is represented by in-house counsel.? ?To read the full complaint, go to:?http://www.karuk.us/images/docs/press/2016/Complaint.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 348256 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu Mar 17 12:06:24 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 12:06:24 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Karuk Tribe, Allies Add Forest Service to Lawsuit Protecting Salmon/Delta Tunnels Proposal Is Built On A House of Cards In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Good Morning Here are two of my latest pieces, the first on the Karuk Tribe and their allies adding the U.S. Forest Service and Klamath National Forest to the lawsuit protecting salmon from a bad logging plan and the second on RTD's "Dear Governor Brown" letter. Thanks Dan http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/15/karuk-tribe-conservationists-add-klamath-national-forest-to-westside-lawsuit/ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/15/1501728/-Karuk-Tribe-Conservationists-Add-Klamath-National-Forest-to-Westside-Lawsuit Karuk Tribe, Allies Add Forest Service to Lawsuit Protecting Salmon by Dan Bacher The Karuk Tribe and four environmental groups today expanded their complaint challenging the Westside Post Fire logging plan to include the United States Forest Service and Klamath National Forest over allegations that they violated federal law protecting imperiled salmon and their watersheds. The groups filing the complaint include the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild), Center for Biological Diversity, and Klamath Riverkeeper. The lawsuit alleges the Klamath National Forest Plan, as approved by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, ?illegally increases the risk of extinction? for threatened populations of coho salmon.? The plaintiffs allege the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of NOAA Fisheries violated the Endangered Species Act (?ESA?) when it issued a Biological Opinion (?BiOp?) and Incidental Take Statement (?ITS?) for the Westside Fire Recovery Project (?Westside Project?) on Forest Service lands in the Klamath River watershed. NOAA Fisheries is an agency that the late Zeke Grader, the longtime Executive Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations (PCFFA), nicknamed ?No Fisheries? for its many failures to protect salmon and other fish over the years. Coho salmon, now listed under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, were historically one of the most abundant fish species on the Klamath, Trinity and other California rivers. The coho population has declined dramatically after decades of bad forestry practices, water diversions and habitat degradation. ?The Klamath National Forest proposal will increase fire danger, degrade water quality, and harm at-risk salmon populations,? according to a statement from the Tribe and their allies. ?An alternative to the Project developed by the Karuk Tribe would result in about 33% of the logging that the Forest Service proposed, but would be far more protective of fisheries, water quality, and communities at risk of wildfire.? ?The Westside proposal short changes our community by denying us an opportunity to restore the forest, manage wildfire, and put locals back to work,? said Karuk Chairman Russell ?Buster? Attebery. ?There is no way that the Forest Service plan will pass a legal challenge. The Karuk alternative on the other hand has the support of local conservation groups, provides significant opportunities for bringing timber to market, and complies with applicable state and federal law.? According to the groups, ?The Tribe?s alternative proposal ensures that future fire events will be healthy for the environment and safe for local residents while providing marketable timber. The Forest Service did not analyze the Karuk Alternative because it rushed the environmental review process under the pretense of a ?public emergency.?? The litigation occurs at a critical time for imperiled Klamath River and West Coast salmon and steelhead populations. Agency scientists estimate that there are only approximately 142,200 Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon in the ocean this year, based on the returns of two-year-old salmon, called ?jacks? and ?jills,? The salmon from the Klamath and Sacramento River make up the majority of salmon taken in California?s ocean and inland fisheries. The low numbers of Klamath and Trinity River fish expected to return to the river and tributaries this year will result in more restricted seasons for both the recreational and commercial fisheries on the ocean and recreational and Tribal fisheries on the rivers in 2016. ?The Forest Service plan to clear-cut thousands of acres above the Klamath River disregards the reasonable Karuk Alternative and hurts at- risk salmon and river communities,? said Kerul Dyer of Klamath Riverkeeper. ?A healthy Klamath River requires sensible forest restoration that addresses the needs of both fish and people, like that laid out in the Karuk plan.? The Tribe and groups are challenging the ?illegal harm to fish and watersheds? that they say will result from the proposed post-fire clear cutting timber sales in hopes that the federal government will change course. The fish play a major role in the culture, religion and food supply of the Karuk and other Klamath River Tribes. ?The Karuk Tribe has occupied lands along the Klamath River since time immemorial,? the complaint states. ?The Klamath, Salmon, and Scott rivers are within Karuk ancestral territory, and are the lifeblood of the Karuk people. Before Europeans entered these lands, these waters provided the Karuk Tribe with a bountiful supply of anadromous fish, including coho and chinook salmon and steelhead trout. Today, in the Klamath River watershed, coho salmon are listed as threatened with extinction under the ESA.? Initial arguments will likely be heard by the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in the ?very near future,? the groups said. The Western Environmental Law Center represents all of the plaintiffs and EPIC is represented by in-house counsel. To read the full complaint, go to: http://www.karuk.us/images/docs/press/2016/Complaint.pdf 2. http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/16/1502337/-Dear-Jerry-Brown-Delta-Tunnels-Proposal-Is-Built-On-A-House-Of-Cards http://redgreenandblue.org/2016/03/16/dear-governor-brown-time-to-admit-your-delta-tunnels-waterfix-plan-is-falling-apart/ Photo of Governor Jerry Brown by Dan Bacher. Delta Tunnels Proposal Is Built On A House of Cards by Dan Bacher Restore the Delta (RTD) today released a powerful open letter to Governor Jerry Brown from Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, RTD Executive Director, stating ?It?s time to detach your legacy from the Delta Tunnels proposal.? ?It?s time to face the reality that this plan is falling apart,? she said. Brown?s controversial California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels is in its biggest crisis ever as lack of a finance plan for the project to build the twin tunnels diverting Sacramento River water under the Delta becomes more obvious every day. The Brown administration is currently reeling from a barrage of national and international news coverage of the Securities and Exchange Commission decision to fine the Westlands Water District, the major financial partner of the proposed Delta Tunnels, for engaging in ?Enron-style? accounting in order to fool the bond market. ?The other big financial players in the Delta Tunnels proposal, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Met) and the Santa Clara Valley Water District, are reviewing data from CA WaterFix, the newest name for the Delta Tunnels proposal, that includes Westlands as a major contributor,? said Barrigan-Parrilla. ?If Westlands relied on fraud for the down payment on the tunnels, how can they be trusted to be honest when they need to come up with more than $3 billion to fund their share? Met and Santa Clara would be wise to reconsider long-term agreements with a water district with a rap sheet. Without this dubious partner, they must think through how and where to make up Westlands? contribution to the plan,? she explained. ?You seem to have grown quiet regarding the Delta Tunnels over the last sixty days, much in the same way you grew quiet over the Porter Ranch gas leak crisis,? Barrigan-Parrilla noted. In a tweet, Mike Fitzgerald, Stockton Record columnist, said, ?Cheers to Restore the Delta & all decrying The Westlands for cooking its books. Jeers to the feds' feeble response.? bit.ly/.?? In his blog, Fitzgerald said, ?Time to kick the Westlands while it?s down. And Barbara Barrigan-Parilla does a brilliant job of it in a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown.? See more at: blogs.esanjoaquin.com/... I completely agree with Fitzgerald?s assessment. The Delta Tunnels will not create one single drop of new water ? and will indebt ratepayers and taxpayers for up to $67 billion in costs for decades to come. The tunnels will hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter-run chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish and wildlife species, as well imperil salmon and steelhead populations on the Klamath and Trinity rivers. Below is the open letter to Governor Brown. An Open Letter to Governor Brown Dear Governor Brown, It?s time to detach your legacy from the Delta Tunnels proposal. It?s time to face the reality that this plan is falling apart. Let me explain why. Put simply, after ten years of trying, the Delta Tunnels still do not have a credible finance plan. There is little reason to think that another ten years would create one. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and even the International Business Times, have all reported the news that the Westlands Water District, the major financial partner of the proposed Delta Tunnels, engaged in ?Enron-style? accounting in order to fool the bond market. Westlands knowingly overstated revenue in order to secure a $77 million loan in 2012. Beginning in the 2010 drought, Westlands reclassified reserves as revenue in order to hide that it could not meet the debt service ratio required of prior bond issuances, and then falsely claimed that they had indeed met that ratio over the five-year period prior to the 2012 bond issuance to investors. The SEC fined Westlands and its leaders a total of $195,000, a rare occurrence for municipal bond agencies, and Moody?s placed Westlands and their neighbors, the San Luis Mendota Water Authority, on negative credit watch. The other big financial players in the Delta Tunnels proposal, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Met) and the Santa Clara Valley Water District, are reviewing data from CA WaterFix, the newest name for the Delta Tunnels proposal, that includes Westlands as a major contributor. If Westlands relied on fraud for the down payment on the tunnels, how can they be trusted to be honest when they need to come up with more than $3 billion to fund their share? Met and Santa Clara would be wise to reconsider long-term agreements with a water district with a rap sheet. Without this dubious partner, they must think through how and where to make up Westlands? contribution to the plan. After ten years and $250 million, we still do not have a Tunnels financing plan or operating plan that can pass the test with environmental agencies. Until there is an honest and independently- vetted financing plan and science proving that Bay-Delta communities and endangered species will be protected, the Delta Tunnels permit process underway should be tabled. Westlands ? An Untrustworthy Partner Throughout the ten-year history of the Delta Tunnels proposal, Westlands indicated to the greater water community that they would be a major beneficiary, paying for the lion?s share of the 40 percent of the Federal contractor contribution for the Delta Tunnels. But the California WaterFix has never released a detailed finance plan showing exactly how the tunnels will actually be funded and by whom. Also, it?s still not known how much each urban water agency under the Metropolitan Water District or Santa Clara Valley Water Districts would pay for their fair share to the project. Will retail water agencies have the ability to opt out of the plan? What happens to financing if they do? For argument sake, let?s assume that Westlands planned on paying the full forty percent contribution of the $15-billion-dollar plan, or $6 billion. How could they have possibly repaid their cost share of the project if the debt load would be almost 78 times greater than the debt they were carrying in 2010? Even if they were only intending to pay half of the forty percent, they could not afford $3 billion. After all, it?s not like Westlands could count on receiving more water from the Delta Tunnels project. In fact, the CA WaterFix was recently caught engaging in its own creative water accounting practices. As Dr. Jeff Michael, Director of the Center for Business and Policy Research, Eberhardt School of Business, University of the Pacific, wrote on his Valley Economy Blog: They [WaterFix] create a website full of deceptive numbers with eye- catching graphics and giant bold numbers saying it will increase water diversions and storage, and then buried in a complex paragraph at the bottom of the page you find a sentence that says that the tunnels don't actually increase water supplies. ?Unbelievable? declares Dr. Michael, incredulously. But magical thinking has never deterred Westlands (or California WaterFix) leadership. Westlands General Manager, Tom Birmingham, willingly participated in Restore the Delta?s documentary, Over Troubled Waters in 2009 and told the film crew that even with current demand and existing storage, there was enough water to meet every demand in the state of California. To follow Westlands? logic, there is enough water in the system for Westlands to receive its full share, that is until the 2010 drought when Westlands did not receive needed water deliveries to repay their bond debt. It?s not just irrigation districts that assume the water will be there. Urban water districts are building their futures on this same house of cards, and without greater water yields, the Delta Tunnels do not pencil out for them either. Santa Clara Valley Water District Faces a Big Decision A recent revenue bond prospectus released by Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD), presents a glowing summary of the District?s financial strength. Indeed, SCVWD exists in one of the wealthiest regions of the country, or the world. Their ratepayers can afford to invest in the district?s future. However, digging deeper into the details several items should give their ratepayers and investors pause. The District?s 2016 prospectus states up front that ?no reserve fund has been created or will be funded with respect to the 2016 bonds? it describes. This means that the District feels it needs no emergency fund set aside to repay the bonds, apparently heedless of future problems that may arise or to support its own debt coverage ratio (similar to Westlands? 2010 problem). While the prospectus does reflect the District?s recent drought experience of lower supplies and reduced water sales in 2013 and 2014, it proceeds to project deliveries and sales for the water it draws from both the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project from 2017 through 2020 as much higher than recent allocations. California is not yet out of its current drought. And no one knows if we are headed into more dry years. SCVWD?s prospectus does not show investors any sensitivity analysis about how its net revenues perform if water deliveries and sales to retail water agencies remain reduced due to conservation. The question a reasonably informed investor reading this prospectus would want answered is: How much would deliveries and sales have to fall before the District?s debt service ratio fails to meet SEC accounting standards? Buried in footnote 14 (pages 67-68) next to ?Future Debt Issuances,? it is revealed that the District intends to seek out a lot of commercial paper and ?long-term debt issuances? cumulating to over $900 million by fiscal year 2020. Plus, the District?s credit rating was recently downgraded slightly, and at least one Board member was not even fully aware of the downgrade because it was noted in the CEO?s report, rather than on the agenda. Climate change modeling shows that Sierra snowpack will decrease markedly from historic levels in the future. This will decrease water in the Sacramento River which is the source water for the tunnels. This is the source water upon which water districts likes Santa Clara Valley are building their bond offerings. They premise their financial stability on decreasing future water supplies. Metropolitan Water District Grasping at Straws Metropolitan Water District faces even higher financial stakes in relation to the Delta Tunnels. Just twenty-four hours before the SEC announced its fine of Westlands Water District, tunnels proponent, Met?s General Manager, Jeff Kightlinger pushed through a votefor Met to purchase five islands in the Delta. He told the media that these islands will serve as a possible construction staging site for the project. Two of the islands are in the direct path of the tunnels, eliminating eminent domain concerns. However, they come with a price tag of roughly $200 million to be paid by Met customers. As Met receives about half of the water normally carried through the State Water Project, one can estimate that their contribution for the tunnels would have been $3.5 billion. But now with Westlands out of the picture, one cannot help but ask how much ratepayer and parcel tax funding are they willing to foist on their customers in order to move forward? Will Met contribute $7 billion to build the Delta Tunnels? And who will be their financial partners? Staff at the Santa Clara Valley Water District reported to their board in February that Santa Clara Valley?s contribution to the tunnels would be between $500 million and $1 billion. That would still leave the project significantly underfunded. Time for a Better Solution That brings us to you Governor Brown. You seem to have grown quiet regarding the Delta Tunnels over the last sixty days, much in the same way you grew quiet over the Porter Ranch gas leak crisis. Isn?t it time to develop a Plan B for water management for California? It?s a shame you latched on to the Delta Tunnels as a legacy project when younger water leaders from think tanks, NGOs, and within government agencies want to begin work on a myriad of smaller projects that will capture rain, recycle water, restore groundwater, and generally adapt California to the reality of our changing climate. These water efficiency and supply projects will cost less, make more water, and create good permanent jobs throughout the state. Governor Brown, it is time to admit the Delta Tunnels proposal is as unstable as a house of cards. The reality of climate, population and decisions regarding sustainability simply do not match up with your desire to build one big project. If you must continue the process of pushing forward with the Delta Tunnels, the proposal must be vetted by independent experts to show the real costs and risks to taxpayers and urban water districts. Sadly, that analysis will show that the $15.5 billion Delta Tunnels proposal is as leaky as the water mains supplying water to Los Angeles and the Bay Area that desperately need our investment now. Yours in service, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla Executive Director Restore the Delta -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: klamath.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 348256 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Screenshot_2015-04-17_at_8.31.51_AM.png Type: image/png Size: 129303 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sat Mar 19 09:57:45 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2016 09:57:45 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Is Brown Administration Official Admitting Delta Tunnels Plan Is Collapsing? (Updated) In-Reply-To: <56ed77ad45d5f_ac3e5feac770539a1@prd-nresque02.sf.verticalresponse.com.mail> References: <56ed77ad45d5f_ac3e5feac770539a1@prd-nresque02.sf.verticalresponse.com.mail> Message-ID: <03A7EA91-84C3-4079-ADDF-8137920C3A10@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/18/is-brown-administration-official-admitting-delta-tunnels-plan-is-collapsing/ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/18/1503524/-Is-Brown-Administration-Official-Admitting-The-Delta-Tunnels-Plan-Is-Collapsing? https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/03/19/18784245.php Photo of John Laird courtesy of California Natural Resources Agency. Is Brown Administration Official Admitting Delta Tunnels Plan Is Collapsing? by Dan Bacher In the video from a recent hearing in the California Legislature, it appears that a Brown administration official is admitting that financial support for Governor Brown?s controversial Delta Tunnels Plan is rapidly collapsing. On March 11, Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird spoke on behalf of the administration during a hearing in San Francisco by the Senate Select Committee on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta entitled, ?Pending Delta Decisions and their Potential Economic and Other Impacts on San Francisco & the Bay Area." Laird responded to the news that the Westlands Water District , the largest agricultural water district in California and longtime proponent of the tunnels, used ?Enron accounting? to mislead investors about a $77 million bond sale, resulting in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over civil charges. He described the news as "disturbing" - and then admitted that "it (the California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels) won?t move ahead unless people, it pencils out for people and they sign up and they pay.? Westlands agreed to pay $125,000 to settle the charges, making it only the second municipal issuer to pay a financial penalty in an SEC enforcement action. The district?s general manager Thomas Birmingham agreed to pay a penalty of $50,000 and former assistant general manager Louie David Ciapponi agreed to pay a penalty of $20,000 to settle the charges against them. ?It is disturbing,? said Laird during the hearing. ?It?s disturbing to us. We found out about it just as you did, from the press reports of the SEC decision.? ?And, overall, this is, as you say, a beneficiary pays project, where the beneficiaries themselves have to decide to do it,? Laird continued. ?[I]t really depends totally on their ability and their willingness to pay for the project. And I think it is totally clear that the urban users have the financial wherewithal to do it.? ?I think the real question is how does it pencil out in the agricultural regions? But the Governor has been really clear. It?s beneficiary pays and that?s what it takes to go ahead and I think it?s just a law of economics that it won?t move ahead unless people, it pencils out for people and they sign up and they pay," he concluded. Senator Wolk made the full hearing available to view online. Laird?s comments come up about 1:04 on the hearing video: http://sd03.senate.ca.gov/news/2016-03-11-select-committee-sacramento-san-joaquin-delta You can read the SEC decision here: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2016/33-10053.pdf Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD), responded to Laird?s comments, noting that financing the tunnels will be difficult even for ?wealthy urban water agencies.? ?Paying for the tunnels in a drought, when water revenue sales are low, will be difficult even for wealthy urban water agencies,? she said. ?What will make it even worse is when their agricultural partners begin to miss payments. ? ?Even this year, El Ni?o has not eradicated the drought. Dry is becoming the new norm. The tunnels are not the solution for water reliability,? noted Barrigan-Parrilla. Several experts testified at the hearing that the Water Fix, a controversial proposal to build two huge tunnels to divert water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and the Bay Estuary for use by corporate agribusiness interests, would have a disastrous impact on the Bay Area?s environment and economy, including the region?s tourism and fishing industries. ?California?s world class economy relies on the sustainability of the state?s own natural water conveyance system, the entire San Francisco Bay Delta system,? said Senator Wolk in a statement. ?In fact, two- thirds of Californians and millions of acres of farmland rely on the Delta for its water supply. Yet the connection between pending Delta policy decisions, specifically the Delta Tunnels proposal, and the State of California?its ecosystem and economy?is often lost, overlooked or completely ignored.? The hearing finished off with the question of ?What, then, is Plan B?? marking a ?starting point to explore viable alternatives that will not damage the integrity of the Delta economy and ecosystem,? Wolk?s Office noted. Laird?s comment comes as opposition to the Tunnels by ratepayers in Southern California, the Livermore Valley and Santa Clara Valley is mushrooming. Faced with massive opposition to the Delta Tunnels by ratepayers packing a hearing room in Livermore on Wednesday night, the Zone 7 Water Agency Board, a State Water Project contractor, rejected a request to pass a resolution supporting Governor Brown?s Delta Tunnels (WaterFix) project. (http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_29649995/tri-valley-water-supplier-wont-endorse-states-delta ) ?Board members noted the lack of key information including environmental impacts, costs, and willingness of agricultural contractors to pay their share,? according to Restore the Delta. The construction of the Delta Tunnels would hasten the extinction of winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead runs on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. It would cost taxpayers and ratepayers up to $67 billion ? and not create one drop of new water. The California Water Fix Plan to build the Delta Tunnels makes no financial, economic, environmental or scientific sense. When will -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: pic_Secretary_John_Laird.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 16483 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Mar 21 07:52:12 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 14:52:12 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Modesto Bee --Tunnels Don't Add Up, Now We Know Why In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1080296226.1937259.1458571933129.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.modbee.com/opinion/editorials/article66974842.html?? ??Issuers must be truthful with investors,? said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC Enforcement Division. Because Westlands wasn?t truthful, the fines were appropriate if somewhat low (they were the highest ever for a public agency). And that brings us back to the tunnels. How can we trust anything untruthful Westlands says? How do we keep faith in Westlands? partners ? Metropolitan and Gov. Jerry Brown? As we?ve pointed out repeatedly, if you divert major portions of the Sacramento River under the Delta, the only way to ?save? the Delta is to increase the flows from the much-smaller San Joaquin River into the Delta. To do that, the state will have to take more of the flows from the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers. The tunnels are nothing less than a water grab, and it?s our water they?re grabbing. Remember feeling victimized by Enron?s dishonest accounting? The tunnels only make sense with more ?Enron accounting.? If they?re built, forget getting our water back. ?Modesto Bee Editorials March 20, 2016 8:56 AM Our View: Tunnels don?t add up, now we know why SEC fines tunnels partner Westlands for its ?Enron accounting?You can?t take water out of the Delta and make it betterCalifornia can?t trust those who want to build the tunnels ?By the Editorial BoardFor years now, Gov. Jerry Brown has been telling us that he will save the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ? the greatest fresh-water estuary on this side of the continent ? by taking water out of it.Environmental scientists have hustled out to make his case. Wildlife experts have joined the ?Oyez? chorus. And state water managers insist it is our only option. Among the biggest and most enthusiastic backers is the largest irrigation district in the world, Westlands Water District, and the largest urban water supplier in the world, Metropolitan Water District. Met has even bought four islands to facilitate the tunnels. They keep a public relations firms on call to answer any negativity (like this).Yet, to many of us poor, unlearned Valley dwellers it just doesn?t make sense. How can you save a water system by diverting major portions of its water before it ever gets to the Delta?Thank goodness Westlands is here to clear up any confusion. We just need to apply a ?little Enron accounting,? in the words of an unnamed Westlands employee quoted in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charge. That?s right, fraud charge; we?ll get back to that in a moment.First, recall Enron. That was the Texas energy company that convinced California?s gullible legislators to deregulate electricity in 1996. Within a few months, the company began ?gaming? the market by artificially limiting supply during heat waves. The company made hundreds of millions in dishonest profits as prices skyrocketed and blackouts rolled across California. One trader sang ?Burn, baby burn? as prices spiked. Another spoke admiringly of a co-worker, saying ?He steals money from California to the tune of about a million.? And who can forget the Enron employee who laughed at the thought that ?Grandma Millie? would want her ?(expletive) money back.?Those employees could mock our misery because they thought no one would hold them accountable for their ?Enron accounting.? But that wasn?t true. Enron folded and some of the crooks at the top went to jail.Westlands didn?t do anything comparable to the Enron scandal, but the nation?s largest water district did get caught lying to investors. Using what an unnamed Westlands executive called ?a little Enron accounting,? the district maximized returns for water customers while misleading those who bought its bonds in 2012. The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Westlands $125,000 to settle the charges last week. It also fined Westlands general manager Thomas Birmingham $50,000. ?Issuers must be truthful with investors,? said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC Enforcement Division. Because Westlands wasn?t truthful, the fines were appropriate if somewhat low (they were the highest ever for a public agency). And that brings us back to the tunnels. How can we trust anything untruthful Westlands says? How do we keep faith in Westlands? partners ? Metropolitan and Gov. Jerry Brown? As we?ve pointed out repeatedly, if you divert major portions of the Sacramento River under the Delta, the only way to ?save? the Delta is to increase the flows from the much-smaller San Joaquin River into the Delta. To do that, the state will have to take more of the flows from the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers. The tunnels are nothing less than a water grab, and it?s our water they?re grabbing. Remember feeling victimized by Enron?s dishonest accounting? The tunnels only make sense with more ?Enron accounting.? If they?re built, forget getting our water back. ? ? #yiv1151781667 #yiv1151781667 -- _filtered #yiv1151781667 {panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv1151781667 {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv1151781667 {font-family:Tahoma;panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}#yiv1151781667 #yiv1151781667 p.yiv1151781667MsoNormal, #yiv1151781667 li.yiv1151781667MsoNormal, #yiv1151781667 div.yiv1151781667MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;}#yiv1151781667 h1 {margin-right:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:24.0pt;font-weight:bold;}#yiv1151781667 a:link, #yiv1151781667 span.yiv1151781667MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv1151781667 a:visited, #yiv1151781667 span.yiv1151781667MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv1151781667 p {margin-right:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:12.0pt;}#yiv1151781667 p.yiv1151781667MsoAcetate, #yiv1151781667 li.yiv1151781667MsoAcetate, #yiv1151781667 div.yiv1151781667MsoAcetate {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:8.0pt;}#yiv1151781667 p.yiv1151781667MsoListParagraph, #yiv1151781667 li.yiv1151781667MsoListParagraph, #yiv1151781667 div.yiv1151781667MsoListParagraph {margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;}#yiv1151781667 span.yiv1151781667Heading1Char {font-weight:bold;}#yiv1151781667 span.yiv1151781667BalloonTextChar {}#yiv1151781667 p.yiv1151781667paragraph, #yiv1151781667 li.yiv1151781667paragraph, #yiv1151781667 div.yiv1151781667paragraph {margin-right:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:12.0pt;}#yiv1151781667 span.yiv1151781667EmailStyle23 {color:#1F497D;}#yiv1151781667 span.yiv1151781667subsection {}#yiv1151781667 span.yiv1151781667date {}#yiv1151781667 span.yiv1151781667fid16 {}#yiv1151781667 p.yiv1151781667published-date, #yiv1151781667 li.yiv1151781667published-date, #yiv1151781667 div.yiv1151781667published-date {margin-right:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:12.0pt;}#yiv1151781667 span.yiv1151781667ngbylinename {}#yiv1151781667 .yiv1151781667MsoChpDefault {font-size:10.0pt;} _filtered #yiv1151781667 {margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}#yiv1151781667 div.yiv1151781667WordSection1 {}#yiv1151781667 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 12785 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Mar 21 16:55:28 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 23:55:28 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fwd: Announcing the Siskiyou Headwaters Initiative - citizens working to protect water at the source! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1297266792.2285063.1458604528050.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Making sure you all saw this! Please forward to your networks. ~~~Angelina Cook Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center(530) 926-5655 office(530) 859-2083 mobilewww.mountshastaecology.org ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center Date: Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 10:45 AM Subject: Announcing the Siskiyou Headwaters Initiative - citizens working to protect water at the source! To: renewsiskiyou at gmail.com | | | | Announcing the Siskiyou Headwaters Initiative?- closing loopholes in the County Water Ordinance to protect groundwater in the county | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | Siskiyou Headwaters Initiative Water issues are as controversial as ever in our region, and many concerned citizens?want to know what they?can do to protect our water. Now there is something YOU can do: ?Join?Mount Shasta Ecology as we?move?forward?with a citizen?s?initiative in 2016.? The Siskiyou Headwaters Initiative seeks to improve sustainable management of our county's precious groundwater. In order to get this on the ballot and made into law, WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! What will it do?? Strengthen groundwater management in Siskiyou County by requiring a permit for any activity (including water bottling) that would extract groundwater for use outside the county. Why should we do it? The current Siskiyou County water ordinance exempts the water bottling industry from requiring a permit for extraction and export of groundwater. Moreover, the extraction permit requirement only applies to a few designated groundwater basins in the county (see map below), leaving many of our source waters and volcanic aquifers unprotected and unregulated. Thus, current law enables unsustainable management of groundwater in one of California?s most strategic source water regions.? How does it work??? Our ballot initiative revises the Siskiyou County?water ordinance to?apply extraction permit requirements to all groundwater resources in the county?(not just a few designated basins), and removes the exemption that lets water bottling companies extract and export water without a permit, thereby holding them to the same standards as agricultural and other commercial water users. The permit process triggers California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) environmental review processes. How can we make it happen?? We need to gather over 1,362 qualified signatures from registered Siskiyou County voters by the end of April 2016 to get this measure on the November 2016 Ballot. Contact campaign coordinator Angelina Cook at angelina at mountshastaecology.org?or call (530) 926-5655 to volunteer, make a contribution or learn more. ? | | | | | | | HOW YOU CAN HELP: Donate ? Help cover costs of the campaign and promotional materials. We?need to raise at least $5,000 to get this initiative on the ballot, and more for the campaign leading up to the November election. Volunteer ? Volunteers are critically needed to collect signatures on the petition. We need signature gatherers who are willing to 1. Go door-to-door, 2. Table in high-pedestrian traffic zones, or 3. Gather signatures in their place of business. ?Volunteer Signature Gathering Training sessions?are scheduled to take place on Friday, March 25, 12 ? 1 PM and Tuesday, March 29, 4 ? 5 PM at the Mount Shasta Ecology Center office located at 101 East Alma St., Suite 100 H.?Please RSVP to angelina at mountshastaecology.org if you're planning to come. A future training?will take place in Yreka, and we are looking for volunteers to gather signatures throughout Siskiyou County.? Spread The Word! ? Distribute this email, flyers, share on social media, discuss the issue with your neighbors, friends and family and urge your representatives to support this proactive democratic process. | | | | | DONATE NOW to support the Siskiyou Headwaters Initiative | | | | | | The current Siskiyou County Water ordinance only requires extraction permits for groundwater in designated basins, shown in green on the map. The Siskiyou Headwaters Initiative would extend the permit requirement for groundwater extraction to anywhere in the county, and require water bottling companies (currently exempted) obtain an extraction permit. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Copyright ? 2016 Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted to receive electronic news and updates from the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center or one of our projects such as the Crystal Geyser campaign or Shasta Commons. Our mailing address is: Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology CenterPO Box 1143Mount Shasta, CA 96067 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list | | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Mar 22 15:20:44 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 15:20:44 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Big Ag Files Motion Attacking Hearing Officers In Tunnels Proceedings/Stewart Resnick Is Advisor to Embattled UC Davis Chancellor Katehi In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Good Afternoon Below are my latest two pieces, the first about corporate agribusiness interests filing a motion to disqualify two State Water Board hearing officers from overseeing the California Water Fix hearing process and the second an updated piece about Stewart Resnick, the Beverly Hills Nut King, being advisor to embattled UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi. Thanks Dan http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/22/state-water-contractor-files-motion-attacking-water-board-officers-in-delta-tunnels-proceedings/ Big Ag Files Motion Attacking Hearing Officers In Delta Tunnels Proceedings by Dan Bacher | posted in: Spotlight | 0 On Monday, the San Luis Delta-Mendota Water Authority (SLDMWA), representing corporate agribusiness interests, filed a legal motion to disqualify State Water Resources Control Board Hearing Officers Felicia Marcus and Tam Doduc from overseeing the permit process for the California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels. The Water Authority alleges the Hearing Officers have ?predetermined a critical issue? before them, Delta flow criteria. SLDMWA is one of the water districts placed on ?negative credit watch? last week due to its bond guarantor, Westlands Water District, engaging in ?Enron accounting.? The Water Authority consists of water agencies representing approximately 2,100,000 acres of 29 federal and exchange water service contractors within the western San Joaquin Valley, San Benito and Santa Clara counties. Westlands agreed to pay $125,000 to settle the charges filed against them by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), making it only the second municipal issuer to pay a financial penalty in an SEC enforcement action. (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/11/us/california-water-district-fined-by-sec-over-enron-accounting.html ) ?The San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority (?Water Authority?) hereby moves fordisqualification of Hearing Officers Felicia Marcus and Tam Doduc,? according to the motion. ?This motion is made on the ground that the Hearing Officers have predetermined a critical issue that will be before them in this proceeding.? ?When a judge, in court or an administrative adjudication, has predetermined an issue, the judge must be disqualified to protect the due process rights of all parties,? the Water Authority claims. The motion alleges that the Hearing Officers ?revealed? that they ?have already reached a ?significant conclusion regarding appropriate Delta flow criteria? in a formal order issued on February 11, 2016. In their order, the Hearing Officers conclude: ?The appropriate Delta flow criteria will be more stringent than petitioners? current obligations and may well be more stringent than petitioners? preferred project.? Hearing Officers? Ruling on Pre-Hearing Conference Procedural Issues (?February Order?), p 4. The Water Authority claims the Hearing Officers ?did not qualify or caveat their conclusion in any way. The February Order reveals they have already decided to impose ?more stringent? flow criteria.? The motion is available at: http://farmwater.org/swrcbmotion.pdf?e1a235 Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director, of Restore the Delta, responded to the motion?s filing by stating, ?Clearly, the large agribusiness water districts on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley know that the tunnels do not pencil out unless they grab more water from the Bay-Delta estuary.? ?They are seeking to manipulate the State Water Resources Control Board permitting process to that end. We can?t help wondering what they fear? Are they worried about what Department of Water Resources or Bureau of Reclamation staff testifying under oath will reveal about water flows?? she asked. In 2010, fishery scientists from environmental NGO?s, fishery agencies, and independent groups reached consensus at State Water Resources Control Board hearings that the Bay-Delta estuary needed more water flow entering and flowing out of the Delta, according to Barrigan-Parrilla. The State Water Resources Control Board concluded at that time, ?The best available science suggests the current flows are insufficient to protect public trust resources.? ?The SLWDMA motion to disqualify hearing officers is an attempt to revise those findings,? she said. ?They are vying to establish that more flows through the Delta are not needed so that they can, instead, grab the water to fill the tunnels, in order to make them financially viable.? ?What is an even greater shame is that Governor Brown has the power to stop this 12 to 24 month permit process currently underway at the State Water Resources Control Board for a project that does not have a detailed finance plan outlining who will pay. Westlands, one of the SLDMWA agencies, clearly does not have money to pay for the project. But instead, Governor Brown is allowing this ill-timed process to move forward and these special interest water districts to manipulate legal water planning processes that impact the Delta and the future of the entire state,? stated Barrigan-Parrilla. She concluded, ?California does not need the Delta Tunnels. It needs the Governor to stand up to special interest water districts that manipulate science and finances to their own ends, and to instead lead the real experts, who work for the public good, toward creating a sustainable water future for all Californians.? The motion was filed at a time when opposition to Governor Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels Plan is mushrooming throughout the state ? and as it is becoming increasingly clear that the California Water Fix makes no environmental, economic or scientific sense. In fact, in the video from a recent hearing in the California Legislature, it appears that a Brown administration official is admitting that financial support for Governor Brown?s controversial Delta Tunnels Plan is rapidly collapsing. On March 11, Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird spoke on behalf of the administration during a hearing in San Francisco by the Senate Select Committee on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta entitled, ?Pending Delta Decisions and their Potential Economic and Other Impacts on San Francisco & the Bay Area.? Laird responded to the news that the Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural water district in California and longtime proponent of the tunnels, used ?Enron accounting? to mislead investors about a $77 million bond sale, resulting in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over civil charges. He described the news as ?disturbing? ? and then admitted that ?it (the California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels) won?t move ahead unless people, it pencils out for people and they sign up and they pay.? (http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/18/is-brown-administration-official-admitting-delta-tunnels-plan-is-collapsing/ ) 2. http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/6/1497033/-Agribusiness-Tycoon-Resnick-Is-Advisor-to-Embattled-UC-Davis-Chancellor- Stewart Resnick Is Advisor to Embattled UC Davis Chancellor Katehi by Dan Bacher UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, made infamous throughout the world for her leadership role at the university when students were pepper sprayed by campus police during an Occupy protest in the fall 2011, is under fire again. Just as students called for her resignation because of the pepper spraying and student repression that occurred under her watch, Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy (D-Sacramento) on Friday, March 4, called for her to resign for accepting questionable paid corporate board seats with for-profit educational organizations. Other legislators have also joined McCarthy in calling for her to resign. UC Davis students are currently occupying Chancellor Katehi?s office on the fifth floor of Mraka Hall as they demand that she resign or be fired. They are also demanding that ?the hiring process is redesigned so that UC Davis students and workers are not only a part of this process, but a major deciding body in the selection and confirmation of a new Chancellor.? For more information, go to: firekatehiblog.wordpress.com In February, Katehi took a board position with the De-Vry Education Group, a ?for profit company under federal scrutiny for allegedly exaggerating job placement and income status,? according to the Sacramento Bee. She resigned from that position on March 1. (http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/the-public-eye/article64041327.html ) Then on Thursday, March the Bee reported that ?Katehi received a total of $420,000 in income and stock across the 2012 to 2014 fiscal years as a board member of John Wiley & Son?s a publisher of textbooks, college materials and scholarly materials.? Katehi has apologized for accepting the corporate board positions ? and said she will donate the money she received to student scholarships. Kathehi?s acceptance of the paid board positions and her role in the pepper spray fiasco are just one of the controversies she has become enmeshed in during her career. When she served as provost at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before assuming the UC Davis position in 2009, the Chicago Tribune revealed that hundreds of under- qualified students were admitted only after the intervention of powerful people. She told the San Francisco Chronicle that she knew nothing about these ?improper admissions.? (www.sfgate.com/...) In addition, Katehi plays a key role in the national security apparatus. In 2010 Katehi was appointed to the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, ?which promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI,? according to the UC Davis website. (www.ucdavis.edu/...) ?The board was established in 2005 and includes about 20 presidents and chancellors of major research universities,? Dave Jones reported in the ?University News? section of the website. ?The chair is Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University. Because of the nature of some of the material they discuss, board members must hold ?secret? security clearances.? In the spring of 2011, internal UC Davis emails revealed surveillance and infiltration tactics employed by campus officials during campus tuition increase protests. A Public Records Act request by UC Davis student Bryan Sparks resulted in the release of 280 pages of documents that ?disclosed a surveillance and infiltration program by university officials to monitor, and shape the protests, and also the narrative reported by the news media, according to a news release from ACLU of Sacramento County. The documents dated from July 1, 2010 through December 6, 2010. Board of Advisors has deepened corporate influence at UC Davis Not only has Katehi profited from her positions with private educational and textbook organizations and has presided over a surveillance and infiltration program at the campus, but she has deepened corporate influence over the UC system by choosing Beverly Hills billionaire Stewart Resnick, a promoter of Governor Jerry Brown?s California Water fix to build the Delta Tunnels and many attacks on laws protecting salmon and Delta fisheries, as one of her Board of Advisors at UC Davis. (chancellor.ucdavis.edu/...) Resnick serves with other corporate leaders such as Riley P. Bechtel, chairman of the board of the Bechtel Corporation, and John S. Watson, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Chevron Corporation, on the Board of Advisors. For the complete list of Katehi?s Board of Advisors, go to: chancellor.ucdavis.edu/? The UC Davis website explains the purpose of Katehi?s Board of Advisors: ?Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi has created a Chancellor?s Board of Advisors to offer independent, expert advice on how the university can continue on its path toward academic excellence and financial strength and stability. The board provides support, mentoring, guidance and expertise, helping the chancellor and campus leadership chart a course for UC Davis to become one of the nation?s top five public research universities. The Chancellor?s Board of Advisors is comprised of a diverse group of leaders from business, science, the judiciary and academia. The advisors each bring a deep understanding of and commitment to UC Davis, its mission and its goals, including the recently announced 2020 Initiative and the campus?s Vision of Excellence. ? Resnicks are the ?Koch Brothers of California Water? Resnick, and his wife, Lynda, the co-owners of The Wonderful Company, are the Power Couple of Corporate Agribusiness in California who have become virtual royalty in a state known for its entrenched "pay to play" politics. The Resnicks have become infamous as the "Koch Brothers of California Water" for the many thousands of dollars they contribute to candidates and propositions in California every election. For example, Stewart Resnick donated $150,000 to Yes on Prop 1, Governor Jerry Brown?s water bond campaign, in 2014. (www.dailykos.com/...) They have also dumped many hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of Jerry Brown, Senator Dianne Feinstein and many other politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, over the years, along with making contributions to the arts and Stewart Resnick's favorite ?environmental? NGO, Conservation International. The Resnicks? deep ties to the University of California system, including Stewart Resnick?s ?service? on UC Davis and UCLA boards, comes as their foundation has donated millions of dollars to the university. Resnicks serve on other UCLA and other university panels Stewart Resnick?s position on the Board of Advisors of Chancellor Linda Katehi is not the only one in the educational system than he holds. According to the UC Davis website, Stewart Resnick is a member of the Executive Board of the UCLA Medical Sciences and a member of the Advisory Board of the Anderson School of Management, at UCLA , his alma mater. Resnick holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Juris Doctorate from UCLA Law School. It is at UCLA where Resnicks exert their influence the most with the millions of dollars they have donated. On May 24, 2013, the UCLA School of Law announced that it had received a $4 million gift from the Resnick Family Foundation to establish the Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy. "The gift provides for as much as another $3 million in matching endowment funds,? according to a news release from the UC School of Law. ?The new program, the first of its kind at a top tier law school, will explore ways to hasten improvements in the modern food system. In addressing questions of food safety, distribution and access, the Resnick Program will focus on reforming food law and policy for the benefit of the consumer.? (law.ucla.edu/...) Dean Rachel F. Moran praised the Resnicks for their donations, stating, ?Alumnus Stewart Resnick ?62 and his wife Lynda, entrepreneurs and dedicated philanthropists, have long used their charitable donations to promote public health. We are deeply grateful for their generosity and their commitment to advancing sound food law and policy.? Stewart Resnick explained his vision for the Resnick Program: ?UCLA Law is a globally respected institution of higher education located in the food capital of the world. We grow more food in California than anywhere else, and the emphasis on health and wellness here ideally positions UCLA to take a leadership position. The rise of the global food trade has generated a modern food system that is different than anything the world has ever experienced. From the farm to the fork, this system has given rise to profound health, social, and cultural consequences. Our goal with this donation is to help consumers better understand exactly what they?re eating. It?s also an opportunity to improve the clarity and accuracy of food labeling and broaden access to healthy food options. I?m very optimistic that this program can save lives.? Ironically, while Stewart Resnick claims to support broadening ?access to healthy food options,? he has become the poster boy for industrialized corporate agribusiness, kept alive by unsustainable water exports. He and his wife have for years fought against laws that protect salmon and other fish, a healthy wild food source, and protect the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. UCLA hospital named after the Resnicks University officials also named a hospital after the Resnicks, the Stewart & Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA (NPH), in "honor of their support" for UCLA?s medical care programs. According to the hospital's website, the 74-bed acute psychiatric hospital is "among the leading centers in the world for comprehensive patient care, research and education in the fields of mental health, developmental disabilities and neurology. A key part of UCLA Health System, Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital is the major psychiatry teaching facility of the UCLA Center for the Health Sciences." (www.semel.ucla.edu/...) The Resnicks contributed $15 million to the construction of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center that opened in June 2008. In 2002, they received the UCLA Medal, the university?s highest honor, in recognition of their ?extraordinary contributions to the campus.? In 2005, the law school bestowed upon Stewart the UCLA School of Law?s Alumni of the Year Award. Resnick is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; a member of the Board of Trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust; and trustee of the California Institute of Technology. The Resnicks have played an instrumental role in promoting campaigns to eviscerate Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for Central Valley Chinook salmon and Delta smelt populations and to build the fish-killing Delta Tunnels. Marketing public water for profit Resnick, while he served as an ?environmental leader? on the Board of Directors of Conservation International, bought subsidized Delta water and then sold it back to the public for a big profit as Delta fish and Central Valley salmon populations crashed. ?As the West Coast?s largest estuary plunged to the brink of collapse from 2000 to 2007, state water officials pumped unprecedented amounts of water out of the Delta only to effectively buy some of it back at taxpayer expense for a failed environmental protection plan, a MediaNews investigation has found,? according an article by the late Mike Taugher in the Contra Costa Times on May 23, 2009. (www.revivethesanjoaquin.org/...) Environmentalists have castigated the Resnicks, the largest orchard fruit growers in the world, and other corporate agribusiness interests for planting thousands of acres of new almond trees during the drought while Governor Jerry Brown is mandating that urban families slash water usage by 25 percent. (www.eastbayexpress.com/...) Besides their influence over the UC system, the Resnicks' have spent millions on arts and charities through the Resnick Family Foundation. The Resnicks have managed to use their wealth not only to exert enormous influence over water politics in California, but over the educational sphere as well, as we can see. In addition to serving on UC Davis and UCLA boards and panels, the Resnicks have also extended their influence over California water policy by forming ?Astroturf? groups like the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta and the Californians for Water Security to promote the construction of Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels and legislative attacks on the Endangered Species Act and other laws protecting Central Valley salmon and steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other fish species. (restorethedelta.org/...) Among the companies the Resnicks own include Paramount Citrus, Paramount Farming and Paramount Farms, ?the world?s largest growers, processors and marketers of citrus, almonds and pistachios,? according to UC Davis. Their holdings also include POM Wonderful, grower of pomegranates and maker of the POM Wonderful pomegranate juice; Teleflora, the largest floral wire service in the world; and FIJI Water, the largest imported bottled water in the United States. The couple also owns Suterra, the ?largest biorational pest control company? in the United States, and JUSTIN Vineyards and Winery, a winery based in Paso Robles focusing on Bordeaux-style blends and single varietals. Westlands Water District also exerts enormous influence While the Resnicks exert enormous influence over California politics and institutions, another agribusiness giant, the Westlands Water District, rivals them in their ability to manipulate environmental politics in California. An article in the New York Times on December 30, 2015 exposes the huge political power that Westlands wields in state and national politics. "A water utility on paper, Westlands in practice is a formidable political force, a $100 million-a-year agency with five lobbying firms under contract in Washington and Sacramento, a staff peppered with former federal and congressional powers, a separate political action committee representing farmers and a government-and-public-relations budget that topped $950,000 last year," the Times said. (www.nytimes.com/...) Linda Katehi?s drawing of income from corporate boards, the presence of Stewart Resnick on the boards of UC Davis and UCLA, and the formidable political force that Westlands Water District represents are just three examples of the growing collaboration between corporations, billionaires and government in California and across the nation that has led to the capture of the regulatory apparatus by Big Money interests. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: headshotupdate.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 42082 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Mar 23 08:01:01 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 15:01:01 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Bureau increases water releases from Lake Shasta References: <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Trinity is still less than half full. ?The glass is half empty.TS http://www.redding.com/news/local/bureau-increases-water-releases-from-lake-shasta-2e986339-8326-2a9c-e053-0100007fd857-373160011.html | | | LOCAL NEWS Bureau increases water releases from Lake Shasta Greg Barnette/Record Searchlight The Bureau of Reclamation has increased the release of water from Keswick Dam the past few days due to the large amount of water in Lake Shasta.Posted:?Yesterday 6:00 p.m.8 CommentsBy?Damon Arthur?of the Redding Record SearchlightAfter receiving nearly 5 feet of rain since October, there is too much water in Lake Shasta, according to the agency that manages Shasta Dam.After four years of drought, the lake has finally reached levels not seen in five years, according to Shane Hunt, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.But bureau officials, worried about the high inflow into the lake from recent heavy rains, have also had to increase the amount of water coming out of Shasta and Keswick dams to reduce the chances of downstream flooding."We're into the safety space for flood encroachment," Hunt said.On Tuesday, 18,600 cubic-feet per second of water was being released from Keswick Dam, or six times the 3,100 cfs of water released from the dam at the beginning of the month.Hunt said the bureau has to keep a safety margin in the lake in case too much water begins flowing into the lake during a storm. If there is not enough space in the lake to absorb the high inflows, the bureau could conceivably be forced to let out amounts that could cause flooding downstream in the Sacramento River, he said.Prior to the weekend rainstorm, the bureau began increasing releases from Keswick Dam. On Friday night, the bureau was releasing 20,200 cfs.Hunt said releases are expected to begin dropping again this week and the lake could continue refilling. Even with the higher releases, inflow into the lake Tuesday reached 30,000 cfs.The bureau's reasoning behind releasing water did not add up, according to Frank Rusch of Redding, who said he has been paying attention to the amount of water being let out of the lake into the Sacramento River.He said it is frustrating to see so much water going down the river while Redding residents are under water-use restrictions that include cutting back on outdoor landscape watering."It just isn't logical that they are releasing this amount of water when we're in a drought," Rusch said.David Coxey, manager of the Bella Vista Water District, said he had similar concerns about why the water was being released.Bella Vista, which serves residents and businesses from northeast Redding to Bella Vista, has been under severe water restrictions the past few years because of cutbacks in deliveries from the bureau."It's a pretty extreme set of circumstances, and I'm getting a lot of calls from customers asking what's going on," Coxey said.The 18,600 cfs being released Tuesday is equivalent to 36,890 acre-feet of water a day. During 2015, city of Redding water utility customers used 24,739 acre-feet of water for the entire year.Hunt said Shasta is not the only reservoir in the state that has had to release water out of flood control concerns. He said similar measures were taken recently at Folsom Reservoir near Sacramento and at Lake Oroville.Lake Shasta hasn't been this full since March 2011, Hunt said. Since then, California has been in the grips of a drought that has drained reservoirs and brought water-use restrictions on businesses and residents.But this year, heavier rain and snowfall has helped reservoirs recover. Since October there has been about 59 inches of rain at Shasta Dam, driving up the lake level 133 feet since Dec. 8, 2015, the date it reached its lowest point of the year.Even though the lake is getting close to full this year ? 86 percent of capacity Tuesday ? that doesn't mean local water agencies will get all they are entitled to this year.City of Redding officials are planning for reductions ranging from 12 percent to 24 percent.Hunt said the bureau usually notifies water contractors such as Redding and Bella Vista of their water allocations by February. But this year the announcement has been delayed.One factor in planning has been the need to keep enough water in the lake for fish and wildlife during the summer and early fall.Because of drought the past couple years, the cold water pool in Lake Shasta has been depleted, leaving only warm water to send down the Sacramento River in the summer and early fall. That warm water is fatal to endangered winter-run chinook salmon eggs and recent hatches in the river.State and federal officials are trying to work out a plan that provides bureau water for cities, agriculture and fish and wildlife. Hunt said he expects an announcement on water allocations toward the end of this month or the beginning of April.With the higher lake level this year, providing enough cold water for the salmon shouldn't be a problem this year, Hunt said. About Damon Arthur Damon Arthur covers resources, environment and the outdoors for the Record Searchlight and Redding.com. - Facebook - @damonarthur_RS - damon.arthur at redding.com - 530-225-8226 | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Mar 23 09:16:42 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:16:42 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] CFB AG Alert:Separate dam pact may muddy Klamath waters References: <687571385.3316036.1458749802578.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <687571385.3316036.1458749802578.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.agalert.com/story/?id=9463 Separate dam pact may muddy Klamath waters Issue Date:?March 23, 2016By Christine Souza?The struggle over dams and water continues in the Klamath Basin, as officials from the states of California and Oregon, the utility company PacifiCorp and the federal government proceed with a plan to remove all or part of four PacifiCorp-owned hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River.In their first public meeting since announcing their plan last month, officials involved in revising the "agreement in principle"?a 133-page document that describes the parties' intent to negotiate dam removal through a process governed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission?met last week in Sacramento.Removal of the hydroelectric dams had been part of a comprehensive set of agreements finalized by stakeholders in 2010, with the goal of providing water supply certainty for irrigators and a comprehensive plan to restore salmon runs. But the U.S. Congress did not authorize the agreements by a deadline at the end of 2015, prompting the agencies and PacificCorp to pursue a separate agreement on the hydroelectric facilities.Klamath Water Project irrigators, represented by the Klamath Water Users Association, spent years negotiating the comprehensive agreement that expired. As those interested in dam removal move forward with the FERC process, KWUA finds it is no longer part of the amended dam-removal deal."For over a decade, we supported the comprehensive approach to settling the issues on the Klamath that included bargained-for benefits for our ag community, and those aren't there anymore. It has become extremely difficult to support this without our side of the package," KWUA Executive Director Scott White said.Others, including Grace Bennett, chairwoman of the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors, expressed concern about how dam removal would affect the local economy and environment."This is our livelihood; this is our watershed; this is our home. For two decades, the county government has worked with landowners and water users to improve fish habitat and water quality in a successful effort to reverse the last century's trend of declining salmon runs," Bennett said. "It is truly perverse that the very agencies that are charged with species recovery are standing in the way of solutions that can readily be implemented."From Oregon, Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallams, who is a small irrigator in the Upper Klamath Lake Basin, spoke of lost tax revenue and jobs in his county."Losing the tax base with the dams coming out is a very hard hit for us," Mallams said.If dam removal is approved, PacifiCorp would transfer title of the Klamath River dams to a nonfederal entity that would assume liability and take the appropriate steps to decommission and remove the dams in 2020.Sarah Edmonds, vice president and general counsel of PacifiCorp Transmission, said during the meeting that the amended dam-removal agreement "lays out a new path while achieving the goals of the original (agreement), and it provides the same protections."Representatives of a number of Klamath-area tribes at the meeting spoke of the importance of removing the dams."We rely upon our fish as not only a commercial product, but also as subsistence. This is very important to our people to take these dams out so we can start rebuilding this resource," Yurok Councilman Tom Wilson said.California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton Bonham told the meeting that those involved in the revised dam-removal agreement will proceed "if sufficient parties decide this is what they would like to do."Bonham thanked Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, for pushing the meeting into its public format, which is one he said will likely continue. In a statement read by an aide, LaMalfa criticized the dam-removal agreement, saying the discussion "has been mired in secrecy and appears to be in a way that excludes the public from the decision-making process."John Bezdek, a senior adviser in the U.S. Department of the Interior, noted that comments from those who don't agree with dam removal remain very important and help shape the process."There are a lot of things that need to occur to get this (Klamath) Basin back to where we'd like it to be," Bezdek said. "We still need that basin-wide approach and we still want to bring everyone along."Part of the meeting was spent making mostly minor revisions to the agreement-in-principle document, but with additional time spent on a section of the Klamath Basin Agreement stating that the parties negotiating dam removal are "committed to engage in good-faith efforts to enter into a longer-term agreement pertaining to the sustainability of management of water and land in the Klamath Basin for the benefit of fisheries, irrigation, counties, tribes and refuges." The section indicates that the separate agreement would establish procedures, schedules and other guidance to resolve remaining issues between the parties.Bonham stated that it is through that section of the agreement in principle that a separate but related agreement would be created to handle water management."I want to find a way where our agricultural community partners that have been at the table a long time?all of the irrigation districts, all of the individuals, the leadership who took really bold steps to sort out their differences?aren't left behind," he said.Klamath Water Users Association leader White said the KWUA is "interested in remaining engaged in the conversation of these agreements for the benefit of our ag community."(Christine Souza is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at?csouza at cfbf.com.)Permission for use is granted, however, credit must be made to the California Farm Bureau Federation when reprinting this item. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Mar 25 15:35:07 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 22:35:07 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Klamath Basin fall Chinook table In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1537503607.258333.1458945307946.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Folks, ? Attached is the ?megatable? for Klamath Basin fall Chinook salmon.? Annual data (in this case 2015 data) are considered preliminary until the following year. I?m working off a slightly old distribution list so if you would like to be removed please let me know, likewise if someone needs to be added let me know as well.? If you have any questions feel free to contact myself or Sara Borok atsara.borok at wildlife.ca.gov or by phone at 707 822-0330. ? Regards, ? Wade ? Wade Sinnen Senior Environmental Scientist (supervisor) CA Department of Fish and Wildlife 5341 Ericson Way Arcata, CA 95521 (707) 822-5119 office phone (707) 496-9359 cell phone ? Every Californian should conserve water.? Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com ?Drought.CA.gov ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2015MEGTBL_prelim_mar_2016.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 414853 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Mar 25 19:09:35 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 19:09:35 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Rigged PPIC Poll Claims Californians Support Delta Tunnels In-Reply-To: <000e01d186e4$2c8e16f0$85aa44d0$@gmail.com> References: <079301d186d0$7afbb1d0$70f31570$@gmail.com> <202692580.878410.1458936052814.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> <000e01d186e4$2c8e16f0$85aa44d0$@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1255B714-8890-488A-BEF3-F5EE19314420@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/25/rigged-ppic-poll-claims-californians-support-delta-tunnels/ Photo of The Salon of the Bechtel Conference Center at PPIC, funded by a "gift" from the Stephen Bechtel Fund. Photo courtesy of the PPIC. Rigged PPIC Poll Claims Californians Support Delta Tunnels by Dan Bacher The Bechtel Foundation-funded Public Policy Institute Of California (PPIC), a long-time supporter of Governor Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels Plan, has released a rigged poll concluding that 54% of those surveyed believe the California Water Fix is "very important" to the future of the state. According to a PPIC press release, "The governor has proposed building tunnels in the Delta to improve the reliability of water supplies. About half of adults (54%) and 45 percent of likely voters say building the tunnels is very important to the future of California. Residents in Los Angeles (61%) and the Inland Empire (61%) are the most likely to say this is very important, followed by the Central Valley (51%), San Francisco Bay Area (49%), and Orange/San Diego (47%)." The wording of the question was worded cleverly to produce the pre- determined result, support for the tunnels. Check out the question: 23. The governor has proposed to improve the reliability of water supplies by building tunnels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. How important is this proposal for the future quality of life and economic vitality of California?is it very important, somewhat important, not too important, or not at all important? 54% very important 26% somewhat important 6% not too important 7% not at all important Of course people are going to respond favorably to this false and misleading question! This question is based on the Big Lie that the tunnels proposed under the California Water Fix will "improve the reliability" of water supplies when there is no evidence that the project will do this. In addition, there is no mention of the enormous costs of the plan to the ratepayers. taxpayers and people of California - nor of the devastating environmental consequences of the project, as documented by U.S. EPA scientists and numerous scientific panels. Of course, the question doesn't mention the tremendous threat the tunnels pose to the culture and livelihood of California Indian Tribes - nor of the huge economic impact that the collapse of salmon and other fisheries spurred by the tunnels' construction would cause to recreational, tribal and commercial fishing families. The construction of the tunnels would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other species, along with imperiling the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. The complete press release and survey can be found here: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/survey/S_316MBS.pd The Bechtel Family has been a major contributor to the PPIC, with the Bechtel Conference Center at PPIC funded by a "gift" from the Stephen Bechtel Fund. "The Bechtel Conference Center is designed to serve as both a meeting place and a learning center for nonprofit organizations, highlighting the value that PPIC places on civic engagement, consensus-building, and respect for different perspectives," according to the PPIC website. "The center was made possible by a gift from the Stephen Bechtel Fund and opened in spring 2011. In its design and operation, the center reflects the values that PPIC and the Bechtel family place on environmental and technological innovation (http://www.ppic.org/main/confcenter.asp ) For my latest article on the Delta Tunnels fiasco, go to: http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/18/is-brown-administration-official-admitting-delta-tunnels-plan-is-collapsing . For more information and action alerts, go to: http://restorethedelta.org . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 1_salonideal.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 202865 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sat Mar 26 12:23:38 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2016 12:23:38 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Protect Medicine Lake Rally - April 19 in Sacramento In-Reply-To: <92A36E4C-FBD4-4E7E-AB20-98D39FFE93ED@fishsniffer.com> References: <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> <9CB87D79-8BE5-4079-838A-1CCFEBF32FFB@fishsniffer.com> <83B14712-C42C-441B-BD19-9079C153A0AB@fishsniffer.com> <72171D4D-E1A4-4B9B-9FE1-0D4A3C0AF0A8@fishsniffer.com> <92A36E4C-FBD4-4E7E-AB20-98D39FFE93ED@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <32A38C17-8F7E-44F7-AACF-7D6B87D3F672@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/26/1506527/-Protect-Medicine-Lake-Rally-April-19-in-Sacramento Protect Medicine Lake Rally - April 19 in Sacramento Please help protect the Medicine Lake Highlands in Northern California, sacred to five distinct Indigenous Nations, from power plants, drilling and fracking. Come to a rally and court hearing on April 19, 2016 at the US District Courthouse at 501 I Street #4, 200, Sacramento, California. People will gather at 12:00 noon in front of the Courthouse. The hearing begins at 1:30 pm in Courtroom 6. Please bring ID to enter the Courthouse. The Medicine Lake Highlands continue to be threatened by Calpine Energy Corporation?s destructive plans for geothermal power development, according to Morning Star Gali of the Pit River Tribe. In March of 2015, a 9th Circuit Court ruling affirmed the right of the Pit River Tribe and allies to challenge geothermal power production leases issued by the Bureau of Land Management. On April 19, Judge Mendez will hear the suit brought by the Tribe and allies for violations of the Geothermal Steam Act and failure to conduct environmental, cultural, and tribal reviews before renewing Calpine Corporation?s expired leases. For more information, go to: protectmedicinelake.org gmail.com 530-335-5421 ext. 1205 Email pitrivertribe.org for a printable PDF of the rally poster www.sacbee.com/... nativenewsonline.net/... www.law360.com/... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: a19-2016-medicine-lake-final-web-small.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 363522 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Mar 28 08:07:54 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 15:07:54 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Chronicle_Editorial=3A_Don=E2=80=99t_trad?= =?utf-8?q?e_away_our_salmon?= References: <435043881.1643636.1459177674749.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <435043881.1643636.1459177674749.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> EDITORIAL On Water Politics Don?t trade away our salmon Andreas Fuhrmann / Associated PressJuvenile winter-run salmon are released into the Sacramento River as part of an effort to save the species that has seen die-offs two years in a row.In yet another battle in California?s water wars, politics is attempting to override science. This has proved disastrous for fisheries and water quality in the past. There is little reason to think it is a good idea now.In this latest skirmish in the favored battleground ? the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ? Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Republican members of the House are calling on the president to order more water pumped out of the delta to San Joaquin Valley farmers. Scientific indicators say federal water managers should reduce pumping to protect endangered fishes.California water politics revolve around the delta smelt, the tiny fish that serves as one of the legal indicators of the delta?s environmental health. But water diversions also threaten with extinction the fish we know and love as an icon of Pacific Coast human culture ? the salmon.Feinstein justifies increased delta exports as necessary for farmers struggling with drought. And she is rightly calling for more holistic ecosystem management. Yet she contradicts that when she says pumping is separate from water management activities in the Upper Sacramento River that have killed fish the past two years. Maybe separate as policies, but not to the fish.Salmon have a three-year life cycle. Decisions one year affect the fish for the next two. Wipe out almost all of the baby salmon in the Upper Sacramento by failing to release cooling flows from dams, as happened in 2014, and there are few juveniles in the delta in 2015. Pump the delta to the max while storing more water upstream, as happened in 2014 and 2015, and the fish are harmed by the reversed flows and toxic algae. Then despair when weakened salmon fail to survive their arduous migration to the sea and back this year or next.With the Pacific Coast salmon fishery at stake, water managers can?t get it wrong again. More mistakes will destroy the fishery and with it the salmon fishing industry. Salmon bakes will be a memory, not an event.In reviewing the letters from the senator and the House Republicans, President Obama might note this cautionary tale: In 2002, President George W. Bush ignored scientific data and ordered water diverted to Klamath River Basin farmers, resulting in high water temperatures that killed 34,000 chinook and endangered coho salmon.Salmon belong to us all and must not be bargained away in a water deal. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Mar 28 08:06:21 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 15:06:21 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Mercury News: Gov. Brown's $17 billion Delta tunnels plan faces new hurdle -- a leading taxpayers organization References: <1211961043.1693458.1459177582315.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1211961043.1693458.1459177582315.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> California Drought / El Ni?o | | | | Gov. Brown's $17 billion Delta tunnels plan faces new hurdle -- a leading taxpayers organization By Paul Rogers, progers at mercurynews.comPosted: ? 03/27/2016 02:58:34 PM PDT | Updated: ? about 7 hours ago In a development that casts significant doubt on whether Silicon Valley's largest water district will help pay for Gov. Jerry Brown's $17 billion Delta tunnels plan, a majority of Santa Clara Valley Water District board members now say they want to put the issue to a public vote.?The district, which provides 1.9 million residents of Santa Clara County drinking water and flood protection, has been a key player in Brown's controversial plan. Its share of the tunnels project could cost up to $1.2 billion.?The district's staff has insisted for years that it can raise property taxes on Santa Clara County homeowners without a public vote to help pay for the tunnels because the project is simply an addition to the State Water Project, the series of dams and canals that was authorized by state voters in 1960 at the urging of Brown's father, Gov. Pat Brown.?In this Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016 photo, a sign opposing a proposed tunnel plan to ship water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Southern California is displayed near Freeport, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) ( Rich Pedroncelli )?That vote predated Proposition 13, the 1978 measure that requires most new taxes to be approved by voters. But this month, one of California's leading taxpayer groups waded into the battle, joining environmentalists in raising major questions about the tunnels project.?The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association -- founded by the co-author of Proposition 13 -- sent water agencies in Silicon Valley and Alameda County a letter suggesting possible legal action. The letter argued that the tunnels were not part of the original State Water Project plan and that any property tax hike to fund them would be illegal without voter approval.?"What the voters approved in 1960 doesn't say anything about tunnels," said Timothy Bittle, the association's attorney.?If water agencies can raise property taxes to pay for the tunnels without voter approval, homeowners could be on the hook for big tax increases if there are cost overruns, as there were with high-speed rail and the rebuilding of the Bay Bridge, he said.?"Before Proposition 13, you had seniors on fixed incomes who couldn't pay their property taxes, and their homes were going into foreclosure," Bittle said. "Prop. 13 was intended to make your property tax bill predictable so you could budget for it. If these water agencies are given a blank check for the tunnels, then the property tax bill would no longer be predictable, and there might be some people who would lose their homes."Earlier this month, Bittle sent letters to the Santa Clara Valley Water District and Zone 7 Water Agency, which serves roughly 200,000 residents of Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin and part of San Ramon, saying that they were being put "on notice."Contacted by this newspaper, five of the seven members of the Santa Clara Valley Water District board said they favor putting a nonbinding advisory measure on the ballot next year in Santa Clara County asking voters if they would raise property taxes to pay for the project, which could cost the district $470 million to $1.2 billion, although final costs won't be known until state studies are finished this fall."I have concerns about the project. As we all know, the record is not good for large-scale public infrastructure projects on cost overruns," said Barbara Keegan, chairwoman of the Santa Clara Valley Water District board."If there's a possibility that property taxes could be going up without any sort of cap on them, that's unacceptable to me," she said. "And I would certainly think it would be appropriate for the public to weigh in on that."The other district board members that say they would support an advisory vote are Dick Santos, Gary Kremen, Tony Estremera and John Varela.Bittle said an advisory measure would be good for water officials who want to avoid "political suicide," but he added that no money could be committed from property taxes anywhere in the state, including the massive Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, without a binding two-thirds vote.Nancy Vogel, a spokeswoman for the state Natural Resources Agency, said Friday that a 1983 court case, Goodman v. County of Riverside, provides authority to raise property taxes without a vote for the tunnels project.If local water agencies decide they want to help pay for the tunnels project and receive its water, she said, they are free to raise the money any way they want, from property tax hikes to water rate hikes.In this Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016 photo, Mike Stearns, chairman of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, checks the soil moisture on land he manages near Firebaugh, Calif. Stearns, who had to fallow thousands of acres of land due to water cutbacks during California's historic drought, supports a proposed tunnel to ship water from the Sacramento River to Southern California. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) ( Rich Pedroncelli )"It is up to the local water agencies to determine how best to pay for their State Water Project bills," she said.The whole issue is likely to end up in court."This tunnels project is already on financially thin ice at best. Requirements for a two-thirds vote to provide property taxes to pay for it would effectively kill it," said Jonas Minton, a former state Department of Water Resources official who now works with environmental groups.Brown is proposing to build two tunnels, each 40 feet in diameter and 35 miles long, under the Delta. The idea is to reduce reliance on the massive state and federal pumps at Tracy -- which draw water south to cities and farms -- and are sometimes shut down to protect endangered salmon, smelt and other fish. The environmentally sensitive Delta is the linchpin of the State Water Project, which consists of 34 reservoirs, 20 pumping plants and 701 miles of canals and pipelines from Lake Oroville, in Butte County, through the Delta to the Bay Area and Los Angeles.?But environmentalists, Delta farmers and some Northern California lawmakers call the tunnels project a water grab by Los Angeles and corporate farmers in the Central Valley that would harm the water quality of the San Francisco Bay and the Delta.So far, the Santa Clara Valley Water District has contributed $13.7 million toward the $250 million the state has spent on reams of studies and analyses of the proposal. Other agencies, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Westlands Water District in Fresno and the Kern County Water Agency, have contributed most of the rest.If one pulls out or decides it can't raise property taxes to pay the costs, that means costs for the remaining agencies would go up.Paul Rogers covers resources and environmental issues. Contact him at 408-920-5045. Follow him at?Twitter.com/paulrogerssjmn. | | ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 25499 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 65360 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 4528 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Mar 28 11:16:37 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 18:16:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] River restoration workshop slated References: <443631793.1725732.1459188997546.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <443631793.1725732.1459188997546.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/environment/article_4a831526-eb15-11e5-a6a2-17645f4f6d33.html River restoration workshop slated Posted:?Wednesday, March 16, 2016 6:15 am0?commentsTrinity River Restoration Program will hold a Decision Support System Workshop March 29-31 at the Trinity Alps Preforming Arts Center, Weaverville.The stated goal of the Trinity River Basin Decision Support System Workshop is to advance the development and use of a decision support system for the Trinity River Restoration Program. The workshop will consist of oral presentations and panel discussions related to four key elements: 1) providing background on DSS and example applications, 2) communicating the status of DSS development for the TRRP and how it can be used in the near term to support decision making, 3) identifying and initiating an approach to resolve key organization and administrative challenges to DSS development, and 4) initiating next steps recommended by the Science Advisory Board for implementation of a DSS such as a work plan, schedule and identifying task leaders. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Mar 28 11:58:13 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 18:58:13 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] SACBEE Soapbox: Congress should stop blocking restoration of Klamath River References: <467081668.1816669.1459191493996.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <467081668.1816669.1459191493996.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> MARCH 26, 2016 5:00 PM Congress should stop blocking restoration of Klamath RiverPlan to remove 4 dams jeopardized when GOP refused to honor the dealCalifornia, Oregon and dam owner worked around roadblock in Congress BY JARED HUFFMAN AND RA?L M. GRIJALVASpecial to The Bee On the cusp of commencing one of the most significant river restoration projects in history ? a project that would remove four old dams that have diminished water quality and harmed salmon migrating along the mighty Klamath River ? it is disappointing that some of our Republican colleagues continue to stand in the way of progress.For years, we have supported a balanced deal to resolve conflicts on the Klamath. We have supported the efforts of the states of California and Oregon, the private owner of the Klamath dams, numerous Indian tribes, local governments, fishermen, farmers and environmentalists to develop a reasonable water management plan. But after decades of conflict and years of negotiation, the dam-removal deal negotiated by the affected parties was jeopardized when House Republicans refused to even introduce legislation to honor the deal before a crucial deadline last year.Fortunately, the states and the dam owner, PacifiCorp, have figured out a way around the roadblock in Congress. The dam removal will be modeled after an admirable, smaller dam-removal project on the Penobscot River in Maine, which restored native fish populations and the river habitat almost immediately.California and Oregon will form a nonprofit corporation to take ownership of the four dams on the Klamath River, and use existing federal authority to decommission and remove them. A free-flowing river with hundreds of additional miles of salmon habitat will replace a river plagued by aging, fish-blocking dams that don?t produce much power.The effort to rebuild this historic river is long overdue. For decades, the four Klamath dams have wrecked a significant salmon and steelhead river, harmed tribes and threatened fishing jobs across the West Coast. Yet some in Congress are still trying to derail the agreement in any way possible.After successfully blocking dam removal that should have proceeded through consensus legislation ? and failing to support a water deal to help farmers in their own districts ? some in Congress are now alleging that dam removal is somehow illegal.This claim is nonsense. We?re talking about four dams that are not owned or operated by the federal government and a dam owner and two states that want to remove them pursuant to existing law. Are the critics attacking this plan really suggesting that the federal government should interfere in this locally driven effort?Last year, the Congressional Research Service documented the way dams are decommissioned through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission process under the Federal Power Act. The Congressional Research Service laid out the clear authority for a willing dam owner ? in this case, PacifiCorp ? to surrender its license for decommissioning. Nowhere in its analysis did it say that members of Congress have special standing to politicize and interfere with this straightforward process.While we recognize that some of our colleagues feel compelled to say that the Klamath?s dams should stay where they are ? a politically popular stance in some corners ? it?s hypocritical for self-proclaimed free-market, states? rights politicians to block a private party from unloading assets through a longstanding, congressionally approved process.It?s long past time for the Klamath dams to come out, and for local stakeholders to begin the work of resuscitating a major West Coast river without being burdened by interference and obstruction from Washington.Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, represents California?s 2nd Congressional District. Rep. Ra?l M. Grijalva of Arizona is the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources.reprints Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article67692817.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bgutermuth at usbr.gov Mon Mar 28 13:04:45 2016 From: bgutermuth at usbr.gov (Gutermuth, F.) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 13:04:45 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] BLM Resource Management Plan update meetings in Redding and Weaverville April 18 and 19 Message-ID: FYI -- The BLM is starting their Resource Management Plan update process. See below for details on how to participate: http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/info/newsroom/2016/march/northwestCArmp.html *Release Date:* 03/11/16 *Contacts:* Jeff Fontana (530) 252-5332 jfontana at blm.gov *News Release No. *CA-N-16-11 Meetings Set for BLM Northwest California Integrated Resource Management Plan *REDDING, Calif.* ? Public meetings will be held in Redding, Arcata and Weaverville during March and April, providing opportunities for people to share with the Bureau of Land Management their values regarding BLM-managed public lands. These informal meetings will be early opportunities for public involvement as the BLM begins developing the Northwest California Integrated Resource Management Plan. The meetings, all from 4 to 7 p.m., are scheduled for: - Arcata: Tuesday, March 22, Redwood Lodge, 490 E Park Rd. - Redding: Monday, April 18, Civic Center Community Room, 777 Cypress Ave. - Weaverville: Tuesday, April 19, Veterans Memorial Hall, 101 Memorial Dr. These meetings are in advance of public scoping meetings, which will begin in the fall. When finalized, the NCIP will establish management goals and actions to maintain, develop, and protect the resource values of BLM-managed lands within the Arcata and Redding field office jurisdictions in Humboldt, Mendocino, Del Norte, Trinity, Shasta, Siskiyou, Butte and Tehama counties. "We are asking the public to identify landscape-level values within the planning area" said Molly Brown, Arcata Field Office manager. "Understanding how people use and value their public lands helps us to determine how these public lands should be managed in the future." The NCIP planning area includes approximately 396,000-acres of BLM-managed public lands. Examples include the Samoa Dunes and Chappie-Shasta off-highway-vehicle recreation areas, the Eel and Trinity rivers, and the Sacramento River Bend Outstanding Natural Area. Throughout the planning process, the BLM will work collaboratively with the public, cooperating agencies, other agencies, and partners to identify the vision for the planning area and key management priorities to be addressed in the plan. "Public input helps the BLM develop a long-term framework for land use and resource management decisions," said Redding Field Office Manager Jennifer Mata. "The partnerships and common goals created through the planning process are a key part of public land management." To learn more about the NCIP or to sign up for the project mailing list, contact Lisa Grudzinski, NCIP project lead, at 530-224-2140 or by email at lgrudzinski at blm.gov. Best - Brandt Brandt Gutermuth Trinity River Restoration Program 530.623.1806 work 530.739.2802 cell http://www.trrp.net/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Mar 28 17:05:46 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 00:05:46 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] San Jose Mercury Editorial, DELTA TUNNEL PROJECT DESERVES A PUBLIC VOTE In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2020708232.1963289.1459209946612.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> | | | | | | | | Gov. Jerry Brown's so-called California WaterFix is anything but. It's a Southern California water grab, designed to send more water from Northern California to thirsty Central Valley farmers and Los Angeles urban dwellers at the expense of the Delta's fragile health. ? The project is estimated to cost Santa Clara Valley Water District ratepayers between $470 million to $1.2 billion, but Valley ratepayers should realize these projects typically go beyond even the high-end estimate. Boston's Big Dig was sold as costing around $2.4 billion but wound up well over $14 billion. ? The tunnels will only make it possible for Southern California to gulp more water from the Delta. There are better ways to solve California's water woes, including conservation, recycling and raising the height of some dams, to name a few. ? The Santa Clara Valley Water District's financial participation is considered crucial, both politically and economically. It is the only Northern California water supplier still considering participating in the project. If it drops out, ratepayers from the remaining Southern California water districts would have to pick up the costs -- and it would be clear to all that more water is expected down there. | ? | ? | ? Opinion | | ? | | | | Mercury News editorial: Delta tunnel project deserves public vote Mercury News Editorial Posted: ? 03/28/2016 03:11:27 PM PDT | Updated: ? about 3 hours ago It's great that five of the seven Santa Clara Valley Water District Board members now say they want to give voters a say in whether Silicon Valley's largest water district will help pay for Gov. Jerry Brown's $17 billion Delta tunnels plan. The other two -- Linda LeZotte and Nai Hsueh -- have yet to weigh in. They should make it unanimous by joining Tony Estremera, Barbara Keegan, Gary Kremen, Dick Santos and John Varela in calling for a public vote, even if it needs to be a non-binding advisory measure. ? Gov. Jerry Brown's so-called California WaterFix is anything but. It's a Southern California water grab, designed to send more water from Northern California to thirsty Central Valley farmers and Los Angeles urban dwellers at the expense of the Delta's fragile health. ? The project is estimated to cost Santa Clara Valley Water District ratepayers between $470 million to $1.2 billion, but Valley ratepayers should realize these projects typically go beyond even the high-end estimate. Boston's Big Dig was sold as costing around $2.4 billion but wound up well over $14 billion. ? The tunnels will only make it possible for Southern California to gulp more water from the Delta. There are better ways to solve California's water woes, including conservation, recycling and raising the height of some dams, to name a few. ? The Santa Clara Valley Water District's financial participation is considered crucial, both politically and economically. It is the only Northern California water supplier still considering participating in the project. If it drops out, ratepayers from the remaining Southern California water districts would have to pick up the costs -- and it would be clear to all that more water is expected down there. ? The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association may be another roadblock. It threatens to sue if water districts try to impose tax increases for the tunnels without voter approval. State officials maintain that they can do this because the Delta tunnels are part of the State Water Project, which was approved by voters before Proposition 13 went into effect. ? It's yet another reason for the Santa Clara Valley district to pull out soon and avoid dealing with a poorly designed plan. | | ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 4528 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Mar 28 15:37:40 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 15:37:40 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] State and feds request 60-day extension on hearing for Delta Tunnels In-Reply-To: <83B14712-C42C-441B-BD19-9079C153A0AB@fishsniffer.com> References: <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> <9CB87D79-8BE5-4079-838A-1CCFEBF32FFB@fishsniffer.com> <83B14712-C42C-441B-BD19-9079C153A0AB@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/28/1507338/-State-and-feds-request-60-day-extension-on-hearing-for-Delta-Tunnels State and feds request 60-day extension on hearing for Delta Tunnels by Dan Bacher Every day, it seems that Governor Jerry Brown?s California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels is getting closer and closer to collapsing. Today the California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Department of Interior sent a joint letter to Hearing Chair Tam Doduc and Hearing Officer Felicia Marcus of the State Water Resources Control Board requesting a 60-day continuance of the Hearing on the California Waterfix Water Rights Petition. ?Based upon recent success settling issues raised in the EIR/EIS process and ongoing discussions with protestants, Petitioners believe that a continuance could provide additional time to resolve other protests to simplify and expedite the hearing process,? the letter said. ?The additional time would also reduce the State Water Board?s burden of analyzing and deliberating on a number of parties' claims and scope of the hearing.? ?Within 30 days of granting this continuance, Petitioners propose to submit at update to the State Water Board to report on their status, potential proposed permit conditions, and any other additional modeling in support of the project description,? the letter stated. In other news pointing to the plan?s imminent collapse, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association recently sent a letter suggesting legal action against Zone 7 Water Agency and the Santa Clara Valley Water District, arguing against Delta Tunnels financing, as the San Jose Mercury News reported. (www.mercurynews.com/...) ?The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association -- founded by the co-author of Proposition 13 -- sent water agencies in Silicon Valley and Alameda County a letter suggesting possible legal action. The letter argued that the tunnels were not part of the original State Water Project plan and that any property tax hike to fund them would be illegal without voter approval,? according to the Mercury News. Timothy Bittle, the association?s attorney, said "What the voters approved in 1960 doesn't say anything about tunnels.? Then in an action alert today, Restore the Delta (RTD) noted, ?The Delta Tunnels project is on ?thin ice.? The plan is in major need of continued financial support from smaller urban agencies such as Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) and Zone 7 Water Agency in Alameda County.? The Tunnels supporters are becoming increasing desperate in their campaign to salvage the Delta Tunnels plan, a project that that is based on the absurd notion that taking more water out of the Sacramento River will ?restore? the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary. In their new petition alert, Californians for Water Security, the Stewart Resnick Big Ag front group, is asking Californians to send emails in support of the Delta Tunnels/CA Water Fix to Santa Clara Valley Water District?s Board. Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) needs to hear from California ratepayers like you that will actually pay the costs, RTD pointed out. ?Let?s make sure the tunnels plan does not get this support! We need you to counter their action,? RTD urged. The group recommended sending an e-mail to SCVWD valleywater.org telling them: Dear Santa Clara Valley Water District Board Members, First off, I would like to express my appreciation that the Board recognizes that it should consult with ratepayers regarding parcel taxes for financing the Delta tunnels project. You are off to a good start. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, however, recently said in the San Jose Mercury News that raising property taxes for Delta Tunnels would violate Proposition 13 and could lead to lawsuits. As a water ratepayer and property taxpayer, I do not want to pay money for a project that will not create additional water supply, but mostly benefit corporate agriculture in the southwestern San Joaquin Valley. In addition, as Westlands and San Luis Delta-Mendota Water Authority have recently been placed on negative credit watch after being fined by the SEC for engaging in a little Enron accounting, it is clear that these agencies cannot be counted on to contribute a 40% capital share toward the tunnels. The Delta Tunnels would violate not only our federal and state standards of environmental and social justice law, but California tax law. As part of the Bay-Delta region, it makes sense for SCVWD to align itself with other Bay-Delta communities to protect the long-term health of the SF Bay-Delta estuary. Please vote no against continued CA WaterFix/Delta Tunnels support. Save the Bay-Delta estuary for our children and future generations. For more information about Nut King Stewart Resnick, one of the key proponents of the Delta Tunnels, and his deep connections to UC Davis and UCLA, go to: www.dailykos.com/... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: CWF-60-Day-Continuance Request March 28, 2016.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 409828 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Mar 29 11:24:47 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 11:24:47 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels Plan Is Collapsing In-Reply-To: References: <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> <9CB87D79-8BE5-4079-838A-1CCFEBF32FFB@fishsniffer.com> <83B14712-C42C-441B-BD19-9079C153A0AB@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/29/1507594/-Jerry-Brown-s-Delta-Tunnels-Plan-Is-Collapsing Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels Plan Is Collapsing by Dan Bacher Governor Jerry Brown?s California Water Fix to Build the Delta Tunnels, a plan to divert Sacramento River water to corporate agribusiness interests, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies conducting fracking and extreme oil extraction methods, is ?broken? and in ?chaos.? That?s the assessment of a coalition of fishing, environmental and farming groups, including Restore the Delta, the Planning and Conservation League, the Local Agencies of the North Delta and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA.) On Monday, the petitioners for a ?Change in the Point of Diversion? permit before the California State Water Resources Control Board have requested a second delay in the process, this time for an additional 60 days. ?The petitioners, the California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation were to present, on Wednesday, March 30, 2016 evidence that the Delta Tunnels plan would impose no significant harms to Delta water users or to protected fish and wildlife,? according to a statement from the four groups. ?After previously receiving a 30-day extension, the petitioners can?t produce the evidence that the project won?t cause serious harm,? the groups said. ?Besides pushing endangered fish species into extinction, harming Bay-Delta communities and agricultural water users, the Delta Tunnels do not comply with the Delta Reform Act of 2009. The California State Legislature mandated 'coequal goals' of providing a more reliable water supply for California AND protecting, restoring and enhancing the Delta ecosystem. However, the tunnels cannot produce the amount of water that the exporters want, especially with climate change.? The California Water Fix is based on the untenable concept that diverting more water from the Sacramento River before it reaches the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta will ?restore? the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary. ?The California WaterFix cannot be fixed,? said Bill Jennings, executive director of California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. ?The idea that you can divert millions of acre feet of water under an estuary that is already suffering from lack of flow without grievously harming existing water users, communities and already degraded fisheries and water quality is fundamentally absurd.? ?We?ve been saying for a long time that there is not a workable project,? said Jonas Minton of the Planning and Conservation League. ?The petitioners have spent 10 years, a quarter of a billion dollars, and still cannot produce a plan that meets environmental or economic muster, or comply with tax law. They should admit the project is not defensible and get on with plan B.? ?They have tried every way possible to get permits before a long- overdue water quality control plan update for the Delta is finished. The Delta Tunnels are in complete disarray today,? said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta. ?The Delta Tunnels proponents already got a 30-day extension, now they want another 60-day extension,? said Osha Meserve, an attorney with Local Agencies of the North Delta. ?The Petition was incomplete when they submitted it last August and they are no closer to having a complete Petition today. That is because the Tunnels are unpermittable under existing laws that protect the Delta, the environment and endangered species. After the federal contractors failed to disqualify the hearing officers last week, their only option was to request yet another delay.? The collapsing Delta Tunnels scheme faces another major hurdle when the terminally flawed ?science? of the California Water Fix will face independent review by a scientific panel convened at the request of NOAA Fisheries on April 5-6. ?At the request of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), select staff from the Delta Stewardship Council?s Delta Science Program will convene an independent scientific peer review for the joint Biological Opinion and 208 1(b) Incidental Take Permit analyses of the California WaterFix aquatic science,? the notice from the Delta Stewardship Council states. It is very likely that the independent review panel will give a failing grade to the ?science? concocted to justify the Delta Tunnels Plan, just like US EPA scientists did last year ? and just as every panel of state, federal and independent scientists has done previously. For more information, go to: deltastewardshipcouncil.cmail20.com/? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Mar 29 12:26:44 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 12:26:44 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Breaking News: Groups Ask Water Board to Dismiss Delta Tunnels Petition In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <29AD716E-67A2-4A34-9219-BC701762E2B5@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/29/groups-ask-water-board-to-dismiss-delta-tunnels-petition/ Groups Ask Water Board to Dismiss Delta Tunnels Petition by Dan Bacher The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and U.S. Department of Interior yesterday called for a delay in a scheduled hearing on their petition to divert water under the California Water Fix - the second time they have asked that the proceedings be delayed because they aren't ready to present their case. Today, representatives of 9 environmental, farming and fishing groups sent a letter to Tam Doduc and Felicia Marcus of the State Water Resources Control Board requesting them to dismiss the petition. Those signing the letter include Jonas Minton, Planning and Conservation League; Bill Jennings, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance; Colin Bailey, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water; Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Restore the Delta; Conner Everts, Environmental Water Caucus; Osha Meserve, Local Agencies of the North Delta; Tim Stroshane, Restore the Delta; E. Robert Wright, Friends of the River; Carolee Krieger, California Water Impact Network; and Kyle Jones, Sierra Club California. "Each time the Hearing Officers accommodate the Petitioners delay requests with more time, more Board staff and protestant time and financial resources are taken, and hundreds of people?s schedules are impacted," the letter states. "We believe there are much better uses of everyone?s time, such as spending the necessary time to update the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan to adequately protect current beneficial uses." "Among other deficiencies, the Change Petition: (1) does not adequately describe the changes sought; (2) fails to attempt to demonstrate a reasonable likelihood that the change will not injure any other legal user of water; and (3) fails to describe the extent of impacts to fish and wildlife. As a result of these and other deficiencies, the full nature and extent of injuries to legal users of water and significant adverse impacts to fish and wildlife uses have not been identified and analyzed," according to the letter. The group representatives concluded the letter by requesting that the Hearing Officers dismiss the Petition until a "complete petition" is submitted pursuant to Water Code section 1701.2 and Title 23 of the California Code of Regulations section 794, among other requirements. Governor Jerry Brown?s California Water Fix to Build the Delta Tunnels, a controversial plan to divert Sacramento River water to corporate agribusiness interests, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies conducting fracking and extreme oil extraction methods, is ?broken? and in ?chaos.? That?s the assessment of a coalition of fishing, environmental and farming groups, including Restore the Delta, the Planning and Conservation League, the Local Agencies of the North Delta and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), as pointed out in a joint news release on March 28. (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/29/1507594/-Jerry-Brown-s-Delta-Tunnels-Plan-Is-Collapsing ) Besides the difficulty the petitioners face in obtaining their permit to divert water from the Sacramento River before reaching the Delta under the California Water Fix, the rapidly collapsing Delta Tunnels scheme faces another major hurdle when the terminally flawed ?science? of the California Water Fix will face independent review by a scientific panel convened at the request of NOAA Fisheries on April 5-6. It is very likely that the independent review panel will give a failing grade to the ?science? concocted to justify the Delta Tunnels Plan, just like US EPA scientists did last year ? and just as every panel of state, federal and independent scientists has done previously. For more information, go to: http://deltastewardshipcouncil.cmail20.com/t/r-l-eilhktl-ffpjrf-d/ The California Water Fix is based on the untenable concept that diverting more water from the Sacramento River before it reaches the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta will ?restore? the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary. ?The California WaterFix cannot be fixed,? summed up Bill Jennings, executive director of California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. ?The idea that you can divert millions of acre feet of water under an estuary that is already suffering from lack of flow without grievously harming existing water users, communities and already degraded fisheries and water quality is fundamentally absurd.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Mar 31 09:32:01 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:32:01 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Major Traffic Delays on Buckhorn Summit References: <905111923.349821.1459441921915.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <905111923.349821.1459441921915.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Oops, a little too much dynamite! http://www.redding.com/news/local/Blasting-closes-Highway-299-on-Buckhorn-Grade-374021061.html UPDATE 12:25 p.m.Traffic in Highway 299 at Buckhorn Summit will be under one-way traffic control with intermittent full closures as crews clean up a rock slide triggered by a blasting operation.Drivers should expect up to two-hour delays.It may take up to two days to remove all the rocks and debris that fell onto the highway, according to Caltrans.The blasting operations are part of an ongoing project to improve the highway.Original story:Highway 299 on Buckhorn Summit in western Shasta County has been closed after blasting near the road caused rocks and dirt to roll into the roadway.Emergency dispatchers announced at about 11:15 a.m. that the highway is expected to be closed 2 to 3 hours. One lane is expected to be open in about 30 minutes to emergency traffic only.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Mar 31 14:55:08 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 21:55:08 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Good story on status of drought with graphics References: <453591513.521216.1459461308405.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <453591513.521216.1459461308405.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.capradio.org/articles/2016/03/31/water-agency-relax-conservation-mandate-for-northern-california/ Water Agency: 'Relax' Conservation Mandate For Northern California - ?Ed Joyce? Thursday, March 31, 2016 | Sacramento, CA |?PermalinkThe last Sierra Nevada snowpack measurement of the 2015-16 season was 95 percent of normal at this Echo Summit location. The statewide average was 87 percent of normal on March 30, 2016.Andrew Nixon / Capital Public RadioSome water providers in northern California say that with near-normal northern Sierra snowpack, state water managers should "relax" conservation mandates for the region.The comments come a day after the season?s last Sierra Nevada snowpack measurement and as the latest?U.S. Drought Monitor?report shows drought has eased slightly in northwest California.Extreme drought still covers 55 percent of the state and exceptional drought nearly 35 percent of California."Water-storage and streamflow indicators continue to show that drought has been sharply scaled back or eliminated," [in northwest California] according to the weekly update released March 31. "For the remainder of the state, the return of dry weather meant that the drought depiction was effectively unchanged from last week."The Drought Monitor drought intensity levels are Abnormally Dry, Moderate, Severe, Extreme and Exceptional.In California, there were slight reductions in all the intensity levels except the exceptional category, at 34.7 percent, and 3.55 percent of the state has no level of drought.?In Nevada, 94 percent of the state is abnormally dry, but just 23 percent is in extreme drought. A year ago, nearly half (48 percent) of Nevada was in extreme drought.The?California Department of Water Resources?says the average water content of the high-elevation Sierra Nevada snowpack currently stands at 24.4 inches statewide, about 87 percent of average."However, the snowpack is 97 percent of average in the northern Sierra Nevada, but just 72 percent of average in the southern Sierra Nevada, reflective of the "northern" storm track that has been a hallmark of the 2015-16 winter wet season," the report notes.El Ni?o brought heavy precipitation to Northern California, but failed to bring the same benefit to Central and Southern California.California water managers say after the snowpack measurement at Echo Summit that they may consider this north-south precipitation split when determining future water conservation mandates. Relax or rescind emergency conservation At least one water agency says the state should take those differences into account.Amy Talbot is the Water Efficiency Program Manager for the?Sacramento Regional Water Authority, which represents water providers in Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado, Yolo and Sutter counties that serve about two million users.?Talbot says?state-mandated water conservation targets for the Sacramento region range from 20 to 36 percent. She says the conservation rate in the region averaged 31 percent from June 2015, when the mandates went into effect, through February 2016."Snow survey results demonstrate the extent to which water supply conditions have improved compared to the previous two years of extreme drought, especially in the northern part of the state," Talbot says. "The Central Sierra snowpack is 88 percent of normal for this date compared to just 4 percent last year and 37 percent in 2014."Talbot says improvements are "striking" in the Sacramento region, "compared to early 2014 when this area began to experience extremely dry conditions. The Folsom reservoir dropped to historic lows but now it is above average for this time of year.""Given the improved conditions, we look forward to working with the?State Water Board?to develop a plan to relax or rescind emergency conservation in areas of the state experiencing average or better hydrologic conditions and transition back into promoting water efficiency as a long-term lifestyle benefit," Talbot says.The "long-term lifestyle benefit" Talbot referenced may be?an ethic?California will need to maintain in the face of drought cycles and climate change. Research submitted to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that snow will come sooner and melt faster in the Sierra Nevada, and Southern California?s climate will become warmer and drier.Looking ahead for the next several months, the?U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook?released March 17 shows drought improvement in Northern California, but drought likely persisting in much of Central and Southern California and Western Nevada. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Mar 30 10:52:10 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2016 10:52:10 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] A Chaotic Mess: State Water Board Suspends Upcoming Delta Tunnels Deadlines In-Reply-To: <83B14712-C42C-441B-BD19-9079C153A0AB@fishsniffer.com> References: <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <131962397.3233387.1458745261683.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> <9CB87D79-8BE5-4079-838A-1CCFEBF32FFB@fishsniffer.com> <83B14712-C42C-441B-BD19-9079C153A0AB@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <11EBFE54-E532-4099-BD41-0F5207698FC2@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/03/30/a-chaotic-mess-state-water-board-suspends-upcoming-delta-tunnels-deadlines/ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/29/1507865/-Breaking-News-State-Water-Board-Suspends-Delta-Tunnels-Deadlines Photo of Governor Jerry Brown by Dan Bacher. A Chaotic Mess: State Water Board Suspends Upcoming Delta Tunnels Deadlines by Dan Bacher The State Water Resources Control Board announced on March 29 that they are suspending the upcoming deadlines for the California Water Fix/Delta Tunnels water rights change petition in response to a request by the state and federal water agencies to extend dates and deadlines for the scheduled hearing, along with a number of other requests either to dismiss or delay the petition. On March 28, 2016, the Water Board hearing officers for the California WaterFix water right change petition hearing received a letter from the Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation requesting a 60-day continuance of all dates and deadlines associated with the hearing, On the same day, the hearing officers also received a request from several parties to dismiss the petition. Then on March 29, the State Water Board received additional requests to delay and stay the hearing, pending resolution of several matters, according to a letter from Tam M. Doduc and Felicia Marcus, State Water Board WaterFix Co- Hearing Officers. ?In response to the various requests, the upcoming deadlines are suspended. A ruling will be issued in the near future formally addressing the requests and providing additional information about the hearing schedule,? said Doduc and Marcus. The hearing officers said they ?are cognizant of the inconvenience to the other parties of repeated delays to the hearing schedule.? ?Accordingly, to inform our consideration, Petitioners are directed to confirm by noon on Friday, April 1, 2016 that they will be prepared to proceed without further delay should the 60-day continuance be granted,? the Hearing Officers concluded. All of these documents have been or will be posted on the State Water Board?s website at: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/water_issues/programs/bay_delta/california_waterfix/ Just hours before the Water Board announced its decision, the Contra Costa Water District (CCWD) announced a withdrawal of their protest petition with the State Water Resources Control Board regarding the ?Change of Diversion Petition? filed by the lead state and federal agencies promoting Governor Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels. The CCWD reached a settlement with the California Department of Water Resources claiming that the state is going to pay for their new water diversion facility, rather than CCWD customers, to mitigate impacts to drinking water quality resulting from operation of the Delta Tunnels, according to a news release from Restore the Delta. ?The settlement is, in itself, an indictment of the Tunnels and represents Contra Costa Water District?s self-interested approach to the Delta as a whole,? said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. (http://restorethedelta.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/CCWD-DWR-Agreement-3-24-16.pdf ) ?The new CCWD intake will have an impact on water quality and quantity in the Delta and is not covered in the EIR for the Delta Tunnels. The settlement says that DWR reserves the right to override environmental needs and concerns to build/operate the Delta tunnels. They are setting up the project as beyond the law, a project by Governor Brown?s fiat,? said Barrigan-Parrilla. Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), said the State Board ?needs to jettison the petition until such time as we have a complete petition.? ?It's a discombobulated mess, with all of the things that have changed, including last week?s request by the San Luis and Delta- Mendota Water Authority for the recusal of hearing officers and the withdrawal of the Contra Costa Water District from the petition protests,? said Jennings. ?The petition was not complete and the Water Board should have held off on the petition until it was completed, but they chose not to do so. Instead we will be picking up the pieces that weren?t submitted originally throughout the process.? ?The entire California Water Fix project just changed with the settlement reached with the Contra Costa Water District,? Jennings emphasized. ?We don?t even have modeling for this new aspect to the California Water Fix that establishes a pipeline from the Sacramento River around the Delta or from the new segmented Clifton Court Forebay. This changes the hydrology of the Delta.? ?A hearing is premature until there is a defined project description and evaluation of potential impacts. Right now, we don?t have a complete environmental document and a fishery assessment under ESA and we have a changing project,? he concluded. It is clear that Jerry Brown?s California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels is broken and in chaos as the economic, scientific and financial justifications for the project to build two giant tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta become increasingly untenable. The Delta Tunnels Plan would hasten the extinction of Sacramento winter-run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, along with imperiling the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. Yet the plan won?t create one single drop of new water for Californians. The plan would divert water from the Sacramento River before it can reach the Delta in order to benefit corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California water agencies and oil companies conducting fracking and extreme oil extraction methods. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Big_OIl_Brown_Photo.png Type: image/png Size: 129303 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Apr 3 07:33:43 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 14:33:43 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] California water allocation has winners, losers References: <1779554711.1546905.1459694023489.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1779554711.1546905.1459694023489.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_29714209/california-drought:-water-allocation-has-winners-losers | | | California water allocation has winners, losers | | By Paul Rogers, progers at mercurynews.com San Jose Mercury News | | Posted:Sat Apr 02 08:20:51 MDT 2016 | | | | In the latest sign of California's improving drought picture, federal officials announced Friday that South Bay cities will receive 55 percent of their contracted water amounts this summer -- up from 25 percent last year -- from the Central Valley Project, California's largest water delivery system.Heavy rains in March boosted the amount of water in Northern California's large reservoirs such as Shasta and Folsom, allowing farmers in the Sacramento Valley and wildlife refuges to receive 100 percent of their contracted amounts, while the Contra Costa Water District also will receive 100 percent, up from 25 percent a year ago.Friday's allocations were the highest since 2013 overall across the state. But some San Joaquin Valley farmers will receive only 5 percent of contracted amounts -- barely up from zero last year.Officials at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees the Central Valley Project, say that's because the rain and snow this winter fell mostly in Northern California. Also, they noted, because it came in March, when endangered salmon and smelt were near massive pumps at Tracy, that limited the amount under federal law that they could pump south into San Luis Reservoir near Los Banos.?"The news today is primarily good news for many of our water users. But the ones who are still impacted are being hit hard," said Shane Hunt, a bureau spokesman.Some agricultural leaders lashed out at the way the bureau has interpreted the federal Endangered Species Act."We prayed for rain and Mother Nature blessed us. We begged for a water supply and instead are handed a pittance that is destroying farms, jobs and communities," said Jason Peltier, executive director of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, whose members irrigate 1.2 million acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley."The faith we once had in the government to intelligently manage our public water resources has also, sadly, been destroyed," Peltier added.The low delivery amounts did not affect all farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. Some with more senior water rights will receive 100 percent of their contracted amounts.The federal Central Valley Project -- which was constructed starting in the 1930s and moves water from Shasta Lake to Bakersfield through a vast array dams, canals and pumps -- provides about 80 percent of its water to farms. In dry years, however, cities receive priority over farms.Friday's news brought smiles to the faces of Bay Area water leaders who have contracts for the federal water."This is good news," said Colleen Valles, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves 1.9 million people. "It's more than we got last year, and that will definitely help us recharge our aquifers and manage supply."Since last year, the water district has asked all cities and private water companies in Santa Clara County to reduce demand by 30 percent from 2013 levels. A key reason is that Central Valley Project water makes up about 25 percent of the district's supply, but last year, the district received only a quarter of its contracted amount.In May, water district officials are expected to relax their conservation targets, though some may remain.Similarly pleased Friday were officials at the Contra Costa Water District, which receives 85 percent of its water via the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta from Central Valley Project contracts. The district serves 550,000 people in central and eastern Contra Costa County."A 100 percent allocation means that we will certainly be able to meet customer demands," said district spokeswoman Jennifer Allen.Other urban areas that will receive 100 percent allocations are north of the Delta, including Sacramento, Roseville and Redding.She noted that full deliveries this summer will allow the agency to raise Los Vaqueros Reservoir, its largest, which now sits at 51 percent full, to at least 70 percent full. It also means that the district will ease water restrictions on residents in the coming months, she said, after state water board officials change mandatory conservation targets across the state on May 3.Other major water agencies around the Bay Area receive no Central Valley Project water. Customers in San Francisco and parts of the Peninsula and South Bay, for example, get water from the Hetch Hetchy system.For the 1.4 million people served by the East Bay Municipal Utility District, the federal water represents a small percentage of overall supply.Paul Rogers covers resources and environmental issues. Contact him at 408-920-5045. Follow him at?Twitter.com/PaulRogersSJMN | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Apr 3 07:35:03 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 14:35:03 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: April 14 - 2016 Trinity River Flow and Gravel Recommendations Meeting In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1218455309.1551161.1459694103063.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Saturday, April 2, 2016 5:05 PM, "Huntt DeCarlo, Caryn" wrote: TMC members,An informational public meeting is scheduled for theevening of April 14, 2016 to present and answer questions regarding the 2016Trinity River flow and gravel?augmentation recommendations.? The meeting will be held by TRRP technicalstaff from 6:00-7:30 p.m. at the TRRP office in Weaverville.If you have any questions, please contact Brandt?Gutermuthat 623-1806 or e-mail ?bgutermuth at usbr.gov.Thank you.? CarynCaryn Huntt DeCarlo, Acting Executive Director, TRRP ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Apr 5 14:30:12 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 21:30:12 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Grant application for Minersville boat ramp upgrade References: <157952153.2923180.1459891812114.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <157952153.2923180.1459891812114.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_0ce6a95a-f617-11e5-a64c-8b49b27570e7.html Grant application for Minersville boat ramp upgrade By Sally Morris The Trinity Journal | Posted: Wednesday, March 30, 2016 6:15 amThe only boat launch ramp available for use on Trinity Lake during low-water conditions is 40 years old and badly in need of repair, but the U.S. Forest Service is seeking $4.8 million in grant funds to fix the problems at the Minersville ramp and upgrade the facility to current standards.Backed by support from the Trinity County Collaborative, state Sen. Mike McGuire and the Trinity County Board of Supervisors, the Shasta-Trinity National Forest applied in January to the California Division of Boating and Waterways for a grant to fund improvements at the Minersville ramp.Built quickly during the 1976-77 drought, the asphalt ramp has deteriorated after 40 years of use and never included turnarounds or designated parking. It is narrow and does not accommodate very well the larger vehicles and boats now in use.During the current drought, Trinity Lake has been at low water levels for multiple years, forcing boaters to rely on the Minersville ramp as their only lake access and resulting in further degradation from the heavy use. Only short-term fixes to patch and re-patch the driveway have been available to sustain access until a permanent solution can be constructed.The total cost of the proposed improvements comes to $4,834,348 and would include new restrooms to replace one built in the 1960s as well as ramp replacement with a wider, concrete boat ramp, turnarounds and sidewalk; dual cable anchor system to accommodate a larger boarding float and designated parking area.The grant application submitted by the Forest Service notes that Trinity Lake is an important economic asset to the region that has become increasingly reliant on tourism, but during low-water conditions, the public is hesitant to visit because the Minersville ramp in its current condition is difficult to launch at.It also notes that in the period from 2001 to 2010, the lake level dropped more than 70 feet below the high water mark in seven out of 10 years (70 percent) which left the Minersville ramp as the only launch access available during some part of each year. During all 24 months of 2014-2015, the lake level never got above the 2,286-foot elevation, meaning that Minersville was the only usable boat ramp for two years. It is operational from 40 to 200 feet of drawdown. There are six other launch ramps, but they are all out of the water after a 70-foot drawdown.To date, a technical feasibility study, preliminary design and engineer?s cost estimate have been prepared for the proposed project. If the grant application to the state division of Boating and Waterways is successful, the proposal is for construction to occur during the lowest water months of October to February in 2019-20 with completion in March 2020, depending on lake levels. The lake needs to drop far enough to pour concrete for the ramp. A high water year would delay construction. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Apr 6 06:14:50 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:14:50 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] EDITORIAL On the Environment A Klamath win References: <963897637.84534.1459948490445.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <963897637.84534.1459948490445.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> EDITORIAL On the Environment A Klamath win The ground is beginning to crumble under a string of Klamath River dams as politics gives way to a monumental plan to restore the river?s fading health. Gov. Jerry Brown is joining Interior Secretary Sally Jewell at the river?s mouth to push a removal plan that skips past a Republican blockade in Congress.The demolition scheme, years in the making, will be the biggest in the nation, taking down four structures dating back nearly a century. The dams have turned toxic, pouring out warm, algae-laden water blamed for declining salmon runs on one of the West Coast?s top fish-rearing rivers. Removal, long a dream of environmental and fishing groups, took hold as Indian tribes and farmers in upstream Oregon joined in.The official gathering in Requa in Del Norte County should put the issue?s uncertain future back on track. The removal plan ? taking in river restoration work along with jack hammering away concrete was stopped in Congress. Republicans bridled at the cost and implications of knocking down dams.The Klamath?s broad constituency isn?t giving up. Oregon Gov. Kathy Brown is joining California?s Brown to emphasize that the two states are aligned. A voter-approved California bond will pay part of the $450 million bill. Electric ratepayers along the Klamath in both states have paid $100 million in surcharges since 2010 for removal due to start in 2020. PacifiCorp, the power firm that owns the four dams, will hand over the structures to a new entity responsible for demolition.The next stop in the path around Congress is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees power dams. Once its members see the long line of supporters and a utility willing to wave goodbye to the dams, the commissioners should go with plan as they have with lesser projects before.That day can?t come soon enough. It?s time to take down the walls at last. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Apr 6 06:24:43 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:24:43 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Chronicle: Deal set to raze 4 dams on Klamath References: <697792410.96891.1459949083562.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <697792410.96891.1459949083562.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Deal set to raze 4 dams on Klamath Biggest river renewal project in U.S. history ADDRESS: BY CAROLYN LOCHHEADJeff Barnard / Associated Press 2009The Iron Gate Dam spans the Klamath River near Hornbrook (Siskiyou County). Iron Gate and two other dams to be demolished are in California; the fourth, J.C. Boyle Dam, is just north, in Oregon.Todd Trumbull / The?ChronicleWASHINGTON ? The Obama administration and California officials are expected to announce a landmark agreement Wednesday to tear down four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, bypassing Congress to restore a major salmon fishery on the Oregon border.The dam removals would set in motion the largest river restoration in U.S. history and signal an end to one of the most contentious water fights in years. Since 2001, the Klamath basin has seen farmer bucket brigades, clashes with American Indian tribes, commercial fishery shutdowns and the largest fish die-off ever on the West Coast.A high-profile news conference to announce the deal is set for Wednesday at the Yurok Reservation in Klamath (Del Norte County), with Gov. Jerry Brown joining Oregon Gov. Kate Brown; Interior Secretary Sally Jewell; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency Administrator Kathryn Sullivan; and Stefan Bird, chief executive of Pacific Power, a division of PacifiCorp, which owns the dams.States work with feds?The two states and Secretary Jewell decided this is too important a place to too many people to walk away from trying to solve these tough problems,? said California Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham.?We more or less locked ourselves up and we produced the details? of the dam removal after outlining the deal two months ago, Bonham said.State officials decided to move forward on a 2010 pact among the warring Klamath basin parties. That pact called for dismantling the dams but required congressional approval. Republicans, especially Californians opposed to dam removals in general, refused to consider legislation and let the pact expire in December.The parties now intend to bypass Congress by using a dam delicensing process at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency that oversees hydroelectric power. The plan calls for removing the four dams by 2020, the same time-line set by the original pact.?What we believe we?ve found here is a way to go forward that doesn?t require approval from Congress,? said Bob Gravely, spokesman for PacifiCorp.The company will pay the first $200 million of the cost of removing the J.C. Boyle, Iron Gate, and Copco 1 and 2 dams. Estimates of the full job run as high as $450 million.Brown has proposed setting aside $250 million to finish the job, which the Legislature would have to approve. No federal funds will be used.Less cost, less riskKeeping the dams could cost as much as removing them. They block about half the Klamath River basin, so relicensing them would require fish ladders and other major capital improvements. Costs for modernization are estimated at about $400 million.?Having them removed and replacing the power will cost less and lead to less risk than proceeding with relicensing under known terms and conditions,? Gravely said.The dams were commissioned in the 1940s and ?50s for hydroelectric power, not to store water or prevent floods. Two of the dams created large reservoirs, used for recreation and lined in some places with private homes.Pacific Power?s 600,000 affected customers have been paying a dam removal surcharge of up to 2 percent of their electricity bills, Gravely said, with about half the cost, $100 million, now set aside.Brian Johnson of Trout Unlimited, a sport fishing and environmental group involved in the negotiations, said that the dams have blocked half the watershed of the Klamath and that removing them will ?open up close to 500 miles of steelhead habitat and about 420 miles for salmon.?Dams disrupt river ecologies, blocking salmon migrations to upstream spawning habitat and preventing the deposition of sediment downstream that nurtures coastlines.The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also has to approve the delicensing plan in a public process at which opponents, mainly farming interests and dam removal opponents, are expected to object.Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, whose district includes some of the basin, said that the new deal will not include assurances of water to basin farmers, but that ?I think (the farmers) are going to be fine.?Bypasses Congress?The essence of the deal is a private dam owner who wants to get rid of these zombie dams that don't provide a lot of hydropower and have huge environmental liabilities, and can be part of a transformative river restoration,? Huffman said. ?None of this requires any approval or authority or appropriation from Congress.?Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicle?s Washington correspondent. Email:?clochhead at sfchronicle.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Wed Apr 6 17:26:35 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 00:26:35 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Final TRP trapping summary for 2015-16 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA893070107DA66@057-SN2MPN2-113.057d.mgd.msft.net> Attached please find the final CDFW Trinity River trapping summary for the 2015-16 sampling year. You might notice a change in numbers from previous iterations as the fork length cut-offs between jack and adult have been adjusted post-season. If you have any questions or concerns, or would like to add anyone to or be deleted from the distribution list just shoot me an email. Our next monitoring season will not begin until sometime in June, so this will be it until then. Cheers! MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: FINAL_2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 74648 bytes Desc: FINAL_2015-16 TRP_ trapping_summary.pdf URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Apr 8 06:16:54 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 13:16:54 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Times Standard: Klamath dam deal only the start, officials say References: <1267357451.109366.1460121414240.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1267357451.109366.1460121414240.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160407/klamath-dam-deal-only-the-start-officials-say Klamath dam deal only the start, officials say Future agreements will require congressional approval By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardThursday, April 7, 2016While supporters of a pact to remove four Klamath River dams called it a historic leap for what could be the largest river restoration project in the nation?s history, nearly all believe it is only the first step on a long, uncharted road.How tribes, governments and irrigators will seek to settle decades? worth of water rights disputes and provide protections for threatened fish on the 236-mile river are still unresolved and will likely require the cooperation of Congress.?The Karuk Tribe would argue that dam removal is an enormous leap forward in terms of restoring the Klamath, but we still have to settle the water problem,? Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Policy Adviser Craig Tucker said Thursday. ?We still don?t have enough water in the river.?On Wednesday, top state, federal and tribal officials?signed an newly amended Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement?(KHSA), which seeks to remove four hydroelectric dams ? Copco 1, Copco 2, J.C. Boyle, and Iron Gate ? from the Klamath River by 2020. The dams are located in northern California and southern Oregon and are owned by the Portland-based energy company PacifiCorp, which has also signed the agreement.If the agreement is approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it will be the largest dam removal project in U.S. history.The parties also signed a second agreement ? the 2016 Klamath Power and Facilities Agreement (KPFA) ? on Wednesday which seeks to help Klamath Basin irrigators and farmers deal with the expected arrival of fish into waters currently blocked by the four hydroelectric dams.The new agreement also commits stakeholders to work over the next year to form other agreements meant to resolve water rights conflicts and provide protections for endangered fish in Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon.This is not the first attempt to address these issues.Two previous agreements ? the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) and the Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement ? were meant to settle the water rights conflicts between tribes and irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin.These two agreements along with the KHSA were packaged together, but required congressional approval. However, the agreements stalled in Congress for six years due to opposition of House Republicans who did not support dam removal.The KBRA expired on Jan. 1.The Klamath Power and Facilities Agreement seeks to resurrect these agreements, but local officials are not expecting Congress to be cooperative.?Speaking Wednesday after the KHSA signing ceremony in Requa, California 2nd District Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) summarized his experience of trying to push the agreements through the House of Representatives.?I?ve beat my head against that wall for the last three years,? Huffman said. ?Unfortunately, it?s very clear that this Congress is not going to be part of the solution.?Irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin in Oregon, represented by the Klamath Water Users Association, are now concerned that the dam removal proposal is moving forward without an agreement that will give them water assurances.?We kept our part of the bargain,? Klamath Water Users Association Executive Director Scott White said Wednesday. ?The amended KHSA is not the solution to the basin. There is work to do to address all interest in the basin including water and power security and reliability for family farms and ranches in the Upper Klamath Basin.?The KFPA focuses on two other Klamath River dams ? Keno and Link River ? which are operated by PacifiCorp, but owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. With many Klamath Basin irrigators diverting water from the reservoirs behind these dams using canals and channels, the agreement seeks to find a way to prevent migrating fish from entering these waterways to protect both the fish and the farmers.?Tucker said this can be achieved through construction of fish screens on canals and fish ladders on both Keno and Link River dams.While the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will seek state and private funding to pay for these additions, irrigation districts and the farmers will be responsible for covering the maintenance and cleaning of these facilities.?What we?re committing to is we?ll support public funding to pay for those things,? Tucker said.Not everyone supports the new agreement. Hoopa Valley Tribal Fisheries Director Mike Orcutt said that the Hoopa Valley Tribe is very supportive of dam removal, but is not willing to sign on to the agreement due to its tie to the Klamath Facilities and Power Agreement.Orcutt argued that the KFPA will be ?indemnifying the water users? in the Klamath Basin of their impacts to water quality and quantity. The Hoopa Valley Tribe had also not supported the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement due to the agreement assuring water for basin irrigators.??A big part of (the KBRA) was it was Christmas-treed up with a whole bunch of assurances,? Orcutt said. ?Now, which one will rise to be the top priority (in the KFPA)??Orcutt said the tribe also questions whether any compromises can be reached before the upcoming presidential election.?This is the last six months of this administration,? Orcutt said. ?We?ll see where it goes.?Tucker holds a different view, stating that good faith negotiations and compromise between tribes, irrigators, governments and power suppliers have led to what he believes is the greatest chance to have the dams removed and the river restored.?If you really want to fix the Klamath, we?re going to have to work with other water users in the basin who are suffering some economic insecurity that comes with water insecurity to agree on a water management plan,? Tucker said.With the dam removal agreement now on a separate track, Tucker hopes that any compromises reached through the Klamath Power and Facilities Agreement will be easier for Congress to swallow.?I?m hoping that by not leaving dam removal in the legislative package that it will be easier for (Congressional Republicans) to play ball now,? Tucker said.Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Fri Apr 8 10:07:34 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 10:07:34 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Santa Cruz Sentinel: West Coast scientists urge immediate action to combat ocean acidification Message-ID: <045d01d191b9$25bf5b10$713e1130$@sisqtel.net> http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/environment-and-nature/20160407/west-coast- scientists-urge-immediate-action-to-combat-ocean-acidification West Coast scientists urge immediate action to combat ocean acidification By Samantha Clark, Santa Cruz Sentinel Posted: 04/07/16, 7:56 PM PDT | SANTA CRUZ >> A group of scientists is warning that waters off the West Coast are quickly becoming more acidic. In a new report out this week from the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel, they urge swift and coordinated action in the region, which is among the hardest hit by the global problem. The ocean is absorbing increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to such a degree that it's throwing the chemical balance of seawater out of whack and in turn threatening marine ecosystems and posing severe economic consequences. While ocean acidification and the related problem of hypoxia - when there's a depleted amount of oxygen in the water - are worldwide problems, the panel of 20 scientists says it's important to fight them on the home front as well. "The goal of this document is to provide a road map for managers on things that they can do now to address the issue of ocean acidification," said Alexandria, Boehm, panel co-chair and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Because of how the Pacific Ocean circulates, the West Coast is exposed disproportionately to water with higher acidity levels. Already shellfish, corals and other organisms are having a harder time reproducing and growing their skeletons and outer protective shells. As a result, the West Coast shellfish industry is seeing high mortality rates during the early life stages when shell formation is important. And increased acidity has shown to give rise to harmful algae blooms in the lab. The toxins can cause sickness and even death up the food chain as contaminated fish and shellfish are consumed by larger fish, marine mammals and even people. "Ocean acidification is very alarming if you look at what's going to happen to the ocean's pH if we don't reduce carbon emissions," Boehm said. In the report, the panel makes calls for action that are coordinated and collaborative between ocean management and natural resource agencies. Its recommendations include exploring the use of sea grass to remove carbon dioxide from seawater, reducing land-based pollution from entering coastal waters and revising water-quality criteria. In addition, the panel suggests policymakers create a West Coast monitoring program for gathering more data and create a scientific task force to help management stay effective. "They make some really tangible recommendations that science suggests could have an impact," said Kristy Kroeker, an expert on ocean acidification and assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz who is not part of the panel. "The West Coast and the Monterey Bay are really sitting in a hot spot for acidification. It's happening here twice as fast as it's happening in the rest of the world. Understanding the problem and things we can do is really critical for our community." To read the report, go to westcoastoah.org/executivesummary. West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel report http://westcoastoah.org/executivesummary/ http://westcoastoah.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/OAH-Panel-Ecosystems-3.30 .16-FINAL.pdf Summary Ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH) together are changing the chemistry of the world's oceans. Despite good evidence of species-level effects of OAH, we have little resolution regarding the scale and magnitude of ecosystem-level effects. Yet, such ecosystem effects are likely to significantly affect economically and culturally important resources, and the services and benefits that marine ecosystems provide to society. Focusing on the West Coast of North America, we first ask how insights gained from the past decade of research can inform and bound our predictions of the direction and magnitude of the ecosystem changes ahead. Although abrupt and significant ecosystem changes can reasonably be expected, predicting the timing of these changes (e.g., 1, 5, 10 years) and how they will manifest is challenging. We then propose that sustaining ecological resilience through the use of ecosystem approaches that are already embedded in natural resource management frameworks provides a pragmatic path forward and offers opportunities for decision-makers to take action now to address OAH. We illustrate this approach with three case studies from the U.S. West Coast: marine protected areas, ecosystem-based fi sheries management, and coastal EBM initiatives. Such actions can potentially ameliorate OAH effects over the near-term and forestall abrupt ecosystem changes, "buying time" as scientific understanding and management options improve. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Apr 8 11:03:24 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 18:03:24 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] EENews: Court revives fishermen's challenge to Reclamation contracts References: <1443700182.267817.1460138604516.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1443700182.267817.1460138604516.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> WESTERN WATER:Court revives fishermen's challenge to Reclamation contracts?Jeremy P. Jacobs, E&E reporterPublished: Tuesday, March 29, 2016?A federal appeals court yesterday revived a challenge from California fishermen to federal water delivery contracts to California's agricultural hub.?The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld a lower court ruling that sided with the Bureau of Reclamation in a lawsuit concerning water deliveries to major irrigation districts.?But the panel also said the bureau failed to adequately explain in its environmental assessment why it did not consider an alternative in which less water was delivered than the maximum obligated under the contracts.?The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association were seeking to undermine eight interim two-year contracts that account for 1.2 million acre-feet of water deliveries from the San Francisco Bay Delta to the Westlands Water District and others via the federal Central Valley Project.?They raised several claims under the National Environmental Policy Act, including that the bureau's environmental assessment focused entirely on environmental impacts where the water would be delivered and not impacts on where it was taken from.?The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit agreed with one of their arguments. The unanimous panel concluded that the bureau's environmental assessment was inadequate "because it did not give full and meaningful consideration to the alternative of a reduction in maximum water qualities."?It added that was an "abuse of discretion."?Bureau water contracts have increasingly been the target of environmental group lawsuits. The contracts, which are periodically renewed, govern how much water major irrigators receive from the Central Valley Project, which moves water from the northern part of the state to agricultural hubs to the south.?In court documents, the fishermen contended that the bureau is automatically renewing the contracts without seriously considering their effects on the Bay Delta, where many fish species, such as the delta smelt and some salmon, are severely threatened.?"Reclamation is barreling down a track that ends with the extinction of the Delta's iconic fisheries," they wrote, "but Reclamation claims that since it has already left the station it cannot consider the impacts of deciding to continue on that journey rather than get off at the next stop."?Courts, they wrote, should force the bureau to consider those effects "before it is too late to avoid the environmental train wreck."?Click here for the opinion.?? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Apr 11 10:13:48 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:13:48 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Breaking News: Feds to Probe Delta Tunnels Misuse of Grant Funds! In-Reply-To: <830FAFCA-1F20-459F-ADFD-C8370CCA3D60@fishsniffer.com> References: <830FAFCA-1F20-459F-ADFD-C8370CCA3D60@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <480835898.756421.1460394828251.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/11/1513800/-Feds-to-Probe-Delta-Tunnels-Misuse-of-Grant-Funds http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/04/11/1614/ Feds to Probe Delta Tunnels Misuse of Grant Funds In the latest development in the long saga of Governor Jerry Brown?s rapidly collapsing California Water Fix, the Inspector General will be conducting an investigation of a Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) complaint detailing how a funding agreement with the California Water Resources Department ?is illegally siphoning off funds that are supposed to benefit fish and wildlife to a project that will principally benefit irrigators.?? Below is the press release that I just received from PEER:www.peer.org/... For Immediate Release: Apr 11, 2016 Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337 FEDS TO PROBE DELTA TUNNEL MISUSE OF GRANT FUNDS Inspector General to Audit California Water Resources Handling of Federal AidPosted on Apr 11, 2016?| Tags:?California,?DOI?Washington, DC ? How the State of California spent millions of dollars of federal aid meant for improving fish habitat on preparing the Environmental Impact Statement for its controversial Delta Tunnel Project is under new legal scrutiny, according to documents posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Representing a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation employee, PEER filed a complaint detailing how a funding agreement with the California Water Resources Department is illegally siphoning off funds that are supposed to benefit fish and wildlife to a project that will principally benefit irrigators.The Delta Tunnel is a massive engineering project to trans-ship vast quantities of freshwater from the reaches of the Sacramento River, its sloughs and Delta to the south. In support of this project, the state has received more than $60 million in grants authorized under the federal Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. The PEER complaint filed on February 19, 2016 charges that ? - Those funds are earmarked for fish habitat improvements but are instead being expended on work that will harm critical habitat for at least five endangered and threatened fish species. Out of millions spent not a dime went to habitat improvements; - The state double-billed for work it supposedly already did with an earlier $50 million grant; and - The state collected all of the federal funds when the agreement was executed, in violation of a 50/50 matching requirement. The Bureau of Reclamation also ignored its own rule barring all the federal money from being expended before receiving the non-federal share. Nor has Water Resources indicated when and from what source it will supply its overdue match. In a letter dated April 8, 2016, Mary Kendall, Deputy Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Interior wrote PEER saying:?We have carefully reviewed the information you provided to us and gathered additional information about the agreement. Based on this information we have decided to conduct a review into the issues raised in your letter and we expect to commence our work on this matter this month.??California is improperly diverting federal grants to a giant slush fund for the California Water Fix,? stated PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein, who drafted the complaint, using a nickname applied to the Delta Tunnel. ?In this case, the Bureau of Reclamation is abetting the State of California in breaking laws designed to ensure that federal investments to benefit wildlife are not used to their detriment.?? Currently, the Interior Inspector General is already auditing misuse of Reclamation grants also intended to benefit fish but actually benefitting irrigators, stemming from another PEER whistleblower complaint made in 2015. Deputy Inspector General Kendall indicates that she does not expect that earlier audit to be delayed, as it is slated to be submitted to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell for her approval.Read the PEER letterSee the Inspector General responseLook at ongoing IG probe of diversion of Klamath drought relief moneys -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Big_OIl_Brown_Photo.png Type: image/png Size: 189025 bytes Desc: not available URL: From magallagher at usbr.gov Mon Apr 11 12:08:12 2016 From: magallagher at usbr.gov (Gallagher, Michele) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 12:08:12 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Flow/Gravel Recommendations Community Meeting, April 14, 2016 from 6-7:30pm Message-ID: You are invited to attend the *2016 Trinity River Restoration Program Flow/Gravel Recommendations* Community Meeting: [image: Inline image 1] Water Year 2016 is a ?Wet? year for Trinity River flows as determined by the April first reservoir inflow forecast of 1,600,000 acre feet, which allows for release to the river of 701,000 acre feet. The Trinity Management Council (TMC) flow release hydrograph recommendation is *awaiting approval *by the U.S. Department of Interior. [image: Inline image 2] Michele Gallagher Project Coordination Specialist Trinity River Restoration Program Tel (530) 623-1804 Fax (530)623-5944 magallagher at usbr.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 156852 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 76854 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bgutermuth at usbr.gov Tue Apr 12 17:37:23 2016 From: bgutermuth at usbr.gov (Gutermuth, F.) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 17:37:23 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Fwd: News Release for BLM public meetings- in Weaverville (April 19) and Redding (April 18th) Message-ID: Hi all - Here's a reminder of BLM's meetings next week - Please see attached new release, call if you have questions.. Meetings Set for BLM Northwest California Integrated Resource Management Plan *REDDING, Calif.* ? Public meetings will be held in Redding and Weaverville during April, providing opportunities for people to share with the Bureau of Land Management their values regarding BLM-managed public lands. These informal meetings will be early opportunities for public involvement as the BLM begins developing the Northwest California Integrated Resource Management Plan. The meetings, all from 4 to 7 p.m., are scheduled for: - Redding: Monday, April 18, Civic Center Community Room, 777 Cypress Ave. - Weaverville: Tuesday, April 19, Veterans Memorial Hall, 101 Memorial Dr. Below is the link for the news release: Meetings Set for BLM Northwest California Integrated Resource Management Plan http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/info/newsroom/2016/march/northwestCArmp.html Bill Kuntz Bureau of Land Management Redding Field Office Sup. of Recreation and Engineering Programs 355 Hemsted Drive Redding, CA 96002 Office: 530-224-2157 Cell: 530-945-6812 Fax: 530-224-2172 Email: wkuntz at blm.gov Web Page: http://www.ca.blm.gov/redding or http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/prog/recreation.html <'}}}}><{ Fish On! The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, the most of any Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. The BLM's multiple-use mission manages 21 National Monuments, almost 9 million of acres of wilderness, 2400 miles of wild and scenic river and 18 National Conservation Areas. In addition, in 2014 public lands contributed more than $112 billion to the U.S. economy and helped support more than 500,000 jobs. Hi everyone, Below is the link for the news release: Meetings Set for BLM Northwest California Integrated Resource Management Plan http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/info/newsroom/2016/march/northwestCArmp.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Apr 14 08:59:24 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 15:59:24 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] California drought and drainage bills could collide on Capitol Hill References: <1179595790.470262.1460649564700.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1179595790.470262.1460649564700.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> California drought and drainage bills could collide on Capitol Hill BY MICHAEL DOYLEmdoyle at mcclatchydc.comWASHINGTON?The politics of California water is becoming three-dimensional chess in Congress as lawmakers balance competing anti-drought ideas with a proposed San Joaquin Valley irrigation drainage settlement that?s going to get bigger.In a fresh gambit, a key House subcommittee on Wednesday approved controversial California water provisions that would steer more water to farmers. Soon, some of these same farmers will be seeking additional legislation to settle a long-running drainage dispute.While the California drought and drainage proposals are distinct, they involve many of the same lawmakers, incite similar regional tensions and in the end could become entangled in each other?s fate.?A lot of dots begin to connect here,? Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said Wednesday.The initial moves involve?California provisions folded into?an 82-page bill that funds federal energy and water programs for the 2017 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives energy and water appropriations subcommittee unanimously approved the $37.4 billion package Wednesday.The California provisions modify proposals that have previously failed in Congress over the past four years. They include mandated pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and a freeze on an ambitious San Joaquin River restoration program.?It moves the ball in the right direction,? said Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, a member of the House Appropriations Committee. ?I wish it would have happened last December, (but) we?re going to take every opportunity possible.?Valadao wrote the original House bills from which the California provisions were taken.THIS YEAR EL NINO STORMS HAVE BLESSED OUR STATE WITH RAIN AND SNOW. BUT THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION HAS PUMPED LESS THIS YEAR THAN LAST YEAR WHEN WE FACED HISTORIC DRY PERIODS.?House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.Northern California Democrats, including those representing parts of the Delta, oppose the familiar-sounding measures. While all but certain to pass the House, parts of the energy and water package will inevitably face resistance in the Senate and the White House.?Same old, same old,? Huffman said. ?This is another highly partisan, overreaching play on the same lousy bill.?Huffman has proposed his own?California water bill that includes a variety of recycling grants, watershed protection programs and desalination studies. It doesn?t stand a chance in a House where Republicans command a 246-188 majority, though individual items might survive.The Senate?s version of the 2017 energy and water bill, also approved by subcommittee Wednesday, includes $100 million for assorted drought-relief programs but omits the California measures preferred by House Republicans.In theory, this conflict sets the stage for a negotiating conference where House and Senate appropriators work out their differences. Some GOP lawmakers have long believed their best shot at a California water win will come in just such a conference committee on a must-pass bill.The irrigation drainage settlement, so far, occupies a different board level in the chess game, but that could change.In January,?Valadao introduced a bill?to implement a settlement between the Westlands Water District and the federal government over the Bureau of Reclamation?s environmentally damaging failure to provide irrigation drainage.The bill mirrors a?legal settlement announced last September, relieving the federal government of the obligation to provide drainage. In return, the 600,000-acre Westlands district will retire at least 100,000 acres of farmland and have its own remaining debt of roughly $375 million forgiven, among other changes.Three smaller San Joaquin Valley water districts, sometimes dubbed the ?Northerly Districts,? have now neared an agreement on their own irrigation drainage settlement. Like the Westlands agreement, the tentative deal with the San Luis, Panoche and Pacheco water districts relieves the government of drainage responsibilities and forgives the water districts? remaining debts.?It appears they are very close,? Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, said Wednesday.Costa noted that the boards of the districts have agreed to a proposed settlement, which would also include some $70 million in federal payments for anti-salinity efforts. The deal still needs sign-off by the federal Office of Management and Budget, which can seem sluggish and opaque to outsiders.Once final, perhaps later this spring, the Northerly Districts? drainage settlement will also be translated into legislation, putting one more piece into play in a Congress where nothing comes easy.Michael Doyle:?202-383-0006,?@MichaelDoyle10 Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article71646777.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Apr 14 13:51:02 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 20:51:02 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?This_just_in_=E2=80=A6_Lawsuit_Challenges?= =?utf-8?q?_Metropolitan_Water_District=E2=80=99s_Purchase_of_Delta_Island?= =?utf-8?q?s?= References: <1117629640.622986.1460667062431.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1117629640.622986.1460667062431.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://mavensnotebook.com/2016/04/14/this-just-in-lawsuit-challenges-metropolitan-water-authoritys-purchase-of-delta-islands/ This just in ? Lawsuit Challenges Metropolitan Water District?s Purchase of Delta Islands April 14, 2016?Maven??Breaking News Local governments and consumer and environmental groups charge Met with evading environmental review in attempt to push through Delta tunnels project Press release from Food and Water Watch, the Planning and Conservation League, San Joaquin County, and Contra Costa County:Today, Food & Water Watch, the Planning and Conservation League, San Joaquin County, Contra Costa County and the Central Delta Water Agency plan to file suit against the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) charging that its claim of complete exemption from environmental review for the proposed purchase of 20,000 acres of Delta islands and farmland is illegal and unjustified. The lawsuit, to be filed in San Joaquin County Superior Court, asks the Court to enjoin MWD from purchasing the property unless and until it completes the environmental review required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).MWD has promoted this land purchase to clear the path for the ?California Water Fix? twin tunnels project and remove obstacles to its completion. The purchase would also enable physical changes affecting the properties that may harm the Delta environment and could cost California ratepayers and taxpayers billions of dollars.?It?s not surprising that Metropolitan avoided a proper review as the land purchase is not in the interest of Southern California ratepayers and taxpayers,? said Brenna Norton, Senior Organizer for Food & Water Watch. ?This purchase would promote Metropolitan?s effort to build the $67 billion tunnels which will only benefit MWD ?s bottom line?while costing Southern Californians billions and not providing one drop of new water.?The plaintiffs allege that the land purchase by MWD is part of an attempt take more water from the Delta for MWD use and that the environmental impacts resulting from that activity would be ?significant? and outside any exemption from?CEQA.?A twin tunnels project has yet to be approved, and Metropolitan Water District has taken brazen steps to bypass?CEQA?requirements in order to approve the $175 million Delta island purchase and begin a staging zone for twin tunnel construction,? said Mark Myles, Esq., County Counsel for San Joaquin County. ?MWD?s actions to sidestep?CEQA?in its deal to purchase the islands illustrates the lengths that MWD is willing to go to acquire water for its own purposes without any regard for?CEQA?laws, environmental review and public input. San Joaquin County is not going to stand idly by and allow MWD to circumvent California environmental laws and make up its own rules in order to bulldoze its way through the Delta. MWD should immediately rescind its decision to purchase the islands and perform the environmental review required by?CEQA.?MWD falsely asserts it is only interested in Delta habitat restoration and therefore its actions are exempt from any form of environmental review. Yet MWD?s General Manager, and its own promotional materials, admit that the islands could facilitate building the $20-67 billion twin tunnels under the Delta by reducing eminent-domain needs and providing a storage place for construction dirt.Roger Moore, the attorney representing the Planning and Conservation League and Food and Water Watch, noted that ?Metropolitan?s outrageous claim that its Delta island purchase is too benign for environmental review can?t be reconciled with its own promotional materials, which portray the island purchase as clearing the path for construction of the Delta tunnels. California?s residents and ratepayers deserve a higher standard of candor and accountability.?The twin tunnel project has no final Environmental Impact Report by the State and no financing plan. Nor have the MWD Board of Directors member agencies approved financing for the project.?Contra Costa County adamantly opposes Metropolitan Water District's attempt to go around?CEQA?rules,? County Supervisor Karen Mitchoff said. ?CEQA?protects everyone from blatant attempts to destroy environmental requirements, and MWD's flagrant disregard of?CEQA?in this instance continues to demonstrate how little it values the Delta and its critical ecosystem. Contra Costa County is a petitioner in this litigation because our citizens understand the importance of everyone having to follow the rules. MWD leadership should be ashamed of this unbelievable tactic, which reflects its ongoing unwillingness to deal with Delta concerns fairly.??MWD board members need to overturn this illegal decision pressed on them by their general manager,? said Jonas Minton, Water Policy Advisor for the Planning and Conservation League. For more information ? - Click here for the court filing. - Click here for the accompanying letter. ####Food & Water Watch?champions healthy food and clean water for all. We stand up to corporations that put profits before people, and advocate for a democracy that improves people?s lives and protects our environment.San Joaquin County?has defended the Delta for decades, and will continue to defend the Delta and its 726,106 constituents.Contra Costa County?is proud to protect the environmental concerns of the Delta and ensure a safe and reliable water supply for its more than one million residents.Planning and Conservation League?(PCL) is a nonprofit lobbying organization, working in the State Legislature to enact and implement policies to protect and restore the California environment. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Apr 14 15:11:57 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 22:11:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Huffman, CA Legislators Launch Investigation into Westlands Water District In-Reply-To: <1453149658.643541.1460671766990.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <53EE14D93FA4B144B575C2EC04D126015AF33D21@HEOC-HRM02.US.House.gov> <1453149658.643541.1460671766990.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1292761586.650862.1460671917641.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> From: Shaffer, Alexa Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2016 5:41 PM Subject: Huffman, CA Legislators Launch Investigation into Westlands Water District ? | For Immediate Release?????????????????????? April 14, 2016 | Contact:Alexa Shaffer 202.236.3421 | | ? Huffman, California Legislators Launch Investigation into Westlands Water District Lawmakers seek answers about ?Enron accounting? agency that seeks Congressional approval of a sweeping legal settlement ? Washington D.C.- In light of the nearly unprecedented penalties paid by the powerful Westlands Water District to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges for misleading investors,?Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) today launched an investigation with several of his congressional colleagues into a major settlement agreement between Westlands and the federal government. The settlement agreement, currently pending in Congress, would forgive hundreds of millions of dollars owed by Westlands yet lacks key safeguards and assurances that the water district will hold up its side of the bargain. ? The SEC recently charged Westlands and two of its top officials with misleading investors about its financial condition, noting that the water district had used ?extraordinary accounting transactions? to hide the fact that insufficient revenues were available to cover debt obligations. The General Manager of the Westlands Water District called this practice ?a little Enron accounting? to his board of directors, and both the General Manager, a former Assistant General Manager, and the Water District itself agreed to pay significant penalties to resolve the SEC charges. ? Separately, Westlands negotiated a sweeping legal settlement with the U.S. Department of the Interior, resolving longstanding litigation over the management of drainwater from selenium-impaired farmland in the water district. While that settlement awaits Congressional consideration, the Interior Department continues to negotiate a similar agreement with Westlands? neighboring water districts. However, as part of today?s investigation, Huffman released a new report from the Congressional Research Service that raises serious questions about the lack of safeguards in the Westlands settlement ? safeguards that the Interior Department had previously identified as necessary for both taxpayers and the environment. ? ?The Westlands Water District plays by its own rules, and trusting them with an agreement of this magnitude should give every member of Congress serious pause,? said Rep. Huffman. ?Anyone who compares their business tactics to Enron?s shouldn?t lightly be given a waiver of nearly $400 million owed to the U.S. Treasury, much less given a permanent water contract or carte blanche to manage the toxic discharge that could drain to the San Joaquin River and the Bay-Delta ecosystem. We need to know that the Westlands Water District didn?t get a sweetheart deal, and that the federal government is working to protect Americans? financial and environmental interests.? ? In launching the investigation, Congressman Huffman and his colleagues are today releasing: ?????????A Congressional Research Service Reportthatdetails the multitude of ways that the legal settlement reached between the Obama Administration?s Interior Department and the Westlands Water District fails to include key safeguards for the environment and for taxpayers, and falls far short of the principles laid out several years ago by the very same Interior Department. ?????????A Congressional letter to Environmental Protection ?Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy urging her to review the Westlands settlement to ensure that the EPA and other federal agencies are prepared to respond to the serious risks that the settlement might pose to water quality.Cosignatories include Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), ?Jerry McNerney (D-Stockton), Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord), Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento), and John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove). ?????????A Hearing Request to the Natural Resources Committee calling for oversight to be conducted on the Westlands settlement, including a request that Westlands? General Manager, Thomas Birmingham, be asked to testify under oath in light of the recent SEC enforcement action. Fellow Natural Resources Committee Democrats Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk), and Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) also joined Rep. Huffman on the hearing request letter to Chairman Bishop. ?????????A letter to President Obama authored by Congressman Jerry McNerney (D-Stockton) asking that the President direct his Administration to answer tough questions about the settlement signed with Westlands. Cosignatories in addition to Huffman include Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord), Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento), and John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) ? ### ? | ? ? Alexa Shaffer Communications Director Congressman Jared Huffman (CA-02) 1630 Longworth HOB | 202-225-5161 ? More updates from Congressman Huffman: ? ???? ? #yiv2712904560 #yiv2712904560 -- filtered {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}#yiv2712904560 filtered {font-family:Tahoma;panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}#yiv2712904560 p.yiv2712904560MsoNormal, #yiv2712904560 li.yiv2712904560MsoNormal, #yiv2712904560 div.yiv2712904560MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:11.0pt;}#yiv2712904560 a:link, #yiv2712904560 span.yiv2712904560MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv2712904560 a:visited, #yiv2712904560 span.yiv2712904560MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv2712904560 p.yiv2712904560MsoAcetate, #yiv2712904560 li.yiv2712904560MsoAcetate, #yiv2712904560 div.yiv2712904560MsoAcetate {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:8.0pt;}#yiv2712904560 p.yiv2712904560MsoNoSpacing, #yiv2712904560 li.yiv2712904560MsoNoSpacing, #yiv2712904560 div.yiv2712904560MsoNoSpacing {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:11.0pt;}#yiv2712904560 span.yiv2712904560BalloonTextChar {}#yiv2712904560 span.yiv2712904560EmailStyle20 {color:windowtext;}#yiv2712904560 span.yiv2712904560EmailStyle22 {color:#1F497D;}#yiv2712904560 .yiv2712904560MsoChpDefault {font-size:10.0pt;}#yiv2712904560 filtered {margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}#yiv2712904560 div.yiv2712904560WordSection1 {}#yiv2712904560 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image005.png Type: image/png Size: 1118 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Apr 15 07:46:22 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 14:46:22 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Bureau looking for ideas on getting salmon around dams References: <1362851168.945803.1460731582616.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1362851168.945803.1460731582616.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Bureau looking for ideas on getting salmon around dams Damon Arthur/Record Searchlight The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is looking for ideas from the general public on how to get fish past tall dams like Shasta Dam.Posted:?Yesterday 6:00 p.m.3 CommentsBy?Damon Arthur?of the Redding Record SearchlightHave an idea about how to get migrating fish past tall dams like Shasta Dam? The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation wants to hear about it.And there is a prize, up to $20,000 for the best proposal, according to the bureau.Connie Svoboda, a hydraulic engineer for the bureau in Denver, Colorado, said the competition is only the third time her agency has opened up a problem to anyone in the nation.Typically the agency has sought proposals from engineering and environmental agencies and companies they work with regularly."This is such a great tool, because previously we could only reach out to the communities that we already knew," Svoboda said. "The prize competition, through the Internet, allows you to reach out to the general public."While the bureau wants solutions that apply to all of the tall dams it operates, there is a problem the agency currently faces with Shasta Dam.The bureau and other federal and state fisheries agencies want to re-introduce winter-run chinook salmon to the McCloud and Sacramento rivers upstream of Lake Shasta. The first phase of that effort, expected to begin next year, focuses on the McCloud.Fish ladders and other types of passages around dams are common to get fish swimming upstream past dams and other obstacles, but the bureau wants a solution to get fish past dams when they are going downstream to the ocean.In the first year of the proposed plan, the fish would be hatched at the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery near Shasta Dam. Once they are about 2 inches long, they would be hauled by truck and released into the river below the dam at McCloud Reservoir.Within a year, the young fish would swim downstream but would be trapped before they swim into Lake Shasta, the bureau's project manager, John Hannon, has said.After the young fish are collected they would be hauled by truck back to the Sacramento River so they could swim out to the ocean.In the second year, they would again release fingerlings and put fertilized eggs in the McCloud . The young fish would again be trapped and collected near the lake. By the third year they would be releasing fingerlings, eggs and adult salmon into the river for spawning, Hannon said.The chinook salmon live in the ocean about three years, and return to fresh water to spawn and die. The bureau wants proposals from the public about the best way to capture the young fish to get them past dams, Svoboda said."For this prize competition, we are interested in collecting the juvenile fish in the reservoir for transport downstream," Svoboda said in a video posted on YouTube."There are challenges for collecting fish in the reservoir. The fish can have a very difficult time finding a single collection point in a very large reservoir. They may never find the collection point or they may be significantly delayed in finding it," she said in the video.There is already a trap at Keswick Dam used to catch adult salmon heading upstream from the ocean. Those fish are taken to the Livingston Stone Fish Hatchery. Hannon said that trap can be used to take adults returning from the ocean past the dam and haul them by truck to the McCloud.In the previous two competitions, the bureau chose proposals submitted from companies and groups they had never worked with before, Svoboda said. She did not know how many dam passage proposals had been submitted because the competition is being managed by a company called InnoCentive.She said proposals should be in the range of three to five pages and include drawings. Proposals don't need to include a testable prototype, she said.The judges, who work with federal agencies, may choose one winner and award the full $20,000 prize, Svoboda said. Both of the earlier competitions also chose more than one proposal, which means the winners split the amount of prize money.There will be at least one $5,000 winner and no winners will receive less than $2,500, according to competition rules.More information about the challenge, which closes May 10, can be found online at http://bit.ly/1oohjL8. About Damon Arthur Damon Arthur covers resources, environment and the outdoors for the Record Searchlight and Redding.com. - Facebook - @damonarthur_RS - damon.arthur at redding.com - 530-225-8226 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Apr 15 07:50:18 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 14:50:18 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Rob Hartman: Time to Manage Reservoirs Differently References: <694977217.952169.1460731818763.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <694977217.952169.1460731818763.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.waterdeeply.org/articles/2016/04/10095/rob-hartman-time-manage-reservoirs-differently/ Rob Hartman: Time to Manage Reservoirs Differently April 11th, 2016?by?Matt Weiser?????8 min read????? - Share31 ?- ? Tweet Some California reservoirs are releasing vast amounts of water even though the drought continues. This wouldn't be necessary if water managers used new weather and streamflow forecasting tools, says Rob Hartman, hydrologist-in-charge of the California/Nevada River Forecast CenterIt might be difficult to believe, but California?s water-supply reservoirs are not managed according to the weather.In the midst of the state?s ongoing drought, reservoirs in recent weeks have been releasing huge quantities of water, as seen recently at Folsom Reservoir on the American River near Sacramento. Even though the reservoir is not full, and even though there is no immediate need to empty the reservoir for flood protection, officials still let precious water go.Why do they do this? It?s because most reservoirs are operated according to rigid rules prescribed by federal law and overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that dictate how much water must be released and when. The purpose of these rules, known as a water control manual, is public safety: Dam operators must maintain a fixed amount of empty space in reservoirs during winter months in case that space is needed to store floodwaters.The rules were mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s, when the dams were originally built. But the rules have not been updated significantly since then, even though there have been profound advances in weather forecasting that could allow that empty space to be managed much differently to hang on to vital water supplies.Today it is possible to know, for example, that no storms are expected for the entire upcoming week, so there is no reason to release water. But this information has not yet altered the rules.Rob Hartman, hydrologist-in-charge of the California/Nevada River Forecast Center, believes that new weather and streamflow forecasting tools should be used to better manage reservoirs. (Rob Hartman)Rob Hartman is hydrologist-in-charge at the?California/Nevada River Forecast Center, a branch of the National Weather Service in Sacramento. He?s an advocate for operating reservoirs using modern weather forecasting tools, an approach now being called Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO). Hartman has been nudging the state and federal officials who manage California?s reservoirs to embrace this approach, and he recently spoke with Water Deeply about how it works and why it makes sense.Water Deeply: What has changed to make Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations possible today?Rob Hartman: It?s really hard to say there was just one thing that did change. I?ve been here doing this for about 20 years. As I look back 20 years ago, the skill and lead time in the weather forecast has really improved a lot. The computer forecast models are fundamentally better at longer lead times. In the past, we didn?t take anything seriously beyond a couple-three days. We integrated a day of rainfall forecasts and we never forecast anything beyond about a day.Now, we?re looking seriously at things that are a week out. They may change a lot by the time they reach us. But we?re definitely looking seriously at things that are a week out, and we?re also looking at week two. Now we routinely put five-day forecasts on the web, and we can run out further than that. The lead time has increased dramatically, and it seems like the skill has improved quite a bit. People take the weather forecast a lot more seriously than they used to. That?s really the big shift, and the pressure that?s been put on Corps of Engineers? water control manuals.Water Deeply:?So why aren?t we using FIRO already?Hartman: There was a great deal of resistance to this, even a couple of years ago, principally from the Corps of Engineers. In the past, they?ve been very resistant to even consider these sorts of things. They want objective and well-established procedures for being able to manage the flood risk. They have a pretty high bar, and rightfully so. But they?ve really softened their stance on this quite a bit, to their credit.When those water-control manuals were developed in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the forecasting skill was not good. So as a result, those manuals make the assumption that the big storm is coming tomorrow, and you?ve always got to be ready. We know, because the weather forecasting is better, that the big storm is not coming tomorrow. And it?s not coming the day after, either.So we don?t need to be in a place with reservoir storage to be able to handle that. We need to be able to get to that place a week from now, should a big storm show up. But we don?t need to be ready for it today. That?s the big change. Nobody is really firmly standing in the way of this now. That wasn?t the case three years ago, even two years ago.Water Deeply:?What eased their concerns?Hartman: This whole notion has really kind of come of age. The drought in California has, I think, shined a light on it. Times have changed and there is other information that needs to be considered. And we need to manage our water resources in a much more intentional fashion, because it?s limited. It?s really tight here. We don?t have the luxury of excess water all the time. We don?t have to make decisions in the dark, and we shouldn?t be ignoring information that helps us do a better job. I think everybody pretty much accepts that.The (weather) prediction on the West Coast, I think, is better than it is in many places for inflow forecasts in a three to five or even seven-day period for major flood events. That sort or realization has sort of worked its way into the thought process.When you have reservoirs that are slightly encroached into their flood-control space during winter season, and you see there?s not much coming in terms of storms for the next week, then the population wonders why you let that water go. And the Corps understands that. So they want to work toward a paradigm where they have rules that allow them to hang on to that water.Water Deeply: Folsom Reservoir has a?new spillway?that boosts its operating flexibility. Will the rules be changed to take advantage of that?Hartman: The new water control manual for Folsom Reservoir will have an element of forecast operations in it. It?s not really full-blown use of the forecast, but it?s something. The Corps has had a very open and transparent process for how that control manual is going to be re-engineered, and has had consistent public forums and opportunities for people to voice concerns and provide feedback. The Sacramento district (of the Army Corps) has really done a nice job of that with Folsom.It?s been four or five years that they?ve been working on it. There are concerns about the Endangered Species Act and (hydroelectric) power production. It adds substantial expense and time. That all has to be developed and vetted with all of the stakeholders and interests. Otherwise, you just end up in court. So you pretty much have to go through that process.When the dam was originally constructed, they had essentially 400,000 acre-feet [493 million cubic meters] of flood control space at maximum in midwinter. After the ?86 flood, when they about lost control of the reservoir, they increased the flood-control space in the reservoir to 600,000 acre-feet. The new water-control manual, it plays in that 400,000 to 600,000 acre-foot range. It doesn?t allow the reservoir to encroach into that 400,000 acre-foot flood-control space in the middle of winter. But it does allow it to modulate in that space between 400,000 and 600,000.It?s not as aggressive as I would choose. But it?s a foot in the door.Water Deeply: How would you have preferred to see it done?Hartman: I have a pretty extreme view, but I?ll tell you anyway. I think rule curves are handy to look at, but I don?t think we should be using them at all. I think what you release from a reservoir today should be a function of everything you know about what the demands are, what the inflow is, what your ability is to release and get rid of the water if something is coming, what the probability of that storm is that may be coming and its magnitude. There?s a way to optimize all of that in a risk-based environment that tells you what you should be releasing in order to optimize the water resources and environmental benefits of the reservoir system.I would throw the water-control manual out the window and I would replace it with something that was a lot more objective and relied on what the real state of the system is today, rather than having some fixed set of rules that doesn?t necessarily match what?s currently going on.That is an approach that the Sonoma County Water Agency is?experimenting?with at Lake Mendocino on the Russian River. They can increase the amount of water that they can store in the reservoir by probably close to 30 percent. So instead of having a wintertime scenario where they store about 65,000 acre-feet, they are able to effectively have that closer to 85,000 acre-feet, with no impact on flood management at all. That?s pretty exciting. That?s just one example they cooked up on their own.Water Deeply: How important is all this in terms of climate change?Hartman: It?s probably more important than it was before. We don?t really know what climate change is going to mean in California. What we?ve been seeing, at least for the last couple decades, is increased variability.People say in a warmer climate we?re going to get more winter rain and less snowpack. And that whole scenario is a disaster for our reservoirs.If we shift to an environment where all the precipitation came as rain, with no more snow for California, we?d be in a world of hurt. There would be more flooding in the winter and there would be massive water supply shortages in the summer, because the reservoirs would never fill. So it could cause drought.I think responsible management means taking advantage of all the information and insight available. And I don?t think we're doing that when we ignore the streamflow forecasts. If we have significant shifts in the timing of the runoff with climate change, this is just one adaptation measure. It won?t in and of itself resolve the problem. But it could help. It definitely won?t hurt.Water Deeply: What are the downsides of forecast-informed operations?Hartman: It can potentially increase the risk of flooding. Anything you can predict is going to have an error rate associated with it. Even though we say we?re really good at this, there?s uncertainty. But that may be fully acceptable. It?s a balancing act.What are you willing to pay to increase your flood risk by 1 percent? If you could pay that 1 percent and instead have 20 percent more reliable water supply, would that be worth it to you? It?s a matter of balancing risks and benefits.Water Deeply:?Does forecast-informed operations put more pressure on forecasters?Hartman: As far as pressure on the forecasting system, I think it?s welcome. I welcome it. We work hard at producing flow forecasts that are useful and can be put to optimum public benefit. When there are systems put in place that leverage those, we don?t shy away from it. It?s not a problem from my perspective at all.Top image: Water flows from five of the eight flood gates at Folsom Dam, Folsom, Calif, on Friday, March 18, 2016. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dam, follows an old rulebook that requires such water releases, even during drought. It might not be necessary if agencies adopted new rules that include modern weather and streamflow forecasting tools. (Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From njharris30 at gmail.com Mon Apr 18 11:21:02 2016 From: njharris30 at gmail.com (Nathan Harris) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 11:21:02 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Willow Creek in-season trap update - April 18th Message-ID: Please see the attached documents for weekly catch data from the Willow Creek traps. Nathan Harris Biologist Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program Trinity River Division 3723 N. Hwy 96 Willow Creek, CA 95573 Office: (530) 629-3333 x1703 Cell: (707) 616-8742 njharris30 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: trapping update summary 4.18.16.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 13845 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Willow Creek RST raw catch update 2016.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 32015 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Apr 18 11:30:47 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 18:30:47 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1540044448.2255932.1461004248034.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, April 18, 2016 10:23 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ? ? Date? ? ? ? ? ?Time ? ? ? ? ? From (cfs) ? ? ? ? To (cfs) 4/21/2016 ? ? ? ?0200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?300 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4004/21/2016 ? ? ? ?0400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 500 4/21/2016 ? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 7004/21/2016 ? ? ? ?1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 600 4/21/2016 ? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 550 4/21/2016 ? ? ? ?2200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?550 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 500 4/25/2016 ? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 7504/25/2016 ? ? ? ?0200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?750 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?1000 4/25/2016 ? ? ? ?0400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1200 4/25/2016 ? ? ? ?1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1100 4/25/2016 ? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1100 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1000 4/25/2016 ? ? ? ?2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?900 4/26/2016 ? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 8004/26/2016 ? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?1000 4/26/2016 ? ? ? ?1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1200 4/26/2016 ? ? ? ?1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1400 4/26/2016 ? ? ? ?1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1600 4/26/2016 ? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 4/26/2016 ? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 4/26/2016 ? ? ? ?2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2400 4/27/2016 ? ? ? ?0200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2200 4/27/2016 ? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 4/27/2016 ? ? ? ?1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 19004/27/2016 ? ? ? ?1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 4/27/2016 ? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 17004/27/2016 ? ? ? ?2200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1600 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "trinity-releases" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to trinity-releases+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Thu Apr 21 14:30:51 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:30:51 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] McClatchyDC: A predator fish in California has lost its White House support Message-ID: <00b901d19c15$14df7490$3e9e5db0$@sisqtel.net> April 20, 2016 5:46 PM A predator fish in California has lost its White House support Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article72930017.html#s torylink=cp Photo: A juvenile salmon is removed from the stomach of a striped bass during a study on whether predation by the non-native bass is interfering with efforts to protect the native salmon. The photo was taken on the Tuolumne River near Waterford, California, on May 2, 2012. Fishbio Fishbio By Michael Doyle mdoyle at mcclatchydc.com . WASHINGTON A still-controversial 1992 law intended to boost California's striped-bass population can be scaled back, the Obama administration now believes. In a modest softening of the state's polarized water debate, a top Interior Department official voiced sympathy Wednesday for a Republican-authored bill that would end the 1992 law's stated goal of doubling the number of striped bass living in and around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. "It makes sense to remove the striped bass from the doubling goals," said Tom Iseman, deputy assistant secretary for water and science, adding that "the striped bass is a predator of native species." Maintaining the goal of doubling the predatory striped-bass population potentially undermines the 1992 law's accompanying goals of doubling the populations of other fish that ascend the Delta and Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Striped bass forage on juvenile salmon, fisheries expert Charles H. Hanson told lawmakers Wednesday. "This is bipartisan and common-sense legislation that means less money, time and water wasted," said Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock. Denham's striped-bass bill, in turn, marks the latest effort by California lawmakers to reconsider portions of the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act that steered more water from farms toward protection of rivers and the Delta. Another bill, by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, to revise a water-recycling grant program established in the 1992 law likewise secured administration support Wednesday. Matsui's bill would remove a requirement that grant applicants first secure a hard-to-get congressional authorization. The answer to our drought challenges is not taking water from one group or region in order to benefit another. Instead, we should be looking at ways to generate new water sources which benefit all water users. Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento. Taken together, the administration's moves might be interpreted as a greater willingness to reopen deliberations about updating a wide-ranging law that's been on the books longer than any of the Central Valley's House members have been in Congress. "We would be willing to have that discussion," Iseman said, adding, "it's appropriate that that conversation include many other stakeholders" as well. Still, serious obstacles remain, and the prospects for any kind of California water deal, at any level, are uncertain at best. While Matsui, for instance, said her water recycling grant bill "prioritizes projects in drought-stricken areas, which is critical given the current challenges facing the West," the Republican chairman of the House water, power and oceans subcommittee, Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana, asserted it would "allow the (grant) program to spiral even further out of control." Denham's striped-bass bill, while it also has the backing of several House Democrats, has raised the hackles of some sport-fishing enthusiasts and was dismissed by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, as an "enormous straw man" that would do little for salmon. Pressed by Huffman, Iseman said the Interior Department has not implemented any specific programs intended to double the striped-bass population. Iseman also noted the administration wants some "technical changes" in Denham's bill. And soon, the full House will wrangle anew over California provisions added by Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, to an energy and water appropriations bill for 2017. The House Appropriations Committee approved the $37.4 billion package Tuesday, including language to mandate more Delta water pumping and block spending on San Joaquin River restoration. "I am continuing to pursue all available avenues until my constituents have the water they so desperately need," Valadao said Tuesday. Huffman, the senior Democrat on the House water, power and oceans panel, remains skeptical, as do other Northern California Democrats. "I don't know where they come up with these ideas," Huffman said in an interview. "None of these overreaching, over-the-top tactics have ever worked for these guys." Michael Doyle: 202-383-0006, @MichaelDoyle10 Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article72930017.html#s torylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Fri Apr 22 09:23:21 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 09:23:21 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Study Finds Lack Of Diversity (Gender, Race) Among Fisheries Scientists, Field Overwhelmingly Dominated By White Men Message-ID: <00ff01d19cb3$4a401dd0$dec05970$@sisqtel.net> THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN: Weekly Fish and Wildlife News www.cbbulletin.com April 22, 2016 Issue No. 789 Study Finds Lack Of Diversity (Gender, Race) Among Fisheries Scientists, Field Overwhelmingly Dominated By White Men Researchers who study fish put a high value on biodiversity in the field, yet a new study found a surprising lack of diversity among fisheries scientists themselves. According to the 2010 United States Census, 51 percent of the people in the U.S. are women. That same year, a study of Ph.D. students in the biological sciences documented that 52 percent of the students pursuing doctorates were women - roughly the same percentage. However, the new study by researchers at Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service found that roughly even split soon disappears - in both federal government positions and in academic institutions. The researchers found that 74 percent of federal fisheries scientists or managers are men, as were 73 percent of the university assistant professors, 71 percent of associate professors and 85 percent of full professors. The lack of diversity is even more pronounced when analyzed by race. In 2010, the U.S. population was 64 percent white, and participation in biological sciences Ph.D. programs was 69 percent white. Yet only roughly 10 percent of all fisheries science, manager and faculty positions were occupied by minorities. Results of the study are being published this week in the journal Bioscience https://www.aibs.org/bioscience/current_issue.html "It is clear that the fisheries science culture is one dominated by white men," said Ivan Arismendi, an Oregon State University research faculty scientist and lead author on the study. "There has been a lot of concern expressed in recent years about diversity, but the numbers don't seem to reflect that concern. It is important to begin turning the process today because the hiring we're doing now will last a generation." Brooke Penaluna, a research fish biologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station and co-author on the study, said the reasons for the disparity are not completely clear. "We are graduating women on a 50-50 basis in the biological sciences, but the hiring rate is not keeping pace with the degree rate," Penaluna said. "For some women, it may be the biological clock butting up against the timetable of career advancement. That doesn't explain the disparity among minorities. "We need to look more closely at possible institutional biases. Women, for example, have fewer professional publications and are not asked as often by senior-level scientists to publish. And some federal positions may be in geographic locations that are not attractive to all candidates. We need to create environments that are welcoming so people want to stay - and those conversations can be uncomfortable." The authors suggest diversity training and a diverse composition of search committees at both the federal and academic institution levels, as well as increasing the pool of female and minority candidates, and programs to insure their success and career advancement. At Oregon State University, 28 percent of faculty members in fisheries science are women and 16 percent are non-white. In December of 2015, OSU named Selina Heppell as head of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, the first female to lead the unit in its 80-year history. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kierassociates at att.net Fri Apr 22 10:19:30 2016 From: kierassociates at att.net (Kier Associates) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 10:19:30 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Study Finds Lack Of Diversity (Gender, Race) Among Fisheries Scientists, Field Overwhelmingly Dominated By White Men In-Reply-To: <00ff01d19cb3$4a401dd0$dec05970$@sisqtel.net> References: <00ff01d19cb3$4a401dd0$dec05970$@sisqtel.net> Message-ID: <001f01d19cbb$22480e20$66d82a60$@att.net> You'd sure never know it from reading the newsletters of the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists http://www.aifrb.org/?wysija-page=1 &controller=email&action=view&email_id=21&wysijap=subscriptions&user_id=2937 Sari, where (young) women are wonderfully well represented. Could it be that women have only recently began entering the fisheries science community in significant numbers, and that a similar study conducted in the not too distant future will show a much better balance of the sexes? 'Best, Bill From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Sari Sommarstrom Sent: Friday, April 22, 2016 9:23 AM To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Study Finds Lack Of Diversity (Gender, Race) Among Fisheries Scientists, Field Overwhelmingly Dominated By White Men THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN: Weekly Fish and Wildlife News www.cbbulletin.com April 22, 2016 Issue No. 789 Study Finds Lack Of Diversity (Gender, Race) Among Fisheries Scientists, Field Overwhelmingly Dominated By White Men Researchers who study fish put a high value on biodiversity in the field, yet a new study found a surprising lack of diversity among fisheries scientists themselves. According to the 2010 United States Census, 51 percent of the people in the U.S. are women. That same year, a study of Ph.D. students in the biological sciences documented that 52 percent of the students pursuing doctorates were women - roughly the same percentage. However, the new study by researchers at Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service found that roughly even split soon disappears - in both federal government positions and in academic institutions. The researchers found that 74 percent of federal fisheries scientists or managers are men, as were 73 percent of the university assistant professors, 71 percent of associate professors and 85 percent of full professors. The lack of diversity is even more pronounced when analyzed by race. In 2010, the U.S. population was 64 percent white, and participation in biological sciences Ph.D. programs was 69 percent white. Yet only roughly 10 percent of all fisheries science, manager and faculty positions were occupied by minorities. Results of the study are being published this week in the journal Bioscience https://www.aibs.org/bioscience/current_issue.html "It is clear that the fisheries science culture is one dominated by white men," said Ivan Arismendi, an Oregon State University research faculty scientist and lead author on the study. "There has been a lot of concern expressed in recent years about diversity, but the numbers don't seem to reflect that concern. It is important to begin turning the process today because the hiring we're doing now will last a generation." Brooke Penaluna, a research fish biologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station and co-author on the study, said the reasons for the disparity are not completely clear. "We are graduating women on a 50-50 basis in the biological sciences, but the hiring rate is not keeping pace with the degree rate," Penaluna said. "For some women, it may be the biological clock butting up against the timetable of career advancement. That doesn't explain the disparity among minorities. "We need to look more closely at possible institutional biases. Women, for example, have fewer professional publications and are not asked as often by senior-level scientists to publish. And some federal positions may be in geographic locations that are not attractive to all candidates. We need to create environments that are welcoming so people want to stay - and those conversations can be uncomfortable." The authors suggest diversity training and a diverse composition of search committees at both the federal and academic institution levels, as well as increasing the pool of female and minority candidates, and programs to insure their success and career advancement. At Oregon State University, 28 percent of faculty members in fisheries science are women and 16 percent are non-white. In December of 2015, OSU named Selina Heppell as head of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, the first female to lead the unit in its 80-year history. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bgutermuth at usbr.gov Fri Apr 22 12:09:35 2016 From: bgutermuth at usbr.gov (Gutermuth, F.) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 12:09:35 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Release schedule for spring flows Message-ID: FYI - Media Contact: Shane Hunt, 916-978-5100, shunt at usbr.gov For Release On: April 21, 2016 Reclamation Announces 2016 Schedule for Release into Trinity River as Part of Restoration Program *REDDING, Calif.* ? The Bureau of Reclamation announced today that releases from Lewiston Dam into the Trinity River began increasing gradually on Thursday, April 21, from 300 cubic feet per second to approximately 4,500 cfs by Saturday, May 7. On Sunday, May 8, flows will begin to increase from 4,500 cfs, reaching 10,000 cfs on Monday, May 9, through May 10. On Wednesday, May 11, flows will be gradually decreased to 5,600 cfs. On Friday, May 13, flows will rapidly increase to 10,000 cfs through Saturday, May 14. Release rates will then gradually decrease over approximately 11 weeks to return to the 450 cfs summer baseflow rate around August 2. The public should take appropriate safety precautions whenever near or on the river. Landowners are advised to clear personal items from the floodplain prior to the releases. The releases for this ?wet? 2016 water year will result in a total volume of 701,000 acre-feet. This year releases will include two peak flows as compared to only one peak flow in previous years. The two peak flows are to better meet coarse sediment management objectives as part of the Trinity River Restoration Program. The December 2000 Trinity River Mainstem Fishery Restoration Record of Decision created a plan for the restoration of the Trinity River and its fish and wildlife populations. The Program?s restoration strategy includes four different restoration elements, two of which include increased releases to the river and sediment management. Flow regimes link two essential purposes deemed necessary to restore and maintain the Trinity River?s fishery resources: (1) flows to provide physical fish habitat (i.e., appropriate depths and velocities, and suitable temperature regimes for anadromous salmonids) and (2) flows to restore the riverine processes that create and maintain the structural integrity and spatial complexity of the fish habitats. More information on the Trinity River ROD can be found at www.trrp.net/background/rod/. A daily schedule of flow releases is available at www.trrp.net/restore/flows/current*/*, and the public may subscribe to automated notifications (via phone or email) of Trinity River release changes. The flow release schedule is posted at the Trinity River Restoration Program office, located at 1313 South Main Street, Weaverville, CA. For additional information, please call 530-623-1800 (TTY 800-877-8339) or email info at trrp.net. # # # Reclamation is the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in the 17 Western States. Its facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. Visit our website at http://www.usbr.gov and follow us on Twitter at Reclamation at USBR. Brandt Gutermuth Trinity River Restoration Program 530.623.1806 work 530.739.2802 cell http://www.trrp.net/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Apr 25 09:49:03 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 16:49:03 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <870141579.1399540.1461602943999.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, April 25, 2016 9:47 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ???Date? ? ? ? ? ?Time?? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 4/29/2016 ? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 18004/29/2016 ? ? ? ?1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 4/29/2016 ? ? ? ?1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ?2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 25004/29/2016 ? ? ? ?2200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ?2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 4/30/2016?? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2900 4/30/2016?? ? ? ?2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2800 4/30/2016?? ? ? ?2200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 5/01/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 26005/01/2016?? ? ? ?0200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 5/01/2016?? ? ? ?0400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2400 5/01/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2300 5/01/2016?? ? ? ?0800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2300 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2200 5/01/2016?? ? ? ?1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2100 5/01/2016?? ? ? ?1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2100 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 5/01/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 5/01/2016?? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 30005/01/2016? ? ? ? 2200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3200 5/02/2016?? ? ? ?0800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 5/02/2016?? ? ? ?1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2800 5/02/2016?? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2600 5/02/2016? ? ? ? 2200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 5/03/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 5/03/2016?? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3500 5/03/2016? ? ? ? 2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4000 5/04/2016?? ? ? ?0200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3800 5/04/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3600 5/04/2016? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 5/04/2016? ? ? ? 1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 32005/04/2016? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 5/05/2016? ? ? ? 1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 35005/05/2016? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4000 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow?-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "trinity-releases" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to trinity-releases+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Apr 26 11:29:59 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 18:29:59 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: 2016 Sacramento River Temperature Management Plan: Materials from Meeting In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1281704363.2086459.1461695399737.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> All, The attached materials and the link to the letter from the National Marine Fisheries Service have the latest reservoir storage and operations forecasts. Regards,?Tom Stokely?V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315 tstokely at att.net? On Thursday, April 7, 2016 11:38 AM, "Mcbride, Sarah" wrote: Infollow-up to Reclamation?s meeting yesterday on the 2016 Sacramento River TemperatureManagement Plan, attached is an electronic copy of the PowerPoint presentationthat was presented at the meeting.? Inaddition, during the Q&A/comment portion of the meeting, there was a briefdiscussion on the March 31, 2016 concurrence letter from the National MarineFisheries Service on Reclamation?s March forecast and water supply allocationfor water year 2016.? For your reference,that letter can be found at the following link: ?http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/Central_Valley/Water%20Operations/nmfs__march_31__2016__response_to_the_bureau_of_reclamation_s_march_forecast.pdf?Reclamationwould like to thank all of those who were able to attend yesterday's meeting andprovided input/feedback.? -- Regards, Sarah McBridePublic Affairs Specialist Bureau of Reclamation 2800 Cottage Way, MP-140 Sacramento, CA 95825 (916)978-5108 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: April 2016 Sacramento Temperature Plan Meeting.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 910875 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Apr 28 09:25:21 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 16:25:21 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Op-Ed Congress is about to wipe out decades of progress in sustainable water use References: <1191513957.3240725.1461860721182.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1191513957.3240725.1461860721182.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0428-gleick-congress-water-bills-20160428-story.html Op-Ed? Congress is about to wipe out decades of progress in sustainable water use Peter H. GleickAs California enters its fifth year of official drought ? and its ninth dry year in the past 10 ? the elements of?a modern, sustainable water system?are finally taking shape. The state is improving water efficiency in agriculture and urban areas, expanding wastewater treatment and reuse, figuring out how to capture more storm water, and starting to monitor and manage badly over-drafted groundwater basins.In Washington D.C., however, special interests are still pushing ineffective and inequitable water strategies. Nowhere is this tension between new water strategies and outmoded federal thinking more apparent than in the?California drought?legislation currently before Congress.Drought is the new normal. We need less shaming and more incentivizingThe federal government has a vital role to play in helping states address water problems: improving management of federal infrastructure, funding research of new technologies, setting standards for water-quality and appliance efficiency, as well as protecting the environment and marginalized communities. And yet none of those issues is the thrust of the two water bills now moving through the House and Senate. Instead,?a California-centric bill sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein?and?a Western water bill sponsored by Rep. David Valadao?both contain egregious, anti-environmental giveaways hidden behind modest provisions for modernizing California's water system.The objective of these bills is not to strengthen California's ability to deal with drought, or to accelerate our transition to an efficient 21st century water system. Rather, both want to ?maximize? the amount of water diverted from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to a few federal irrigation contractors in the San Joaquin Valley. To do that, both propose undermining environmental protections for salmon and other endangered species. Under the California Delta Reform Act and the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, supplying water for human use and environmental protection have been ?co-equal? goals ? but these laws weaken, if not abandon, that concept.The proposed legislation also revises watershed rules for rivers in ways that could preempt or violate California's water rights laws. Meantime, they serve up pork-barrel federal funding for reservoirs that would produce little usable water, flood Native American cultural sites, or violate Wild and Scenic River protections.Both bills approach California's entrenched water problems from the misguided idea that we can squeeze even more water out of an already overtapped system.The House bill, in effect, repeals the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Act that Congress enacted a decade ago to resolve 18 years of contentious litigation between conservationists, multiple federal agencies and irrigation districts. It would preempt the California law that requires restoration of river flows and native salmon in the San Joaquin River and waive federal environmental protections such as the National Environmental Policy Act under a range of conditions. It would also actually harm farmers by canceling water supply and flood-control projects that benefit local agriculture.Here's just one example of how the House bill would ride roughshod over existing environmental laws: One provision simply orders federal agencies to ignore a 2014 finding that the section of the San Joaquin River that would be destroyed by the proposed Temperance Flat Dam is eligible for federal wild and scenic river status. The Senate bill, too, would authorize violations of science-based rules put in place to protect endangered fish.While the House version is more extreme, both bills approach California's entrenched water problems from the misguided idea that we can squeeze even more water out of an already overtapped system. Although the Senate bill promotes some sensible water management reforms, it still helps a small number of Central Valley farmers at the expense of other regions and water users.When the Senate and House try to reconcile these two bills, these inappropriate provisions are likely to be made worse, not better.Given these flaws, there is strong opposition to these bills from several corners. Scientists who labored to improve our understanding of California's tremendously complex hydrology and biology are dismayed that their work is being ignored by politicians. The fishing community, including both recreational and commercial organizations along the entire West Coast, sees a direct threat to a multi-billion-dollar industry dependent on healthy fish runs. Communities in northern California are worried that more water from their region will be diverted south. Environmental groups that struggled for years to put in place even modest protections for fish and bird habitat and wild and scenic rivers are aghast that their work would be undone. Native American communities are furious that proposed dams would flood their cultural sites.Maybe this is the kind of ?compromise? needed to pass any bill in today's polarized Congress. But the bad in these bills far outweighs the good. Congress could be about to wipe out decades of painstakingly achieved progress in order to repeat some of the most lamentable errors of mid-20th century western water policy.Difficult steps are needed to deal with California's long-term water problems. But no bill at all is better than legislation like this that takes easy steps in the wrong direction.Peter Gleick is a hydroclimatologist, President of the Pacific Institute, MacArthur Fellow, and member of the US National Academy of Sciences. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon May 2 08:02:22 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 15:02:22 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Chronicle EDITORIAL On Corporate Welfare An all-wet deal References: <1603372319.4750037.1462201342133.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1603372319.4750037.1462201342133.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> EDITORIAL On Corporate Welfare An all-wet deal When the public is railing about the unfairness of Big Bank bailouts and corporate welfare, why is the Obama administration pursuing a deal that gives away California water ? a resource as precious as oil ? to a San Joaquin Valley water agency?A proposed legal settlement would wipe off the federal books a long-standing lawsuit but also reward the Westlands Water District with what every community in the arid West would like ? a permanent water contract.The proposed agreement and the changes in law required to implement it contained in HR4366 give away water that belongs to all Californians and do nothing to ensure the state?s land, wildlife and humans are protected from pollution.Here?s the story: The Department of the Interior has a duty to provide drainage for the district to dispose of selenium-polluted water. Under the settlement agreement, the federal government would transfer responsibility for building and managing the drain to West-lands. In exchange, it would forgive the $375 million still owed taxpayers for the district?s share of the cost of the Central Valley Project, the federal water project that delivers it water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.Westlands, one of the most productive and profitable agricultural areas in the world, farms lands laced with selenium salts. West-lands farmers need additional water to flush the salts from the crops? roots so the plants or trees don?t turn brown and die. Without flushing, the land eventually becomes too toxic to farm. Without a drain, the selenium-laden runoff contaminates groundwater and waterways.The proposed agreement, according to the Congressional Research Service, fails to require Westlands to say how it would protect water quality. It includes no consequences ? such as stopping water deliveries ? if the district fails to put in an acceptable drain.But here?s the capper: The agreement converts the district?s two-year contracts to a permanent contract for up to 890,000 acre-feet of subsidized water ? a third more water than Los Angeles uses in a year. It would be cheaper to have Westlands fallow more land.The state should object to this plan. Californians should tell Congress and the Obama administration we won?t stand for more corporate welfare. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From njharris30 at gmail.com Mon May 2 10:32:34 2016 From: njharris30 at gmail.com (Nathan Harris) Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 10:32:34 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Willow Creek in-season trap update - May 2nd Message-ID: Please see the attached documents for weekly catch data from the Willow Creek traps. Nathan Harris Biologist Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program Trinity River Division 3723 N. Hwy 96 Willow Creek, CA 95573 Office: (530) 629-3333 x1703 Cell: (707) 616-8742 njharris30 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Willow Creek RST raw catch update 2016.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 32245 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: trapping update summary 5.2.16.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 14029 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue May 3 10:44:41 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 3 May 2016 17:44:41 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Almond acreage up 6% in 2015, 180, 000 AF/year for 25 years References: <394410514.5521693.1462297481205.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <394410514.5521693.1462297481205.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> https://onthepublicrecord.org/2016/04/27/various-almond-acreage-leasing-a-water-right-ap-exam/ Various: almond acreage, leasing a water right, AP?exam, The?2015 California Almond Acreage Report?is out.? Last year, while you were carrying your warm-up water out to the rose bushes, growers planted another sixty thousand acres of almonds. California?s 2015 almond acreage is estimated at 1,110,000 acres, up 6 percent from the 2014 revised acreage of 1,050,000. This acreage, planted in?Drought Year Four,?commits about 180,000 AF/year to those trees, a constant burden on groundwater basins and our political system for every one of the next twenty-five years.? Had the Brown administration banned new permanent crops in basins with declining groundwater levels, that demand might be in annual crops, flexible in times of high climate variability. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue May 3 11:11:52 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 3 May 2016 18:11:52 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] PPIC Blog: Reconnecting the Klamath References: <53971733.5512389.1462299112737.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <53971733.5512389.1462299112737.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.ppic.org/main/blog_detail.asp?i=2031 Reconnecting the KlamathJEFFREY MOUNT,?PETER MOYLE?APRIL 27, 2016State and federal officials recently?signed two agreements?to reshape the Klamath River. If these agreements are fully implemented (and there are still some important hurdles ahead), they would lead to removal of the four aging hydropower dams that separate the Upper and Lower Klamath Basin, perhaps as early as 2020. This restoration effort would be the largest of its kind in the US, if not the world.?We were members of the 2001 National Research Council committee that first reviewed the environmental management challenges in the Klamath Basin.?Our report, which focused on conflicts over habitat and water for threatened and endangered fishes, made many recommendations, including dam removal. We are gratified to see progress toward this objective.?There are many good reasons for removing these dams. They harm water quality, block access to spawning grounds in the upper watershed for declining stocks of wild salmon and steelhead, and are a?financial liability?to the company that owns and operates them. Their removal is both inevitable and appropriate.?While the agreements represent a major milestone, we had another conclusion: dam removal will not solve the Klamath Basin?s problems, although it is a necessary first step.?There is an understandable perception that reconnecting the Upper and Lower Klamath will lead to dramatic improvement of conditions for salmon and steelhead. After all, the largest dam removal in US history to date?the?Elwha Dam in Washington?resulted in?rapid improvements for these fishes?and the ecosystems that support them. Other dam removals have had similar responses.?The Klamath, however, is very different. The removal of the Elwha Dam opened up 70 miles of pristine habitat, all protected within a national park. In contrast, the vast expanse of marshes in the Upper Klamath Basin through which the upstream rivers flow have been drained and farmed for more than a century. And the remaining lakes, including Upper Klamath Lake and Keno Reservoir, have significant water quality issues. If these and other problems in the Upper Basin are not addressed, the environmental benefits of taking down the dams will not be fully realized.Dam removal will not solve the Klamath Basin?s problems, although it is a necessary first step.For these reasons, dam removal on the Klamath is a commitment, rather than a conclusion. Sustained, well-funded efforts to restore and monitor habitat in the tributaries (where most salmon and steelhead spawn and rear), and to improve water quality in the Upper Basin must continue for decades after the dams come down. The agreements recognize this, but it is easy to lose focus once the primary objective?dam removal?is achieved.The story of the Klamath dam removal effort is an object lesson for the deeply entrenched combatants in the Sacramento?San Joaquin Delta. The Klamath agreements are a triumph of negotiation over confrontation and litigation. These agreements represent more than a decade of hard work on the part of the federal and state governments, farmers, environmental groups, and Native American tribes, who are especially critical to its success. Long-time adversaries climbed out of their trenches and negotiated a comprehensive fix. Agreements like this are, by virtue of their many compromises, naturally imperfect and difficult to come by. But in today?s complex, politically charged environment, they are the only way to make meaningful progress on resolving contentious water issues.?LEARN MORE Read a?summary of policy recommendations?from?Improving the Federal Response to Western Drought?(February 2016) Visit the?PPIC Water Policy Center? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pcatanese at dhscott.com Tue May 3 12:32:01 2016 From: pcatanese at dhscott.com (Paul Catanese) Date: Tue, 3 May 2016 19:32:01 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Almond acreage up 6% in 2015, 180, 000 AF/year for 25 years In-Reply-To: <394410514.5521693.1462297481205.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <394410514.5521693.1462297481205.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com>, <394410514.5521693.1462297481205.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <422FE0C7-0286-4C34-B6C6-C6DD299525AB@dhscott.com> Funny from the standpoint that pot is grown all over trinity county sucking up all our water and people are concerned about almonds while sipping on their Napa valley wine and smoking pot from trinity and Humbolt county. Sounds two faced to me Paul J. Catanese, Partner D.H. Scott & Company O: 530.243.4300 | F: 530.243.4306 900 Market St, Redding, CA 96001 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This communication (including any attachments) may contain privileged or confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this communication and/or shred the materials and any attachments and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this communication, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. Thank you. Disclaimer: Any accounting, business or tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. If desired, D.H. Scott & Company would be pleased to perform the requisite research and provide you with a detailed written analysis. Such an engagement may be the subject of a separate engagement letter that would define the scope and limits of the desired consultation services. On May 3, 2016, at 12:48 PM, Tom Stokely > wrote: https://onthepublicrecord.org/2016/04/27/various-almond-acreage-leasing-a-water-right-ap-exam/ Various: almond acreage, leasing a water right, AP exam, The 2015 California Almond Acreage Report is out. Last year, while you were carrying your warm-up water out to the rose bushes, growers planted another sixty thousand acres of almonds. California's 2015 almond acreage is estimated at 1,110,000 acres, up 6 percent from the 2014 revised acreage of 1,050,000. This acreage, planted in Drought Year Four, commits about 180,000 AF/year to those trees, a constant burden on groundwater basins and our political system for every one of the next twenty-five years. Had the Brown administration banned new permanent crops in basins with declining groundwater levels, that demand might be in annual crops, flexible in times of high climate variability. _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue May 3 11:44:18 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 3 May 2016 11:44:18 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Tribunal Considers Rights of Nature in Imperiled San Francisco Bay-Delta In-Reply-To: <8ED9A064-EFC0-4749-A9F8-818BB1E5CC41@fishsniffer.com> References: <8ED9A064-EFC0-4749-A9F8-818BB1E5CC41@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/2/1522252/-Tribunal-Considers-Rights-of-Nature-in-Imperiled-San-Francisco-Bay-Delta Gary Mulcahy, Winnemem Wintu Tribe, one of the judges of the tribunal, asks a question of witness Roger Mammon. Photo by Dan Bacher. Tribunal Considers Rights of Nature in Imperiled San Francisco Bay-Delta by Dan Bacher Many people have opined about Governor Jerry Brown?s environmentally devastating Delta Tunnels Plan, but nobody, including the Brown and Obama administrations promoting the project, have asked the alleged ?beneficiary? of this plan ? the San Francisco Bay-Delta Ecosystem - what the estuary has to say about the tunnels. That all changed on April 30, 2016, when a panel of judges convened in Antioch to consider the question: ?What would the San Francisco Bay- Delta Ecosystem say?? when examining a case brought before them in the first-ever Bay Area Rights of Nature Tribunal. The event was based on an international rights of nature tribunal held in Paris during the Paris Climate Talks last December. ?The rights of nature have been inherent from the beginning of time,? said Gary Mulcahy, Winnemem Wintu Tribe, one of the tribunal judges. ?We need to get rid of the concept of dominion over the Earth. We ? the salmon, the water, the trees, the spiders ? are all one thing. The more pieces you take from the whole, the closer you come to becoming extinct. Just like the salmon that my people depended upon.? The Bay Area Rights of Nature Alliance, Restore the Delta, and Move to Amend held their ?Rights of Nature Tribunal? regarding Governor Brown's proposed Delta Tunnels proposal, recently renamed the California Water Fix, at the Nick Rodriguez Community Center in Antioch, in the heart of the West Delta, from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm. The tribunal took place at a critical time for the Delta, its fish and wildlife, and its people. ?The San Francisco Bay-Delta lies polluted and suffering in a state of perpetual, human-made drought,? according to a statement from the three groups. ?An estimated 95 percent of the historic Delta natural habitat has been lost. Between 2.1 million to 6.9 million acre-feet of water is exported from the Delta every year. Numerous Delta species face extinction, including the Delta Smelt and Winter-run Chinook Salmon. Marine species that depend on Delta fish for food, such as the Southern Resident Killer Whale, are also imperiled by failing Bay- Delta ecological health.? The event organizers noted, ?Dozens of U.S. and international laws have begun recognizing rights and legal standing for ecosystems and species as a new framework for environmental protection, including for the beleaguered Delta. These laws and tribunals are inspired by the Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth.? ?This is the first local nature?s rights Tribunal based on the extraordinarily successful International Rights of Nature Tribunal held in Paris during December?s climate talks,? said Linda Sheehan with the Earth Law Center. The tribunal addressed alleged violations of nature?s rights and human rights posed by state and federal water management decisions and by Governor Brown?s proposed Delta Tunnels, a multi-billion dollar project that will significantly reduce flows needed for Delta waterways and fish. The construction of the tunnels would hasten the extinction of a multitude of fish species, including Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other endangered fish. The tunnels would also export water from the Trinity River, the largest tributary of the Klamath River, imperiling the salmon, steelhead and lamprey populations that play a big role in the culture and food supply of the Yurok, Hoopa Valley and Karuk Tribes. Tribunal judges included: Idle No More SF Bay co-founder Pennie Opal Plant; London-based Gaia Foundation Director Liz Husked; government liaison for the Winnemem Wintu Tribe Gary Mulcahy; Movement Rights director Shannon Biggs; and Delta water expert Tim Stroshane. The Bay Area Rights of Nature Tribunal ?explored ways to confront a system of law that harms people and nature, identified new strategies to protect nature?s and human rights and to begin the process of healing the Delta. Judges considered water diversions from the Delta not just under existing environmental law, but from the perspective of the inherent rights of ecosystems and species, including the inherent right of the Delta to flow,? according to the groups. Alhison Ehara Brown and Osprey Orielle Lake, both from the Women's Earth & Climate Action Network, International, opened the tribunal. They were followed by witnesses including Roger Mammon, Delta resident, duck hunter, and fisherman; Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta; Ixtzel Reynoso, resident of Clarkburg; and Ryan Camero, Stockton artist and activist. Expert speakers testifying include Darcie Luce, Friends of the San Francisco Estuary; David Cobb, Move to Amend; and Chris Tittle, Sustainable Economies Law Center. ?Sadly, I have watched this magnificent ecosystem slowly die over the past 30 years,? said Roger Mammon. ?When I first began fishing in the Delta, I was amazed watching salmon jump out of the water on their way to the Pacific. I look at the Delta as a huge lung that inhales and exhales twice a day through natural tidal movement. A huge weight has been placed on its chest and this once mighty estuary is now gasping for breath.? ?The Delta and the San Francisco Bay are one big estuary," stated Darcie Luce. ?There are now 13 fish species listed as threatened or endangered in the Delta. More than 40 percent of water is diverted, when scientists tell us at least 75 percent of the fresh water should flow through the estuary to be fully protective of fish and wildlife. With the Delta Tunnels, the amount of diverted water will remain the same or be increased. We need more freshwater flows to save the Delta, not less.? Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla testified, ?What does it mean to destroy the Delta ecosystem? Four million rural and urban residents live in the five Delta counties. The proposed Tunnels would destroy these communities that depend on a healthy delta, and their sustainable ways of life.? The judges also commented on the assault on the Delta by the state and federal governments, corporate agribusiness, Southern California water agencies and others. Shannon Biggs, Movement Rights director, said, ?I have watched the harms to the Delta increase my entire life. The Delta is so polluted that it is now unsafe to eat more than one fish a month. Who decides which communities are to be sacrificed? Which fish? The Delta has been violated, raped. There is another way.? ?We find state and federal water agencies guilty of promoting a tunnel project that would enlarge harm to the beleaguered, Delta,? said Tim Stroshane, Delta Water Policy Expert. ?These difficulties arise because water is being treated as a commodity, which a water industry seeks to profit from.? Linda Sheehan, serving in the role of Prosecutor for the Earth, said at the conclusion of the Tribunal, ?The rights of people and nature to life-giving water are fundamental rights, and they must be recognized and protected. I urge you to reject the destruction of the Delta and Delta communities, and to call for solutions that respect the laws of nature.? Ecuador under President Rafael Correa is the first county to recognize the Rights of Nature in its Constitution, rewritten in 2007-2008. The people of Ecuador ratified the Constitution in 2008. (therightsofnature.org/...) In Bolivia under President Evo Morales, the Plurinational Legislative Assembly in December 2010 passed the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra). The law defines Mother Earth as "a collective subject of public interest," and declares both Mother Earth and life-systems (which combine human communities and ecosytems) as titleholders of inherent rights specified in the law. For more information about this event visit: www.facebook.com/... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Tribunal Judges.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 86089 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue May 3 13:30:33 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 3 May 2016 13:30:33 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Blockade Disrupts Klamath Watershed Salvage Logging In-Reply-To: References: <8ED9A064-EFC0-4749-A9F8-818BB1E5CC41@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <10436A7C-5284-4D63-86FF-952886363782@fishsniffer.com> Photo courtesy of Stop Westside Coalition. http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/2/1522459/-Early-Morning-Blockade-Disrupts-Klamath-Salvage-Logging Blockade Disrupts Klamath Watershed Salvage Logging by Dan Bacher In the early morning hours before daybreak on May 2 in the fire- impacted conifer forest near Seiad Valley in the Klamath River watershed, 27 people including Tribal youth, river advocates and forest activists blocked the road leading to the Klamath National Forest?s Westside salvage logging project. Demonstrators held banners that read ?Karuk Land: Karuk Plan,? recited call and response chants, and testified to the timber sales? impact on ailing salmon populations. Work was delayed for approximately four hours, according to a news release from the river advocates. The protesters said the Westside Salvage Logging Project would clear cut more than 5,700 acres on steep slopes above Klamath River tributaries and along 320 miles of roads within Klamath National Forest. Post-fire logging and hauling began in late April, before legal claims brought forth by a lawsuit led by the Karuk Tribe could be considered in court. ?The Forest Service should follow the Karuk Plan on Karuk Land. Traditional knowledge of fire helps everything stay in balance because it?s all intertwined,? said Dania Rose Colegrove of the Klamath Justice Coalition. ?When you destroy the forests, you destroy the rivers.? The protesters said the Westside plan, unlike the Karuk Alternative, calls for clear cut logging on steep slopes right above several of the Klamath River?s most important salmon-bearing streams, at a time when returning salmon numbers are reaching record lows. Members of local Tribal youth councils who participated in the protest see Westside salvage logging as a threat to their future. ?Today I showed up and stood up for what is right for future generations,? said Lacey Jackson, a 16-year old Hoopa Tribal Youth Council member. ?My cultural and traditional livelihood is being threatened, and the way they are going about this logging is a big part of that. I will continue to stand up for me, my people and future generations.? River advocates say the Forest Service plan to clear-cut thousands of acres above the Klamath River disregards the reasonable Karuk Alternative and hurts at-risk salmon and river communities. They believe a healthy Klamath River requires sensible forest restoration that addresses the needs of both fish and people, like that laid out in the Karuk plan. Federal and state fisheries agency scientists estimate that there are only approximately 142,200 Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon in the ocean this year, based on the returns of two-year-old salmon, called ?jacks? and ?jills.? The salmon from the Klamath and Sacramento River make up the majority of salmon taken in California?s ocean and inland fisheries. The low numbers of Klamath and Trinity River fish expected to return to the river and tributaries this year will result in more restricted seasons for both the recreational and commercial fisheries on the ocean and recreational and Tribal fisheries on the rivers this season. During a meeting on Klamath dam removal in Sacramento in March, Thomas Wilson, a member of the Yurok Tribal Council and owner of Spey-Gee Point Guide Service, described the dire situation that the salmon fishery is in this year. ?This season will be devastating for fishermen and people on the river. Usually we get around 12,000 fish for subsistence on the river and what?s left goes to the commercial fishery. This year our entire Tribal quota is only about 5900 fish,? he explained. ?The people are praying that the science predicting the low numbers is wrong. If we don?t protect the fish now, it will hurt us down the road. As Yuroks and natives, we are conservationists. We want make sure enough to keep seed for the all of the resources for future generations,? Wilson said. The last thing that the watershed needs, at a time when the fishery is in crisis, is a Forest Service-approved clear cutting plan that further threatens salmon and steelhead habitat. For information about the lawsuit by the Karuk Tribe and conservationists challenging the U.S. Forest Service and the Klamath National Forest?s Westside plan, go to: www.indybay.org/... HD video and photos available for use at: Youtube: youtu.be/... Photos: goo.gl/... Please credit photo and video to Stop Westside Coalition A wider campaign is building and everyone's support is needed. More information about the Karuk Tribe's Alternative can be found here: www.karuk.us ? CONTACT: Kerul Dyer, kerul.dyer, 415-866-0005 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 13151687_1017732914982581_517721133066973106_n.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 48162 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue May 3 18:09:29 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 3 May 2016 18:09:29 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Grape and nut drying up Golden State's water holes In-Reply-To: <1117527971.5020753.1462220809605.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1117527971.5020753.1462220809605.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1117527971.5020753.1462220809605.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: http://patrickporgansblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/grape-and-nut-glut-drying-up-golden.html Grape and nut glut drying up Golden State?s watering holes Part I California water officials and mainstream media assertions this epic drought caused socioeconomic and financial disaster to state?s economy is not supported by the facts published in government reports. Three years into the drought and the Golden State Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reached a record of $2.31 trillion, agricultural revenues higher than ever, statewide building permits doubled, and more water-guzzling permanent crops planted. (Latest published GDP figures.) IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 2 May 2016 Contact Patrick Porgans, Solutionist Porgans/Associates porgansinc at sbcglobal.net (916) 833-8734 Californians inundated by a plethora of mainstream-media bytes predicting Draconian consequence from this "epic drought" water experts and public-relations firms branded the worst in 500-years are perplexed by drought-flood news accounts aired simultaneously. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/30/california-drought-effects-500-years_n_4647539.html Meanwhile, government officials, water contractors, and mainstream media, whine about the dire impacts of the so-called worst drought in California since the 1500s, the record, show they're reaping windfall profits. Public records attest that the Golden State's economy, tax revenue stream, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reached all-time highs during four years of drought. In the third year of the drought, the state's GDP was a record-breaker. "In 2014, the State?s GDP was ranked as the 7th or 8th largest economy in the world, based on traditional measurements [just below France and above Brazil]. On June 10 [2015], the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released its preliminary estimates of state gross domestic product (GDP) for 2014, as we described in a blog post last week. California's 2014 GDP? the value of all goods and services produced here?was estimated at $2.31 trillion. There are different estimates of countries' GDP."http://www.lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/90 That number is the latest number published by the government (www.bea.gov ) Epic drought generates the largest budget in State?s history: Last month, Governor Jerry Brown proposed the largest budget in California's history; $170 billion, of which, $120 billion comes from the State's General Fund revenue stream; with additional billions earmarked by Brown to the "Rainy Day" fund. This surplus of funds is collected tax revenue; almost 70 percent of the $120 billion is derived from personal income tax. Today, the Rainy Day Fund is at 37 percent of its constitutional target (10 percent of General Fund tax revenues) amounts to $12 billion to be held in reserve! The Budget proposes to bring the Rainy Day Fund to a balance of 65 percent. ttp:// ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf] This March, government and water industry officials responded to the good news by extending mandatory water cutback! California?s economy has expanded during the past seven years. Governor?s Budget Summary 2016-2017, Introduction. "The economy is finishing its seventh year of expansion, already two years longer than the average recovery. While the timing is uncertain, the next recession is getting closer, and the state must begin to plan for it. If new ongoing commitments are made now, then the severity of the cuts will be far greater ? even devastating ? when the recession begins. Without question, the best way to protect against future cuts is to build up the state?s Rainy Day Fund," according to Gov. Brown. Californians face a multi-dimensional conundrum; an extended drought, which imposed first-time ever statewide mandatory water cutbacks while portions of the state are under siege from flooding resulting from the remnant of a fading El Nino. Factors compounded by a massive appeal by the water industry requesting State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) members to end the drought. In the interim, the Brown Administration recently reinstituted signage posted on California highways stating: Extreme Drought ? Conserve water! Water condition above average: The truth about the state's water conditions is immersed in a stupor of shifting forecasts, as is the winter weather, unpredictable and changing. On 1 February a report depicting statewide precipitation at 115 percent and 120 percent for the North Coast Region for this time of year, according to Department of Water Resources (DWR) personnel.1 The very next day 2 February the SWRCB voted to extend drought emergency regulation, purportedly to ensure mandatory water conservation through October 2016.2 http://saveourwater.com/blog-posts/conservation-extended/ In early March through April Californians were stunned as officials dump floodwaters from Folsom Dam, on the American River, which had received 120 percent of average precipitation. Water was also being dumped at other major reservoirs in the north state.http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article67772672.html It is estimated that more than one million acre-feet of water were dumped from state reservoirs, enough to provide half of the water needs of those 19 million customers receive annually from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The March snow survey, conducted by DWR personnel showed snowpack at locations ranged from low 90s to over 100 percent of average. http://www.water.ca.gov/waterconditions/waterconditions.cfm Findings contained in a Forensic Accounting based on the public record and direct intercommunication with water officials and regulatory personnel, most of whom putatively accepted the 500-year conjecture, in the absences of verifiable peer-reviewed data. If the intrinsic shortcomings of those assertions were even theoretically plausible, assuming that this is the worst drought in California, it might have possibly occurred in central and southern California; however, the public record does not support those assertions in the water-rich north state. http://www.theterranews.com/content/?p=66539 Forensic Accounts of previous drought events are the subject of a series of article that prompted responses from the California Farm Water Coalition. The California Farm Water Coalition has this response to Patrick Porgans & Lloyd Carter?s post, Wolf Cries ? Howling About Drought ? All Wet ? No More Doubts Officials Exaggerated Severity of Drought: "Coalition viewpoint?These numbers provide a clear picture of the effect that governmental regulations and the drought, during the past four years, had on water users who rely on deliveries of water through the Delta. As indicated by the bloggers, the water years in the Sacramento Valley from 2006-2009 averaged 16.39 million acre-feet (MAF), which is a 60% increase, or 6 MAF more than during 1989-1992." http://www.farmwater.org/Current-News/ http://www.watereducation.org/aquafornia-news/california-farm-water-coalition-responds-porganscarter-commentary-howling-about Ironically, the doomsday public-relations campaign precipitated an astonishing downpour of wealth to state and federal water contractors that already receive publicly-subsidized water. Water districts and land-gentry billionaires reaped an abundant harvest of public give- away funds. Unfortunately, their profits come at the expense and to the demise of urban water users; taxpayers, the state General Fund, and Public Trust Resources (water, fish, and wildlife).3 Abundant Harvest: Contrary to mainstream media reports, agricultural profits reached all-time high in the fourth year of drought. "Even though the 2014 crop year coincides with the third consecutive year of unprecedented drought, the innovation and resilience of California?s agricultural community continue to ensure the State?s agricultural abundance. Despite the tremendous challenges in 2014, the farmgate value of the state?s 76,400 farms and ranches was a record $54 billion. Of the $54 billion, over $21 billion was attributed to California?s agricultural exports." http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/iodir?s=b120 Building permits doubled: In the second and third year of the drought, building permits doubled statewide. http://www/census.gpv/construction/bps/txt/tb2u2013.txt http://www/census.gpv/construction/bps/txt/tb2u2012.txt http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/FS_DATA/LatestEconData?FS_Construction.htm The Governor's Proclamation and the Emergency Drought Regulations relieve government water project operators of their obligation to comply with the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). It also sanctions the reduction or suspension of water quality standards and objectives contained in the San Francisco Bay- Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary Water Quality Control Plan; enacted to protect Delta farmers, water diverters, and aquatic, avian and terrestrial species. The SWRCB issued emergency drought regulation that targets mandatory cutbacks by urban-residential users, while subversively exempting the agricultural industry that reportedly applies an estimated 80 percent of the state's developed water supply annually. Instead, Board members left it up to the agricultural industry to reduce and conserve water. Gross agricultural revenues represent about two (2) percent of the State's GDP. Additional revenue is generated by the processing and distribution of the products produced. Thus for every dollar of value added in that sector, there is an additional $1.27 added to the state economy. http://aic.ucdavis.edu/publications/moca/moca_current/moca09/moca09chapter5.pdf During this current drought, it is estimated that $3 billion of borrowed public funds have already been given away for drought "relief" programs. That money comes from the sale of State issued General Obligation (G.O.) bonds, which, repayment is backed by the full-faith and credit of California. A list of General Obligation Bonds authorized and issued by the state can be found here.http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/bonds/debt/04/authorized.pdf For every dollar of G.O. bonds sold, it cost a dollar in interest; it will cost $6 billion to repay, with revenues derived the State's General Fund. "It must never be forgotten, however, that 69.5 percent of our General Fund revenues come from the volatile personal income tax which, as history shows us, drops precipitously in time of recession ? an event not too far off given the historic pattern of the ten recessions that have occurred since 1945. During a moderate recession, revenue losses to the General Fund will easily total $55 billion over three years"; Gov.'s Budget Summary 2016-2017.11 [Note: Rainy Day Fund is used to assure bond investors G.O. debt is covered. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-jerry-brown-releases-state-budget-20160107-story.html California land of fruits and nuts exporting water to foreign markets "California, which produces much of the country's water-guzzling fruits [nuts] and vegetables, is in year four of a major drought, and almonds, its No. 1 export, have become a symbol of the state's heavy water consumption. Mature almond trees in the Southern Sacramento Valley use 41 to 44 inches of water on average per year, according to the University of California at Davis. Trees in drier southern San Joaquin Valley use 50 to 54 inches. In California, an acre supports about 124 almond trees. Last year, and acre produced around 2,270 pounds of almonds, for a ratio of about 502 gallons of water per pound of nuts." (The math works out to equals 3.49 acre-feet of water per acre of almonds planted.) Total amount of water applied averages out to 3.55 MAF annually. www.wsj.com/articles/the-numbers-behind-agricultural-water-use-1434726353 The amount of water required to sustain the growth of these almonds is 1.4 MAF more than the 2.1 MAF the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California provides annually. (One acre-foot equals about 326,000 gallons; an average California household uses between one-half and one acre-foot of water per year for indoor and outdoor use.)http://www.watereducation.org/general-information/whats-acre-foot Almond crop bonanza ? money grows on trees: In the year 2000, there was 610,000 acre of almond planted, valued at $666,487,000 for the crop. California's 2014 almond acreage is estimated at 1,020,000 acres, up 5 percent from the 2013 acreage of 970,000, according to a recent survey conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Of the total acreage for 2014, 870,000 acres were bearing, and 150,000 acres were nonbearing, crop valued at $6,464,500,000.http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_StateCalifornia/Publications/fruits_and_Nuts/201505almpd.pdf The subjective production for the 2015 almond crop is 1.85 billion pounds, according to a survey conducted by the National Statistic Service. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Fruits_and_Nuts/201505almpd.pdf CBS and Fox News "erred" scenes of almond orchards ripped out due to a lack of water while other experts predicted California would run out of water in 2016. Public records do not support their assertions and the orchard depicted in their stories failed to "air" the scene where those same drought-stricken lands were replanted with a new variety of almonds. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/depleting-the-water As indicated by USDA's Graph California Almond Bearing Acreage has continued to expand before and since the onset of this drought, in 2011. http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Fruits_and_Nuts/201505almpd.pdf The SWRCB was advised of almond acreage expansion years ago; it took no action to curtail the use of the public's water, and growers went nuts.http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrightsissues/programs/drought/docs/workshops/comments/patrick_porgans.pdf There was so much of a glut in the almond market that the price of almonds dropped precipitously. After prices for almonds climbed to a record $4 per pound in 2014, farmers across California began replacing their cheaper crops with the nut, causing a huge increase in supply. Now, the bubble has popped. Since late 2014, according to The Washington Post, almond prices have fallen by around 25%. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/29/too-many-almonds/ More grapes and other permanent crops also planted while building permits doubled statewide in 2013-2014. http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/FS_DATA/LatestEconData/FS_Construction.htm A major challenge facings taxpaying Californians, is if they can afford to export water in the form of surplus fruits and nuts to countries such as China, which is not required to pay an import tax. In the interim, the California dream appears to be fading into the midst impairing their quality of life and cost of living as the forces behind water exploitation usurp others water and property rights. Endnotes 1 California Department of Water Resources, Bulletin 120, Water Conditions in California, February 1, 2016, p. 2. 2 State Water Resource Control Board?s Fact Sheet, Extending the Emergency Water Conservation Regulation, 9 February 2016. 3 Joseph L. Sax, The Public Trust Doctrine In Natural Resource Law: Effective Judicial Intervention, The Historical Background, Michigan Law Review, [Vol. 68:471] Part II: Water officials usurp property/water rights under the guise drastic action to protect endangered fish Part III: California?s drought-flood water management crises - why it pays - source of funds About the author: Patrick Porgans is a Solutionist, and for the past 40 years serving clients and as a de facto public trustee, assisting and or compelling government officials to perform their functions in a manner consistent with the law. Porgans authored more than 80 Fact- Finding reports on water- and water-related issues in the West. He contributed to Mark Reisner's Cadillac Desert publication. He is the author of "Truth De-Code-It", which provides insight on how wealthy land-gentry billionaires are using the tax base, the state's credit rating, General Fund, General Obligation Bonds, and publicly-owned natural resources to amass and sustain ill-gain fortunes. (Truth De- Code-It focuses on ways to mutually coexist and to empower ourselves to make change, one person, one day at a time. The FACT SHEET can be viewed at www.planetarysolutionaries.org or by emailing noblewaters at yahoo.com This report was made possible by the joint commitment of New-Old Worlds Wholistically Emerging (NOWWE) and Patrick Porgans/Associates as a public service. For more articles and FACT SHEETS, Google Patrick Porgans water. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: almondgraph2015.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 16894 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu May 5 14:49:29 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 5 May 2016 14:49:29 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Fwd: Trinity County Erosion and Sediment Control BMP Workshop, June 6 References: <572bba417bd4a_5f038186e9441642@worker1.nbuild.prd.atl.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: > From: Sara Schremmer > Date: May 5, 2016 at 2:25:21 PM MST > To: Tom Stokely > Subject: Trinity County Erosion and Sediment Control BMP Workshop, June 6 > > > Visit our Website | Join us on Facebook > > Salmonid Restoration Federation > > Hi Tom, > > Salmonid Restoration Federation and Pacific Watershed Associates are offering a Best Management Practices (BMP) workshop and field tour of sediment and erosion control sites in Trinity County. > What: Erosion and Sediment Control BMP Workshop and Field Tour > When: June 6, 2016 from 9am - 5pm > Where: Fire Hall Room, Weaverville Fire Department. Click here for a map and to get directions. > Registration: Online advanced registration is $35 until May 25. Click here to register. This workshop is limited in size. > The workshop will cover identifying and evaluating sediment sources, assessing environmental impacts, creating erosion control and prevention plans, designing and evaluating grading plans, and the environmental permitting application process. > > We hope to see you there, and please help us spread the word. This promotional poster can be printed out and hung up in your community or place of work. > > Please contact me with any questions. Thank you! > > Sara Schremmer > Program Manager > Salmonid Restoration Federation > > > > > > Salmonid Restoration Federation ? United States > This email was sent to tstokely at att.net. To stop receiving emails, click here. > Created with NationBuilder, the essential toolkit for leaders. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu May 5 09:38:25 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 5 May 2016 09:38:25 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] U.S. Taxpayers Are Paying Lion's Share for Brown's Delta Tunnels In-Reply-To: References: <1124608490535.1101626840123.9926.0.380310JL.1002@scheduler.constantcontact.com> Message-ID: http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/05/05/taxpayers-are-paying-lions-share-for-browns-delta-tunnels/ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/28/1521285/-U-S-Taxpayers-Are-Paying-for-Brown-s-Delta-Tunnels U.S. Taxpayers Are Paying Lion's Share for Brown's Delta Tunnels by Dan Bacher How would you like to pay for a massive government public works project that will drive Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt and other fish species to extinction but won't create one single drop of new water? In fact, you and every other taxpayer in this country are already being billed for this giant boondoggle, Governor Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels, whether you like or not. Federal taxpayers, not the federal water contractors, are paying the lion?s hare for Governor Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels, a coalition of environmental and fishing groups revealed on April 28. The water will be exported for use for corporate agribusiness interests, Southern California water agencies and oil companies conducting fracking and extreme oil extraction methods. In response to a January 25, 2016 letter sent by conservation groups, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Regional Director David G. Murillo has confirmed that over $86.9 million of the costs for the Delta Tunnels have been billed to federal taxpayers to date! The alarming data was revealed in a news release, including a copy of the letter, issued by Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Restore the Delta; Carolee Krieger, California Water Impact Network; Conner Everts, Southern CA Watershed Alliance & Environmental Water Caucus (EWC); and Tim Sloane, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation letter affirmed the tunnels project is not authorized by Congress and they have no plans to conduct the required feasibility study or pay the construction costs which will more than double the current State Water Project debt to be paid by ratepayers and property taxpayers if permitted, according to the groups. In the letter, Murillo wrote: "Due to the State separating the BDCP into two programs and due to the fact that Reclamation does not have construction authority for the new conveyance facilities, Reclamation does not anticipate formally submitting a feasibility report to Congress. Currently, there are no plans for Reclamation to fund the construction of California WaterFix, nor provide financial assistance agreements to provide funding for construction.? Murillo also divulged that the federal contractors paid zero money of the $73,733,099 of federal dollars granted to the Department of Water Resources (DWR) for the Delta Tunnels Plan through FAA #1 and #2. "The federal CVP contractors contributed $0. The funding source was Federal appropriations," said Murillo. In addition, he said, "Westlands Water District paid $0. The funding source was Federal appropriations." The Environmental Water Caucus, along with several of its member groups who sought answers regarding this gouging of the federal taxpayers, called on the State Auditor to investigate why state laws requiring federal contractors such as Westlands Water District are ?shirking their responsibilities to pay for the water export tunnels environmental review .? ?In response to our questions, it is clear Congress and the American people are being misled," stated Tim Sloane, PCFFA Executive Director. "While our salmon heritage hangs on the brink of extinction and toxic algae blooms build, funds to protect fish and wildlife and restore the Delta Estuary have been diverted to fund water tunnel export plans to take even more essential fresh water from this critical estuary.? "As federal investigators probe the California Department of Water Resources overcharges, double billings and $300+ per hour charges to the federal government for the water export tunnels, the Bureau of Reclamation's admission that federal contractors such as Westlands, have not paid their required 50% share of the tunnels in accordance with state law, needs to be investigated," asserted Conner Everts, Executive Director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance and the Environmental Water Caucus. "How have the federal contractors been shirking their duties under state law to pay for the CA WaterFix environmental analysis, while the state contractors (ratepayers) are pouring money into the effort (over $60 million from MWD alone, to date)?" he asked. ?The largest irrigation district in the nation which receives 100?s of millions in taxpayer subsidies, Westlands Water District wants the nation to not only give them a permanent water contract for free with virtually no strings as to how they will contain their toxic groundwater pollution, now we find out they have been gaming their responsibility to pay for these expensive tunnels to export even more water to these toxic lands,? explained Carolee Krieger, Executive Director of California Water Impact Network. ?Continuing to send more water to irrigate these toxic soils at taxpayer expense makes no sense.? ?State ratepayers and taxpayers are footing the bills along with folks in New Jersey, while Westlands, the largest irrigation district in the nation, funds phony advertising campaigns hiding behind their hard working farm workers, to solicit even more taxpayer dollars to fund this expensive risky tunneling project,? stated Barbara Barrigan- Parrilla of Restore the Delta. ?We are calling on the State Auditor to investigate.? The Department of Interior?s Inspector General in April opened an investigation into the possible illegal use of millions of dollars by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) in preparing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Delta Tunnels Plan. (http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/12/feds-to-probe-misuse-of-state-funds-for-jerry-browns-delta-tunnels/ ) ?These funds have been spent on the environmental studies ?NEPA review? and hired contractors paid by DWR with Federal Grants," the groups stated. "These federal grants are under investigation for a variety of reasons?double billing, failing to follow federal procedures such as competitive bidding and questions about ?reasonable and prudent? charges among others." The investigation resulted from a complaint the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed on the behalf of a Bureau of Reclamation employee on February 19, 2016. Yes, we have a real "win-win" scenario here, don't we. Salmon, steelhead and Delta smelt will be exterminated, not one drop of new water will be created, and the taxpayers will be hosed! And it's all to create a "legacy project" for Jerry Brown, one of the worst governors for fish, water and the environment in recent California history, at the same time that a federal investigation of illegal use of funds for the Delta Tunnels by the Brown administration moves forward! Questions the State Auditor Should Ask The Reclamation response to the NGO letter raises additional questions, especially for the State Auditor Elaine Howle, according to the groups. For example: How have the federal contractors been shirking their duties under state law to pay for the WaterFix environmental analysis, while the state contractors are pouring money into the effort (over $60 million from MWD alone, to date)? Are Federal CVP Contractors Paying Their 50% for the Tunnels Planning and Environmental Review? The letter confirms federal taxpayers have been billed more than $86.9M for the Delta water export tunnels. It appears State Law, California Water Code Section 85089 is being circumvented by Westlands and other federal contractors, Why? Recall Water Code Section 85089 requires?.Construction of a new Delta conveyance facility shall not be initiated until the persons or entities that contract to receive water from the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project or a joint powers authority representing those entities have made arrangements or entered into contracts to pay for both of the following: (a) The costs of the environmental review, planning, design,? Background: Tunnels Plan Just One of Brown's Terrible Environmental Policies While the Delta Tunnels plan poses a huge threat to the ecosystems of the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Klamath and Trinity river systems, it?s not the only environmentally devastating policy promoted by Governor Jerry Brown. Brown is promoting the expansion of fracking and extreme oil extraction methods in California and is overseeing water policies that are driving winter run-Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt and other species closer and closer to extinction. Jerry Brown also oversaw the "completion" of so-called ?marine protected areas? under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, overseen by a Big Oil lobbyist and other corporate interests, in December 2012. These faux ?Yosemites of the Sea? fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling, fracking, pollution, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. As if those examples of Brown?s tainted environmental legacy weren?t enough, Brown has promoted carbon trading and REDD policies that pose an enormous threat to Indigenous Peoples around the globe; has done nothing to stop clearcutting of forests by Sierra-Pacific and other timber companies; presided over record water exports from the Delta in 2011; and oversaw massive fish kills of Sacramento splittail and other species in 2011. While Brown spouts "green" rhetoric when he flies off to climate conference and and issues proclamations about John Muir Dayand Earth Day, his actions and policies regarding fish, water and the environment are among the worst of any Governor in recent California history. For more information about the real environmental record of Governor JerryBrown, go to: www.dailykos.com/... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: District-Map-624x642-292x300.png Type: image/png Size: 75317 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Fri May 6 10:52:07 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Fri, 6 May 2016 10:52:07 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Study: Half Of Farmed Salmon Have Ear Deformities Leading To Hearing Loss Message-ID: <004501d1a7c0$02611010$07233030$@sisqtel.net> THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN: Weekly Fish and Wildlife News www.cbbulletin.com May 6, 2016 Issue No. 790 * Study: Half Of Farmed Salmon Have Ear Deformities Leading To Hearing Loss New research published last week in the journal Scientific Reports has revealed for the first time that half of the world's farmed fish have hearing loss due to a deformity of the earbone. Like humans, fish have ears which are essential for hearing and balance, so the findings are significant for the welfare of farmed fish as well as the survival of captive-bred fish released into the wild for conservation purposes. The University of Melbourne-led study found that half of the world's most farmed marine fish, Atlantic salmon, have a deformity of the otolith or 'fish earbone', much like the inner ear of mammals. The deformity was found to be very uncommon in wild fish. Lead author Tormey Reimer said farmed fish are 10 times more likely to have the deformity than wild fish. "The deformity occurs when the typical structure of calcium carbonate in the fish earbone is replaced with a different crystal form. The deformed earbones are larger, lighter and more brittle, and the way they perform within the ear changes," Reimer said. "The deformity occurs at an early age, most often when fish are in a hatchery, but its effects on hearing become increasingly more severe as the fish age. "Our research suggests that fish afflicted with this deformity can lose up to 50 percent of their hearing sensitivity." To test if the deformity was a global phenomenon, researchers from the University of Melbourne and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research sampled salmon from the world's major salmon producing nations: Norway, Canada, Scotland, Chile and Australia. The team compared the structure of the otoliths from farmed and wild salmon. They also compared the hearing of the fish using a model that predicts what a fish can hear. Regardless of the country where salmon were farmed, the deformity was much higher in farmed fish than wild fish. "This study raises questions about the welfare of farmed animals and could explain why some conservation programs aren't working" said co-author Assoc. Prof. Tim Dempster from the School of Biosciences, University of Melbourne. "Something about the farming process is causing the deformity. We now need to work out what is the root cause to help the global salmon industry produce fish with acceptable welfare standards." Over two million tons of farmed salmon are produced every year, with more than a billion fish harvested. "We estimate that roughly half of these fish have the earbone deformity, and thus have compromised hearing. We don't yet know exactly how this hearing loss affects their performance in farms. ??However, producing farmed animals with deformities contravenes two of the ??Five Freedoms?? that forms the basis of legislation to ensure the welfare of farmed animals in many countries," added Reimer. Deformed earbones could also explain why many fish conservation programs aren't performing as expected, the study says. Every year, billions of captive-bred juvenile salmon are released into rivers in North America, Asia and Europe to boost wild populations, but their survival is 10-20 times lower than that of wild salmon. Hearing loss may prevent fish from detecting predators, and restrict their ability to navigate back to their home stream to breed. Study co-author Prof Steve Swearer from the University of Melbourne said that the poor performance of restocked fish has been a long-standing mystery. "We think that compromised hearing could be part of the problem. All native fish re-stocking programs should now assess if their fish have deformed earbones and what effect this has on their survival rates," Prof. Swearer said. "If we don't change the way fish are produced for release, we may just be throwing money and resources into the sea." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri May 6 10:57:42 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 6 May 2016 17:57:42 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Klamath article in the News In-Reply-To: <07968F55C4B6674AAB697ABE5DFD21F8E7A337C3B5@exchange.yuroktribe.nsn.us> References: <07968F55C4B6674AAB697ABE5DFD21F8E7A337C3B5@exchange.yuroktribe.nsn.us> Message-ID: <1610119606.506051.1462557462085.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Undamming this major U.S. river is opening a world of possibility for native cultures and wildlife ? http://fusion.net/story/297901/undamming-major-west-coast-river/ ??The run of salmon in the Klamath River this year is the heaviest it has ever known. There are millions of fish below the falls near Keno, and it is said that a man with a gaff could easily land a hundred of the salmon in an hour, in fact they could be caught as fast as a man could pull them in.? ??Klamath Falls Evening Herald?front page?on Sept. 24, 1908.?Flowing over 250 miles from the high desert of southern Oregon through the Cascades Mountains before emptying out into the Pacific Ocean in northern California, the Klamath River and its Coho and Chinook salmon and steelhead runs were vital to Native American tribes for thousands of years before settlers arrived. ?But within decades of their arrival there would be half a dozen dams constructed on the river, effectively blocking salmon and steelhead migrations on what was once the?third-highest salmon producing?river on the West Coast. The river that was fabled for its millions of salmon each season saw significant decreases following dam construction.?But now after nearly a century, an agreement has finally been reached to remove four dams on the Klamath River by 2020 as the first step towards restoring the salmon and steelhead migrations in the Klamath basin.?The deal to carry out one of the largest dam removal projects in U.S. history was reached after years of effort by diverse stakeholders including the local Native American tribes, county, state and federal agencies, irrigators, farmers, and conservation and fishing groups.??When the first dam went up in 1918 without fish ladders, our people were very concerned,? said the chairman of the Klamath Tribes in Oregon?s Klamath Basin, Don Gentry. ?They basically extirpated salmon from the Upper Klamath Basin and a lot of important tribal fisheries.? ?The early dams were built on Klamath River without fish ladders or other protections to ensure the passage each year of thousands of salmon and steelhead. ?Without the fish, a vital part of local tribes? way of life was missing, said Thomas P. O?Rourke Sr., the chairman of the Yurok Tribe in northwestern California near where the Klamath River enters the Pacific Ocean.??You don?t say Yurok without saying fish?they go hand in hand,? O?Rourke Sr. said. ?Our people depend on the river for our livelihood?in order for us to preserve our identity we very much need the river intact.???It?s our way of life that makes us who we are,? he said.??When the first dam went up in 1918 without fish ladders, our people were very concerned,? said the chairman of the Klamath Tribes in Oregon?s Klamath Basin, Don Gentry. ?They basically extirpated salmon from the Upper Klamath Basin and a lot of important tribal fisheries.? ?The early dams were built on Klamath River without fish ladders or other protections to ensure the passage each year of thousands of salmon and steelhead.?Without the fish, a vital part of local tribes? way of life was missing, said Thomas P. O?Rourke Sr., the chairman of the Yurok Tribe in northwestern California near where the Klamath River enters the Pacific Ocean.??You don?t say Yurok without saying fish?they go hand in hand,? O?Rourke Sr. said. ?Our people depend on the river for our livelihood?in order for us to preserve our identity we very much need the river intact.???It?s our way of life that makes us who we are,? he said.?Just 140,000 Chinook salmon?are predicted?for the fall migration this year on the Klamath River, according to the California and Oregon Departments of Fish and Wildlife. That?s just a third of 2015?s estimate and the second lowest since at least 1996. The extremely low estimates are the result of a combination of factors caused by climate change and the ongoing drought in the region. ?While the Klamath Tribes, as well as other local tribes including the Yurok and Karuk, have signed and welcomed the agreement?which followed years of grassroots efforts by the tribes and environmental activists?they warned that a comprehensive water deal to assist with salmon restoration was still missing. ??Without a full package on restoration it?s still a very difficult road to restore the salmon,? Gentry said. Salmon need specific water quality and temperatures to thrive, and irrigators also need to be able to use water from the river for their livelihoods So during dry years, there are often opposing claims to water?making it an issue that must be addressed. This type of overlapping and oftentimes conflicting water allocation is a major problem with regional water treaties across the country. ?In 2001 amid severe drought conditions,?water was shut off to?Klamath basin irrigators and the next year salmon returned to a river with water levels that were too low and warm. Tens of thousands of the fish died as a result. That prompted local stakeholders to work together on a water deal to protect everyone?s interests ?But 15 years later that part of the plan was left off of the KHSA, Gentry said. ?That?s because before the KHSA, there was a previous deal signed in 2014 called the Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement which included actions to restore the river?s ecosystem, fisheries, and salmon and steelhead migrations along with the four dam removals. But that agreement expired when the U.S. Congress adjourned in 2015 without authorizing them. The agreements had?been controversial since?the beginning, and many conservative lawmakers objected to the idea of dam removal. ?In order to move the project forward, the parties to the agreement decided to go through a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) process to remove the dams. That avoided the need for congressional approval.??The majority of (the KHSA) can be done within the states? governmental functions, we don?t have to go through Congress to make that happen which had been a roadblock in the past,? said O?Rourke Sr.?But it left out the hard-won water deal?and since that part of the process could not be handled through FERC, it was agreed in the KHSA that parties would continue to work on the water deal in a separate agreement.?Although the dam removal project has been celebrated for its environmental benefits, the initial reason for the plan to remove the four dams was more practical than anything else, according to a senior official at the DOI.??The amount of capital outlay to meet environmental standards would not be insignificant,? the official, who did not wish to be named due to the sensitive nature of the topic, said. ?That?s really the impetus.??The dams? operator, PacifiCorp, learned in 2004 when it applied for re-licensing that it would need to bring the dams up to current environmental standards. That appeared to cost more and present more risks to PacifiCorp and its customers than removing the dams, the company?said on its?website.??In our view we think people have begun to realize especially in the northwest that dams don?t last forever ? all dams do have an expiration date,? said Jim McCarthy, communications director at WaterWatch of Oregon.?The U.S. has around?84,000 dams with?an average lifespan of 52 years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), with thousands considered deficient and ?high hazard.? The number of high hazard dams is expected to increase, it added.With the estimated cost of repairing those dams at around $21 billion, outweighing the cost of simply removing them, dam removals will likely increase in the coming decades, according to the ASCE.?WaterWatch has been involved in a number of dam removals in recent years in Oregon?s Rogue River Basin, McCarthy said. What he and researchers noticed was that the ecosystems and physical characteristics of waterways were quick to bounce back to their natural states after dams were removed. ?One of the dam removals WaterWatch advocated for was the Savage Rapids dam on the Rogue River?which like the Klamath River is a popular salmon and steelhead run. Oregon State University conducteda study?on the river before and after the dam removal and found that within a year of removal, the river ecology was similar to upstream conditions where there had been no impacts from the dam. ?That?s what local tribes said they hope will happen in the Klamath River following the dam removals. But both Gentry, of the Klamath Tribes, and O?Rourke Sr. of the Yurok Tribe, said without a restoration plan, the salmon would not regain their former numbers.??Without the whole package and restoration it?s still a very difficult road to restore the salmon,? Gentry said. ?That?s what?s missing from these agreements?a real coordinated salmon restoration plan.? ??The water deal would also protect irrigators who use the water.There are over 1,200 family farms and ranches in the Klamath Reclamation Project area. That was a 1905 project to create irrigable land on both sides of the California-Oregon border, according to the Klamath Water Users Association?a non-profit representing those farmers and ranchers. ??Scott White, KWUA?s executive director, said a second agreement was signed along with the KHSA on April 6 that gave certain protections to local farmers and ranchers. The Klamath Power and Facilities Agreement will help irrigators avoid regulatory burdens associated with the return of fish to the Klamath basin, White said. One example is irrigators will be provided fish screens to prevent federally protected species of salmon from entering their property. ??But more importantly, ?it provides commitments from the parties to continue working on a water deal, which is ultimately what we have been working towards for 15 years,? White said.?Despite the lack of a comprehensive water and restoration agreement yet, O?Rourke said he thought the KHSA was ?a very good start.??With the dams removed, everything else becomes possible,? he said. #yiv4541973366 #yiv4541973366 -- filtered {panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}#yiv4541973366 filtered {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}#yiv4541973366 p.yiv4541973366MsoNormal, #yiv4541973366 li.yiv4541973366MsoNormal, #yiv4541973366 div.yiv4541973366MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;}#yiv4541973366 a:link, #yiv4541973366 span.yiv4541973366MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv4541973366 a:visited, #yiv4541973366 span.yiv4541973366MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv4541973366 p {margin-right:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:12.0pt;}#yiv4541973366 span.yiv4541973366EmailStyle18 {color:#1F497D;}#yiv4541973366 span.yiv4541973366EmailStyle19 {color:#1F497D;}#yiv4541973366 span.yiv4541973366EmailStyle20 {color:#1F497D;}#yiv4541973366 .yiv4541973366MsoChpDefault {font-size:10.0pt;}#yiv4541973366 filtered {margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}#yiv4541973366 div.yiv4541973366WordSection1 {}#yiv4541973366 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon May 9 08:41:14 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 9 May 2016 15:41:14 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Times Standard: Yurok Tribe alleges illegal fishing by neighboring Resighini Rancheria References: <1026104756.913695.1462808474428.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1026104756.913695.1462808474428.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/government-and-politics/20160506/yurok-tribe-alleges-illegal-fishing-by-neighboring-resighini-rancheria Yurok Tribe alleges illegal fishing by neighboring Resighini Rancheria Klamath River salmon catch limited this season By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardFriday, May 6, 2016The Yurok Tribe filed a federal lawsuit against neighboring Resighini Rancheria on Friday, claiming tribal members fished the mouth of the Klamath River without permission of the tribe or state.?This action is a last resort,? Yurok Tribal Chairman Thomas P. O?Rourke Sr. said in a statement on Friday. ?We have an obligation and a responsibility to stand up for the fish because they do not have a voice.?Resighini Rancheria Tribal Manager Donald Valenzuela said he did not want to comment on the lawsuit at this time and said the tribal council will be discussing the litigation at its meeting Monday.The Yurok Tribe is seeking a declaratory judgment to stop the Resighini Rancheria from fishing on the Klamath River within the Yurok Tribe?s reservation, which runs from the mouth of the Klamath River to the confluence of the Trinity River about 45 miles away.?The 228-acre Resighini Rancheria is located within the Yurok Tribe?s reservation, but the it is not included in the tribal fishing rights that were given to the Yurok and Hoopa tribes by Congress in 1988 through the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act.According to the Yurok Tribe, members of the Resighini Rancheria had an opportunity to join the Yurok Tribe to gain access to fishing rights on the river, but chose to take a $15,000 per person buyout instead.The lawsuit alleges that Resighini Rancheria members including Secretary Gary Dowd harvested fish without the authorization of the tribe and without a state license.In Friday?s release, the tribe said it filed the lawsuit to protect the salmon populations, which are predicted to have?lower than average numbers this season. About 142,200 fall run Chinook salmon from the Klamath River are estimated to be in the Pacific Ocean this year, which is nearly a third of last year?s estimate and the second lowest predicted population since at least 1996, according to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife data.As a result, the Yurok Tribal Council adopted a four-day per week closure of the salmon fishery.?This year, the predicted salmon run on the Klamath River is so low that the Tribe?s fishery allotment is less than one fish per Tribal member,? the release states.With more than 6,000 members, the Yurok Tribe is the largest tribe in California.Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tgstoked at gmail.com Mon May 9 13:40:51 2016 From: tgstoked at gmail.com (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 9 May 2016 13:40:51 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Fwd=3A_Delta_Tunnels_News=3A_State_Audit_?= =?utf-8?q?=26_Financial_Plan_Requested=C2=A0?= References: <06887fa70084fef8e939fef632ca461c02c.20160509190043@mail18.wdc01.mcdlv.net> Message-ID: <30002F60-200B-4A2A-92C1-D91FF8E9405B@gmail.com> Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: > From: Restore the Delta > Date: May 9, 2016 at 12:01:29 PM PDT > To: tgstoked at gmail.com > Subject: Delta Tunnels News: State Audit & Financial Plan Requested > Reply-To: Restore the Delta > > > For immediate release > Is this email not displaying correctly? > View it in your browser. > > For Immediate Release: May 9, 2016 > > Contact: > Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director, Restore the Delta, 209-479-2053 > Tim Stroshane, Policy Analyst, Restore the Delta, 510-847-7556 > > > Federal and State Taxes to Fund the Delta Tunnels: > Restore the Delta seeks a full accounting of financial plan and state audit > > Stockton, CA ? Citing a lack of state or federal legislative authorization, Restore the Delta today sent a detailed request under the California Public Records Act to a half dozen public agencies, including the California Department of Water Resources seeking details about the funding plan for the proposed Delta Tunnels (CA WaterFix). > The letter was addressed to officials at Zone 7 Water Agency, Westlands Water District, Metropolitan Water District, Kern County Water Agency, and the Santa Clara Valley Water District, in addition to the California Department of Water Resources. > > The letter asks the agencies to clarify how ??the continued planning and design of the proposed project is funded by each major water contractor who may benefit from its construction, operation and maintenance, and who provide security for state and federal debt issuance.? > > The group seeks assurance that ??best practices consistent and compliant with the taxation principles of the California Constitution as amended by Propositions 218 and 26?? are being followed. Restore the Delta also seeks information regarding how the US Bureau of Reclamation came to finance Delta Tunnels planning for the Westlands Water District. > > The letter concludes that Restore the Delta will ask the State Auditor and Joint Legislative Audit Committee to investigate the funding plan for the Delta Tunnels proposal. > > Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta said, ?No finance plan has been made public. Recent Federal investigations have led many urban residents to suspect that they will be forced to subsidize (with higher water rates and property taxes) industrial agriculture on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, growing crops for export. The agencies promoting the project have been very secretive about how interim project costs have been paid to date and how the project will be paid for in the future. The original concept was a project funded by the beneficiaries, which is important since 70 percent of the water will go to big industrial growers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.? > > ?They?ve said for years that ?beneficiaries should pay? for the Delta Tunnels but like a classic bait and switch, they?d like to find ways for unsuspecting urban ratepayers and taxpayers in Silicon Valley and Southern California to pay the majority,? said Tim Stroshane, policy analyst with Restore the Delta and author of today?s letter. ?While the project has been around for 10 years, there has been no single, accurate description of how the state and federal governments and their water contractors intend to finance the Delta Tunnels. Restore the Delta seeks information to help accomplish that.? > > Among questions for ratepayers are: > ? How have the contractors funded planning and design of the Delta Tunnels plan so far? > ? What shares have all water contractors paid to date since 2006, and for what purposes? > ? Which funding sources, including debt, have Tunnel proponents used and how much funding have they raised, by source? > ? Did DWR or water contractors issue debt financing for Tunnels planning and design activities and how was their debt issuance secured? > ? Were legal contract procedures followed for planning and design activities with qualified staff awarded contracts? > ? Have funds been raised and spent in accordance with Proposition 218 and Proposition 26? > ? Have ratepayers and taxpayers been properly notified if contractors are using specific local revenue sources to raise these funds? > > About Restore the Delta: > > Restore the Delta (restorethedelta.org) is a grassroots campaign by residents and organizations committed to restoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta so that fisheries and farming can thrive there together again. We work through public education and outreach so that all Californians recognize the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta as part of California?s natural heritage, deserving of restoration. We fight for a Delta with waters that are fishable, swimmable, drinkable, and farmable, able to support the health of the estuary, San Francisco Bay, and the ocean beyond. Our coalition envisions the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as a place where a vibrant local economy, tourism, recreation, farming, wildlife, and fisheries thrive for future generations as a result of resident efforts to protect our waterway commons. Restore the Delta advocates for local Delta stakeholders to ensure that they have a direct impact on water management decisions that affect the well-being of their communities, in addition to water sustainability policies for all Californians. > > > LA Times, "Don't blame the smelt: The salmon too reflects the dire state of the California Delta" > As Robin Abcarian writes in the LA Times, "I have never - not once - heard a politician or a farmer talk smack about salmon." The Delta's hero Bill Jennings is featured in this article on the present collapse of the estuary. Read at LA Times. > > Mark Your Calendars! > We will be holding a 3-day open house and advocacy training. Participants can drop by at their own convenience during these dates & times or sign up for more formal classes. Details. > DONATE | follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend > Copyright ? 2016 Restore the Delta, All rights reserved. > You are receiving this e-mail because you signed up for our mailing list to receive updates and news about Restore the Delta. > Our mailing address is: > Restore the Delta > 42 N. Sutter Street, Suite 506 > Stockton, CA 95202 > > Add us to your address book > unsubscribe from this list | update subscription preferences > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue May 10 10:57:37 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 17:57:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1241340840.1617346.1462903058010.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, May 10, 2016 10:28 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ?Date? ? ? ? ? ?Time?? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 5/13/2016? ? ? ? 0400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 5600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 6000 5/13/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 6000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 7000 5/13/2016? ? ? ? 0800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 7000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 8000 5/13/2016? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 8000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 9000 5/13/2016? ? ? ? 1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 9000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 10000 5/14/2016? ? ? ? 0800 ? ? ? ? ? ? 10000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 9500 5/14/2016? ? ? ? 1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 9500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 9000 5/14/2016? ? ? ? 1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 9000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 8500 5/15/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 8500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 8000 5/15/2016? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 8000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 7500 5/15/2016? ? ? ? 1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 7500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 7000 5/15/2016? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 7000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 6500 5/16/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 6500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 6000 5/16/2016? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 6000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 5600 5/16/2016? ? ? ? 1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 5600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 5200 5/16/2016? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 5200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4800 5/17/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4400 5/17/2016? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4200 5/19/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4400 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow?-- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Tue May 10 12:43:51 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 12:43:51 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] PPIC: Regulating Marijuana as a Crop (Humboldt Co. fish habitat map) Message-ID: <014501d1aaf4$481f7ba0$d85e72e0$@sisqtel.net> http://www.ppic.org/main/blog_detail.asp?i=2041 &utm_source=The+PPIC+Blog&utm_campaign=002931f4f9-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_All&utm _medium=email&utm_term=0_1d97666088-002931f4f9-181945237 http://www.ppic.org/common/blogHeader.png Regulating Marijuana as a Crop Van Butsic, Patrick Murphy May 09, 2016 In the 20 years since marijuana was legalized for medical use in California, it has become an increasingly legitimate crop in the state's agricultural landscape. Yet despite relatively steady progress in moving marijuana cultivation out of the shadows, important questions remain about the crop's impact on water and the environment, and whether the state can regulate these issues successfully. Last year the state legislature passed laws designed to regulate medical marijuana production. Should Californians vote to legalize recreational marijuana use this fall, the state will need to take an even more active role in regulating production, as argued in a recent PPIC report. Marijuana growing has yet to move to large-scale production, but that could change with shifts in state or federal laws. Both the total amount of marijuana produced and number of cultivation sites are difficult to estimate. An often cited but uncertain estimate is that California has about 50,000 cultivation sites. A recent effort to map grows in Humboldt County suggests that most have less than 100 plants and typically cultivate less than one acre. These small grows are usually located far from improved roads and often scattered on steep slopes. Currently, only 7 percent of grows in Humboldt County are on what could be considered prime agricultural land. The biggest environmental concerns regarding marijuana cultivation-or any agricultural commodity, for that matter-are water use, deforestation, and water pollution. Given the small size of most grows, marijuana production currently does not appear be a major driver of deforestation in California, although building access roads may cause erosion and fragment wildlife habitat. And although it has been reported to be a thirsty plant, recent estimates of marijuana's water use in Humboldt County-one of the state's biggest growing areas-suggest that under 2,000 acre feet a year is used for that county's entire crop. This is enough to irrigate about 400 acres of almonds (for scale, California currently has more than 300,000 irrigated acres of almonds). Some water used for marijuana irrigation comes from headwater streams that are home to sensitive species, and water use tends to increase in the fall when these watersheds are most stressed. If the crop were to be widely grown in drier areas, water impact might increase. Recent proposals for large marijuana greenhouse operations in Southern California desert communities also raise questions about water supply. State regulations have recently given regional water quality boards and county governments better tools to manage marijuana growing. The North Coast Regional Water Board has adopted regulations requiring all marijuana operations over 2,000 square feet to enroll in a program requiring monitoring and potential cleanup for water discharge and diversions at existing marijuana operations. Humboldt County has introduced one of the state's first land use ordinances for marijuana production, which limits cultivation size based on zoning type and square footage of the parcel. The legal market for marijuana in California is likely to expand, especially if voters approve recreational use this fall. This presents both opportunities and challenges. The state can establish rules that make access to the market contingent upon following environmentally responsible and water-smart growing practices. The challenge is that for the regulations to be meaningful, they must be enforced. State and county officials will need to monitor the location of grows and practices, and collect information that can guide future policies to effectively reduce the crop's impact on land and water resources. Accomplishing that will require adequate time and staff. Learn more Read "California Streams Going to Pot from Marijuana Boom" (PPIC blog, July 23, 2015) Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 4193 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 179295 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kierassociates at att.net Tue May 10 13:51:03 2016 From: kierassociates at att.net (Kier Associates) Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 13:51:03 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] PPIC: Regulating Marijuana as a Crop (Humboldt Co. fish habitat map) In-Reply-To: <014501d1aaf4$481f7ba0$d85e72e0$@sisqtel.net> References: <014501d1aaf4$481f7ba0$d85e72e0$@sisqtel.net> Message-ID: <000901d1aafd$aba2b530$02e81f90$@att.net> PPIC totally blew it on CA's almond acreage with that 'California currently has more than 300,000 irrigated acres of almonds' in the article below CA has north of one million acres of almond trees, all irrigated. See https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Fruits _and_Nuts/201504almac.pdf Bill From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Sari Sommarstrom Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 12:44 PM To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: [env-trinity] PPIC: Regulating Marijuana as a Crop (Humboldt Co. fish habitat map) http://www.ppic.org/main/blog_detail.asp?i=2041 &utm_source=The+PPIC+Blog&utm_campaign=002931f4f9-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_All&utm _medium=email&utm_term=0_1d97666088-002931f4f9-181945237 http://www.ppic.org/common/blogHeader.png Regulating Marijuana as a Crop Van Butsic, Patrick Murphy May 09, 2016 In the 20 years since marijuana was legalized for medical use in California, it has become an increasingly legitimate crop in the state's agricultural landscape. Yet despite relatively steady progress in moving marijuana cultivation out of the shadows, important questions remain about the crop's impact on water and the environment, and whether the state can regulate these issues successfully. Last year the state legislature passed laws designed to regulate medical marijuana production. Should Californians vote to legalize recreational marijuana use this fall, the state will need to take an even more active role in regulating production, as argued in a recent PPIC report. Marijuana growing has yet to move to large-scale production, but that could change with shifts in state or federal laws. Both the total amount of marijuana produced and number of cultivation sites are difficult to estimate. An often cited but uncertain estimate is that California has about 50,000 cultivation sites. A recent effort to map grows in Humboldt County suggests that most have less than 100 plants and typically cultivate less than one acre. These small grows are usually located far from improved roads and often scattered on steep slopes. Currently, only 7 percent of grows in Humboldt County are on what could be considered prime agricultural land. The biggest environmental concerns regarding marijuana cultivation-or any agricultural commodity, for that matter-are water use, deforestation, and water pollution. Given the small size of most grows, marijuana production currently does not appear be a major driver of deforestation in California, although building access roads may cause erosion and fragment wildlife habitat. And although it has been reported to be a thirsty plant, recent estimates of marijuana's water use in Humboldt County-one of the state's biggest growing areas-suggest that under 2,000 acre feet a year is used for that county's entire crop. This is enough to irrigate about 400 acres of almonds (for scale, California currently has more than 300,000 irrigated acres of almonds). Some water used for marijuana irrigation comes from headwater streams that are home to sensitive species, and water use tends to increase in the fall when these watersheds are most stressed. If the crop were to be widely grown in drier areas, water impact might increase. Recent proposals for large marijuana greenhouse operations in Southern California desert communities also raise questions about water supply. State regulations have recently given regional water quality boards and county governments better tools to manage marijuana growing. The North Coast Regional Water Board has adopted regulations requiring all marijuana operations over 2,000 square feet to enroll in a program requiring monitoring and potential cleanup for water discharge and diversions at existing marijuana operations. Humboldt County has introduced one of the state's first land use ordinances for marijuana production, which limits cultivation size based on zoning type and square footage of the parcel. The legal market for marijuana in California is likely to expand, especially if voters approve recreational use this fall. This presents both opportunities and challenges. The state can establish rules that make access to the market contingent upon following environmentally responsible and water-smart growing practices. The challenge is that for the regulations to be meaningful, they must be enforced. State and county officials will need to monitor the location of grows and practices, and collect information that can guide future policies to effectively reduce the crop's impact on land and water resources. Accomplishing that will require adequate time and staff. Learn more Read "California Streams Going to Pot from Marijuana Boom" (PPIC blog, July 23, 2015) Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 179295 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue May 10 14:34:01 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 14:34:01 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] PPIC: Regulating Marijuana as a Crop (Humboldt Co. fish habitat map) In-Reply-To: <000901d1aafd$aba2b530$02e81f90$@att.net> References: <014501d1aaf4$481f7ba0$d85e72e0$@sisqtel.net> <000901d1aafd$aba2b530$02e81f90$@att.net> Message-ID: <61DF5339-0BC4-4C98-8E87-512391B2325E@fishsniffer.com> Bill And 60,000 of new almond acreage went in during 2015, during the peak of the drought. dan On May 10, 2016, at 1:51 PM, Kier Associates wrote: > PPIC totally blew it on CA?s almond acreage with that ?California > currently has more than 300,000 irrigated acres of almonds? in the > article below > > CA has north of one million acres of almond trees, all irrigated. > Seehttps://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Fruits_and_Nuts/201504almac.pdf > > Bill > From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > ] On Behalf Of Sari Sommarstrom > Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 12:44 PM > To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > Subject: [env-trinity] PPIC: Regulating Marijuana as a Crop > (Humboldt Co. fish habitat map) > > http://www.ppic.org/main/blog_detail.asp?i=2041&utm_source=The+PPIC+Blog&utm_campaign=002931f4f9-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_All&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1d97666088-002931f4f9-181945237 > > > > Regulating Marijuana as a Crop > VAN BUTSIC, PATRICK MURPHY MAY 09, 2016 > In the 20 years since marijuana was legalized for medical use in > California, it has become an increasingly legitimate crop in the > state?s agricultural landscape. Yet despite relatively steady > progress in moving marijuana cultivation out of the shadows, > important questions remain about the crop?s impact on water and the > environment, and whether the state can regulate these issues > successfully. > Last year the state legislature passed laws designed to regulate > medical marijuana production. Should Californians vote to legalize > recreational marijuana use this fall, the state will need to take an > even more active role in regulating production, as argued in a > recent PPIC report. > Marijuana growing has yet to move to large-scale production, but > that could change with shifts in state or federal laws. Both the > total amount of marijuana produced and number of cultivation sites > are difficult to estimate. An often cited but uncertain estimate is > that California has about 50,000 cultivation sites. A recent effort > to map grows in Humboldt County suggests that most have less than > 100 plants and typically cultivate less than one acre. These small > grows are usually located far from improved roads and often > scattered on steep slopes. Currently, only 7 percent of grows in > Humboldt County are on what could be considered prime agricultural > land. > The biggest environmental concerns regarding marijuana cultivation? > or any agricultural commodity, for that matter?are water use, > deforestation, and water pollution. Given the small size of most > grows, marijuana production currently does not appear be a major > driver of deforestation in California, although building access > roads may cause erosion and fragment wildlife habitat. > And although it has been reported to be a thirsty plant, recent > estimates of marijuana?s water use in Humboldt County?one of the > state?s biggest growing areas?suggest that under 2,000 acre feet a > year is used for that county?s entire crop. This is enough to > irrigate about 400 acres of almonds (for scale, California currently > has more than 300,000 irrigated acres of almonds). Some water used > for marijuana irrigation comes from headwater streams that are home > to sensitive species, and water use tends to increase in the fall > when these watersheds are most stressed. If the crop were to be > widely grown in drier areas, water impact might increase. Recent > proposals for large marijuana greenhouse operations in Southern > California desert communities also raise questions about water supply. > State regulations have recently given regional water quality boards > and county governments better tools to manage marijuana growing. The > North Coast Regional Water Board has adopted regulations requiring > all marijuana operations over 2,000 square feet to enroll in a > program requiring monitoring and potential cleanup for water > discharge and diversions at existing marijuana operations. Humboldt > County has introduced one of the state?s first land use ordinances > for marijuana production, which limits cultivation size based on > zoning type and square footage of the parcel. > The legal market for marijuana in California is likely to expand, > especially if voters approve recreational use this fall. This > presents both opportunities and challenges. The state can establish > rules that make access to the market contingent upon following > environmentally responsible and water-smart growing practices. The > challenge is that for the regulations to be meaningful, they must be > enforced. State and county officials will need to monitor the > location of grows and practices, and collect information that can > guide future policies to effectively reduce the crop?s impact on > land and water resources. Accomplishing that will require adequate > time and staff. > > LEARN MORE > Read "California Streams Going to Pot from Marijuana Boom? (PPIC > blog, July 23, 2015) > Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center > > _______________________________________________ > env-trinity mailing list > env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu May 12 08:09:06 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 12 May 2016 15:09:06 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Capitol Journal So the drought has you watering less? It won't matter much References: <63932266.974262.1463065746979.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <63932266.974262.1463065746979.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-jerry-brown-drought-edict-20160512-story.html Capitol Journal? So the drought has you watering less? It won't matter much A number of California water districts are expected to urge state regulators to relax emergency water restrictions as rain and snow this winter have eased five years of drought.?(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)George SkeltonContact ReporterCapitol Journal?Gov.?Jerry Brown?wants to forbid you from hosing down the driveway. And he is really cranky about lawn watering.But corporate agriculture is free to plant all the water-gulping nut orchards it desires, even in a semi-desert.This is the essence of the governor?s new long-term drought policy that he announced Monday.Brown intends to make permanent some urban water conservation rules that had been temporary. He also plans to give communities more flexibility to decide how much water they should save, depending on local conditions. But it?s basically hands off agriculture.The governor issued an executive order declaring that the state must ?move beyond temporary emergency drought measures and adopt permanent changes to use water more wisely and prepare for more frequent and persistent periods of limited water supply.?Some emergency drought rules might be eased, but don't start hosing down sidewalksHe directed the State Water Resources Control Board to, among other things, ?eliminate water waste? in urban areas. He specifically mentioned hosing off sidewalks and driveways, washing cars without a shut-off nozzle, sprinkling lawns in a way that causes runoff and irrigating grass on public street medians.Well, OK. Everyone needs to do their part.But let?s not forget: Residential lawns soak up only about 5% of developed water in California. All residential outdoor use ? including pools, shrubs, trees ? amounts to less than 7%. Total urban use ? showers, washers, business landscaping, golf courses, ball fields ? account for just 20% of human water consumption.Agriculture slurps up 80%, much of it in the semiarid San Joaquin Valley, where growers increasingly have been planting thirsty nut orchards, mainly for profitable export overseas.But while agriculture devours 80% of the developed water, it accounts for only 2% of the state?s gross product, according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.Last year, as Californians dealt with the fourth year of drought, growers planted an additional 60,000 acres of almonds, mostly in the San Joaquin Valley, according to state agriculture officials.That was a 6% increase in almond acreage over the previous year, bringing the total to 1.1 million acres. That?s nearly double the number of almond orchards that existed 12 years ago.Unlike carrot, tomato and other vegetable plants, nut and fruit trees cannot be temporarily fallowed during dry years.So when government reduces water deliveries through the giant aqueducts, farmers feel compelled to drill deeper wells, further draining aquifers. The result is that land in much of the San Joaquin Valley has been sinking, damaging roads and canals and drying up water supplies for hardscrabble local communities.The state lists 21 ?critically overdrafted? water basins, covering practically the entire San Joaquin Valley. The Paso Robles area and Oxnard also are on the list.In 2014, Brown signed landmark groundwater management legislation ? California?s first. But it basically punted the chore of refereeing water use to local agencies. And the rules won?t fully take effect for another generation.Back to almonds. Not all of them are equally thirsty. It depends on their location.In the wetter Sacramento Valley ? the northern part of the Central Valley ? one acre of these nuts requires 2.4 acre-feet of irrigation water annually, according to the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. In most of the San Joaquin Valley, they need 3.4 acre-feet. But in the lower valley, they gobble up 4 acre-feet.Roughly 85% are in the parched San Joaquin. Do the math: Those additional 60,000 acres of almonds require more than 200,000 acre-feet of water per year, enough for 400,000 households.Making this really simple, one gallon of water is generally needed to grow one almond.Yes, the water produces food, but most of it isn?t for us. It provides snacks for other countries, primarily in Asia.?I believe farmers should grow whatever they want,? Brown told me last year.Never mind that government regulates practically all other land use. A property owner can?t just willy-nilly build an apartment house, develop a mall or carve out a dump.Brown did, however, pester farmers a little in his executive order.Irrigation districts serving at least 25,000 acres currently are required to develop drought management plans and monitor groundwater levels, reporting the numbers to Sacramento. The governor?s new edict lowers the acreage threshold to 10,000, covering an additional 1 million acres of farmland.But there?s no enforcement of the current regulations.?There should be,? says Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources. He says enforcement legislation will be proposed by next year.?What we?re trying to do is see how efficiently agriculture uses water,? Cowin says. ?We?re staying away from mandating land use and types of agriculture.?But agriculture is going to be constrained anyway eventually ? by nature and by groundwater regulations ? predicts one expert.?There?s not enough water,? says Jay Lund, director of the UC Davis watershed center. ?It?s inevitable.?Lund says less water will be exported south from the deteriorating Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Groundwater is being depleted and contaminated. Seas will rise because of climate change, pushing more saltwater inland. Less snow will fall in the Sierra. San Joaquin Valley soil will become more toxic because of irrigation runoff and imported salty water. And urbanization will eat up cropland.He says up to 2 million of the San Joaquin Valley?s 5 million irrigated acres will need to be fallowed.?That looks right to me,? Cowin says.Not hosing down your driveway won?t amount to a hill of beans.george.skelton at latimes.comFollow?@LATimesSkelton?on Twitter? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ddj at cah2oresearch.com Thu May 12 16:07:25 2016 From: ddj at cah2oresearch.com (Deirdre Des Jardins) Date: Thu, 12 May 2016 16:07:25 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Capitol Journal So the drought has you watering less? It won't matter much In-Reply-To: <63932266.974262.1463065746979.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <63932266.974262.1463065746979.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <63932266.974262.1463065746979.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <09cf01d1aca3$0d0a98a0$271fc9e0$@cah2oresearch.com> Lawn-watering in Southern California means that the State Water Project increases exports to 60% this year so that MWD can sell the water over the summer. Back to business as usual for MWD and other urban water agencies. Urban conservation would mean that the increased exports are used to replenish MWD?s depleted reserves in Diamond Valley and Semitropic. This would mean increased reserves in the event of another dry year in 2017-2018, and less need for another TUCP. Does this really ?not matter much?? Deirdre Des Jardins California Water Research ddj at cah2oresearch.com 831 423-6857 v 831 566-6320 c @flowinguphill From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Tom Stokely Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2016 8:09 AM To: Env-trinity Subject: [env-trinity] Capitol Journal So the drought has you watering less? It won't matter much http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-jerry-brown-drought-edict-20160512-story.html Capitol Journal So the drought has you watering less? It won't matter much A number of California water districts are expected to urge state regulators to relax emergency water restrictions as rain and snow this winter have eased five years of drought. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) George Skelton Contact ReporterCapitol Journal Gov. Jerry Brown wants to forbid you from hosing down the driveway. And he is really cranky about lawn watering. But corporate agriculture is free to plant all the water-gulping nut orchards it desires, even in a semi-desert. This is the essence of the governor?s new long-term drought policy that he announced Monday. Brown intends to make permanent some urban water conservation rules that had been temporary. He also plans to give communities more flexibility to decide how much water they should save, depending on local conditions. But it?s basically hands off agriculture. The governor issued an executive order declaring that the state must ?move beyond temporary emergency drought measures and adopt permanent changes to use water more wisely and prepare for more frequent and persistent periods of limited water supply.? Some emergency drought rules might be eased, but don't start hosing down sidewalks He directed the State Water Resources Control Board to, among other things, ?eliminate water waste? in urban areas. He specifically mentioned hosing off sidewalks and driveways, washing cars without a shut-off nozzle, sprinkling lawns in a way that causes runoff and irrigating grass on public street medians. Well, OK. Everyone needs to do their part. But let?s not forget: Residential lawns soak up only about 5% of developed water in California. All residential outdoor use ? including pools, shrubs, trees ? amounts to less than 7%. Total urban use ? showers, washers, business landscaping, golf courses, ball fields ? account for just 20% of human water consumption. Agriculture slurps up 80%, much of it in the semiarid San Joaquin Valley, where growers increasingly have been planting thirsty nut orchards, mainly for profitable export overseas. But while agriculture devours 80% of the developed water, it accounts for only 2% of the state?s gross product, according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. Last year, as Californians dealt with the fourth year of drought, growers planted an additional 60,000 acres of almonds, mostly in the San Joaquin Valley, according to state agriculture officials. That was a 6% increase in almond acreage over the previous year, bringing the total to 1.1 million acres. That?s nearly double the number of almond orchards that existed 12 years ago. Unlike carrot, tomato and other vegetable plants, nut and fruit trees cannot be temporarily fallowed during dry years. So when government reduces water deliveries through the giant aqueducts, farmers feel compelled to drill deeper wells, further draining aquifers. The result is that land in much of the San Joaquin Valley has been sinking, damaging roads and canals and drying up water supplies for hardscrabble local communities. The state lists 21 ?critically overdrafted? water basins, covering practically the entire San Joaquin Valley. The Paso Robles area and Oxnard also are on the list. In 2014, Brown signed landmark groundwater management legislation ? California?s first. But it basically punted the chore of refereeing water use to local agencies. And the rules won?t fully take effect for another generation. Back to almonds. Not all of them are equally thirsty. It depends on their location. In the wetter Sacramento Valley ? the northern part of the Central Valley ? one acre of these nuts requires 2.4 acre-feet of irrigation water annually, according to the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. In most of the San Joaquin Valley, they need 3.4 acre-feet. But in the lower valley, they gobble up 4 acre-feet. Roughly 85% are in the parched San Joaquin. Do the math: Those additional 60,000 acres of almonds require more than 200,000 acre-feet of water per year, enough for 400,000 households. Making this really simple, one gallon of water is generally needed to grow one almond. Yes, the water produces food, but most of it isn?t for us. It provides snacks for other countries, primarily in Asia. ?I believe farmers should grow whatever they want,? Brown told me last year. Never mind that government regulates practically all other land use. A property owner can?t just willy-nilly build an apartment house, develop a mall or carve out a dump. Brown did, however, pester farmers a little in his executive order. Irrigation districts serving at least 25,000 acres currently are required to develop drought management plans and monitor groundwater levels, reporting the numbers to Sacramento. The governor?s new edict lowers the acreage threshold to 10,000, covering an additional 1 million acres of farmland. But there?s no enforcement of the current regulations. ?There should be,? says Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources. He says enforcement legislation will be proposed by next year. ?What we?re trying to do is see how efficiently agriculture uses water,? Cowin says. ?We?re staying away from mandating land use and types of agriculture.? But agriculture is going to be constrained anyway eventually ? by nature and by groundwater regulations ? predicts one expert. ?There?s not enough water,? says Jay Lund, director of the UC Davis watershed center. ?It?s inevitable.? Lund says less water will be exported south from the deteriorating Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Groundwater is being depleted and contaminated. Seas will rise because of climate change, pushing more saltwater inland. Less snow will fall in the Sierra. San Joaquin Valley soil will become more toxic because of irrigation runoff and imported salty water. And urbanization will eat up cropland. He says up to 2 million of the San Joaquin Valley?s 5 million irrigated acres will need to be fallowed. ?That looks right to me,? Cowin says. Not hosing down your driveway won?t amount to a hill of beans. george.skelton at latimes.com Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon May 16 09:34:14 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 16:34:14 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <935302680.2800036.1463416455006.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, May 16, 2016 9:32 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ? ??Date? ? ? ? ? ? Time?? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 5/20/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4000 5/22/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3800 5/23/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4200 5/24/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4000 5/24/2016? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 4000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3800 5/24/2016? ? ? ? 1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3600 5/25/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 5/26/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 38005/26/2016? ? ? ? 1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3600 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow?-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "trinity-releases" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to trinity-releases+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From njharris30 at gmail.com Mon May 16 10:36:54 2016 From: njharris30 at gmail.com (Nathan Harris) Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 10:36:54 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Willow Creek in-season trap update - May 16th Message-ID: Please see the attached documents for weekly catch data from the Willow Creek traps. Nathan Harris Biologist Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program Trinity River Division 3723 N. Hwy 96 Willow Creek, CA 95573 Office: (530) 629-3333 x1703 Cell: (707) 616-8742 njharris30 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: Willow Creek RST raw catch update 2016.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 30559 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon May 16 10:39:38 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 17:39:38 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Parks Creek Road Closure In-Reply-To: References: <9abdc2d636fcc60f0cc20c6ed464f49b524.20160512212822@mail79.atl31.mcdlv.net> <6aa9c2bd6be649beb0d22357cc80f194@SN1PR0201MB031.001f.mgd2.msft.net> <706352AE4FCF0B43B696652F0F32FF10072A8F39@001FSN2MPN2-082.001f.mgd2.msft.net> Message-ID: <441556979.2920278.1463420378277.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Smith, Stacy L -FS Date: Fri, May 13, 2016 at 8:33 AM Subject: FW: Parks Creek Road Closure To:? Note the closure dates for Parks Creek Road.??Stacy SmithLands and Special Uses Officer204 W. Alma Street, Mt. Shasta CA 96067Shasta-Trinity National Forest(530) 926-9643 phone(530) 926-9675 faxSlsmith01 at fs.fed.us?In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.? In practice, there is.? Subject: Parks Creek Road Closure? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | U.S. Forest Service,Shasta-Trinity National Forest?3644 Avtech Parkway, Redding, CA 96002Voice (530) 226-2500Web:www.fs.usda.gov/stnf ??????????? ? | | | News Release For Immediate Release Contact Phyllis Swanson (530) 226-2500 pdswanson at fs.fed.us Twitter: @ShastaTrinityNF facebook.com/USFSShastaTrinityNF | | | | | | | | | | Parks Creek Road ClosureREDDING, Calif., May 12th, 2016 -?The Shasta-Trinity National Forest will be temporarily closing Parks Creek Road, 42N17, ?beginning May 23rd and it will remain closed through June 24th.? The closure order will be in effect from Monday mornings at 6:00 AM and lasting through Fridays at 5:00 PM.? The road will be open on the weekends.? The exact location of the closure begins at the 42N17 and the intersection of Stewart Springs Road, County Road 4L051. This will not impact access to Stewart Mineral Springs. ? This closure is part of an ongoing maintenance repair project to continue to stabilize Parks Creek Road.? Last fall, Forest Service maintenance crews installed pin piles alongside of the road in order to help to stabilize the road shoulder in several areas.? This latest closure will allow crews to remove the old road surface and reinforce the previously installed pins.? The next phase of the project will take place later this summer when contractors will come back and repave the repaired areas. Motorist are advised that a significant amount of snow remains in place over the higher portions of 42N17 and southbound travel to the Trinity Lake area is not possible at this time.? For current forest service road conditions and recreational opportunities in the Mt Shasta area, please call the Mt Shasta Ranger Station at (530) 964-5227.? For more information about the Parks Creek Road Project, please call the Forest Supervisor Office at (530) 226-2500. ?The mission of the Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. The agency manages 193 million acres of public land, provides assistance to state and private landowners, and maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world. Public lands the Forest Service manages contribute more than $13 billion to the economy each year through visitor spending alone. Those same lands provide 20 percent of the nation's clean water supply, a value estimated at $7.2 billion per year. The agency has either a direct or indirect role in stewardship of about 80 percent of the 850 million forested acres within the U.S., of which 100 million acres are urban forests where most Americans live.# USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender. ? | | | | | | | | This email was sent tojaorosz at fs.fed.us why did I get this?????unsubscribe from this list????update subscription preferences Shasta-Trinity National Forest Public Affairs ? 3644 Avtech Parkway ? Redding, Ca 96002 ? USA | | This electronic message contains information generated by the USDA solely for the intended recipients. Any unauthorized interception of this message or the use or disclosure of the information it contains may violate the law and subject the violator to civil or criminal penalties. If you believe you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and delete the email immediately. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue May 17 10:01:19 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 17:01:19 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fishery Agency Slams Feinstein Drought Bill References: <896490109.3665469.1463504479143.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <896490109.3665469.1463504479143.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> https://mavensnotebook.com/2016/05/17/daily-digest-fishery-agency-slams-feinstein-drought-bill-catching-striped-bass-a-controversial-thrill-in-norcal-when-climate-change-causes-californians-to-migrate-to-oregon-and-washington-and-more/ Fishery Agency Slams Feinstein Drought Bill:???The federal agency?that manages fishing harvests along the Pacific Coast has strongly criticized drought legislation proposed by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, saying it will cause ?irreparable harm? to salmon and the coastal communities that depend on fishing.?The?Pacific Fishery Management Council, based in Portland, Ore.,?prepared a letteron May 11 analyzing Feinstein?s bill, in response to a request from Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), both of whom represent fishing communities. The letter notes that, among other things, the Feinstein legislation,?SB 2533, would guarantee certain water supplies for agricultural irrigation and loosen environmental laws to benefit water extraction from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. ... ?? Read more from Water Deeply here:??Fishery Agency Slams Feinstein Drought Bill THE FEDERAL AGENCY?that manages fishing harvests along the Pacific Coast has strongly criticized drought legislation proposed by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, saying it will cause ?irreparable harm? to salmon and the coastal communities that depend on fishing.The?Pacific Fishery Management Council, based in Portland, Ore.,?prepared a letter?on May 11 analyzing Feinstein?s bill, in response to a request from Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), both of whom represent fishing communities.The letter notes that, among other things, the Feinstein legislation,?SB 2533, would guarantee certain water supplies for agricultural irrigation and loosen environmental laws to benefit water extraction from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. But it does almost nothing to help the endangered Central Valley Chinook salmon, which breed in the Sacramento River watershed and have experienced severe population declines during the ongoing California drought.Fall-run Chinook supports a fishing industry worth $1.4 billion annually, along with an estimated 23,000 jobs in three states.?The bill does not mandate or even authorize stronger water management protections for salmon,? writes Charles Tracy, the council?s acting executive director. The legislation would ?maximize the water supply and exports from the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary in order to increase water available for agriculture ? Essentially, ?maximizing supply? means reducing the water available to salmon.?The letter comes just a few weeks after the council?adopted rulesfor the 2016 ocean salmon fishing season. Fishing opportunities will be sharply reduced compared to the last few years, because salmon numbers have dropped considerably due to water shortages.The council is a 19-member regulatory body appointed to set sustainable fishing seasons for ocean-going species in California, Oregon and Washington. Its members include representatives of the fishing industry as well as wildlife management experts from state and federal government agencies, who have the best available information about fishery health and threats to the species.?Their voice is powerful, and I expect it will be heard by at least some in Congress who are interested in the welfare of coastal communities and fishing families,? said John McManus, executive director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association.Feinstein?s bill is scheduled for a?hearing?Tuesday before the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. It will be the first ? and possibly the only ? hearing for the bill.If approved in the Senate, Feinstein?s bill will likely be merged in a conference committee with a bill by Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford). That bill,?HR 2898, which has already passed the House, is similar to Feinstein?s in many respects, but goes further in weakening environmental laws and guaranteeing water deliveries for agriculture.Feinstein could not be reached for comment. But Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) defended Feinstein?s bill.Garamendi, who lives in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, had announced earlier this year that he supports the Feinstein bill, a move that puzzled many of his constituents since the bill would alter a number of federal policies intended to protect the estuary.He said?a key goal of the legislation is to require ?real-time monitoring? of fish locations in the estuary to guide water export decisions. This, he said, would improve water delivery while also protecting fish.?The question is, will it provide for better operational flexibility in a drought circumstance?? Garamendi said. ?The answer is absolutely yes, both for the fish as well as for the consumptive water users. It creates greater certainty that the species will be protected whatever water is to be exported.?Both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries service already do real-time monitoring for delta smelt and various salmon and steelhead species. They use trawl nets and rotary screw traps at strategic locations throughout the fish migration seasons to track the location and abundance of the species.A biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prepares to attach a tiny transmitter to a juvenile salmon raised in a flooded rice field that mimics the natural marshlands that once were plentiful in California, on April 3, 2013, near Woodland, Calif. Real-time monitoring of fish is an important component of decision making about water exports for the Bay Delta. (Tracie Cone, AP)Asked if the bill would increase water exports from the delta, Garamendi said it could.?It would allow for appropriate levels of pumping consistent with the protection of the species. That could result in more [exports],? he said.Almost three months ago, Garamendi announced he was going to introduce his own drought bill in the House as a companion to the Feinstein bill, no doubt intended as a moderate alternative to Valadao?s bill. But he has not done so yet. Asked why, he indicated it?s because he is working closely with Feinstein.?We are delaying the introduction so as to assist Sen. Feinstein?s passage of her bill,? Garamendi said on Friday. ?It is not clear when that moment will arise. It may be next week.?(Editor?s note: Garamendi introduced his legislation, HR 5247, on Monday evening, and it is reportedly identical to the Feinstein bill.)Feinstein?s bill focuses largely on boosting water delivery to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. But it also has a provision to do the same for Sacramento Valley farmers who buy water under contract from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which is delivered primarily from Shasta Reservoir ? the same source from which San Joaquin Valley farmers get their water.A section of the bill guarantees Sacramento Valley farmers, most of them located on the west side of the valley, a certain percentage of their water contracts depending on water-year type. Ironically, this would essentially eliminate the process the reclamation bureau uses today, which relies on a wide variety of real-time monitoring factors to allocate water.John Brennan, a rice farmer in the Colusa area, said the language in the bill seems intended to curry favor with Sacramento Valley farmers who might otherwise object to the legislation. Because the bill guarantees more water to the San Joaquin Valley, that could leave less for the Sacramento Valley without a corresponding guarantee.In any case, there is no obvious need for that guarantee,?Brennan said.?At the end of last year, there was more water available to the west side Sacramento Valley than they could take,? said Brennan, also a board member of the Northern California Water Association, which represents agricultural water users in the Sacramento Valley. ?Right now, there?s enough water that can be moved around to those junior contractors with basically a one-page contract. But you could not sell any of that water to the west-side people because there?s no demand.?Asked how drought legislation could be helpful, Brennan said federal law could mandate more projects to improve salmon habitat. The problem for salmon is not just inadequate water flows, but also disappearing habitat and decreasing food sources due to a century of land development.Brennan?s company, Cal Marsh and Farm, is a key partner in the?Nigiri Project, which experimentally flooded a rice field to help salmon populations. It confirmed that opening flooded rice fields to migrating juvenile salmon can boost their survival by providing bountiful new food sources for fish, in the form of aquatic insects that breed in the shallow water.Brennan said incentives are needed to create such projects on a much larger scale. Other viable salmon projects have been recognized as important for years, but have never gotten past the planning stages. These include building a modern fish ladder in the Yolo Bypass, constructing a giant flood-control channel near Sacramento, and re-engineering agricultural drainage channels where salmon often become stranded.Such projects could boost salmon populations and thereby reduce stress on the species when water supplies are limited. This, Brennan argued, could potentially free up some of that water for other purposes.The Feinstein legislation does nothing about these projects.?We?ve identified projects up and down the Sacramento River system to work on fish issues, and we need to focus on these projects,? Brennan said. ?It?s all coming down to how serious are we about endangered species?? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed May 18 08:03:47 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 15:03:47 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Hoopa Tribe sues feds, claims inadequate salmon protection References: <1865548844.4253663.1463583827229.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1865548844.4253663.1463583827229.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160517/hoopa-tribe-sues-feds-claims-inadequate-salmon-protection Hoopa Tribe sues feds, claims inadequate salmon protection By The Times-StandardTuesday, May 17, 2016The following is a press release issued by the Green Diamond Resource Company:The Hoopa Valley Tribe has filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and NOAA Fisheries for violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Failure by these federal agencies to reinitiate consultation on the flawed 2013 Klamath Project Biological Opinion (BiOp) will simply add to the millions of sick and dead juvenile salmon already lost due to the Klamath Irrigation Project. High infection prevalence of the deadly salmon parasite Ceratomyxa nova has been directly linked to the Project and its effect upon natural flows in the river.?The juvenile fish kills in 2014 and 2015, while not as noticeable to the naked eye as dead adults on the banks, are as devastating to Hupa people as the 2002 adult fish kill,? said Ryan Jackson, Chairman, Hoopa Valley Tribe.?The BiOp limited the number of fish that could be harmed or killed by the Project. This threshold was knowingly violated in 2014 and 2015, with nearly 100% infection rates of juvenile salmon in those years. ?Tribal and non-tribal fisheries will be substantially depressed as adult salmon which out-migrated in 2014 return in record low numbers this year and next? said Mike Orcutt, Hoopa Fisheries Director. BOR and NMFS have refused to take appropriate actions to make sure this does not happen again and have clearly violated the ESA by not reinitiating consultation. Continued catastrophic losses of salmon can be expected in the Klamath Basin given this inaction by the agencies. ?Despite numerous attempts to make this right with the agencies, their lack of action has required us to take legal action to protect our fishery and way of life? said Jackson.The Hoopa Valley Tribe inhabits the largest reservation in California and is one of only two tribes in the state with federally reserved fishing rights, entitling the tribes to 50% of the allowable harvest of Klamath River fish. ?Since time immemorial, Klamath Basin has been the lifeblood of the Hupa people. We will continue to stand up for the fish of the Klamath Basin,? concluded Jackson. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed May 18 10:00:04 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 17:00:04 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Agenda for Trinity Management Council Meeting May 19, Weaverville References: <1357815426.4378051.1463590804887.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1357815426.4378051.1463590804887.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> FYI. ?This meeting is shown on the trrp.net website, but I cannot find the agenda there. Also, I do not see a call in number.?Tom Stokely?V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315 tstokely at att.net? ?TRINITY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL?Trinity River Restoration Program Office?Weaverville, CA?Draft Agenda for May 19, 2016?Time Topic, Purpose and/or Decision to be Made Discussion Leader?Regular Business:?10:00 Introductions: Federico Barajas, Chair?? Welcome?? Approval of Agenda?? Approval of April minutes? Open Forum: Comments from the public?Information / Decision Items:?10:15 2017 Funding Discussion TRRP?? Revised TRRP Program Budget?? Science?? Restoration?? Administration?? Next Steps? 11:30 Water Year 2016 TRRP?? ROD flows update? 11:45 Discuss TMC Chair Position All?? Next meeting - June 1-2 in Eureka? Open Forum?12:00Noon Adjourn? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed May 18 10:02:57 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 17:02:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Adaptive Management Working Group Agenda May 24-25, Weaverville References: <322949580.4316639.1463590977278.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <322949580.4316639.1463590977278.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.fws.gov/arcata/fisheries/reports/tamwg/2016/2016_05/TAMWG%20Agenda%20DRAFT%20for%20May%2024-25,%202016%20V1%20May%204%202016%20(1).pdf Trinity River Adaptive Management Working GroupDRAFT AGENDA Meeting of May 24-25, 2016 NOTE: Times Subject to Change Location: Trinity River Restoration Program office (1313 South Main St, Weaverville, CA 96093)Web Conference: http://www.mymeetings.com/nc/join.php?sigKey=mymeetings&i=442336293&p=&t=cConference Call: 866-715-1246, pass code: 4251781 | Tuesday, May 24, 2016 | | Time | Agenda Item | Presenter | | 9:30 AM | Welcome, Introductions, Approve Agenda & Minutes | TAMWG | | 9:45 AM | Public Comment Note: In accordance with traditional meetingpractices, TAMWG will not act on any public comment item duringits current business meeting | | | 10:00 AM | Designated Federal Officer Items | Joe Polos | | 10:15 AM | TMC Chair Report | TMC Chair | | 10:45 AM | DSS Update | Tyrell Deweber | | 11:45 PM | Lunch | | | 1:00 PM | Trinity River Brown Trout Study | Justin Alvarez | | 2:00 PM | Upper Trinity River Tributary Access Survey | Robert Stewart | | 2:45 PM | Water Management-Temperature Control | Tom Stokely | | 3:450 PM | Current TMC Issues | TAMWG | | 4:00 PM | Adjourn | | | Wednesday, May 25, 2016 | | 9:00 AM | TRRP Managers Reports | ED, Sci Coord, ImplementBranch Chief | | 10:00 AM | TRRP FY17Budget | TRRP Staff | | 12:00 AM | Public Comment | | | 12:15 PM | Adjourn | | Page 1 of 1? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed May 18 14:11:50 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 21:11:50 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Revised Draft May 19 TMC agenda References: <691717006.4422003.1463605910530.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <691717006.4422003.1463605910530.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> ?TRINITY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL?Trinity River Restoration Program Office?Weaverville, CA?Agenda for May 19, 2016?Conference Line: 866-618-5350 Guest Code: 2295361#?Time Topic, Purpose and/or Decision to be Made Discussion Leader?Regular Business:?10:00 Introductions: Federico Barajas, Chair?? Welcome?? Approval of Agenda?? Approval of April minutes? Open Forum: Comments from the public?Information / Decision Items:?10:10 2017 Funding Discussion TRRP?? Revised TRRP Program Budget?? Administration?? Restoration?? Science?? Next Steps? 11:45 Discuss TMC Chair Position All?? Next meeting - June 1-2 in Eureka?? Agenda Items for June Mtg? Open Forum?12:00Noon Adjourn? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From unofelice at gmail.com Wed May 18 17:05:53 2016 From: unofelice at gmail.com (Felice Pace) Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 17:05:53 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Hoopa Valley Tribe declares intent to sue to protect Klamath Coho Salmon Message-ID: It is about time that someone challenged ESA management that is killing most of the juvenile Klamath Coho before they can reach the ocean. Bravo to the HVT! Last year adult Coho also died as a result of diseases made epidemic by the Klamath Irrigation Project's bad water quality and failure to provide adequate spring flows. It is shameful that no organization in the environmental community stepped up to challenge corrupt ESA management in the Klamath River Basin; but good that the HVT has stepped in to do the job environmental and fishing organizations failed to do. This happened as a direct result of agencies and fishing groups agreeing to provide "regulatory assurances" to federal irrigators as part of the KBRA Water Deal. Such "assurances" - which amount to agreements not to enforce provisions of the ESA and state wildlife law that inconvenience the federal Irrigation Elite - corrupt agency personnel. Those federal officials who conspired to not enforce the ESA, need to be reassigned to desk jobs in DC or Portland. Such "regulatory assurances" mischief must not be included in any future or newly negotiated water deals. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon May 23 10:11:33 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 23 May 2016 17:11:33 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1351579997.953782.1464023493261.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, May 23, 2016 9:27 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ? ??Date? ? ? ? ? ??Time?? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 5/27/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 5/28/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3200 5/29/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3500 5/31/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 5/31/2016? ? ? ? 0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3300 5/31/2016? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3300 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 6/01/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3300 6/01/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3300 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3100 6/01/2016?? ? ? ?2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3100 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 6/02/2016?? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3100 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow?-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "trinity-releases" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to trinity-releases+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon May 23 11:47:23 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 23 May 2016 18:47:23 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Advanced registration for the Trinity BMP Workshop ends May 25! In-Reply-To: <574348adbe013_1ff2d5d6418328e1@asgworker-qmb.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> References: <574348adbe013_1ff2d5d6418328e1@asgworker-qmb.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: <1321894644.1002198.1464029243532.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, May 23, 2016 11:15 AM, Sara Schremmer wrote: NationBuilder#yiv7052253881 #yiv7052253881 body{background-color:#e5effd;}#yiv7052253881 table{border-spacing:0;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;}#yiv7052253881 table td{border-collapse:collapse;}#yiv7052253881 p{margin-bottom:1em;line-height:140%;}#yiv7052253881 h1.yiv7052253881site-title{font-size:28px;}#yiv7052253881 .yiv7052253881body-content img{max-width:100%;}#yiv7052253881 hr {border:1px solid #3887a8;margin:20px 0;}#yiv7052253881 @media screen and (max-width:600px){#yiv7052253881 table[class="yiv7052253881container"] {width:100%!important;}}#yiv7052253881 @media screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv7052253881 table[class="yiv7052253881container"] {width:100%!important;}#yiv7052253881 div[class="yiv7052253881body-content"]img {width:100%;}#yiv7052253881 h1[class="yiv7052253881site-title"] {font-size:25px!important;}}#yiv7052253881 @media screen and (max-width:600px){#yiv7052253881 #yiv7052253881 table[class="yiv7052253881container"] {width:100%!important;}#yiv7052253881 h1[class="yiv7052253881site-title"] {font-size:22px!important;}} | | Visit ourWebsite | Join us onFacebook | | | | | | SalmonidRestoration Federation | | | | | Hi Tom, SalmonidRestoration Federation and Pacific Watershed Associates are offering aBest Management Practices (BMP) workshop and field tour of sedimentand erosion control sites in Trinity County. Advancedregistration for this event ends on May 25. - What: Erosion and Sediment Control BMP Workshop and FieldTour - When: June 6, 2016 from 9am - 5pm - Where:?Fire Hall Room, Weaverville Fire Department.Click here for a map and to get directions. - Registration: Online advanced registration is $35 until May 25.Click here to register. This workshop is limited in size. AfterMay 25 the registration fee increases to $50. The workshop will cover identifying and evaluating sedimentsources, assessing environmental impacts, creating erosion control andprevention plans, designing and evaluating grading plans, and theenvironmental permitting application process. We hope to seeyou there, and please help us spread the word. This promotional poster can be printed out and hung upin your community or place of work. Please contact me withany questions. Thank you! Sara Schremmer ProgramManager Salmonid Restoration Federation | | | | | | | | | Salmonid Restoration Federation ? United States This email was sent to tstokely at att.net. To stop receivingemails, clickhere. | Created with NationBuilder, the essential toolkit forleaders. | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon May 23 13:01:27 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 23 May 2016 20:01:27 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: House Natural Resources Committee Will Hold Hearing on Westlands Settlement In-Reply-To: <9CEBEDA6-CAE1-46B5-A5CB-FF26588DC945@fishsniffer.com> References: <002401d1b388$034c9610$09e5c230$@att.net> <9CEBEDA6-CAE1-46B5-A5CB-FF26588DC945@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <872279476.1102849.1464033688062.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, May 23, 2016 1:00 PM, Dan Bacher wrote: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/23/1530022/-House-Natural-Resources-Committee-Will-Hold-Hearing-on-Westlands-Settlement House Natural Resources Committee Will Hold Hearing on Westlands Settlement by Dan Bacher The U.S. House Congressional Subcommittee on Water, Power, and Oceans will hold a?hearing on controversial water settlement legislation?for the Westlands, San Luis?and Panoche Water Districts on Tuesday, May 24, 2016 at 10:30 am. The San Luis Drainage Resolution Act (H.R. 4366),?sponsored by?Rep. David Valadao, R-CA),?affirms a recent litigation settlement between the Obama administration?and other parties in an attempt to bring about ?final resolution to decades-long litigation over the federal government?s responsibility to provide drainage for certain lands in central California,? according to the hearing memo from John Fleming, Chairman.?This one-panel hearing will also include consideration of two other legislative proposals. The invited witnesses are?John Bezdek?,?Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary,?U.S. Department of the Interior;?Tom Birmingham,?General Manager,?Westlands Water District;?Jerry Brown,?General Manager,?Contra Costa Water District;?Steve Ellis,?Vice-President,?Taxpayers for Common Sense; and?Dennis Falaschi, General Manager, Panoche Water District Firebaugh, California.?The Administration signaled its support for the Settlement agreement in its April 21, 2016 letter to Representative Valadao expressing that ?it is our belief that the Settlement results in significant savings to American taxpayers when compared to the unavoidable costs that would occur without the terms agreed to in the Settlement.??Only one of the witnessess, Steve Ellis, is a critic of the deal. ?His group,?Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington, DC watchdog group,?said,??We just don?t think this is the best or even a good deal for taxpayers.?Notably, the?Committee did not invite those most impacted by the deal, including commercial and recreational fishermen whose livelihoods have been devastated by water exports from the Delta delivered to irrigate drainage impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Nor have Tribal leaders, environmental advocates, family farmers, Delta advocates and Northern California Congressmembers been invited to testify at the hearing.Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta, said U.S. taxpayers, and Californians in particular, should be??alarmed??that?H.R. 4366 ( and H.R. 5217 (Rep. Jim Costa, D-CA) are moving forward. ?? ?The settlement agreement reached in September 2015 between the Obama Administration and these large industrial agricultural, special-interest water districts, will result in a $300 million taxpayer giveaway without addressing or solving the extreme water pollution these irrigation districts discharge into the San Joaquin River, and ultimately, the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary. It is exactly these types of taxpayer giveaways to corporations that have incensed voters in both parties this election year,? said Barrigan-Parrilla. ?Years ago, the California Department of Water Resources attempted to articulate numerous state concerns about this proposed drainage settlement that didn?t ensure a solution to the polluted water discharge problem and that didn?t include a full review under the National Environmental Policy Act. (See the attached 2007?letter from State officials to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials),? she said. At the same time,?she noted that there is a??deafening silence??from Governor Jerry Brown?s Administration on this settlement agreement and other federal legislation that will??bring harm??to the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary. Brown, who spoke on Saturday at the UFW Convention in Bakersfield, continues to promote?the construction of the Delta Tunnnels, a public works project that Delta advocates consider to be potentially the most environmentally-destructive project in California history. ?Whether it?s a free pass on allowing the discharge of selenium, salt, and numerous pollutants back into the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary, or Senator Feinstein and Congressman Garamendi?s companion bills to over pump the Bay-Delta estuary for the benefit of these same irrigation districts, the Brown Administration has failed to weigh in on needed protections for the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary,? emphasized Barrigan-Parrilla.??Governor Brown continues to sell the Delta Tunnels to the public as benefitting the Bay-Delta estuary; if he cares about the health of the estuary, then why isn't he advocating for the Delta?s interests with the Federal government?? Barrigan-Parrilla concluded,??It is heartbreaking to the people of the Delta that so many of our elected officials are willing to sacrifice the health of the Bay-Delta estuary for the benefit of a limited number of special interest irrigation districts that make up only 0.3% of the state?s GDP. Adding insult to injury, they are all comfortable with American citizens footing the bill for these big polluters.?? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: district-map-2014-11-10a.png Type: image/png Size: 23009 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue May 24 13:02:35 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 24 May 2016 13:02:35 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Fwd: Reclamation and USFWS Announce the Availability of $2.1 Million in Grants to Help Imperiled Species References: <6aec345f0e464803af1c756fe294df65@usbr.gov> Message-ID: <5954A2E9-F84A-4F71-B3CC-907047A74BB0@att.net> This looks like an opportunity for coho restoration in the Trinity River basin. Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: > From: "Sarah McBride" > Date: May 24, 2016 at 12:22:00 PM PDT > To: tstokely at att.net > Subject: Reclamation and USFWS Announce the Availability of $2.1 Million in Grants to Help Imperiled Species > > > Mid-Pacific Region > Sacramento, Calif. > > MP-16-118 > > Media Contact: Shane Hunt, 916-978-5100, shunt at usbr.gov > > For Release On: May 24, 2016 > > Reclamation and USFWS Announce the Availability of $2.1 Million in Grants to Help Imperiled Species > > SACRAMENTO, Calif. ? The Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announce the availability of approximately $2.1 million in grants for projects that improve conditions for federally-imperiled species and their habitats impacted by the federal Central Valley Project. The CVP, owned and operated by Reclamation, is one of the world?s largest water storage and conveyance systems. > > The grants are funded by the Fiscal Year 2017 Central Valley Project Conservation Program and Central Valley Project Improvement Act Habitat Restoration Program. The CVPCP and CVPIA HRP have established 16 specific Priority Actions related to CVP-impacted species, their habitats and corresponding geographic areas. > > Each of the Priority Actions is supported by a threatened or endangered species recovery plan that provides strategies and guidance on how the species could be restored to a healthy and viable status. Applicants are requested to submit proposals that support these Priority Actions. > > The 2017 grants continue 22 years of funding projects. This year, four categories of projects are being solicited for funding: land protection (fee title and conservation easement); habitat restoration; research; and species captive propagation and reintroduction. > > State or local government agencies, private organizations, individuals and educational institutions are eligible to apply for grants. Applications for grants will close on Friday, Sept. 30, 2016. Federal agencies wanting to apply are encouraged to contact the program managers named in the announcement to discuss potential projects and the proposal submission process. > > Instructions for submitting a proposal and background information on the programs is available at www.grants.gov. Applicants may search for the Funding Opportunity Announcement by Funding Opportunity Number BOR-MP-16-0004. > > Additional information about the CVPCP and HRP may be found at http://www.usbr.gov/mp/cvpcp/. For questions, please contact Daniel Strait, Manager, Reclamation?s CVP Conservation Program and CVPIA Habitat Restoration Program, at 916-978-5052 or dstrait at usbr.gov. > > ### > > Reclamation is the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in the 17 Western States. Its facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. Visit our website at http://www.usbr.gov. > > > > If you would rather not receive future communications from Bureau of Reclamation, let us know by clicking here. > Bureau of Reclamation, Denver Federal Center, Alameda & Kipling Street PO Box 25007, Denver, CO 80225 United States -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed May 25 07:53:09 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 14:53:09 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] From fisherman to supervisor: North Coast champion Jimmy Smith dies at 67 References: <53082647.373586.1464187989965.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <53082647.373586.1464187989965.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Jimmy Smith was a true friend of the Trinity River. ?He served on the Trinity River Task Force, among many other things. ?He will be greatly missed. TSFrom fisherman to supervisor: North Coast champion Jimmy Smith dies at 67 | ? | | ? | | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | From fisherman to supervisor: North Coast champion Jim...Longtime Supervisor and North Coast elder statesman Jimmy Smith has died at 67.A commercial fisherman and wildlife biologist, Smith was known for his gracious ... | | | | View on www.times-standard.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | ? | >From fisherman to supervisor: North Coast champion Jimmy Smith dies at 67 By Marc Vartabedian,?mvartabedian at times-standard.comTuesday, May 24, 2016Longtime Supervisor and North Coast elder statesman Jimmy Smith has died at 67.A commercial fisherman and wildlife biologist, Smith was known for his gracious manner and dedication to public service. He died Monday night at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka.Humboldt County 3rd District Supervisor and board Chairman Mark Lovelace said he had heard about Smith?s death a few minutes before Tuesday?s Board of Supervisors meeting and was ?reeling from the sad news.?The board Smith served on for 12 years held a moment of silence in his honor.?He was a great man, and it was a real honor just to get to serve with him,? Lovelace said. ?He is absolutely going to be missed by the whole county.?Lovelace served with Smith for a little under four years before Smith stepped down in 2012 to battle cancer for the third time.When he was diagnosed with cancer in the early 1990s, doctors told him he had only a few weeks to live. Smith not only fought the disease but went on to successfully run for the Humboldt County Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District board in 1995 and the Board of Supervisors five years later.When Smith was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2004, he again fought the odds of his diagnosis.Connie Stewart, a close friend and executive director of the California Center for Rural Policy, said she was devastated.?I don?t know anyone who fought as hard for life as Jimmy. He was quite a hero to all of us,? she said. ?I?m still in shock; I don?t really know what to say. He?ll be missed big time.?John Woolley, who served much of his 12 years on the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors alongside Smith, said Smith was not only a great friend, but a tireless worker.?It?s a sad day. We were great friends together with a lot of mutual interests,? Woolley said. ?He was a standout leader who worked day and night to keep people together; he was the glue.?Woolley also noted the reputation Smith?s work earned him, which oftentimes focused on preserving the North Coast environment, including Humboldt Bay, the Salt, Eel, Trinity, and Klamath rivers, as well as marine fisheries.??When you think of the relationships you build on the team, everyone considered Jimmy a ?go to guy.? He was as strong in what he did as what he said,? said Woolley, who added that Smith was also a co-founder of the seven-county North Coast Integrated Regional Water Management Plan ? now the North Coast Resource Partnership ? and the Five-Counties Salmonid Conservation Program.Specifically, Woolley said Smith?s work to make the Salt River project a reality was a prime example of his persistence. The project, which faced numerous political hurdles, was nearly 30 years in the making before ground was finally broken in 2013.??He was dogged in making sure that got funded,? Woolley said about the project which seeks to restore the Salt River channel, floodplain and marshland.State Sen. Mike McGuire emphasized the lasting impression Smith has made on the region.?No one was a stronger champion for the North Coast than Jimmy,? McGuire said. ?Humboldt will always be a better place because of his hard work and unwavering commitment to the people of Northern California .?The Fields Landing Boat Launch was dedicated to Smith in 2014 and a memorial for him will be held there on Friday at 5 p.m.Before adjourning their Tuesday meeting, each county supervisor took a moment to speak about their memories of the friend, mentor and colleague whose reach spread across all five districts.Rex Bohn, who was elected as 1st District supervisor in 2012 after Smith stepped down, remembered how Smith would call and give support to other county employees whose families were experiencing similar situations.?I think I had to fill the biggest shoes there were,? Bohn said.Fourth District Supervisor Virginia Bass said Smith used to hate it when she introduced him as the nicest guy in the world, but she couldn?t help it.?For me, he was a trusted mentor, confidant, friend and definitely a wonderful human being,? she said, holding back tears.Second District Supervisor Estelle Fennell said she has many lovely memories of Smith?s gentle friendship, as well as her last private conversation with him.?It resides like a jewel in my heart and I will treasure it forever,? Fennell said.From their road trip to Weaverville to their time serving on the board together, 5th District Supervisor Ryan Sundberg said he didn?t know if he had ever made a quicker friend as he did with Smith.?I?ll never forget him,? Sundberg said.Lovelace, who had served with Smith the longest of the current board members, remembered how Smith always sought to find a middle ground and was never satisfied if conflict and division still existed within the board on an issue.?When I think of him, I think of that smile inside of him ? that he?s keeping something inside, enjoying some private joke,? Lovelace said.Speaking to the county board of supervisors during the public comment period on Tuesday afternoon, McKinleyville Community Services District board member Dennis Mayo said he remembered how Smith had a ?huge, glaring, infuriating fault.???He had unlimited kindness and understanding,? Mayo said, his voice breaking and his eyes tearing. ?That?s a liability we can all strive to have a little more of in our lives.??Smith is survived by his wife Jacque and their son Gary.Marc Vartabedian can be reached at 707-441-0509. Will Houston contributed to this report. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu May 26 10:00:35 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 17:00:35 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity County Parcel Viewer for proposed 2016 flood zones In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1687969769.1013848.1464282035224.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Wednesday, May 25, 2016 6:20 PM, "Gutermuth, F." wrote: Hi Tom -? As discussed at the Trinity Adaptive Management Working Group (TAMWG) meeting today - here is Trinity County's link for the new proposed Trinity River flood map:?http://trinitycounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Viewer/index.html?appid=320cf1c1558c43c8b1f2f70c23d35026? The map includes the 100 year flood zone.? Though we are all in the learning the process, I understand that Trinity County's revised flood map (also know as the Flood Insurance Rate Map) will be become effective on July 20, 2016. The County manages the Trinity River flood way (i.e. development along the river) so questions concerning the new map should be addressed to their planners. Leslie Hubbard, who's contact information is below, has been designated as a Trinity County contact on the subject. Leslie Hubbard Transportation Planner31301 State Hwy 3P.O. Box 2490Weaverville, CA 96093Trinity County Department of Transportation(530) 623-1365 Ext. 3400 She obviously has duties that extend beyond transportation.? Best Regards-? Brandt Gutermuth Trinity River Restoration Program530.623.1806 work530.739.2802 cellhttp://www.trrp.net/ ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu May 26 12:27:11 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 19:27:11 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Hoopa Valley Tribe: San Luis Settlement Agreement Will 'Forever Condemn Tribe to Poverty' References: <683181475.1106601.1464290831816.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <683181475.1106601.1464290831816.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/24/1530400/-Hoopa-Valley-Tribe-San-Luis-Settlement-Agreement-Will-Forever-Condemn-Tribe-to-Poverty Hoopa Valley Tribe: San Luis Settlement Agreement Will 'Forever Condemn Tribe to Poverty'By Dan Bacher??Tuesday May 24, 2016???10:33 AM PDT2?Comments?(2 New)?18?186Photo of Trinity River below Lewiston Dam by Dan Bacher.?RSSTAGS - KlamathRiver - WestlandsWaterDistrict - WinnememWintuTribe - YurokTribe - HoopaValleyTribe - KarukTribe - TrinityRiver - sanluissettlementagreement Share this articleOn May 24,?the Hoopa Valley Tribe of Northern California?filed its objection?to two bills, H.R. 4366 (Rep. David Valadao)?and H.R. 5217 (Rep. Jim Costa, D-CA),?proposed in the House of Representatives to implement the controversial?San Luis Settlement Agreement, saying?the agreement would ?forever condemn the Tribe to poverty.??Our Tribe is an indispensable party to this settlement,? said Chairman Ryan Jackson, in a press release.??We notified Congress and the Bush and Obama Administrations on numerous occasions over the past several years of our concerns. Though we have been mostly ignored, rest assured, this legislation will not advance in absence of protection of our interests.?The hearing of today?s hearing on the bills by the?U.S. House of Representative?Natural Resources Committee?Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans is posted now at:?naturalresources.house.gov/??The invited witnesses were?John Bezdek?,?Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary,?U.S. Department of the Interior;?Tom Birmingham,?General Manager,?Westlands Water District;?Jerry Brown,?General Manager,?Contra Costa Water District;?Steve Ellis,?Vice-President,?Taxpayers for Common Sense; and?Dennis Falaschi, General Manager, Panoche Water District.Notably, the?Committee did not invite those most impacted by the deal. These include the leaders of the Hoopa Valley, Yurok, Karuk, Winnemem Wintu and other Tribes, commercial and recreational fishermen,?family farmers and others whose livelihoods have been imperiled by decades of exports of Trinity, Sacramento and San Joaquin River water to corporate agribusiness interests irrigating drainage-impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. ??Jackson said the?Settlement Agreement contains Central Valley Water Project water supply assurances (895,000 acre feet of water) for that Westlands Water District that?originate from the Trinity River on which the Hoopa Valley Tribe ?has depended for its fishery,? economy and culture since time immemorial.??It is a travesty that the pristine waters of the Trinity Alps that have nurtured our people have been diverted from their natural course,? sent 400 miles from our homeland and converted into toxic industrial waste by agribusiness in the Central Valley,? said Michael Orcutt, Hoopa Tribal Fisheries Director.??What makes this worse is that the destruction of our water quality was aided and abetted by our Federal Trustee, the Department of the Interior,? said Self-Governance Coordinated Daniel Jordan.?Instead of ensuring that existing law is enforced for the Tribe?s benefit, the United States has ?focused its energy on escaping federal liability for the generations of mismanagement of the reclamation program,???They are doing this at the expense of the? federal? trust responsibility to our Tribe,? added Jackson.?The Tribe has the first right of use of Trinity River water under the 1955 federal stature that authorized the Trinity River Division of the CVP, according to the Tribe.However, the Tribe said the?San Luis Unit settlement and legislation as proposed ignores this priority right held by the Tribe.?The Secretary of the Interior and Attorney General are blatantly ignoring our rights and the Congressionally mandated responsibility of the Bureau of Reclamation to furnish the water necessary for fish and wildlife and economic development in the Trinity River Basin,? stated Orcutt.?The Tribe?s testimony includes a proposal for settlement of the drainage issue that also provides for long overdue fair treatment of the Hoopa Valley Tribe. If Congress approves our proposals, the Hupa people? would finally get a long overdue measure of justice,? according to the Tribe.??Our culture and economy have been devastated by the federal government?s mismanagement of the Central Valley Project and the San Luis Unit contractors? ongoing assaults on our rights to Trinity River water,? said Jackson, ?Now is the time to end the fighting and begin the long process of recovery.? ?The objections filed today come just a week after the Tribe?filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and NOAA Fisheries for violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by failing to adequately protect salmon on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.?Failure by these federal agencies to reinitiate consultation on the flawed 2013 Klamath Project Biological Opinion (BiOp) will simply add to the millions of sick and dead juvenile salmon already lost due to the Klamath Irrigation Project. High infection prevalence of the deadly salmon parasite Ceratomyxa nova has been directly linked to the Project and its effect upon natural flows in the river,? according to a statement from the Tribe.?The juvenile fish kills in 2014 and 2015, while not as noticeable to the naked eye as dead adults on the banks, are as devastating to Hupa people as the 2002 adult fish kill,? said Chairman Ryan Jackson. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri May 27 14:35:45 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 27 May 2016 21:35:45 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: The WRTC is hiring In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2054498010.532145.1464384945990.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Friday, May 27, 2016 1:48 PM, Piper McDaniel wrote: Hello all, The Watershed Center is hiring a full time Administrative Assistant and a seasonal Forestry Tech. Please find details below and full ?job descriptions attached. You can also find full job posts on our website:?http://www.thewatershedcenter.com/?page_id=90 Please share with anyone who may be interested and help spread the word. --Piper? Seasonal Forestry Technician? Forestry Technician position will entail inventory,data collection and data management, stocking surveys and stand assessments, coordinatingfield data collection, data entry, unit layout (GPS and flagging), and assistingin additional forestry applications as needed.?Pay $21.11 hour This is a seasonal positionbeginning lasting approximately 3 months from June-August with the potentialfor longer-term employment. Weekly schedule is flexible (4/10 or 5/8). Traveland per-diem will be paid as needed.PositionOpen Until Filled For more information please call Dave at 530-628-4206. To apply,please send a cover letter and resume to Dave at the Watershed Center byemailing david at thewatershedcenter.com with Forestry Technician as the subjectline, by mail to P.O. Box 356, Hayfork, CA 96041, or bring your application tothe Watershed Center office at 98 Clinic Ave in Hayfork. Administrative Assistant Administrative assistant position?will consist of bookkeeping, accounting,overall financial management, staff support, as well as office support andlight secretarial duties. Strong working knowledge of Quickbooks and Excelrequired. Salary starting at $14.00/hour with benefits. ?This is a full time position. For more information please call Cindy at 530-628-4206. To apply please submit ?a cover letter and resume to cindy at thewatershedcenter.com,mail to PO Box 356, or bring to our office at 98 Clinic Ave in Hayfork.? Position Open Until Filled?? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WRTC Admin Assistant Job Post Summer 2016 .docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 306003 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WRTC Forestry Tech Job Post_Summer 2016.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 251010 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri May 27 17:27:06 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sat, 28 May 2016 00:27:06 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Management Council Meeting Agenda, Eureka June 1-2, Wharfinger Building References: <142902229.580979.1464395226052.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <142902229.580979.1464395226052.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> ?TRINITY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL? Wharfinger Buidling (Bay Room)?1 Marina Way?Eureka, CA 95501?Agenda for June 1-2, 2016?Wednesday, June 1, 2016?Time Discussion Leader?Regular Business:?9:00 Introductions: Federico Barajas, Chair?? Welcome?? Approval of Agenda?? Approval of April and May Meeting Minutes? 9:15 Open Forum: Comments from the public?9:30 Report from TAMWG Elizabeth Hadley?9:45 Watershed workgroup presentation Sean Ledwin?? Recommendations?? Next Steps? 10:15 Regulatory/Compliance Monitoring James Lee?10:45 Presentation on Scale-Age Analysis Joe Polos/George?11:45 Current Conditions Robert Stewart?? ROD Flows update? 12:00 Lunch?Information / Decision Items:?1:00pm 2017 Funding Discussion Caryn and Linsey?? Revised TRRP Program Budget?? Administration?? Implementation?? Science?? Next Steps? 4:45 Public forum?5:00 Adjourn?Thursday, June 2, 2016?Time Discussion Leader?9:00 Open Forum Seth Naman, Vice-Chair?Information / Decision Items:?9:15 Report from Acting Executive Director Caryn DeCarlo?9:45 DSS & Adaptive Management Presentation Bruce Bingham/Joe Polos?? Synthesis Reporting?? Next Steps? 11:00 Design Workgroup Presentation Brandt/Robert/Aaron?? Effectiveness Monitoring?? Outyear project designs? 11:45 Federal/Regional Updates Reclamation?? CVP Ops?? Long Term Plan EIS? 12:00 Lunch?1:00 Flow Workgroup Ltr Seth Naman?? Discuss Flow Workgroup Ltr re:Trinity River Temperature Mgmt? 1:30 TRRP Fixer Process Mike O./Dave H.?? Discuss List of potential candidates for independent review?? Funding?? Next Steps? 2:00 TMC Chair and Vice-Chair All?2:30 Public Forum?2:45 Adjourn? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sat May 28 09:08:54 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sat, 28 May 2016 16:08:54 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Researchers let striped bass off the hook for salmon decline References: <506758486.693355.1464451734956.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <506758486.693355.1464451734956.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.redding.com/lifestyle/outdoors/fishing/researchers-let-striped-bass-off-the-hook-for-salmon-decline-337c261c-1b64-7a21-e053-0100007fbddb-381113951.html Researchers let striped bass off the hook for salmon decline By?Damon Arthur?of the Redding Record SearchlightGetting rid of striped bass would not solve the problem of predator fish feeding on young salmon in the Sacramento River trying to get out to the ocean, according to University of California, Davis, researchers.The proposal to eliminate striped has persisted for years, but it won't work, said Peter Moyle, a professor emeritus at UC Davis. He said there are better ways to ensure young chinook salmon ? with one run teetering on the brink of extinction ? make it out to the ocean.Get rid of striped bass and another predator will move in and take its place, Moyle said."It's the law of unexpected consequences," Moyle said in a phone interview.Moyle and four other Davis researchers posted a story titled "Understanding predation impacts on Delta native fishes" this week on the California WaterBlog. The blog looks at the effects of predation on salmon and other fish, such as the Delta smelt and longfin smelt living in the Delta and tributary rivers such as the Sacramento.Moyle said in an interview they wrote the blog because the proposal to eradicate the striped bass continues to persist. There are bills in Congress this year that would target non-native predator fish, including striped bass.In 2012 the California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended tripling the catch limit and reducing the size limit for the bass, but the state Fish and Game Commission rejected the plan.While the striped bass is not native to the Delta or the Sacramento River, they have lived alongside salmon for the past 150 years, enough time for them to adapt to living together, the blog says.The bass live in the ocean, but migrate up rivers to spawn. They once spawned as far north as Red Bluff. But with the removal of the Red Bluff Diversion Dam on the Sacramento River, anglers and others say the stripers have moved north of Red Bluff.Rather than blame the bass for the decline of salmon in California, the report offers several other proposals to increase salmon survival, including habitat improvement and changing the way salmon are raised and released from hatcheries.John McManus, executive director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, said the biggest problem for little salmon migrating to the ocean is the lack of safe places for the fish to live in.Before people built dams, roads, bridges, canals, pumping plants and channelized the river, there were many smaller side streams, pools and areas shaded by trees and shrubs where little fish could dart into and hide from predators.He likened it to a cottontail rabbit hopping into a thicket of bushes to get away from a fox. But many of the river's safe places have been removed, he said."We have so altered the system that those hiding places are no longer there," he said. Instead, conditions in the river are now more favorable to predators than the prey, he said.Moyle and other Davis researchers also recommend giving fish routes around areas of the river that are "hot spots" for predators.Increasing flows in the Sacramento River and sending water and young salmon through the Yolo Bypass near Sacramento would help the fish get around areas in the river where there are higher numbers of predators, according to the blog.The report also suggests changing fish hatchery release practices so fingerling salmon aren't dumped in large numbers, which attracts predators.Releases should be timed with heavy rain that turns water muddy, providing cover for young fish, the report says.Hatchery fish are raised in concrete troughs and fed "food pellets raining down from above. This does not give the fish much chance to learn how to avoid predators," the report says."It is scarcely surprising that predators take advantage of these na?ve and fat-laden prey, gorging themselves," the blog says.Brett Galyean, acting project leader at Coleman National Fish Hatchery near Anderson, said some fish hatcheries have self-feeders that help fish remain wary of predators. They aren't used at Coleman, though.The hatchery annually releases about 12 million fingerling fall-run chinook salmon.This year the hatchery experimented with releasing fish earlier in the year when Battle Creek and the Sacramento River was running higher and the water was muddier from rain.Galyean said they also try to time April releases with storms, but if no storms are in the forecast, the fish have to be released because they get too large and they can't be held indefinitely.Over the past couple decades federal and state officials have been working to meet the goals of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act to double the number of salmon in the Sacramento River.But the act also requires fisheries agencies to double the number of striped bass. That may be changing, though.The same congressional bill that targets removal of striped bass in some California streams also proposes removing salmon from the list of fish whose numbers need to be doubled. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon May 30 08:52:50 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 30 May 2016 15:52:50 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Chronicle=3A_Water_crisis_not_on_presiden?= =?utf-8?q?tial_candidates=E2=80=99_radar?= References: <1138467384.1282531.1464623570880.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1138467384.1282531.1464623570880.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Water-crisis-not-on-presidential-candidates-7952495.php?t=eadf8addf5 Water crisis not on presidential candidates? radar By?Carolyn LochheadMay 29, 2016?Updated: May 29, 2016 8:00pmWASHINGTON ? The 20th century dams and canals that gave birth to modern California ? to San Francisco, to Los Angeles, to the San Joaquin Valley farms that feed the nation ? are near the end of their engineered lives. The rivers and aquifers they tap are, simply, tapped out.The state?s record drought, only dented by last winter?s rains, comes amid a 16-year dry spell in the Colorado River basin, which provides 16 percent of California?s water. The basin?s giant reservoirs are dwindling and may never fill again, even as the nation?s population continues to shift relentlessly into the arid West.So far, the three major presidential candidates have hardly noticed these problems as they barnstorm the state heading into the June 7 primary.?One of every three Americans now lives in the West,? said Stanford University historian David Kennedy, a scholar at the university?s Bill Lane Center for the American West. ?One out of every eight Americans lives in California.?Lake Mead, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam serving 25 million people, is at 37 percent of its capacity, he noted.?If that isn?t an alarm bell going off, I don?t know what would be,? Kennedy said. ?Whoever is elected next ? the next several presidents actually ? will be sorely lacking in guts if they don?t take this issue on.?California has allocated five times more water to human uses than exist in the state?s rivers. The federal government operates a big chunk of the state?s plumbing through the Central Valley Project, and has the big pockets that could help the state deal with the slow-motion disasters that droughts are.Photo: Michael Macor, The ChronicleThe San Clemente Dam in Carmel Valley is demolished in 2015.Building new reservoirsA basic question facing policymakers is whether to try to squeeze more water out of rivers. That would mean building new dams and reservoirs, and potentially overriding protections for several endangered fish, including native salmon and delta smelt, that now are on the brink of extinction.New dams and reservoirs would cost billions of dollars but produce scant new water, because the river systems are already over-exploited. The most promising ideas for new reservoirs entail recharging natural aquifers, a cheap alternative to dams with enormous environmental benefits.Another option is to find new sources of water through such things as recycling wastewater, capturing urban storm water runoff, conservation, efficiency and desalination. All of these efforts are under way in the state, but could be accelerated with federal help.?There?s a big role for the federal government to play on a variety of fronts,? said Leon Szeptycki, executive director of Stanford?s Water in the West program. ?The West?s water infrastructure is old, and it needs not just to be renewed, but it needs to be renewed with an eye to what the future of water management is.??Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump drew thousands to a rally in Fresno on Friday, where he also met privately with officials of the Westlands Water District, a deep-pocketed farming colossus that is lobbying Congress to squeeze more water for its farmers from California rivers by overriding the Endangered Species Act.?We?re going to open up the water, very simple,? Trump told a crowd. ?There is no drought,? he added, dismissing the delta smelt as ?a 3-inch fish.?The Bernie Sanders campaign did not respond to repeated requests for the candidate?s position on California water issues.?Photo: Leah Millis, The ChronicleA dead tree sits on the edge of a recently harvested field just off of the San Luis Canal near Huron (Fresno County).Role for cities, farmersThe Clinton campaign offered a response Hillary Clinton made to a Southern California television reporter asking whether she thinks more water should be sent from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to farms and cities in the south.Clinton said she has received briefings on the California drought. ?I have followed it from afar,? she said.?What I do believe is that we have got to seriously address the California water situation, because I know how difficult it has been,? Clinton said.?I?m not going to prejudge anything,? she said. ?There has to be a role for cities, there has to be a role for agriculture, of course, but let?s figure out what are the best ways of doing that. And I can?t, standing here today, tell you what it is other than to say I am going to support as strongly as I can a process of Californians to reach (those) conclusions. And if there is a role for the federal government to expedite that, to support that, I certainly will be open to it.?Both Sanders and Clinton have proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in new infrastructure spending that could update the West?s water systems, as well as aggressive plans to battle climate change, which intensifies Western droughts.Sanders, D-Vermont, is a big backer of dairy subsidies. Dairy farms are far and away one of the largest users of water in California. Sanders has also expressed support for fixing aging dams, but little else in the form of solutions.Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a water think tank in Oakland, said the candidates should acknowledge the need to protect both human and environmental water uses.?We can?t ignore the environment anymore,? Gleick said. ?That?s what we did in the 20th century, and it led to a lot of the problems we have today.? Gleick wrote an open letter to the candidates offering 16 recommendations on water that start with developing ?a 21st century national water policy.?? CALIFORNIA DROUGHT - Editorial: How do we share California water? - State loosens the water spigot ? for now - California?s still in a drought, so don?t roll back Delays with new damsDan Beard, former head of the Bureau of Reclamation during the Bill Clinton administration, said one of the most important numbers to come out of the drought is the 1.2 million acre-feet of water that Californians conserved last year, many times more than the 125,000 acre-feet of water that some dam proposals offer.Any new dam would ?take 25 years before you got the first drop of water,? Beard said. ?In the meantime, the citizens of cities and towns have put into the system 1.2 million acre-feet and done it at virtually no cost.?Last year, he proposed tearing down Glen Canyon dam on the Colorado River, a radical idea that is catching on in the media. Its reservoir at Lake Powell is emptying, and evaporation losses could be reduced if the water were sent downstream to bolster Lake Mead, the linchpin of the basin?s water supply.?Beard said a test for how far presidential candidates in California might go would be to see whether they would support tearing down O?Shaughnessy Dam and the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite that supplies San Francisco?s water.??That?s the one dam removal that has not received the serious attention that it needs? from public officials, Beard said. The idea has won past Republican support from the San Joaquin Valley, mainly because it takes aim at San Francisco, the source of much criticism of agriculture?s water use.Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicle?s Washington correspondent. Email:?clochhead at sfchronicle.com?Twitter:?carolynlochhead -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue May 31 09:43:24 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 31 May 2016 16:43:24 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <684304079.1790711.1464713004562.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, May 31, 2016 8:39 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ? ??Date? ? ? ? ? ??Time?? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 6/03/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3100 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3300 6/04/2016?? ? ? ?2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3300 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3100 6/05/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3100 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2900 6/06/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2800 6/06/2016?? ? ? ?0400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 6/07/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 6/08/2016?? ? ? ?0200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2900 6/08/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 6/08/2016?? ? ? ?1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 6/08/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 6/09/2016?? ? ? ?0800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 6/09/2016?? ? ? ?1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2400 6/09/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2300 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow?-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "trinity-releases" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to trinity-releases+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue May 31 09:46:52 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 31 May 2016 16:46:52 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: WEBEX and Conference line for TMC meeting June 1-2 Eureka In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1268067718.1826110.1464713212100.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, May 31, 2016 9:36 AM, "Huntt DeCarlo, Caryn" wrote: Hello.? Below are the call in numbers for the WebEx for the TMC.? Please share with anybody who may need it. ?Thank you.? Caryn Dialing in: Day 1: ?1-408-792-6300 / Access code 805 635 491?Web if you decide you want it:?https://trrp.webex.com/trrp/j.php?MTID=m419926ad61935affb0de2fa3527e65bd Day 2:??1-408-792-6300 / Access code 806 431 035?Web: https://trrp.webex.com/trrp/j.php?MTID=ma351d88139353da74057a689a7a3652e--- Eric B. Peterson, Ph.D.Trinity River Restoration ProgramU.S. Bureau of Reclamation530-623-1810 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jun 1 15:22:40 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2016 22:22:40 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Supes sign Klamath River dam removal pact; References: <438618535.23960.1464819760975.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <438618535.23960.1464819760975.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160531/supes-sign-klamath-river-dam-removal-pact-airbnb-taxation-agreement-approved&template=printart Supes sign Klamath River dam removal pact; AirBnb taxation agreement approved AirBnb agrees to collect taxes from local operators By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardTuesday, May 31, 2016The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously today to once again show its support for the removal of four hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River by 2020.Unlike the previous version of the dam-removing Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA) that was signed by the board and nearly 40 other entities in 2010, the new agreement currently does not include solutions for water rights disputes between Klamath River Basin tribes and farmers.?For our sake, signing on to the KHSA carries a general obligation to support implementation of this agreement and to support working towards those other issues in the future,? 3rd District Supervisor and board chairman Mark Lovelace said.As part of its consent agenda, the board also approved a agreement with the online lodging company AirBnb that requires the company to begin collect lodging taxes from its local property owners.The board also put its $14 million juvenile hall building replacement project out to bid. Klamath agreement If implemented, the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement would become the largest dam removal project in U.S. history by removing four aging hydroelectric dams on the 236-mile Klamath River by 2020.?Signed by federal agencies, state, environmental, tribal and county officials as well as the dam-owning company PacifiCorp in 2010, the agreement and its companion agreements ? the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement ? sought to end decades of water rights disputes and restore habitat to threatened and endangered fish species in the basin.?The agreements took nearly a decade to form, but required Congress to enact them. However, the three agreements were unable to pass the House Natural Resources Committee, which included members of Congress such as 1st District California Congressman Doug LaMalfa, who openly opposed dam removal.The bills stalled in the committee until the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement expired on Dec. 31, 2015, seemingly killing all three agreements.However, many of the signatories quickly came together to draft a newly amended version of the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement, which was?signed by top state, federal, and tribal officials?in April. The new version of the agreement will no longer require congressional approval, but will instead seek to decommission the dams through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which was authorized by Congress to decommission and license dams. The agreement is set to go before the commission in July.Fourth District Humboldt County Supervisor Virginia Bass said today that this new agreement takes a better approach to the issue and allows the signatories to have more control over the parameters of the agreement.The dam removal is expected to cost about $450 million, with $250 million being paid for by PacifiCorp ratepayers and the other $200 million paid through California?s Proposition 1 water bond. Three of the four dams are located in Siskiyou County; the fourth is in Southern Oregon.LaMalfa, who represents Siskiyou, was critical of the state paying to removing dams owned by American businessman Warren Buffet.?PacifiCorp is a subsidiary of Buffet?s Berkshire Hathaway Energy.The new agreement still does not address water rights and that some signatories, especially Klamath Basin irrigators, say have been ?left on the sideline,? Lovelace said.A new agreement known as the Klamath Power Facilities Agreement, also signed in April, calls for new regulations to be drafted to aid Klamath Basin irrigators and ranchers when salmon and other Klamath River fish are reintroduced into the Upper Klamath River Basin. Whatever regulations are drafted are still expected?to require congressional approval. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Jun 1 15:49:46 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2016 15:49:46 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Delta Advocates Challenge Brown Administration's Case For Twin Tunnels In-Reply-To: <438618535.23960.1464819760975.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <438618535.23960.1464819760975.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <438618535.23960.1464819760975.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/1/1533359/-Delta-Advocates-Challenge-Brown-Administration-s-Case-For-Twin-Tunnels Photo of Governor Jerry Brown by Dan Bacher. Delta Advocates Challenge Brown Administration's Case For Twin Tunnels by Dan Bacher The state and federal governments pleaded their case for Governor Jerry Brown?s controversial Delta Tunnels plan in testimony submitted to the State Water Resources Control Board yesterday and in a media call held today. On Tuesday, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and Bureau of Reclamation submitted their testimony and evidence required for upcoming public hearings regarding their request to add three new points of diversion on the Sacramento River for the California Water Fix, the new name for the Delta Tunnels Plan. In response, Restore the Delta, a coalition opposed to the project, described the testimony as ?largely a rehash of unsubstantiated claims about the Delta Tunnels project that have not been proven, despite more than 40,000 pages of environmental review that the US Environmental Protection Agency has declared is still inadequate (a failing grade.)? Tunnel opponents say the construction of the two massive water diversion tunnels under the Delta would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other species and endanger family farms on the Delta. The project will also imperil salmon and steelhead populations on the Klamath and Trinity rivers, since massive quantities of Trinity River water are diverted every year through a tunnel through the Trinity Mountains to the Sacramento River watershed every year. According to a DWR news release, ?The questions before the Board, defined by the members themselves in Part I of the hearings, are narrow: Does the new point of diversion alter water flows or affect water quality such that there would be injury to any legal user of the water, and does the project in effect initiate a new water right?? In Part I of the hearings and with the submitted testimony, DWR claimed it will ?present evidence? to show that the proposed change ?will neither initiate a new water right nor injure any other legal user of water.? John Laird, Secretary for the California Natural Resources Agency, touted the alleged benefits of the Delta Tunnels Plan. ?With California WaterFix, we seek to improve upon the unreliable way water is now conveyed through the Delta, reduce or eliminate costs to the environment and economy from our aging water infrastructure and better prepare the state for effects of climate change,? said Laird. ?The key elements of California WaterFix have long been part of the State?s comprehensive vision for the Delta, and the Water Board hearings are an important step in the advancement of the project.? Mark Cowin, Director of the Department of Water Resources, claimed that the California WaterFix would not establish a new water right. ?Through hundreds of pages of testimony submitted yesterday in advance of the hearings, DWR?s team of engineers, lawyers and water experts shows that WaterFix will not establish a new water right, will not injure any other legal user of water and will not negatively impact flows or water quality,? said Cowin. DWR also claimed in their testimony, ?New, properly screened intakes, as proposed in the California WaterFix, would better protect fish and allow us to use the existing south Delta pumps in a strategic and flexible manner in a dual conveyance system with the proposed north delta diversions.? ?To this we say, prove it!? Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD), responded. ?The environmental impact report for the project already tells us you can?t! Show Californians, and federal wildlife agencies, proof that the Delta Tunnels plan will protect West Coast fisheries, because that proof is certainly not found in the environmental impact report.? In fact, the CalFed Record of Decision of 2000 required the installation of state-of-the-art fish screens to protect salmon, steelhead, striped bass, Delta and longfin smelt and many other fish species, but the water contractors have refused to pay for these new screens to stop the massacre of millions of fish at the Delta pumping facilities every year. Delta advocates are very skeptical that effective new fish screens would ever be installed at the new intakes when the mandated screens were never built for the South Delta pumping facilities. ?And when it turns out the Tunnels are not protective of endangered species, what then? Will the Delta Tunnels remain dry from ongoing drought?? Barrigan-Parrilla asked. ? If not, where is the proof with a water availability analysis?? ?The CA WaterFix is nothing more than a very expensive gamble based on cherry picked science. But now we have the opportunity to get at the facts in a formal hearing process. We relish the opportunity," she said. Tim Stroshane, policy analyst for RTD, noted that DWR provided no costs-benefits analysis in its submissions ?While DWR submitted over 5,000 pages for its case to the Board, they submitted no exhibits addressing why the economic benefits and costs of the Delta Tunnels proposal are in the public interest. This is a huge omission,? he emphasized. ?It appears likely that the agency has refined its modeling to buttress their existing talking points, such as the alleged benefits of dual conveyance providing flexible response to listed fish for real time operation of diversions. They also continue to claim that water rights holders will not be injured by Tunnels operations, without specifics,? Stroshane stated. Stroshane also challenged DWR?s contention that their petition is ?not a new water right.? The Water Board specifically asked for testimony on whether this change petition is really a new water right application. ?DWR?s case-in-chief maintains that an old diversion point in their permits at Hood in the north Delta is ?close enough? to the new Tunnels intakes at Clarksburg and Courtland to justify the Board deciding this is a small change in their permits," said Stroshane. ?Instead we think Hood is a different location than either Clarksburg or Courtland. Board rules require that water availability analysis is done for new water right applications. And the outcome of this decision could result in the Tunnels getting water rights that are over fifty to seventy years junior to the rest of the State Water Project," he concluded. DWR also argues that their petition is not a new water right because they claim that several operational aspects of the Tunnels, including upstream storage, and overall Banks/Jones pumping, will not change materially; this is merely a ?modification? of the existing CVP and SWP permits. ?Delta advocates beg to differ," said Stroshane. ?Any added diversion point requires issuance of a new water right permit. If the State Water Board agrees with Delta advocates and decides it?s a new water right, Tunnel backers would need to do a water availability analysis to follow their procedures.? ?We doubt they would find enough water to sustain the Tunnels project. They already don?t have enough," Stroshane concluded. Part I of the hearings is scheduled to begin July 26. Part II of the hearings is expected to take place in early 2017 and ?will focus on the extent to which fish and wildlife and other beneficial uses will be affected by the requested change in point of diversion and any measures needed to protect fish and wildlife from any unreasonable impacts of the change,? according to DWR. DWR?s testimony regarding its petition for change to its water right permit is available here , and the petition for the new points of diversion can be found here. On the same day that DWR and the Bureau submitted their testimony, Governor Jerry Brown endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary. It is believed that one of the key reasons why Brown endorsed Clinton is to get her to support the Delta Tunnels and his other controversial water policies. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Big_OIl_Brown_Photo.png Type: image/png Size: 129303 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Jun 3 10:12:52 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2016 17:12:52 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Cal Fire places moratorium on Trinity small-parcel conversions References: <1062986994.787299.1464973972526.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1062986994.787299.1464973972526.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_37ba628c-2792-11e6-9cda-578ec6caced2.html Cal Fire places moratorium on Trinity small-parcel conversions - By Sally Morris The Trinity Journal ?- Jun 1, 2016 ?- ?0 - - - - - - - - There?s a temporary hold in effect on approval of small-parcel conversions from forest to agricultural purposes in Trinity County pending further direction by the county Board of Supervisors tentatively set to consider the issue at its June 7 meeting in Weaverville.Known as a less than 3-acre conversion, the permits are issued through Cal Fire that regulates all timber harvest on private lands in the state. Anything over 3 acres requires a much more intensive review and approval of a timber harvesting plan describing measures to protect streams and wildlife habitat and restock the forest. Small parcels under 3 acres are eligible for exemption to those rules through a conversion permit typically used by property owners wanting to clear land for a homesite.In response to recent complaints about an explosion of conversion permits being issued for small properties in close proximity to each other chiefly for marijuana cultivation, Cal Fire representatives attended the May 12 Trinity County Planning Commission meeting to clarify how the permits are issued through the Redding office.Trinity County?s Senior Planner Carson Anderson said part of the challenge the state regulators face is that Trinity County has no grading ordinance, ?so when foresters inspect locations for permits, they observe things the county could follow up with to achieve goals at the county level if we had a grading ordinance.?Responsible for overseeing the conversion process for Cal Fire?s northern region, John Remaley said the Redding office approves approximately 1,200 conversion permits a year.?It is a ministerial permit, based on a two-page form with a map. Our review and acceptance of the document doesn?t give us discretion to have discretion,? he said, adding permits are approved as long as they are prepared by a professional forester, contain a legal description and will be performed by a licensed timber operator.There is opportunity for the county to review and sign off on the permits if it designates a person to do that, but until now, it hasn?t done so. Otherwise, the county receives a copy of the permit, but there are no noticing requirements or required certification.Remaley said that in 2010, there were no 3-acre conversion permits issued in Trinity County. Last year, there were 155, and to date this year, 123.Local Cal Fire inspector Dan Dresselhaus said his job is to make sure water courses are protected and that slash piles from the logging activities are treated within a year, ?but I don?t have any say on what the land use is going to be.? He said most of the development activity ?is within the Trinity Pines subdivision, but it is starting to spread.?The only mandated inspection is a completion inspection after tree removal, and a six-month time frame is allowed for that to occur.Dresselhaus said Cal Fire can also do inspections of road impacts for up to three years, ?but landings become whatever they?re going to be. I?m the only inspector in the area, and I am completely outpaced with the completion inspections.?He added there?s been a steady increase in conversion permits since 2010 when Cal Fire began taking enforcement actions against illegal land clearing ?so the knowledge base is out there now that they need to get a permit and it is expanding.? The numbers have also been growing in the McCloud area as well as Humboldt and Mendocino counties, he said.Audience members weighed in, including Clarence Rose of Weaverville who once served on the California Board of Forestry and said ?if our board were made aware of this catastrophe, we would have gone to the Legislature to get it fixed. Saying there?s nothing we can do is repulsive to me.?He added the county?s existing medical marijuana ordinance limits growers to a maximum of eight plants (on 10 acres or more) or 400 square feet ?so why are we giving permits to clear 130,000 square feet??Debbie Lono from outside of Hayfork spoke of personal experience watching several conversions occurring in her own neighborhood for large-scale marijuana farms without regard for the environment, destroying streams others have relied on and blocking roads. She has repeatedly requested an emergency moratorium on the permits ?until the Board of Supervisors has a chance to study impacts on our neighborhoods.?Terry Mines of Junction City said he agrees a moratorium would probably be most effective while the county is in the middle of adopting a commercial cannabis ordinance, arguing that small, mom and pop growers ?who are trying to be compliant need protection while the county figures out how to address this situation correctly.?Others favored a moratorium until the cumulative impacts can be addressed and there are adequate resources available to conduct inspections. Some noted there are valid, legitimate reasons why landowners need the small acre conversions to be available for development purposes and said ?don?t throw the baby out with the bath water.?Planning Commissioners generally favored the suggestion of a temporary moratorium and the designation of a county official, Trinity County Transportation and Planning Director Rick Tippett, to review and certify the permits. Some agreed the Board of Supervisors needs to be considering adoption of a county grading ordinance.Following the commission meeting, Tippett reported to the Board of Supervisors that no additional conversion permits have been processed by Cal Fire since mid-April, and that if he is the county?s designee, ?I have no direction on which ones to sign and which not to sign. The direction seems to be if there?s a house, a septic system, or encroachment permit, those are the only ones I?ll sign so they can go forward with building a home, but for all the others, I prefer to have board direction on those.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Fri Jun 3 11:16:33 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2016 11:16:33 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] NOAA STATUS REVIEW: NONE OF 28 ESA-LISTED PACIFIC SALMON/STEELHEAD STOCKS WARRANT STATUS CHANGE Message-ID: <005101d1bdc4$0f950880$2ebf1980$@sisqtel.net> NOAA Status Review: None Of 28 ESA-Listed Pacific Salmon/Steelhead Stocks Warrant Status Change Posted on Thursday, June 02, 2016 (PST) http://www.cbbulletin.com/436826.aspx NOAA Fisheries completed its five-year status review for 28 Pacific salmon and steelhead stocks last week. None of the fish stocks, all listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, warranted a change in status. NOAA is required under the ESA to review all ESA-listed stocks every five years to determine if each should be delisted, reclassified from endangered to threatened or threatened to endangered, or whether the fish should keep its current classification. "Many species have either improved or remained stable since the previous review in 2011, but none of the species reviewed have declined significantly or improved such that a change in listing status is warranted," NOAA said in an announcement. "This means that the species' conditions have not significantly declined but also that they have not improved enough to reach the next threshold on the path to recovery." The news for West Coast salmon is mixed, NOAA said. The good news is that Oregon Coast coho salmon, mid-Columbia steelhead and Hood Canal chum, have rebounded strongly from the lows of past decades, and highly endangered Snake River sockeye are showing a "newfound promise" for recovery thanks to a captive broodstock program. Other fish have not fared as well. The California drought and high ocean and stream temperatures in recent years hit many populations hard. Simply sustaining imperiled fish through such trying conditions is an important success, according to NOAA. Drought conditions and high stream temperatures for Sacramento River winter chinook reduced the 2015 survival of juvenile fish in the first stretch of river to just 3 percent. NOAA said it knows more since its previous 5-year review in 2011 about the biological status and needs of some species, but other species still need research. "We are seeing significant progress, but, as anticipated in our recovery plans, it is slow and steady," NOAA said. "Progress will be measured, and achieved, over decades. This is because salmon are especially sensitive to environmental conditions, they experience wide fluctuations in population size, and the benefits from habitat improvements and recovery actions take time to accrue." NOAA identified several key findings: -- habitat degradation and the lack of complex, cold water refuge continue to threaten the survival and recovery of many populations; --hatcheries have successfully thwarted extinction for several species, but maintaining the genetic integrity of wild stocks continues to be a cornerstone of management efforts; --ongoing collection of monitoring data is critical for refining recovery efforts on the ground; and --the recovery plans provide strong roadmaps to recovery, but more work remains to implement them. NOAA also identified new trend information: --it had limited data on Snake River steelhead in 2011, but after five years of new monitoring data for populations in Idaho and Oregon, the agency's ability to assess the abundance of wild fish and diversity across Snake River steelhead populations has improved. Though a change in listing status is not warranted at this time, NOAA said that Snake River steelhead populations are "holding steady" since the previous review. --Southern Oregon and northern California data is less clear. Returns of coho salmon to the Shasta River in 2014 and 2015 was very low, but there is insufficient data to fully understand the trends for Southern Oregon and Northern California coho. Several environmental factors will influence salmon returns in the future that will provide researchers the opportunity to track the resiliency of the populations and their ability to handle the sort of natural environmental variations that have always influenced salmon numbers. Those factors are the warm expanse of water known as "the blob" along the West Coast that began to show up in 2013 and then gave way to El Nino conditions in late 2015. Such warm conditions often reduce ocean productivity, including survivability of salmon and steelhead year classes that are in the ocean. All 28 five-year status reviews are available at the NOAA Fisheries website at http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016_status_review.html For the Columbia River Basin: --Upper Columbia River, Summary & Evaluation of Upper Columbia River Steelhead and Spring-Run Chinook, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_upper-columbia.pdf --Snake River, Summary & Evaluation of Snake River Sockeye, Spring-Summer & Fall-Run Chinook, & Steelhead, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_snake-river.pdf --Middle Columbia River, Summary & Evaluation of Middle Columbia River Steelhead, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_middle-columbia.pdf --Upper Willamette River, Summary & Evaluation of Upper Willamette River Steelhead and Chinook, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_upper-willamette.pdf --Lower Columbia River, Summary & Evaluation of Lower Columbia River Chinook Salmon, Chum Salmon, Coho Salmon, & Steelhead, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_lower-columbia.pdf Areas outside the Columbia River Basin: Oregon Coast, Summary & Evaluation of Oregon Coast Coho Salmon, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_oc-coho.pdf Southern Oregon & Northern Oregon Coast, Summary & Evaluation of Southern Oregon/Northern California Coho, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_soncc_coho.pdf Puget Sound, Summary & Evaluation of Puget Sound Chinook, steelhead, & Hood Canal summer-run Chum (link not yet available). Lake Ozette, Summary & Evaluation of Ozette Lake Sockeye, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_lake_ozette.pdf. Sacramento River, Summary & Evaluation of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook, (link not yet available). California Central Valley, Summary & Evaluation of Central Valley Spring-Run Chinook, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_cv-spring-run-chinook.pdf Summary & Evaluation of Central Valley Steelhead, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_cv-steelhead.pdf California Coast, Summary & Evaluation of Central California Coast Coho, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_ccc-coho.pdf Summary & Evaluation of Central California Steelhead, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_ccc-steelhead.pdf Summary & Evaluation of California Coastal Chinook Salmon and Northern California Steelhead, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_cc-chinook_nc-steelhd.pdf Summary & Evaluation of South-Central California Coast Steelhead, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_sccc-steelhead.pdf Summary & Evaluation of Southern California Coast Steelhead, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_scc-steelhead.pdf Other supporting links are: Status Review Update for Pacific Salmon & Steelhead Listed Under the Endangered Species Act: Northwest Fisheries Science Center, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_nwfsc.pdf Status Review Update for Pacific Salmon & Steelhead Listed Under the Endangered Species Act: Southwest Fisheries Science Center, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_swfsc.pdf 5-Year Status Review: Listing Status Under the Endangered Species Act for Hatchery Program Associated with Listed Salmon & Steelhead, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/status_reviews/salmon_s teelhead/2016/2016_jones-et-al.pdf May 26, 2016 Federal Register Notice, http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/frn/2016/81fr33468.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Jun 5 08:53:54 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2016 15:53:54 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Higher releases planned from Whiskeytown Dam References: <1244451264.1448161.1465142034515.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1244451264.1448161.1465142034515.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Higher releases planned from Whiskeytown Dam Higher releases planned from Whiskeytown Dam Posted:?June 03, 20160 CommentsSHARE????By?Damon Arthur?of the Redding Record SearchlightOfficials plan to quadruple the amount of water released from Whiskeytown Lake for several days this month to benefit spawning salmon.The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to increase the amount of water coming out of the Whiskeytown Dam and into Clear Creek on Monday and June 20.Last year, the "pulse flows" drew protests from local officials angry that water was being sent down the creek while North State water districts had their bureau water allocations drastically reduced.This year, though, no protests are planned as most water agencies received their full water allotments."We felt the pulse flows were a little over the top, if you will," said Irwin Fust, who sits on the board of directors for the Clear Creek Community Services District, which provides water to much of Happy Valley.The flows down the creek will increase to 400 cubic feet per second on Monday and then dial back to the base flow of 200 cfs by June 12. Flows will be kicked back up beginning June 20 and peak out three days later at 800 cfs.Creek flows will go back down to 200 cfs five days later, the bureau said in a news release. There also was a pulse flow in May.Bureau officials said the pulse flows entice steelhead and spring-run Chinook salmon to swim up the creek to spawning areas.Bureau spokesman Shane Hunt said the water goes downstream into the creek and eventually into the Sacramento River and through the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta. He said the water is used downstream by other bureau downstream customers, including cities and farms.The water is also necessary for wildlife habitat and water quality in the rivers and Delta, Hunt said.Hunt said the bureau has increased to 1,000 cfs the amount of water it transfers from Lewiston Lake to Whiskeytown Lake to make up for the extra water sent down Clear Creek.Water is pumped through large conduits over the mountains from Lewiston Lake to the Carr Powerhouse at Whiskeytown Lake.Fust said last year's protests were prompted because the Clear Creek district received only 541 acre-feet of water last year from the bureau. But pulse flows last year during the drought sent about 7,700 acre-feet of water down the creek, he said."That just wasn't fair. It didn't work out," Fust said.This year, though, the district received its full allotment of 15,300 acre-feet of water, he said.Fust said he understood that the bureau has to use water for environmental reasons, but said there should be some flexibility to reduce pulse flows during drought years.Johanna Trenerry of Happy Valley, also a Clear Creek CSD board member, said communities should receive priority for water ahead of fish and wildlife."The environmentalists have a stranglehold on this country, and they rake in so much money," she said. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Jun 6 07:56:45 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2016 14:56:45 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1896046498.1818344.1465225005200.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, June 6, 2016 7:17 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ? ??Date? ? ? ? ? ??Time?? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 6/10/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2300 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 6/11/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2800 6/11/2016?? ? ? ?2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 6/12/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 6/12/2016?? ? ? ?0400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2300 6/12/2016?? ? ? ?0800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2300 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2100 6/13/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2100 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 6/14/2016?? ? ? ?1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2300 6/15/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2300 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2100 6/16/2016?? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2100 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow?-- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Jun 3 10:27:26 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2016 10:27:26 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Eye on Sacramento calls on Steinberg to fully disclose details of relationship with MWD In-Reply-To: <68F22B3C-F2E8-4E45-8601-EF8F371D3366@fishsniffer.com> References: <718D9F34-6A80-4767-974C-3A16936EFD34@fishsniffer.com> <68F22B3C-F2E8-4E45-8601-EF8F371D3366@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <14C8C02D-0349-49B8-9A29-5A56B35728FE@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/2/1533845/-Eye-on-Sacramento-calls-on-Darrell-Steinberg-to-fully-disclose-details-of-relationship-with-MWD Eye on Sacramento calls on Steinberg to fully disclose details of relationship with MWD by Dan Bacher Eye on Sacramento (EOS), a group championing the adoption of ?meaningful transparency and ethics reform? in the City of Sacramento, on Thursday called on Mayoral Candidate Darrell Steinberg, the former Senate President Pro Tem, to ?fully disclose? the details of his contractual relationship with the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California. The Sacramento Bee first exposed the contractual relationship in an article published online on May 31 after obtaining a copy of the controversial contract. Steinberg?s law firm, Greenberg Traurig, has been collecting $10,000 per month from MWD for Steinberg?s services since July of last year. (www.sacbee.com/...) The politically powerful Metropolitan Water District has played a key leadership role in promoting Governor Jerry Brown's plan to build the massive Delta Tunnels, designed to export Northern California water to agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California water agencies. Local County and City governments oppose the Delta plan, along with a broad coalition of fishermen, environmentalists, Indian Tribes and family farmers, because of the enormous environmental damage it would inflict on fisheries and the ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas. MWD was also a key backer of the controversial water bond/water policy package that Governor Arnold Scharzenegger and Steinberg pushed through the Legislature in November 2009 , as well as Governor Jerry Brown?s Proposition 1 Water Bond that was approved by the voters in November 2014. In the contract, Steinberg is tasked ?to provide strategic advice on approach, outreach and messaging for matters related to Metropolitan?s public policy to ensure effective communications with stakeholders in Northern California.? Two of Steinberg's key duties are to ?assist in the development of strategy and outreach plan for a multi purpose project in the Yolo Bypass? and to ?identify and pursue outreach opportunities with elected officials in Delta counties to build relationships for advancing common ground.? The contract, at Steinberg?s request, states, ?Consultant will not engage or advocate on matters specifically related to new Delta conveyance,? the term often used by state and federal officials to describe the Delta Tunnels/California WaterFix plan. The contract between MWD and the Greenberg Traurig law firm involving Mr. Steinberg?s consulting services to MWD may be viewed on the EOS website via this link. Steinberg said he entered into the Metropolitan Water District contract last summer before choosing to enter the mayor's race and said he will end his full-time position with MWD when the contract expires at the end of June. In a written statement from his campaign, Steinberg said, ?As I?ve made clear from the day I announced, if I?m fortunate enough to be elected mayor, my full-time energy and attention will be focused on doing that job to the best of my abilities for the people of Sacramento, and I will relinquish my full-time role with my current employer.? ?I get innuendo,? Steinberg told the Bee. ?As long as the work is consistent with my values and the interests of my city, I don?t see a problem. (www.sacbee.com/...) In a press release, Craig Powell, President of Eye on Sacramento, disagreed with Steinberg's claim that his work for MWD is consistent with the city's interests. ?Sacramentans learned for the first time yesterday from a Sacramento Bee story that Darrell Steinberg, while actively seeking the support of Sacramento voters for his mayoral bid, has been covertly providing strategic consulting services to the politically powerful Southern California-based Metropolitan Water District (MWD) whose interests are very much at odds with the interests of the City of Sacramento and its residents on just about every major water issue facing our region,? said Powell. ?We are troubled that Sacramento voters who have already voted via absentee ballot (now fully half of all Sacramento voters) did so without the knowledge that one mayoral candidate was effectively on the payroll of the MWD. While nothing can be done at this late date to cure that significant informational failure, there are some immediate steps that Mr. Steinberg can and should take to fully explain the nature and extent of his relationship with MWD for the benefit of voters who will be casting their ballots on Election Day,? Powell stated. The group compiled a list of questions they believe Steinberg should answer. These include: ? When did he and MWD first begin discussing a consulting arrangement? ? How much of his time over the past year has he devoted to providing ?strategic advice? to MWD as called for in the contract? ? Has he been maintaining time records of his services? ? Will he publicly disclose such records? ? Has he provided any ?deliverables? to MWD, such as reports and other documentation? ? Will he and MWD now disclose such documents? ? What public officials in our region did he meet with in the service of MWD?s goal of building relationships with North State stakeholders? ? Will he and MWD voluntarily release copies of their e-mail communications with one another, without the need for submitting formal public records requests? Powell noted that Steinberg was providing ?consulting services? for MWD, not legal services that would have been protected from public disclosure under the attorney/client privilege. ?The voters of Sacramento deserve to know if Mr. Steinberg, in providing consulting services to MWD while campaigning for Sacramento mayor, has been acting appropriately, ethically and loyally as both a Sacramento resident and an aspirant to the mayor?s office or has he acted in a manner that is at odds with the long-term best interests of Sacramento and its residents,? he stated. ?By promptly and fully disclosing these matters to the Sacramento public, Mr. Steinberg will go a long way towards allaying legitimate public concern over the role he is playing with MWD. If Mr. Steinberg fails to provide such disclosures, we would encourage the Sacramento County Civil Grand Jury to consider initiating an investigation into Mr. Steinberg?s relationship with MWD to uncover the facts. One way or the other, Sacramento voters deserve to know the facts and implications of Mr. Steinberg?s dealings with MWD,? Powell concluded. Steinberg is running against the current Sacramento Vice Mayor, Angelique Ashby, in the current mayoral election. Ashby told the Board of Directors of ECOS, the Environmental Council of Sacramento, at a recent meeting that she completely opposes the Delta Tunnels plan. At the same meeting, Steinberg didn?t discuss his position on the Delta Tunnels plan. According to the Bee, Steinberg said in 2013 he was ?not ready to sign off on any particular-size tunnel, but I think the idea that we both have to restore the ecosystem of the Delta and at the same time provide water reliability conveyance for the entire state by going around the Delta is true, and accepted. And I accept it, and I?m ready to work with the governor to figure out the details.? Delta advocates believe it is crucial that Steinberg take a definitive stand against the tunnels. "It's really important for any mayor of ?River City? to be committed to protecting our river,? said Osha Meserve, a Sacramento lawyer representing local environmental and farming interests on Delta matters. ?Steinberg's waffling on this issue indicates he has not yet made that committment and he should.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Steinberg_055_copy.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 97891 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Jun 6 09:01:12 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2016 09:01:12 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Delta tunnels plan still makes zero sense In-Reply-To: <14C8C02D-0349-49B8-9A29-5A56B35728FE@fishsniffer.com> References: <718D9F34-6A80-4767-974C-3A16936EFD34@fishsniffer.com> <68F22B3C-F2E8-4E45-8601-EF8F371D3366@fishsniffer.com> <14C8C02D-0349-49B8-9A29-5A56B35728FE@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <78E5BE79-0212-4401-98F2-9D16A786EC01@fishsniffer.com> http://redgreenandblue.org/2016/06/01/delta-tunnels-plan-still-makes-zero-sense/ Delta tunnels plan still makes zero sense By Dan Bacher The state and federal governments pleaded their case for Governor Jerry Brown?s controversial Delta Tunnels plan in testimony submitted to the State Water Resources Control Board on May 31 and in a media teleconference held on June 1, claiming that the planned new water diversion points won?t endanger other water users. The Department of Water Resources (DWR) and Bureau of Reclamation submitted their testimony and evidence as required for upcoming public Water Board hearings regarding their request to add three new points of diversion on the Sacramento River for the California WaterFix. That?s the new name for the plan to build two tunnels under the Delta to export water to agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California water agencies. In response, Restore the Delta, a coalition opposed to the project, described the testimony as ?largely a rehash of unsubstantiated claims about the Delta Tunnels project that have not been proven, despite more than 40,000 pages of environmental review that the US Environmental Protection Agency has declared is still inadequate (a failing grade.)? Part 1 of the hearings, scheduled to begin July 26, focuses on two questions: Does the new point of diversion alter water flows or affect water quality such that there would be injury to any legal user of the water, and does the project in effect initiate a new water right?? In Part I of the hearings and with the submitted testimony, DWR claimed it will ?present evidence? to show that the proposed change ?will neither initiate a new water right nor injure any other legal user of water.? John Laird, Secretary for the California Natural Resources Agency, touted the alleged water supply reliability and environmental benefits of the Delta Tunnels Plan. ?With California WaterFix, we seek to improve upon the unreliable way water is now conveyed through the Delta, reduce or eliminate costs to the environment and economy from our aging water infrastructure and better prepare the state for effects of climate change,? said Laird. ?The key elements of California WaterFix have long been part of the State?s comprehensive vision for the Delta, and the Water Board hearings are an important step in the advancement of the project.? In the conference call, Laird claimed the Delta Tunnels plan ?protects and restores? the Delta ecosystem. ?We believe that WaterFix mitigates the risk to our water supply due to climate change and earthquakes, and protects and restores the Delta ecosystem, and offers clean and secure water for much of California,? Laird said. ?Without this, California and the state?s economy risk devastating losses of water supply.? Mark Cowin, Director of the Department of Water Resources, contended that the California WaterFix would not establish a new water right. ?Through hundreds of pages of testimony submitted yesterday in advance of the hearings, DWR?s team of engineers, lawyers and water experts shows that WaterFix will not establish a new water right, will not injure any other legal user of water and will not negatively impact flows or water quality,? said Cowin. DWR also claimed in their testimony, ?New, properly screened intakes, as proposed in the California WaterFix, would better protect fish and allow us to use the existing south Delta pumps in a strategic and flexible manner in a dual conveyance system with the proposed north delta diversions.? ?To this we say, prove it!? Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD), responded. ?The environmental impact report for the project already tells us you can?t! Show Californians, and federal wildlife agencies, proof that the Delta Tunnels plan will protect West Coast fisheries, because that proof is certainly not found in the environmental impact report.? In fact, the CalFed Record of Decision of 2000 required the installation of state-of-the-art fish screens to protect salmon, steelhead, striped bass, Delta and longfin smelt and many other fish species, but the water contractors have refused to pay for these new screens to stop the massacre of millions of fish at the Delta pumping facilities every year. Delta advocates are very skeptical that effective new fish screens would ever be installed at the new intakes when the mandated screens were never built for the South Delta pumping facilities. ?And when it turns out the Tunnels are not protective of endangered species, what then? Will the Delta Tunnels remain dry from ongoing drought?? Barrigan-Parrilla asked. ?If not, where is the proof with a water availability analysis?? ?The CA WaterFix is nothing more than a very expensive gamble based on cherry picked science. But now we have the opportunity to get at the facts in a formal hearing process. We relish the opportunity,? she said. Tim Stroshane, policy analyst for RTD, challenged DWR?s contention that their petition is not a new water right. ?DWR?s case-in-chief maintains that an old diversion point in their permits at Hood in the north Delta is ?close enough? to the new Tunnels intakes at Clarksburg and Courtland to justify the Board deciding this is a small change in their permits,? said Stroshane. ?Instead we think Hood is a different location than either Clarksburg or Courtland. Board rules require that water availability analysis is done for new water right applications. And the outcome of this decision could result in the Tunnels getting water rights that are over fifty to seventy years junior to the rest of the State Water Project,? he stated. DWR also argues that their petition is not a new water right because they claim that several operational aspects of the Tunnels, including upstream storage, and overall Banks/Jones pumping, will not change materially; this is merely a ?modification? of the existing CVP and SWP permits. ?Delta advocates beg to differ,? said Stroshane. ?Any added diversion point requires issuance of a new water right permit. If the State Water Board agrees with Delta advocates and decides it?s a new water right, Tunnel backers would need to do a water availability analysis to follow their procedures.? ?We doubt they would find enough water to sustain the Tunnels project. They already don?t have enough,? Stroshane said. Stroshane also noted that DWR provided no costs-benefits analysis in its submissions. ?While DWR submitted over 5,000 pages for its case to the Board, they submitted no exhibits addressing why the economic benefits and costs of the Delta Tunnels proposal are in the public interest. This is a huge omission,? he emphasized. ?It appears likely that the agency has refined its modeling to buttress their existing talking points, such as the alleged benefits of dual conveyance providing flexible response to listed fish for real time operation of diversions. They also continue to claim that water rights holders will not be injured by Tunnels operations, without specifics,? Stroshane stated. Tunnel opponents say the construction of the two massive water diversion tunnels under the Delta would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other species and endanger family farms on the Delta. The project will also imperil salmon and steelhead populations on the Klamath and Trinity rivers, since massive quantities of Trinity River water are diverted every year through a tunnel through the Trinity Mountains to the Sacramento River watershed every year. Part II of the hearings is expected to take place in early 2017 and ?will focus on the extent to which fish and wildlife and other beneficial uses will be affected by the requested change in point of diversion and any measures needed to protect fish and wildlife from any unreasonable impacts of the change,? according to DWR. DWR?s testimony regarding its petition for change to its water right permit is available here: cms.capitoltechsolutions.com/? The petition for the new points of diversion can be found here:www.waterboards.ca.gov/ ? On the same day that DWR and the Bureau submitted their testimony, Governor Jerry Brown endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary. It is believed that one of the key reasons why Brown endorsed Clinton is to get her to support the Delta Tunnels and his other controversial water policies. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: california-waterfix-animation-500.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 19175 bytes Desc: not available URL: From njharris30 at gmail.com Mon Jun 6 10:20:19 2016 From: njharris30 at gmail.com (Nathan Harris) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2016 10:20:19 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Willow Creek in-season trap update - June 6th Message-ID: Please see the attached documents for weekly catch data from the Willow Creek traps. Nathan Harris Biologist Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program Trinity River Division 3723 N. Hwy 96 Willow Creek, CA 95573 Office: (530) 629-3333 x1703 Cell: (707) 616-8742 njharris30 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: trapping update summary 6.6.16.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 14142 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Willow Creek RST raw catch update 2016.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 30929 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Jun 6 21:53:12 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 04:53:12 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] California's drought: How Trump's blustering caricatured a genuine crisis References: <1146347933.155811.1465275192851.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1146347933.155811.1465275192851.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-trump-westlands-20160606-snap-story.html Michael Hiltzik?ColumnistBUSINESS?Michael HiltzikColumn? California's drought: How Trump's blustering caricatured a genuine crisis? Donald Trump speaks in Fresno on May 27. (Associated Press)Michael HiltzikContact ReporterOf all the mistakes, misstatements, and assorted bloviations issuing from?Donald Trump?during the current presidential campaign, surely one of the leading head-scratchers is his May 27 assertion to the effect that ?there is no drought? in California.Let?s consider a fuller quote from Trump?s appearance (see?the video below):??We?re going to solve your water problem ? you have a water problem that is so insane, it is so ridiculous, where they?re taking the water and shoving it out to sea. And I just met with a lot of the farmers who are great people, and they're saying, we don?t even understand it?. ??They have farms up here, and they don?t get water. I said, ?Oh, that?s too bad. Is it a drought?' ?No, we have plenty of water. ??We shove it out to sea.? ??The environmentalists don?t know why. They?re trying to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish. ??My environmental standard is very simple. ? I want clean air and clean water.?This was a typical Trump liturgy, in that he took an extremely complicated problem and caricatured it as a simple?problem, easily solved. It was also typical in that, while masquerading as the people?s friend, he actually was parroting the position of vested interests ? in this case, Central Valley growers and their water suppliers, especially the giant Westlands Water District, which?has?been grousing for years about its?drought-related reduced allocations from the federal Central Valley Project.?We can glean this from the fact that Trump?s meeting with farmers had been arranged by Johnny Amaral, a local political figure who is the deputy general manager of Westlands.??I said, ?Oh, that?s too bad. Is it a drought?' ?No, we have plenty of water. ... We shove it out to sea.??? Donald Trump, relaying a conversation with California farmersAmaral says the attendees at the meeting came from all parts of the Central Valley, not merely Westlands, and that he was the only Westlands employee in attendance. But it?s proper to observe that the politically?connected Westlands usually has the political clout to?get what it wants, and roping in Trump comes right out of its playbook.?More on that in a moment.A?few important points leap out from Trump?s speech. First, its basic theme was that among all stakeholders in the state?s water supply,?farmers should come first. This was undoubtedly gratifying for Trump?s Central Valley agricultural?audience, but not especially useful for more than 30 million residents who depend on the same water sources to live, or those who gain their livelihoods from fishing, whether in rivers or, um, the sea. ?This clip of Donald Trump speaking in Fresno on May 27 displays how little he knows about water and the California drought.Second, Trump was parroting an old, discredited line of chatter about how environmental uses of water are all about protecting the delta smelt, that three-inch fish. Sadly, no. It?s about protecting salmon and other commercial fisheries, and the entire ecosystem on which millions of residents around and south of the Sacramento delta rely. Shortchanging that ecosystem means dirtier water and dirtier air, which Trump claimed to be serious about.Finally,?the drought?is real. The farmers who got Trump?s ear managed to fill it with abject flapdoodle?about how 2016 isn?t a drought year,?since some?reservoirs have filled so high they?ve had to be siphoned down?to make room for spring runoffs.But only an innocent would take this at face value. The truth is that the state has been in severe drought for five years straight, and indications are that the coming year will again be dry, thanks to the periodic Pacific condition known as La Ni?a (think of it as the mirror image of wet-year El Ni?os).?Amaral told me, indeed, that the 50 farmers who met with Trump on May 27 gave him a more nuanced view of the situation than he gave to his audience in Fresno.??Over the long term,? Amaral acknowledges, ?everyone should expect a shortage of water. And 2012, ?13, ?14?those were dry years. But anyone who talks about a drought in 2016 isn?t being fair with the public.?Drought still grips much of the West and Southwest. (Oregon State University)Amaral says he reached out to both the Trump and Clinton presidential campaigns, offering to introduce them to the growers? viewpoint, which is that ?the Central Valley is not out of water because of the drought, but because the water is mismanaged.??Only Trump responded. But surely Amaral had to know that when the farmers? views got passed through the Trump wringer, they?d come out hopelessly twisted: the idea that 2016 is a wet year transformed into ?there is no drought.?The viewpoint of the growers and Westlands that ?there?s enough water in the state for people, farms, businesses, and fish to coexist peacefully,? as Amaral put it ??if only bureaucrats (and federal law) get out of the way ??also warrants critical examination.?Amaral?s take might be accurate, if all the?stakeholders could sit down and jointly work out new allocations of existing supply, while agreeing on just compensation for transfers of historic water rights.?That?s a tough job, made even tougher when?uninformed politicians such as Trump airdrop?into the Central Valley and declare?farmers to be the most deserving water users and that allocating supply to anyone else is ?ridiculous? and ?insane.??Some Northern California reservoirs are well-filled after a rainy 2016, according to this map from the state Department of Water Resources. But statewide storage is still at a low ebb. (Department of Water Resources)Water officials in the state?have been trying to work out a sustainable agreement on intrastate allocations from the Colorado River since the so-called?Quantification Settlement Agreement?was reached under the federal government?s?gaze in 2003. They?ve been trying to solve the issues of statewide transfers from the delta since at least 1982, when voters rejected the Peripheral Canal for moving water from north to south.?The truth is that climate change will likely make drought?a close to permanent fact of life in California, and wet years such as?2016 merely short-term feints by Mother Nature. As water expert Jay Famiglietti of?NASA and UC Irvine observed in?a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, so much water disappeared from the state?s major watersheds from 2011 to?2015 that it would take??two to three more winters of at least average precipitation to bring an end to the current drought.?Westlands, the district that Amaral represents, knows that its legal rights to available water are junior,?by history and law. Unsurprisingly, it has a blinkered view of the situation, which it plainly articulated quite effectively to Trump, who came into the discussion knowing nothing. When Amaral says that the available supply is being ?mismanaged,? he really means it?s not being managed in a way that Westland prefers ? one that would increase its draw or perhaps make its purchases from those with senior water rights more economical. Westlands is famous for its?ability to squeeze every possible drop of water from its legal rights, and to extend those rights to the breaking point, as one can see from the extraordinarily advantageous litigation settlement it extracted from the federal government last year. (See my coverage?here?and?here.)?When it can?t operate legally, it?s not above??a little Enron accounting,??either. But its users? place?in the hierarchy of California water rights?was fixed decades ago, and in some respects as long ago as the 19th?century. Complaining about the delta smelt today?isn?t going to fix that.?That doesn?t mean the state and federal governments have hit on the indisputably best way to allocate an ever-scarcer resource among ever-more demanding users. Much more work has to be done to solve the riddle?of California water in an era of drought. Putting one?s trust in Trump is the wrong place to start. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image005.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 37953 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image004.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 59179 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jun 7 12:08:51 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 19:08:51 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fishery Jobs with USFWS References: <731113816.498770.1465326531714.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <731113816.498770.1465326531714.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Supervisory Fish Biologist?(Full-time, permanent GS-12).? Position advertised under Merit Promotion (internal) and under the Delegated Examining Unit (DEU), which is?OPEN?to all U.S. Citizens.??The incumbent will serve as a senior-level fish biologist for the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Office in Arcata, CA, with responsibility for directing and overseeing the Program's Aquatic Habitat Assessment Branch. The Branch is extensively involved in conducting fish habitat and instream flow assessments and in developing aquatic habitat and instream flow decision support models used to inform managers and large-scale fish habitat restoration programs in Northern California. Announcement?Closes?Wednesday 6/15/2016.? Biological Science Technician (Fisheries)?- Temporary GS-5, 6, & 7 (up to 4 vacancies). TEMPORARY positions not-to-exceed 1 year and may be extended for a maximum of 2 years. Incumbents will work in collaboration with States, Tribes, other Federal agencies, and other Service Programs to assist in field investigations designed to help guide and evaluate the success of aquatic habitat restoration efforts that contribute to the recovery and conservation of fish populations and fisheries in northern California. ? Incumbents will assist Fish Biologists in completing all phases of biological studies, including project planning and logistics, leading field crews, collection and analysis of data, and completion of project updates and technical reports.? Announcement closes?6/7/2016. ??For more information, check out the Service's?Arcata Fish and Wildlife Office?Homepage?or its?Fish Program website.?? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Wed Jun 8 14:20:22 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2016 14:20:22 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Western Water magazine: Delta at a Crossroads Message-ID: <00b401d1c1cb$919f40b0$b4ddc210$@sisqtel.net> Announcement June 8, 2016 http://www.watereducation.org/announcement/new-western-water-magazine-issue- available-1?utm_campaign=Hear%20from%20global%20groundwater%20experts%2C%20l earn%20the%20latest%20on%20the%20Delta%2C%20purchase%20a%20water%20map &utm_medium=email&utm_source=bundle_and_blast New Western Water Magazine Issue Available The Delta at a Crossroads Image of New Western Water Magazine Issue AvailableIn the recently released Spring 2016 issue of the Water Education Foundation's Western Water, Writer Gary Pitzer delves into the dilemma of balancing needs for the economy and the environ-ment in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the impor-tance of transporting water to the south. Pitzer discusses the California WaterFix, a $15 billion plan supported by the state of California and the federal government that would involve a major re-working of the Delta plumbing system. At the heart of the plan are three intakes in the northern Delta on the Sacramento River that would feed twin tunnels - 40 feet wide, 39 miles long and 150 feet under-ground. The tunnels would transport water under the Delta to the existing state and federal pumping facilities in the southern Delta near Tracy to be transported hundreds of miles to homes in the Bay Area and Southern California and to farm fields in the San Joaquin Valley via the State Water Project (SWP) and the federal Central Valley Project (CVP). The proposed project is not without its critics and hurdles. The article explores Gov. Jerry Brown's resolve to construct the tunnels, proposed legislation that would require ballot-box approval, the pending water rights hearing for the tunnels' intake and water users' frustration over reduced Delta exports despite the improved precipi-tation in early 2016 following several years of drought. Read the excerpt from this issue. You can also subscribe to a print or digital, interactive version of our quarterly magazine. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 37273 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Jun 7 11:13:47 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 11:13:47 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Conservation groups ask for more time to file objections to Delta Tunnels plan In-Reply-To: <78E5BE79-0212-4401-98F2-9D16A786EC01@fishsniffer.com> References: <718D9F34-6A80-4767-974C-3A16936EFD34@fishsniffer.com> <68F22B3C-F2E8-4E45-8601-EF8F371D3366@fishsniffer.com> <14C8C02D-0349-49B8-9A29-5A56B35728FE@fishsniffer.com> <78E5BE79-0212-4401-98F2-9D16A786EC01@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <3B65E923-03FC-4991-A64C-B1A323E33613@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/7/1535572/-Conservation-groups-ask-for-more-time-to-file-objections-to-Delta-Tunnels-plan Conservation groups ask for more time to file objections to Delta Tunnels plan by Dan Bacher Following the submission of documents on May 31 by the state and federal governments pleading their case for the Delta Tunnels plan, environmental and fishing groups and San Joaquin County asked the State Water Resources Control Board for more time for them to file their objections to the documents. Three separate request letters were filed, including one by AquAlliance, California Sportfishing Alliance and other groups; the second by the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations (PCFFA) and the Institute for Fishery Resources (IFR); and the third by San Joaquin County and Mokelumne River WPA. The Department of Water Resources (DWR) and Bureau of Reclamation last Thursday submitted their testimony and evidence as required for upcoming public Water Board hearings regarding their request to add three new points of diversion on the Sacramento River for the California WaterFix. That?s the new name for the plan to build two tunnels under the Delta to export water to agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California water agencies. The AquaAlliance, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Environmental Water Caucus, Friends of the River, Planning and Conservation League, Restore the Delta and Sierra Club California requested a 27-day extension of time for all protestants in the Hearing on the California Waterfix Change Petition to file and serve any written procedural/evidentiary objections concerning petitioners? case in chief. (mavensnotebook.com/...) If granted, this request would change the present time and date for receipt of any written procedural/evidentiary objections from 12:00 noon, June 15, 2016 to 12:00 noon, July 12, 2016. ?Since the State Water Board gave notice of the petition on October 30, 2015, petitioners have made changes in documents including modeling that they have claimed to be relying on and have sought and been granted continuances in starting the Hearing totaling 90 days so far,? the groups argued. ?The Hearing does not commence until July 26, 2016. Granting the extension we request will ensure the filing and service of objections a full two weeks before the start of the Hearing. ?That is ample time for petitioners to learn what the objections are and yet allows protestants a reasonable period of time to attempt to read and evaluate the May 31 submissions and the new modeling analysis for the purpose of identifying and writing appropriate objections. In court proceedings, parties do not learn of opposing parties? objections until the witness is actually testifying,? they explained. The County of San Joaquin, San Joaquin County Flood Control and Water Conservation District and Mokelumne River Water and Power Authority also requested a 27-day extension of time to file and serve any written objections concerning the petitioners? cases. (mavensnotebook.com/...) The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and Institute for Fisheries Resources requested 61-day extension. The groups argue, ?This extension is necessitated by the sheer volume (5,159 pages of documents, 186 MB of video and audio files, and 19.3 GB of modeling files) and arcane and confusing nature of petitioners' evidentiary submissions.? (mavensnotebook.com/...) Meanwhile, the Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation sent a letter to the Water Board objecting to any further extension of time, claiming it is ?unwarranted.? ?Very little of what has been submitted by Petitioners as part of their case-in-chief, whether in their concise testimony (133 pages total for 8 lead witnesses) or in their submitted exhibits, represents ?new?information. Rather, much of the information contained in Petitioners' case-in-chief, including submitted exhibits, is public information previously available to all protestants,? the agencies wrote. DRW and Reclamation also wrote, ?Because the majority of information provided with Petitioners' case-in-chief has been available to protestants long before the submission of testimony and exhibits on May 31, 2016, the current hearing schedule provides ample opportunity for protestants to file written procedural/evidentiary objections by the current deadline of June 15, 2016.? The State Water Board has indicated they will issue a decision on the extension requests some time this week. In a statement issued on June 1, DWR claimed it will present evidence to show that the proposed change in points of diversion ?will neither initiate a new water right nor injure any other legal user of water.? Restore the Delta, a coalition opposed to the project, described the testimony as ?largely a rehash of unsubstantiated claims about the Delta Tunnels project that have not been proven, despite more than 40,000 pages of environmental review that the US Environmental Protection Agency has declared is still inadequate (a failing grade.)? California WaterFix will only hasten extinction of Delta smelt, salmon Governor Jerry Brown is promoting his California WaterFix at a catastrophic time for salmon and Delta fish populations. In this spring?s California Department of Fish and Wildlife smelt survey released last week, the numbers of the endangered fish, once the most abundant fish in the estuary, have plummeted to a new low. ?There?s nothing between them and extinction, as far as I can tell,? Peter Moyle, a UC Davis biologist, professor and author who has studied Delta smelt and other Delta fish species for nearly four decades, told the Sacramento Bee: www.sacbee.com/? ?We are entering uncharted waters with the delta smelt now because populations have never been so low,? Dr. Moyle told me this March. "My guess is that populations are so small now that random events, such as predation by a swarm of silversides on eggs and larvae in an isolated spawning event, can keep driving the population down." (www.indybay.org/...) Yet the Delta Tunnels plan will only hasten the extinction of Delta smelt, along with longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and other fish species, according to Delta advocates and scientific experts. The California Water Fix will also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. For more information, go to: redgreenandblue.org/... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: delta_smelt_-_dwr.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 61114 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jun 9 07:44:01 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 14:44:01 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] AP EXCLUSIVE: WATER GIANT GAVE $1.4M LOAN TO OFFICIAL References: <86408525.181974.1465483441610.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <86408525.181974.1465483441610.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CALIFORNIA_WATER_LOAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT | Jun 9, 2:10 AM EDT AP EXCLUSIVE: WATER GIANT GAVE $1.4M LOAN TO OFFICIALBY?ELLEN KNICKMEYER ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER | | | | AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Netanyahu, Leaders Visit Tel Aviv Attack SceneAP | | | | | | | | | DOCUMENT | | | | | SOME OF THE PROJECTS CALFED SPENT MONEY ON | | | | | | | | | | SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A California public water district that earned a rare federal penalty over what it described as "a little Enron accounting" loaned one of its executives $1.4 million to buy a riverfront home, and the loan remains unpaid nine years later although the official has left the agency, according to records and interviews.Westlands Water District says its 2007 loan to deputy general manager Jason Peltier - now at $1.57 million with a 0.84 percent annual interest rate - is allowed under agency rules on salary.But experts in governance say the deal raises red flags, not just over the unpaid loan and its generous terms but over whether Peltier and Westlands complied with laws mandating disclosure of the use of public funds."Show me the statute that allows this," said Peter Detwiler, long the top consultant, now retired, to the California Senate on local government finance."Where else could you borrow $1.6 million dollars for 0.84 percent?" Detwiler asked. "Who wouldn't want a real-estate deal like that? Sweet."Westlands, which sells water to big farmers and other landowners in the country's largest public irrigation district, came under scrutiny in March, when federal regulators levied a $125,000 penalty against it over bookkeeping that a Westlands' general manager had described as "a little Enron accounting."The Securities and Exchange Commission had concluded Westlands misled bond investors about its financial condition.A heavyweight in California water politics, Westlands currently is negotiating two multi-billion-dollar deals with local, state and federal agencies that would reshape water distribution in California, the country's agriculture leader.Peltier described the loan from Westland's reserve funds as a good deal for the water agency and for him."It was what was attractive to me, and I guess it worked for them relative to where their reserves were," said Peltier, who has since bought an additional house in Pebble Beach while his loan to Westlands for his home on "Millionaires Row" along the Sacramento River has remained unpaid.Governance experts say public agencies sometimes provide home loans to help recruit executives, but say Peltier's appears unusual because it was extended for years at a fraction of the interest rates of commercial mortgages, the district's various actions on the loan were not disclosed publicly although Peltier is a public official, and the loan will continue for years after he stopped working at Westlands."Each of the individual features is a bit unusual. Taken together these features are very unusual," Fred Whittlesey, a consultant on employee compensation based in Washington state, said of the circumstances of the loan."Free money is usually a great deal," Whittlesby said. "But it may not be appropriate in an employment arrangement."The story on the loan is this, according to Peltier and records from Westlands and the U.S. Interior Department, where he worked before Westlands:In March 2007, Peltier, whose Interior job included overseeing California water issues, notified the department he was looking for a job elsewhere. Two months later, he signed a $1.4 million purchase agreement for his home with a new, "state of the art" $115,000 boat dock and a $100,000 swimming pool.Peltier said he had already signed the paperwork before getting the Westlands job offer. Westlands hired Peltier June 25, 2007, as chief deputy general manager, and a short time later loaned him the full $1.4 million home price, agency records show.Terms initially required Peltier to repay the money within a year, when he sold his old house in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. But Peltier said the home didn't move after the 2007 housing crash, and records show he signed repeated one-year loan extensions.In 2012, he and Westlands revamped their agreement giving him until 2021 to pay off the loan, with a final payment of more than $1 million, according to district records. Peltier made monthly payments of about $5,000 from January 2013 to February 2015.Peltier, whose salary ranged between $185,000 and $200,000 according to state records, finally sold the house back East in February 2014, and left Westlands for a job at an affiliated water agency in summer 2015, with the Westlands loan still unpaid.Current Westlands Deputy General Manager Johnny Amaral defended the transaction."Unfortunately, Mr. Peltier, like millions of other Americans, was unable to sell his property in Virginia because of the collapse of the housing market and the bridge loan was converted to a long-term loan," Amaral said in an email.Westlands officials declined interviews.The Associated Press had asked Westlands under open records laws to provide all documents on the loan, including any showing whether the district disclosed the deal publicly.In response to written questions, Chief Operating Officer Dan Pope said the home loan was allowed under a district rule that gives officials the authority to set salaries. There was no public record of the district board's loan decision, Pope wrote, because it was made in a closed session.The AP could find public mention of the loan only on the website of a federal agency that oversees municipal bonds. Posted there were Westlands' annual audits, which from 2010 on reported a $1.4 million loan to an unidentified management-level employee.Peter Scheer, head of the California-based non-profit First Amendment Coalition, said Westlands as a public agency should have disclosed all of its actions on Peltier's loan, noting that the public has a right to know those details. Scheer's group has been supported by donations from some news organizations, including the AP.California law requires public officials like Peltier to file annual financial disclosure forms, which includes reporting some loans.Peltier said he had begun reporting the loan in his most recent annual disclosures. However, his reports through 2015, obtained from the state, make no mention of an outstanding loan from Westlands.Asked about the apparent discrepancy, Peltier said he thought he had included the information.Asked whether the loan from a public agency would require disclosure, Jay Wierenga, spokesman for the state Fair Political Practices Commission, said, "Someone probably has to have a pretty good reason to not report a loan that's outside of the realm of what's normal and available to the public at large." | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jun 9 20:47:07 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2016 03:47:07 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] I wonder if Mr. Amaral rated a similar loan. by onthepublicrecord References: <1016411545.518288.1465530427294.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1016411545.518288.1465530427294.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> | | | | New post on?On the public record | | | | | | I wonder if Mr. Amaral rated a similar?loan. by?onthepublicrecord | For some reason, I find myself called to write about Westlands Water District today.? You may have seen that in 2007 WWD gave a former deputy manager a personal loan of $1.4M at 0.84%, and hasn't seen the need to be repaid for that loan yet.? One and a half million dollars would buy a whole lot of house in Cantua Creek City or Three Rocks, although?we know that?Mr. Peltier, gritty?man of agriculture, chose to buy?a lot of house?in Walnut Grove instead.? It doesn't appear that WWD properly disclosed the loan, but we're used to WWD?defying disclosure rules.? So we will skip over petty, small-minded, literalist?discussions of fraud, perjury, and fiduciary misbehavior.? Why linger on ugly details?? Instead, let's talk about money, power and dominance.NOTE:? For the discussion below, I am talking about public perception within the water field.? I am not an insider at any of the districts I'm about to discuss.? I don't know any of the managers or staff personally; I haven't been introduced to them, even.? I am asserting what I believe to be the mainstream opinion of water professionals.Westlands is?widely described?as "powerful".? Their?managers worked at high levels in George Bush's administration; when the Bush administration ended, WWD was there to?hire all the influence?it could.? Westlands maintains a?stable of lobbyists, and funds?faux-grass roots public information campaigns.? Westlands makes extensive?politicaldonations.? Their ability to be heard in Washington is reflected in the?unfortunate deal?Pres. Obama's Interior Department made.But when I look at that list, the thought that keeps coming back to me is that Westlands Water District is bleeding money.? For all of that talk of power, they have to pay and pay and pay to maintain it.? They aren't buying particularly good power, either.? Their purchases aren't buying any popular support, good press, any diversity of friendships, good access to Gov. Brown's administration.? It isn't buying them the?prudent anonymity of the other?west side districts?that never show up in the press.? Their power isn't winning them state grants or other incoming money.? They just pay out the ass for their manager dudes to talk to?like-minded political dudes?in Washington.I want to contrast that with the?Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority.? A check tells me that they do?hire lobbyists, but I've never heard of SAWPA being described as?inherently powerful.? What I do know about them is that they rake in money.? They?get?grants.? They are?named recipients?in (attempted) bond measures.? They win?awards. So which is the powerful?agency here?? The widely disliked one that bleeds money for political access?? Or the friendly one that?sweetly and?relentlessly brings in money?Which brings me to the approaches used by the two agencies.? Westlands Water District is going for dominance.? They have chosen to buy the influence to force their agenda through in political capitols.? They are also, frankly,?powerful male?assholes?talking to other?powerful male assholes.? When I've seen them at conferences, they schmooze with the big boys.? SAWPA's approach is collaboration, written all over?their front page.? I haven't participated in their processes, so I can't tell you how deep that runs.? But when I see?their managers at?conferences, they talk to all comers.? Scared young brown student at their first conference?? They're welcoming.? They naturally catch up?with their (male and female)?friends and colleagues from over the years.? By all appearances, they are friendly and broadly engaged.? Which means that when politics is?giving out money,?they don't have to buy as much access or fake public support.Westlands WD's?power is naturally limited to the total political power of like-minded politicians, which ebbs and flows and can be blocked by opposing political groups.? It is also amazingly expensive.? Mr. Peltier's loan alone?cost Westlands' farmers about $2.5/irrigated acre in 2007.? The power of a collaborative approach is limited by the friends?the members of SAWPA?can make, and it brings in money.? If Westlands stops buying access, what other kinds of power would it have left?? If SAWPA stopped paying lobbyists, what other kinds of power would it have left? | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Jun 13 09:51:02 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 16:51:02 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1174961145.1830549.1465836662384.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, June 13, 2016 9:47 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ????Date? ? ? ? ? ??Time?? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 6/17/2016?? ? ? ?0800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2400 6/17/2016?? ? ? ?1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2200 6/17/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 6/17/2016?? ? ? ?2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1900 6/18/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 6/18/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow?-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "trinity-releases" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to trinity-releases+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Jun 13 10:10:38 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 10:10:38 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Butte County Voters Pass Fracking Ban/Mismanagment In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5269AA48-8336-4CB9-81C3-836109798553@fishsniffer.com> Good Morning Here are two of my latest pieces, the first an article in dailykos about the passage of the fracking ban in Butte County and the second an LTE in the Sacramento Bee about water mismanagement leading to the near-extinction of Delta smelt. Thanks Dan http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/10/1537286/-Butte-County-Voters-Pass-Fracking-Ban Butte County Voters Pass Fracking Ban by Dan Bacher The voters in Butte County, California approved Measure E, a ban on fracking, by an overwhelming 71 percent on June 7. Butte is the fourth California county to ban the environmentally destructive and dangerous method of oil extraction, according to a statement from Frack-Free Butte County, the campaign organized by the Citizens Action Network (CAN), in coordination with the Butte Environmental Council, in the largely rural and agricultural county. San Benito, Santa Cruz and Mendocino counties have also passed fracking bans, as have the cities of Beverly Hills and Carson, ?We are thrilled that Butte County voters decided to protect our clean water and almond and walnut farms from fracking,? said Dave Garcia, of Frack-Free Butte County. ?We?re proud that we can hand down a community that?s green and pristine to our children and grandchildren.? Measure E proponents were able to convince the voters that toxic fracking chemicals would destroy the county?s water supply and farmlands, as well as endanger the health of their citizens. The toxic chemicals used in fracking, including benzene, toluene and other carcinogens, could make groundwater unsafe for drinking and irrigation. "We congratulate Butte County for banning fracking and protecting California?s precious water resources," said Ella Teevan, Northern California organizer with Food & Water Watch. "When our Governor and local elected officials fail to act, voters are taking the initiative at the ballot box to protect their health and their water from fracking. The victory in Butte County will inspire other counties and cities to follow suit." The latest victory against fracking in a California county shows that grassroots activists can indeed win, in spite of the oil industry?s power and influence, when they are organized. Big Oil is the biggest and most powerful corporate lobby in Sacramento ? and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) is the biggest and most powerful lobbying organization. The oil industry, including WSPA, Chevron, Phillips 66, AERA Energy, Exxon and Shell, have spent more than $25 million so far in the 2015-16 legislative session. Big Oil also has millions and millions of dollars to spend on election campaigns. There was no official opposition to Measure E during the campaign, but activists believe that it is likely that the oil industry will file a lawsuit like Marathon Oil did when San Benito passed its measure ban against fracking in 2014. On June 6, 2014, attorney Sean P. Welch of the San Rafael-based firm Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Gross and Leoni filed a lawsuit against the initiative proponents on behalf of an oil industry group called ?Californians for a Safe Secure Energy Future.? The lawsuit claimed that the initiative petition sheets that were submitted had several fatal legal flaws that made it invalid. ?The county clerk halted the process of certifying signatures while the court case was resolved,? according to Ballotpedia. ?The suit claimed that the petition did not comply with county and state elections law with regard to wording and formatting. In a preliminary ruling on July 23, 2014, Butte County Superior Court Judge Robert Glusman decided that the petitions' faults, which were admitted by the petitioners, were not significant enough to impede the initiative process.? This measure is one of four similar initiatives passed in the state that has been contributing to the growing anti-fracking momentum currently at the forefront of the political discussion, Measure E advocates noted. The passage of the Measure E ban on fracking comes after a similar ordinance failed to pass the Butte County Board of Supervisors in February of 2015, due to oil industry opposition. Residents were concerned that the county?s 200 abandoned gas wells were ripe for fracking since the practice is occurring in neighboring Glenn, Colusa and Sutter Counties, according to Measure E proponents. Garcia emphasized, ?The biggest victory of this campaign was the fact that it was residents of the county, not the corporations, that decided whether or not fracking would be allowed in Butte County.? As of February 2015, there were 10 active gas wells in Butte County, with many more wells in nearby Glenn County and Tehama County. In early 2015, none of the wells had been reported as hydraulically fractured, according to Frac Focus. There are also 17 natural gas storage wells, depleted wells that are currently used for storage, operated by Wild Goose Storage, according to Garcia. That operation is similar to the Aliso Canyon Gas Storage facility, the infamous operation responsible for the massive gas leak that forced thousands of residents of the Los Angeles County community of Porter Ranch to move out of their homes last year. Residents of Monterey and Alameda Counties watched the Butte County measure closely with an eye to their own local campaigns, Teevan noted. Alameda County?s Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on a fracking ban sometime this summer, while Monterey County voters will tackle the issue on the ballot November 7. 2. http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article82575547.html Mismanagement caused fish?s peril Re ?Delta smelt?s state gets more dire with index at record low?(Local, June 7): It is appalling that the Delta smelt population has reached a record low level. Biologists counted only 13 adult Delta smelt, once the most abundant fish in the estuary. The gross mismanagement of water by the state and federal governments has led to the demise of the smelt, an indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Delta. For decades, the pumping facilities have shipped massive quantities of water south to corporate agribusiness interests and water agencies, destroying the habitat of smelt and other fish. Ironically, Gov. Jerry Brown continues to forge ahead with the Delta tunnels, a project that will only hasten the extinction of Delta and longfin smelt, Central Valley steelhead, winter-run Chinook salmon and green sturgeon. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: butte_county.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 135952 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Jun 13 10:16:15 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 10:16:15 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Daily Kos: Butte County Voters Pass Fracking Ban/Sacramento Bee: Water mismanagement led to near-extinction of Delta smelt In-Reply-To: <09CD59A9-A24C-40D5-97C9-2425B485AC03@fishsniffer.com> References: <030021DC9C2BC8469969B904F7933D818D3FBE@MBX021-W3-CA-4.exch021.domain.local> <09CD59A9-A24C-40D5-97C9-2425B485AC03@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: Good Morning Here are two of my latest pieces, the first an article in dailykos about the passage of the fracking ban in Butte County and the second an LTE in the Sacramento Bee about water mismanagement leading to the near-extinction of Delta smelt. Thanks Dan http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/10/1537286/-Butte-County-Voters-Pass-Fracking-Ban Butte County Voters Pass Fracking Ban by Dan Bacher The voters in Butte County, California approved Measure E, a ban on fracking, by an overwhelming 71 percent on June 7. Butte is the fourth California county to ban the environmentally destructive and dangerous method of oil extraction, according to a statement from Frack-Free Butte County, the campaign organized by the Citizens Action Network (CAN), in coordination with the Butte Environmental Council, in the largely rural and agricultural county. San Benito, Santa Cruz and Mendocino counties have also passed fracking bans, as have the cities of Beverly Hills and Carson, ?We are thrilled that Butte County voters decided to protect our clean water and almond and walnut farms from fracking,? said Dave Garcia, of Frack-Free Butte County. ?We?re proud that we can hand down a community that?s green and pristine to our children and grandchildren.? Measure E proponents were able to convince the voters that toxic fracking chemicals would destroy the county?s water supply and farmlands, as well as endanger the health of their citizens. The toxic chemicals used in fracking, including benzene, toluene and other carcinogens, could make groundwater unsafe for drinking and irrigation. "We congratulate Butte County for banning fracking and protecting California?s precious water resources," said Ella Teevan, Northern California organizer with Food & Water Watch. "When our Governor and local elected officials fail to act, voters are taking the initiative at the ballot box to protect their health and their water from fracking. The victory in Butte County will inspire other counties and cities to follow suit." The latest victory against fracking in a California county shows that grassroots activists can indeed win, in spite of the oil industry?s power and influence, when they are organized. Big Oil is the biggest and most powerful corporate lobby in Sacramento ? and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) is the biggest and most powerful lobbying organization. The oil industry, including WSPA, Chevron, Phillips 66, AERA Energy, Exxon and Shell, have spent more than $25 million so far in the 2015-16 legislative session. Big Oil also has millions and millions of dollars to spend on election campaigns. There was no official opposition to Measure E during the campaign, but activists believe that it is likely that the oil industry will file a lawsuit like Marathon Oil did when San Benito passed its measure ban against fracking in 2014. On June 6, 2014, attorney Sean P. Welch of the San Rafael-based firm Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Gross and Leoni filed a lawsuit against the initiative proponents on behalf of an oil industry group called ?Californians for a Safe Secure Energy Future.? The lawsuit claimed that the initiative petition sheets that were submitted had several fatal legal flaws that made it invalid. ?The county clerk halted the process of certifying signatures while the court case was resolved,? according to Ballotpedia. ?The suit claimed that the petition did not comply with county and state elections law with regard to wording and formatting. In a preliminary ruling on July 23, 2014, Butte County Superior Court Judge Robert Glusman decided that the petitions' faults, which were admitted by the petitioners, were not significant enough to impede the initiative process.? This measure is one of four similar initiatives passed in the state that has been contributing to the growing anti-fracking momentum currently at the forefront of the political discussion, Measure E advocates noted. The passage of the Measure E ban on fracking comes after a similar ordinance failed to pass the Butte County Board of Supervisors in February of 2015, due to oil industry opposition. Residents were concerned that the county?s 200 abandoned gas wells were ripe for fracking since the practice is occurring in neighboring Glenn, Colusa and Sutter Counties, according to Measure E proponents. Garcia emphasized, ?The biggest victory of this campaign was the fact that it was residents of the county, not the corporations, that decided whether or not fracking would be allowed in Butte County.? As of February 2015, there were 10 active gas wells in Butte County, with many more wells in nearby Glenn County and Tehama County. In early 2015, none of the wells had been reported as hydraulically fractured, according to Frac Focus. There are also 17 natural gas storage wells, depleted wells that are currently used for storage, operated by Wild Goose Storage, according to Garcia. That operation is similar to the Aliso Canyon Gas Storage facility, the infamous operation responsible for the massive gas leak that forced thousands of residents of the Los Angeles County community of Porter Ranch to move out of their homes last year. Residents of Monterey and Alameda Counties watched the Butte County measure closely with an eye to their own local campaigns, Teevan noted. Alameda County?s Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on a fracking ban sometime this summer, while Monterey County voters will tackle the issue on the ballot November 7. 2. http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article82575547.html Mismanagement caused fish?s peril Re ?Delta smelt?s state gets more dire with index at record low?(Local, June 7): It is appalling that the Delta smelt population has reached a record low level. Biologists counted only 13 adult Delta smelt, once the most abundant fish in the estuary. The gross mismanagement of water by the state and federal governments has led to the demise of the smelt, an indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Delta. For decades, the pumping facilities have shipped massive quantities of water south to corporate agribusiness interests and water agencies, destroying the habitat of smelt and other fish. Ironically, Gov. Jerry Brown continues to forge ahead with the Delta tunnels, a project that will only hasten the extinction of Delta and longfin smelt, Central Valley steelhead, winter-run Chinook salmon and green sturgeon. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: butte_county.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 135952 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jun 14 16:02:58 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 23:02:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fwd: Vacancy Announcement Notification - In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <972279881.2589952.1465945378110.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Chang, Barbara Date: Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 12:43 PM Subject: Vacancy Announcement Notification - To: BOR MP All Mid-Pacific Employees Good ?afternoon, The Northern California Area Office is currently recruiting for a? Program Manager or Supervisory Interdisciplinary, (Executive Director) with the Trinity River Restoration Program in Weaverville, CA.?The following?announcement?has been prepared via Reclamation's HireMe on-line application system. BR-MP-2016-?190, ??Supervisory Interdisciplinary, GS-(0401/0810/1301) -1?4??FPL 1?4 ?https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/441838600 ?BR-MP-2016-193,??Program Manager, GS-0340-14 FPL 14https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/441838100 Interested Applicants?can view the?announcement?through USAJOBS at the link?s above?:? First time applicants must register with USAJOBS at?https://www.usajobs.gov/Account/Account?to create an account. For additional information regarding this?vacancy, please call Barbara Chang at 916-978-5498 or email?barbarachang at usbr.gov. --?Thank you,?Barbara Chang Barbara Chang, HR SpecialistDivision of Human Resources Bureau of Reclamation, Mid-Pacific Region 2800 Cottage Way (MP-500), Sacramento, CA 95825 Office (916) 978-5498 ?Fax (916) 978-5496 E-mail: barbarachang at usbr.gov How was my service today? -- Don BaderActing Area Manager Northern California Area Office530-276-2002dbader at usbr.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jun 15 12:08:37 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 19:08:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Public Notice on Bucktail Project References: <2028479349.3104487.1466017717715.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2028479349.3104487.1466017717715.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> >From the Trinity Journal: PUBLIC NOTICE TRINITY COUNTY PLANNINGDEPARTMENT PERMITTING REVISIONS OF FLOOD HAZARD AREAS IN BUCKTAIL AREA OFTRINITY RIVER The Trinity County Planning Department, in accordance withNational Flood Insurance Program regulation 65.7(b)(1), hereby gives notice of theCounty's intent to permit revision of the floodway, generally located betweenBucktail Bridge and Gold Bar on the Trinity River.? Specifically, the floodway would be revisedfrom a point approximately 500 feet upstream from Bucktail Bridge to a pointapproximately 4,100 feet upstream from Bucktail Bridge (just below Gold Bar).As a result of the floodway revision, the floodway would be widened with amaximum widening of 120.62 feet at a point approximately 1,200 feet upstreamfrom Bucktail Bridge. In addition, the 1% annual chance water-surface elevations (?BaseFlood Elevations - BFEs?) and/or the 1% annual chance floodplain (?100-yearfloodplain?) would be revised from a point approximately 70 feet upstream ofBucktail Bridge to a point approximately 4,100 feet upstream from BucktailBridge. As a result of the revision, the 1% annual chance water-surfaceelevations would both increase and decrease within this area, and the 1% annualchance floodplain would be widened within a portion of the area of revision. Noincreases in the BFE are expected around insurable structures. Maps and detailed analysis of the revision can be reviewed at theTrinity River Restoration Program at 1313 South Main Street (next to TopsMarket) or online at http://www.trrp.net/restore/rehab/current/bucktail/. ?Individual notices will be mailed tolandowners in the Bucktail area with specific information regarding individualparcels. Interested persons may call the County at 530-623-1365, ext 3400,for additional information. ? ? Understanding New FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps and theTRRP?s Expected Revisions The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is adoptingnew Trinity River Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) on July 20, 2016. Becausethe County administers the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), they areworking with FEMA to disseminate the new FIRMs and are fulfilling new FEMAfloodplain permit requirements for proposed projects in flood hazardareas.? The new Trinity River FIRMs depictthe floodway, 100-year floodplain, and the 500-year floodplain and areavailable at: http://trinitycounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Viewer/index.html?appid=320cf1c1558c43c8b1f2f70c23d35026 The Trinity River Restoration Program?s (TRRP) proposedBucktail channel rehabilitation project is now required to meet new FEMAfloodplain permitting requirements for proposed 2016 work upstream of theBucktail bridge. New floodplain permit conditions (required by the County tomeet FEMA needs) include detailed forecasting (modeling of design conditionsusing the HEC-RAS model to predict future water surface elevations) of expectedchanges to flood elevations that will result from implementation of proposed channelrehabilitation projects. As part of the permit process, the TRRP will also berequired to report actual changes (based on modeling of as-built projectconditions using the HEC-RAS model to predict flood water surface elevations) tothe channel and floodplain after the rehabilitation project is completed. With the Bucktail channel rehabilitation project planned forthis summer, our forecasting of changes in flood hazard areas is concurrentwith FEMA?s adoption of the new Trinity River FIRMs, which may cause someconfusion. ?The new FEMA FIRMs will be adoptedin July 2016 regardless of TRRP restorationactivities. Before implementing the Bucktail channel rehabilitation project,the TRRP must obtain a floodplain development permit from Trinity County.? The TRRP is working with Trinity County staffto complete the application process and meet FEMA requirements. ?Steps include: 1.????Modeling of Bucktail Project design conditionsusing the HEC-RAS model to predict future water surface elevations. The HEC-RASmodel is the FEMA flood analysis tool used throughout the USA for mapping floodelevations. 2.????Requesting conditional approval of proposed designconditions.? Trinity County is requestinga ?Conditional Letter of Map Revision,? or CLOMR from FEMA. The CLOMR applicationprocess includes public notification of forecast water surface elevationchanges that would result from Project implementation. 3.????Surveying post-construction floodplain andin-channel conditions (expected fall 2016 at the Bucktail Project). Collectedtopography is input into the HEC-RAS model for flood forecasting. 4.????Requesting a final revision of FIRMs in the Bucktailarea based on actual conditions after the Project is complete.? Trinity County is required to submit a requestfor a ?Letter of Map Revision,? or LOMR, from FEMA based on HEC-RAS modeling ofwater surface elevations over surveyed (actual) post construction topography. After technical review of all post-projectinformation, FEMA will issue a LOMR, thus updating revised sections of FIRMs inthe Bucktail area. Modeling of the Bucktail designcondition estimates that there will be no rise in flood elevations aroundinsurable, permitted structures (e.g., houses). Therefore, the Bucktail Projectis not expected to add structures into flood hazard areas requiring floodinsurance that are not already included in the 2016 FIRMs.? After the Bucktail Project is constructed,the presence of insurable, permitted structures in relation to the floodplainis expected to stay the same as they appear on the new FIRMs becoming effectivein July, 2016. Overall, the model forecasts some minor decreases in floodelevations for the Bucktail subdivision from Project implementation. Some smallincreases (less than one foot) in flood elevations are forecast at, andupstream of, the Bucktail boat ramp. Four maps illustrate the process: Exhibit A.?? Depictsthe Bucktail channel rehabilitation project planned for 2016 construction.Approximate and surveyed property boundary lines are included so thatlandowners may locate their properties. Exhibit B.??? Depictsthe FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRMs) with flood hazard areas that are plannedfor adoption by FEMA in July 2016, regardlessof TRRP actions.? Exhibit C.??? Depictspost-Bucktail Project conditions on the ?Pending? FEMA floodway.? Modeled changes to 100-year flood elevationsare included. Green lines (in the Bucktail subdivision area) indicate a forecastlowering of flood elevations. Thismap also indicates forecast changes to the 100-year floodplain and floodway.Reductions are indicated in white and increases in black. Exhibit D.?? DepictsBucktail Project conditions from Exhibit C with a focus on the Bucktail subdivision. ? Please study the provided information and contact LeslieHubbard (Trinity County point of contact for the adoption of the FEMA FIRMs)with questions at (530) 623-1365 Ext. 3400 or lhubbard at trinitycounty.org . Thank you. ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jun 16 13:49:57 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 20:49:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Fresno_Bee=3A_Westlands=E2=80=99_commitme?= =?utf-8?q?nt_to_secrecy?= References: <938466949.32964.1466110197956.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <938466949.32964.1466110197956.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Fresno Bee Editorials? June 15, 2016 6:07 PM? Westlands? commitment to secrecy? Fresno-based water district is a public agency, and its dealings should be completely transparentWestlands should have publicly disclosed $1.4 million loan at 0.84 percent interest to top executiveUncovering of loan follows district?s settlement of civil charges by Securities and Exchange CommissionThis is the Walnut Grove home of Jason Peltier, a former deputy general manager of the Westland Water District. Peltier received a $1.4 million loan at 0.84% interest from the district to buy the home in 2007 and has until 2021 to repay the final $1 million-plus.?Rich Pedroncelli?The Associated PressBy The Editorial BoardWestlands Water District is a Fresno-based public agency formed in 1952 to deliver irrigation water to hundreds of thousands of fertile acres on the Valley?s west side.As a public agency, Westlands? employees, growers and board of directors should exhibit a 100 percent commitment to transparency. Westlands, after all, conducts the people?s business, and sunlight is the best disinfectant against backroom deals, shady practices and favoritism.In fact, Westlands claims that it promotes transparency. Here?s what the district says on its website: ?Westlands Water District is committed to providing current and accurate information to our water users and to the general public.?Don?t believe it.What Westlands claims and what it does are two different things. Thanks to the?investigative efforts of Associated Press reporter Ellen Knickmeyer, we now know that Westlands is a mortgage lender, too.Not the kind of lender where any citizen can go in, fill out forms, pass a credit check and walk out with a mortgage. Rather, it?s an agency that had not an ounce of compunction about loaning one of its top executives, Jason Peltier, $1.4 million in 2007 so he could buy a riverfront estate about 150 miles away from Fresno in Walnut Grove.Three more things. Peltier, who no longer works for Westlands, received one mighty fine interest rate (0.84 percent). He now owes, with accumulated interest, $1.57 million on the loan. And he has since bought another house ? at Pebble Beach.In response to queries from Knickmeyer for her June 9 report, the district and Peltier vigorously defended the loan. We wonder, if it was a win-win arrangement, as both sides say, why not announce it to the world??It?s obvious why they didn?t. The arrangement stunk to the high heavens.?In response to written questions, (Westlands) Chief Operating Officer Dan Pope said the home loan was allowed under a district rule that gives officials the authority to set salaries,? Knickmeyer reported. ?There was no public record of the district board?s loan decision, Pope wrote, because it was made in a closed session.?The AP could find public mention of the loan only on the website of a federal agency that oversees municipal bonds. Posted there were Westlands? annual audits, which from 2010 on reported a $1.4 million loan to an unidentified management-level employee.?The public had a right to know about the buddy-buddy deal Westlands made with Peltier. The fact that Westlands failed to disclose it is evidence of its aversion to sunlight.Revelations about the Peltier loan come on the heels of a March announcement that Westlands would pay $125,000 to settle Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges that the district misled investors about its financial health. As part of the settlement, Westlands General Manager Tom Birmingham agreed to pay $50,000.The charges, which Westlands and Birmingham neither admitted nor denied, involved accounting maneuvers that allegedly masked revenue reductions caused by drought and corresponding cuts in water deliveries.?Westlands growers are battling the drought, environmental regulations that reduce water deliveries, and serious drainage problems. The last thing they need are more self-inflicted wounds like the Peltier loan and the Enron-like accounting maneuvers.We remind the district of a biblical observation that every farmer should understand: You reap what you sow.Westlands must let the sunshine in and become an ethical, transparent public agency. If the district doesn?t, its fertile fields are destined to become dust in the wind. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jun 16 16:06:44 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 23:06:44 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fishermen's News: Why the Trinity River Matters to Fishermen References: <1937371254.12402.1466118404576.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1937371254.12402.1466118404576.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Tom Stokely? V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315?tstokely at att.net? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: FN0616_PCFFA.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 248160 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Jun 17 07:21:58 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2016 14:21:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Journal: Trinity PUD draws on reserves for budget References: <459052436.247424.1466173318926.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <459052436.247424.1466173318926.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_c9ff86a4-3296-11e6-a972-5b7fa606985c.html PUD draws on reserves for budget - By AMY GITTELSOHN The Trinity Journal ?- Jun 15, 2016 ?- ?0 - - - - - - - - The Trinity Public Utilities District Board adopted a budget for the coming fiscal year that includes taking another bite out of the district?s reserves.The reserves have been dropping steadily since 2014 as the price the TPUD pays for hydroelectric power has increased with the drought, TPUD General Manager Paul Hauser said at the board?s June 9 meeting.?We obviously can?t continue on that path until we run out of reserves,? he said, though he added that the district?s bond holders would force it to take action before that point.The 2016/17 budget does not include a rate increase for customers, but Hauser said in the next couple of years an increase will likely be needed.Operating receipts for the year ahead starting in July are estimated to be approximately $12.2 million, 3 percent more than last year?s, while operating expenses are forecast to be $10.5 million and capital expenditures $3.3 million. The district will make up the difference primarily from its reserves as well the county?s annual loan repayment of $150,000. The district?s reserves are projected to decrease from approximately $8.1 million to $6.7 million by the end of the fiscal year.Although it?s common for utilities to keep about six to eight months of operating expenses in reserves, with the price of hydroelectric power fluctuating greatly depending on rainfall, Hauser said the TPUD should have enough to cover a year?s worth of expenses.He noted that the current water year is normal and that will bring some relief in power costs from the federal Western Area Power Administration, but there is a time lag for the adjustment to be made by WAPA. The price reduction when it comes won?t be that big, Hauser said, noting that the Trinity reservoir is still low and yet the high ?wet year? releases to the Trinity River will reduce power generation.The TPUD?s primary source of revenue is power sales. Although the number of customers has increased and receipts were up last year, when adjustments are made to account for the cold winter Hauser does not project sales to continue rising.Use of more efficient LED light bulbs and state conservation efforts have also played a part, Hauser believes.?When you add all those things together,? he said, ?we?ll be lucky to have flat load.?With 22 employees ? one less than when he joined the TPUD in late 2011 ? if staff were to be cut it would be difficult to restore power after an outage, Hauser said. Fixed costs to maintain the system over a large area are high, he added.?You?re not just willy-nilly adding staff,? agreed board member Dick Morris, pointing out that there are no pay increases for any of the staff in the 2016/17 budget.Looking even farther into the future, Hauser noted that in 2023 the higher rates in Zone B, which is still paying off infrastructure acquisition costs, are to match those in Zone A, creating a million dollar hole in the budget.?So you really need to be looking to industrial development,? said board member Kelli Gant, and Hauser responded, ?We need big loads.?Hauser presented figures showing TPUD bills for monthly use of 1,000 kilowatt hours in 2014/15 were well under Pacific Gas & Electric, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Lassen Municipal Utility District, the city of Redding and city of Shasta Lake.With PG&E, for example, the cost for 1,000 kilowatt hours in the summer was $266.87 and in the winter was $264.65; whereas the TPUD charged $91.31 year round in Zone A and $114.68 in Zone B. The city of Shasta Lake came the closest at $169.59.?That?s what we?re providing people,? Morris said.?They don?t buy it,? board member Kelli Gant responded, but Hauser noted that there are PG&E customers in Southern Trinity who would ?love to have (TPUD?s) rates.?Morris said there are many residents who have relatives living out of the area who appreciate the difference. ?We need to take this and sell it and market it,? he said.The TPUD board voted unanimously to approve the 2016/17 budget and five-year financial forecast. - -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Fri Jun 17 11:53:00 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2016 11:53:00 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Drought mode returns to NW Calif Message-ID: <00b501d1c8c9$79437220$6bca5660$@sisqtel.net> http://www.capradio.org/articles/2016/06/16/water-supply-a-concern-this-summ er-in-california/ The U.S. Drought Monitor says a lack of rain in May and in early June has caused the expansion of abnormally dry conditions in northwest California. Remember that white area on the California state graphic showing "no drought" along the northwest coast and slightly east on the border with Oregon? It's gone now. 061616 DROMON-CALIF "For the first 11 days of June, precipitation values across northwest California are 5 - 20 percent of average," the report notes. "D0 [Abnormally Dry] was expanded to cover all of northwest California to reflect these conditions." There were no changes to drought conditions in central and southern California in the past week as moderate drought covers 83 percent of the state, with 59 percent in severe and 42 percent in extreme drought. This year marks the 5th consecutive year of drought in California. In the Reno area, "impressive rainfall totals from the previous weekend allowed for further contraction of D3 [extreme drought] along the crest of the White Mountains." 061616 DROMON-U.S. In the past week, "precipitation deficits approached one-half inch or less than 5 percent of normal," in California and other parts of the western U.S. But "above normal precipitation fell in central and southern Nevada and into north and south central Arizona." "Temperatures in the region were generally 3-6 degrees F above normal except for a few small areas along the California coast that were around 3 degrees F below normal," according to the weekly update. "In northern California the canals are full, and water is in good supply at the moment. However, with the rapid snow melt this year, water supply may be a concern later this summer." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 103999 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 167535 bytes Desc: not available URL: From njharris30 at gmail.com Mon Jun 20 16:46:52 2016 From: njharris30 at gmail.com (Nathan Harris) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 16:46:52 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Willow Creek in-season trap update - June 20th Message-ID: Please see the attached documents for weekly catch data from the Willow Creek outmigration monitoring. Nathan Harris Biologist Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program Trinity River Division 3723 N. Hwy 96 Willow Creek, CA 95573 Office: (530) 629-3333 x1703 Cell: (707) 616-8742 njharris30 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: trapping update summary 6.20.16.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 14329 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Willow Creek RST raw catch update 2016.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 31247 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jun 21 08:17:48 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 15:17:48 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1468535295.1873687.1466522268383.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, June 20, 2016 9:42 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ????Date? ? ? ? ? ??Time?? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 6/24/2016?? ? ? ?2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1900 6/25/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 6/25/2016?? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1700 6/26/2016?? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1900 6/27/2016?? ? ? ?1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 6/28/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1700 6/28/2016?? ? ? ?0400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1600 6/28/2016?? ? ? ?0800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1500 6/28/2016?? ? ? ?1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1600 6/28/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 6/29/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1700 6/29/2016?? ? ? ?0400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1600 6/30/2016?? ? ? ?1400 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 6/30/2016?? ? ? ?1600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1900 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow?-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "trinity-releases" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to trinity-releases+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jun 21 20:05:22 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 03:05:22 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?What_Lake_Mead=E2=80=99s_Record_Low_Means?= =?utf-8?q?_for_California?= References: <95336400.2342822.1466564722948.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <95336400.2342822.1466564722948.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> What Lake Mead?s Record Low Means for Californiahttps://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2016/06/20/what-lake-meads-record-low-means-for-californiaAfter 16 years of drought in the Colorado River Basin, Lake Mead has hit its lowest point ever. Here?s a look at what impact this will have on the 19 million Californians who depend on the water supply. | WRITTEN BYMichael Levitin | PUBLISHED ON???Jun. 20, 2016 | READ TIMEApprox. 5 minutes | Water intake pipes that were once underwater sit above the water line along Lake Mead in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area near Boulder City, Nevada. This photograph was taken on May 18, 2015. The lake hit a record low in May 2016.?John Locher, APWHEN THE U.S.?Bureau of Reclamation announced last month that the country?s largest reservoir, Lake Mead, had fallen to its lowest-ever level at 1,074ft (327m), the question many asked was: How will it affect one of California?s primary drinking sources?After all, some 19 million Californians, nearly half the state?s population, receive some part of their water from the Colorado River, which flows into the 80-year-old reservoir created by Hoover Dam outside Las Vegas.By inching below the 1,075ft threshold, the lake?s historic low provoked a Level 1 Water Shortage declaration, signaling the start of potential water cuts to Arizona and Nevada. If Lake Mead sinks to 1,025ft (312m), the Department of Interior will seize control of its management and water allocation, and if it falls to 900ft (274m) it will be considered ?deadpool,? meaning that water is no longer passing through the turbines. Falling water levels are the result of a drought in the Colorado River Basin that has dragged on for 16 years and counting.For Glen MacDonald, the John Muir memorial chair in geography and former director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, the May pronouncement was ?the line in the sand.??According to the laws, [California] wouldn?t have to take a cut. But they?re worried if this goes down to 1,045ft, and then 1,025ft, it?s going to be really problematic,? said MacDonald. Like most state water experts, he doesn?t think shortages will be triggered next year, but he isn?t ruling out water cuts in 2018 and beyond. The Bureau of Reclamation reports a 64 percent chance that Lake Mead, with its 60 million acre-foot (74 billion cubic-meter) capacity, will fall below the 1,025ft threshold by 2019, requiring an emergency federal response. Given the unknowns, he said, ?this is the best over-the-horizon look we can get.?The legislation MacDonald referred to, the Colorado River Compact of 1922, handed California senior rights over the river and stipulated that Nevada and Arizona must be the first to make cuts in times of shortage. But if bad turns to worse in the region?s persistent drought, officials are already discussing the possibility of new negotiations taking shape.?Cuts to California? Not anytime soon,? said Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which distributes 4 million acre-feet (4.9 billion cubic meters) of water ? most of it from Lake Mead ? to 19 million customers each year. The crucial period, he said, is between 1,075ft and 1,020ft, because ?we have no rules lower than 1,020, so everyone has to talk about next levels of action. The expectation is, at some point, California would likely be sharing the pain as well. [So] while California is not willing to put water on the table, we also agree that we shouldn?t wait until 1,020ft ? we should be having the conversation earlier.?Unofficial proposals that are being floated include eventual Colorado River cuts to California in the range of 300,000?350,000 acre-feet (370?430 million cubic meters) ? a little less than 10 percent of the 4.4 million acre-feet the state currently draws from the river. ?Losing 10 percent of your water portfolio would be tough,? said MacDonald, who suggested California negotiators may sit down sooner to hammer out a deal, mitigating to avoid the more precarious political impacts of a water crisis engulfing the West.On the upside, increased rainfall this winter enabled California?s Department of Water Resources to announce in April that it is boosting water delivery to meet 60 percent of requests through the 2016 calendar year ? up from 20 percent last year and 5 percent in 2014. (The last time 100 percent of water requests were allocated was 2006.)Plants grow out of dry cracked ground that was once underwater near Boulder Beach in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area near Boulder City, Nevada. About 19 million Californians, nearly half the state?s population, receive some part of their water supply from the Colorado River. (John Locher, AP)Heavy rains brought on by El Ni?o helped fill key reservoirs in northern California, including Lake Oroville (now at 92 percent capacity), Shasta (90 percent capacity) and Folsom (83 percent). More than two-fifths of California still remains in what the U.S. Drought Monitor calls ?extreme drought,? but the State Water Resources Control Board responded to the wet winter by loosening restrictions on water use.Yet despite the significant relief to the north, that?s not likely to translate into additional water moving south from the Delta to compensate for the eventual shortages caused by a shrinking Lake Mead ? not least because of the tenuous recovery and preservation efforts of the Delta?s fragile fisheries. ?The allocations are already set from the Delta. There?s not going to be any more allocated,? said Shane Hunt, public affairs officer at the Bureau of Reclamation for the Mid-Pacific region. ?We are still dealing with the drought. Just because two of our reservoirs, Shasta and Folsom, are above average doesn?t mean the rest of them are. We?re having a lot of problems delivering to customers.?MacDonald said it?s physically conceivable, but politically improbable, that more Bay-Delta water will be sent south to offset future demands of Metropolitan. ?In a perfect world, if we had cuts in the Colorado River, and we had surplus capacity up in the San Joaquin Valley, you would offset the amount of water needed,? he said. ?But nobody here is counting on being able to do that. No rational person is thinking that we?re going to get a lot more water out of the Delta for L.A.?Kightlinger of Metropolitan agrees. ?We don?t see a Delta impact in the near future. Our game plan is that we?ll be making up [the shortage] with more conservation and more recycling,? a process that currently reuses about 400,000 acre-feet (490 million cubic meters), or 10 percent of the region?s water each year, he said. ?We expect to have some losses, but to stem our losses best we can. We don?t expect to get more imported water from either the Colorado or northern California.?So, returning to the original question of how Lake Mead?s historic low will impact California?s crucial drinking source, the best answer may be: in the near term not a whole lot, but in the long term, quite a bit. Still, UCLA?s MacDonald strikes a note of optimism. ?This is manageable right now by taking strong action in terms of conservation and infrastructure,? he said, suggesting that if Southern California increases stormwater capture to 300,000 acre-feet by 2025, it could offset the potential 10 percent cut from the Colorado River. But time is of the essence.?This is it. We?ve seen our vulnerabilities,? said MacDonald. ?In a sense, we should take advantage of the drought: If we can learn some lessons, we can put into place some strategies that will get us through this century.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sat Jun 18 16:58:48 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2016 16:58:48 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Western States Petroleum Association Wins The Prestigious "Scummy" Award In-Reply-To: References: <5269AA48-8336-4CB9-81C3-836109798553@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/18/1540197/-Western-States-Petroleum-Association-Wins-The-Prestigious-Scummy-Award? Western States Petroleum Association Wins The Prestigious "Scummy" Award by Dan Bacher The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), the lobbying organization for Big Oil in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, received the prestigious ?Scummy Award? from the environmental group ?Stop Fooling California? (stopfoolingca.org) on June 17 for ?fighting for the oil industry?s right to pollute.? In every edition of Stop Fooling California?s ?The Crude Truth? newsletter, the group gives the ?Scummy Award? for ?who?s the best at being the worst.? I love these awards because they offer a creative and humorous way to point out the latest transgressions of the oil industry. ?Remember that time the Richmond Chevron refinery sent thousands to the hospital when it caught fire and covered the community with heavy, toxic smoke?,? the group recalled. ? Well, understandably, the local air quality management district didn?t like that one bit. So, officials set up five rules designed to reduce refinery emissions and ensure Big Oil doesn?t poison its neighbors. Seems reasonable, right?? ?Well, not if you?re elite scum bag,? the group said. ?The Western States Petroleum Association filed a lawsuit, with their lawyers calling the rules ?arbitrary and capricious.?? (www.mercurynews.com/...) ?Meanwhile, climate justice groups like the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, support the rules, saying they?re needed to protect our climate and health especially for disadvantaged communities, who shoulder the brunt of pollution,? the group concluded. In an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle cited by Stop Fooling California, Andres Soto and Sandy Saetern pointed out the enormous hazard that oil refinery emissions pose to human health and the environment. (www.sfchronicle.com/...) ?East Bay residents know what it?s like to rush, choking, to the emergency room when a refinery fire poisons our air because oversight is too lax,? Soto and Saetern wrote. ? We know that from Chevron?s 2012 Richmond refinery fire, which sent 15,000 people to seek medical help after a corroded pipe failed and caught fire. The Bay Area knows we need air pollution reductions to protect our climate and our health.? This is not the first time that Stop Fooling California has bestowed its ?Scummy Award" upon WSPA or its President, Catherine Reheis-Boyd. After hearing that the ?Women's Empowerment Summit" was going to honor Reheis- Boyd, with the 2016 "Distinguished Woman and Petroleum Advocate of the Year" award on May 7, the group decided to give Reheis- Boyd the "Scummy Award.? (www.indybay.org/...) "Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), is receiving TWO awards this weekend!," the group proclaimed. ?She?ll receive the first annual Distinguished Woman and Petroleum Advocate of the Year award (because she leads the most powerful corporate lobbying group in Sacramento) AND our prestigious Scummy (because she?s an oil industry shill)." (us8.campaign- archive2.com/...) The oil industry, including WSPA, Chevron, Phillips 66, AERA Energy, Exxon and Shell, have spent more than $25 million so far in the 2015-16 legislative session. WSPA has spent $12.8 million so far in the session, making them, as usual, the top California lobbying spenders of the session. In a huge conflict of interest that the mainstream media has refused to discuss, Reheis-Boyd chaired the South Coast Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue) Ribbon Task Force that created the so- called ?marine protected areas? that went into effect in Southern California waters on January 1, 2012. She also served on the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces for the North Coast, North Central Coast and Central Coast. (www.dfg.ca.gov/...) The ?marine protected areas? created under her leadership fail to protect the ocean from fracking, acidizing, other offshore oil drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. While Reheis-Boyd served on the task forces to "protect" the ocean, the same oil industry that the "marine guardian" represents was conducting environmentally destructive fracking operations off the Southern California coast. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and media investigations by Associated Press and truthout.org in 2013 reveal that the ocean has been fracked at least 203 times in the past 20 years, including the period from 2004 to 2012 that Reheis-Boyd served as a "marine guardian.? Besides exerting enormous influence over state regulators, WSPA and Big Oil also wield enormous power over federal regulators. Claiming that fracking poses ?no significant impact? to the environment, Obama administration officials on May 27 finalized their plans to allow oil companies to resume offshore fracking and acidizing in California?s Santa Barbara Channel after a moratorium on fracking was temporarily imposed as the result of a Center for Biological Diversity lawsuit. (theecoreport.com/...) As expected, Reheis-Boyd applauded the Environmental Assessment (EA) report by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement that ended the moratorium on offshore hydraulic fracturing in California: ?Today?s final report continues to reaffirm the sound science behind our safe energy production practices,? Reheis Boyd said in a statement on May 27. ?Offshore producers in California will continue to adhere to the strictest safety and operational standards in the world while delivering affordable and reliable energy to U.S. consumers.? (www.wspa.org/ ... ) WSPA and Big Oil wield their power in five major ways: through (1) lobbying; (2) campaign spending; (3) getting appointed to positions on and influencing regulatory panels; (4) creating Astroturf groups: and (5) working in collaboration with media. For my in-depth investigation on the five ways WSPA and Big Oil have captured California politics, go to: www.dailykos.com/? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: wspa_president_meme-1.png Type: image/png Size: 56661 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jun 22 09:03:54 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 16:03:54 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Melting_snow=2C_water_releases_and_La_Nin?= =?utf-8?q?a_complicate_California=E2=80=99s_drought_picture?= References: <1600057201.2537774.1466611434649.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1600057201.2537774.1466611434649.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.redding.com/news/local/melting-snow-water-releases-and-la-nina-complicate-californias-drought-picture-35b82d9b-9b05-5f05-e0-383707081.html LOCAL NEWS Melting snow, water releases and La Nina complicate California?s drought picture Posted:?June 20, 20160 CommentsBy Ryan Sabalow and Phillip Reese, Sacramento BeeFederal officials have begun releasing more water from Shasta Dam following nearly two weeks of pressure from California's powerful farming lobby and members of Congress who argued that too much water was being held back to protect endangered fish.The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and federal fisheries officials on June 17 adopted a temporary plan that would increase the amount of water rushing down the Sacramento River below Shasta Dam from 8,000 cubic feet per second to 9,000 for the rest of June, spokesman Shane Hunt said Monday."We need to start increasing releases to meet our commitments to our contractors," Hunt said.The news led to sighs of relief throughout the state's agricultural industry, since it means there will be more water for crops in the short term, particularly for rice farmers in the Sacramento Valley.However, Federal officials still haven't formalized a plan to protect endangered salmon and smelt later this summer by managing water behind Shasta and other Sacramento Valley dams. The lack of a formal plan has left growers anxious they won't get enough water going into the hottest months. Environmentalists worry that fish won't get the water they need to stave off extinction.Hunt said he hopes an agreement will be finalized sometime this week.After two years of fallowing fields, rice farmers in the Sacramento Valley significantly ramped up planting this spring. Heavy storms this winter fueled expectations that water deliveries were returning to normal. But some farmers have said Sacramento River flows are lower than expected, and they're concerned about having enough water to sustain their crops. More water from Shasta could help.The additional flows also could help San Joaquin Valley farmers reliant on water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta."It's good news for the entire state," said Johnny Amaral, deputy general manager for the sprawling Westlands Water District in the San Joaquin Valley. "It's not just good for us. It's good news for the people who drink water or use water. ... I would say level heads have prevailed."Environmentalists countered that increased releases from Shasta could threaten endangered fish that need cool water in the Sacramento River to survive. Maintaining a deeper pool of water behind Shasta makes for colder water. The idea is to release that colder water later in the summer and early fall, when critically endangered winter-run salmon make their annual return to their spawning grounds below the dam. Releasing water now could mean less cool water available later.The past two summers, excessively warm water in the Sacramento River killed off nearly all of the juvenile Chinook. Scientists say a third year of die-offs could mean the extinction of the winter-run as a wild species.Jon Rosenfield, a conservation biologist at the nonprofit Bay Institute of San Francisco, said not maintaining cool temperatures in the Sacramento River "would push the winter run Chinook salmon very close to extinction."He noted that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has confidently increased water releases from Shasta in prior years, only to later fail to hold temperatures down."I'm dubious that they actually know they have enough water," Rosenfield said. "It's an irreversible thing ? once the water is released, it can't be put back. The damage done to the fish is irreversible, particularly if they go extinct."The increase in Shasta releases follows a June 9 letter from 15 members of Congress from California urging the Obama administration to reject two dam-management proposals they said could hurt the state's water supply.The first proposal involves keeping a substantial amount of water in Shasta Lake until summer to protect juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon. The second plan aims to rescue the Delta smelt, which also teeter on the brink of extinction.The plan for Shasta could have implications for Folsom Lake, since it may mean a second year in which regulators draw more heavily on Sacramento region's primary drinking water reservoir to help control salinity levels in the Delta.The Bureau of Reclamation, which operates dams in the federal government's Central Valley Project, is considering letting more water flow to the Pacific Ocean through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta this summer to protect the smelt.State and federal dam operators are required to maintain flows that ensure downstream fish survive. They're also required to ensure that enough fresh water flows through the Delta to keep seawater from rushing into the estuary and compromising salinity levels. The fresh water pumped from the Delta helps provide irrigation for millions of acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley and drinking water for 25 million residents.Friday's action to release more water from Shasta comes amid fairly bleak news from state officials about the snowmelt, which provides a substantial portion of the state's summer water supply. In addition, federal forecasters say California faces a 75 percent chance of a potentially dry La Ni?a weather pattern during the fall and winter.The Sierra snowpack has all but disappeared, state officials say. The vast majority of the Sierras has no measurable snow. The snowline in Yosemite National Park sits at roughly 10,000 feet, mostly covering just a portion of the eastern side of the park.Normally at this time of year, the Sierra has an average of about 3.3 inches of snow-water content. As of Monday, it averaged 0.1 inches.It has not been abnormally warm in the Sierras. At the South Lake Tahoe airport, average high temperatures in May were 61 degrees; so far in June they have been 72 degrees, almost even with the historical average, federal data show.At the Yosemite National Park ranger station, average high temperatures were 72 in May and 81 so far in June, also on par with historical averages.But the mountains did not get much snow after the start of April. The Central Sierra received the equivalent of about five inches of precipitation between April 1 and Monday, a couple of inches below average, state data show.Late season precipitation can keep snowpack around longer. On April 1, 2010, the central Sierra had a similar amount of snow as it did on the same date this year. But after 11 inches of precipitation in April and May 2010, snow lingered that year into early July.Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville, the state's two largest reservoirs, remain above average levels for this time of year, state figures show. Folsom Lake and Don Pedro Reservoir are near average levels. All told, eight of the state's 12 major reservoirs are above 75 percent of average for this time of year.All of California is abnormally dry, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center. Almost 43 percent of the state is either in extreme or exceptional drought. One year ago, about 71 percent of the state was in extreme or exceptional drought.The most parched area stretches from around Fresno County in the north to Orange County in the south. Most of Sacramento County is in severe drought, one step below extreme drought.Hunt, the Bureau of Reclamation spokesman, said that the state is far better shape this year than it was last year, and there's hope that the water in the Sacramento Valley reservoirs could carry over to next year."We haven't had that since probably 2011," Hunt said. "We're hoping we can work through everything and keep some water in Folsom. I'm optimistic right now." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu Jun 23 19:46:26 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 19:46:26 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Sacramento Judge Rules Delta Plan Is "Invalid" In-Reply-To: References: <47C89CA4F16BD844A23D20A88B3AF39243F216F8@057-SN2MPN1-061.057d.mgd.msft.net> <079301d1cbbe$2a52cfb0$7ef86f10$@gmail.com> <4F353683-BF9C-4807-A640-162890470BB9@icloud.com> Message-ID: <974A8049-FC57-4A24-B333-E33B6CE536F8@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/23/1541929/-Sacramento-Judge-Rules-Delta-Plan-Is-Invalid https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/06/23/18787985.php Photo of the Sacramento River at Clarksburg by Dan Bacher. Sacramento Judge Rules Delta Plan Is "Invalid" by Dan Bacher Judge Michael Kenny of the Sacramento Superior Court today ruled that the Delta Plan is "invalid" after a successful legal challenge by multiple Delta parties who argued that the controversial plan is not protective of the water quality or the fish species that depend on fresh water flows for their survival. The Court, in its tentative ruling vacating the plan, said the Delta Stewardship Council must redo the Delta Plan to include a number of quantitative measures of performance, including reduced reliance on the Delta for future water needs by exporters. Since the Delta Plan relied heavily on Governor Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels Plan, now called the California WaterFix, to achieve its goals, Delta and public trust advocates see this as significant victory that will delay the twin tunnels for years. The Delta Plan was required by the 2009 Delta Reform Act. It was to establish new rules that would further the state?s "coequal goals" for the Delta: "Improve statewide water supply reliability, and protect and restore a vibrant and healthy Delta ecosystem, all in a manner that preserves, protects and enhances the unique agricultural, cultural, and recreational characteristics of the Delta." In his decision, Judge Kenny said: ?To be clear, the Delta Plan is invalid and must be set aside until proper revisions are completed. As Respondent itself argued previously, in light of an invalid Delta Plan, there is no proposed project, and consequently nothing before the Court to review under CEQA. The Court does not believe that piece- meal CEQA review is feasible under circumstances in which significant Plan revisions are required.? Representatives of groups who participated in the lawsuits against the weak protections in the Delta Plan hailed the decision. They plan to issue a full press release on Friday, June 24. ?The court invalidated the Delta Plan because it blatantly failed to comply with the law and, consequently, was not protective of the Delta," said Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA). "The Plan failed to mandate specific requirements that would reduce reliance on the Delta, provide for more natural flows, reduce harm from invasive species or increase water supply reliability though increased regional self-sufficiency." "The order will require major changes in the Plan that will reverberate though-out the document necessitating new environmental review. This will delay WaterFix?s efforts to construct the Delta tunnels by years and force the state and federal contractors to reassess whether they wish to expend tens of billions of dollars for a project that will supply less water from the Delta," explained Jennings. Tim Stroshane, policy analyst with Restore the Delta (RTD), said, ?Judge Kenny has told the state that the Delta Reform Act means what it says. The Delta Stewardship Council must go back to the drawing board with the Delta Plan and actually require numeric measures that must reduce reliance on the Delta water. This decision will force reductions in reliance on Delta waters by Metropolitan Water District, Santa Clara Valley Water District, Westlands Water District, Kern County Water Agency, and Alameda County?s Zone 7 Water Agency on the Delta, for their future water needs.? In a statement, Jessica Pearson, Executive Officer of the Delta Stewardship Council, said they were "disappointed" with the ruling. "While the Sacramento Superior Court?s May 19th ruling upheld significant aspects of the Council?s Delta Plan, the tentative ruling from today unfortunately moves to set aside the Delta Plan until specified revisions are completed," Pearson stated. "At the same time, the Court validated the Council?s role in creating an enforceable Delta Plan, and the Council?s use of best available science to set direction for the Delta." "While the Council is still considering the full implications of the ruling, we are disappointed that the Court chose to invalidate the entire Delta Plan because of what it identified as inadequacies in two discrete areas: ? The lack of legally enforceable, quantifiable targets for achieving reduced Delta reliance, reduced harm from invasive species, restoring more natural flows and increased water supply reliability, and ? Inadequate ?promotion? of options to improve the way water projects move water across the Delta." For the complete statement from the Council, go to: https://mavensnotebook.com/2016/06/23/this-just-in-delta-stewardship-council-issues-statement-on-courts-tentative-delta-plan-ruling/' If constructed, the Delta Tunnels would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperiling the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. A broad coalition of fishing groups, conservation organizations, Tribal leaders, family farmers, environmental justice advocates, Delta residents and elected officials opposes Governor Brown's California Water Fix. The project is designed to ship massive quantities of northern California water to corporate agribusiness interests irrigating drainage impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies conducting fracking and other extreme oil extraction methods. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Sacramento River.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 357063 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Sat Jun 25 07:43:52 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2016 14:43:52 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Yurok, Karuk tribes threaten feds with lawsuit over Klamath salmon References: <1911434040.1157556.1466865832967.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1911434040.1157556.1466865832967.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/environment-and-nature/20160624/yurok-karuk-tribes-threaten-feds-with-lawsuit-over-klamath-salmon Yurok, Karuk tribes threaten feds with lawsuit over Klamath salmon The Yurok and Karuk tribes announced their intention to sue two federal agencies on Friday for alleged violations of the Endangered Species Act unless they take action to provide more spring flows for coho salmon (pictured) on the Klamath River.?courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationBy?Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardPOSTED:?06/24/16, 9:13 PM PDT?|?UPDATED: 5 HRS AGO# COMMENTSThis Aug. 21, 2009 file photo shows Iron Gate Dam spanning the Klamath River near Hornbrook, California. Three tribes ? Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley ? are calling on two federal agencies to release more dam water in the spring and winter to flush fish parasites that infected as many as 91 percent of juvenile salmon, including threatened coho salmon, in 2014 and 2015.Jeff Barnard ? The Associated PressThe Karuk and Yurok tribes are planning to sue two federal agencies for what they perceive to be a failure to protect threatened juvenile coho salmon from deadly parasitic outbreaks on the Klamath River in 2014 and 2015.The tribes blamed the agencies? management of Klamath River flows for allowing more than 90 percent of juvenile salmon to become infected by the parasite in 2015 and a nearly identical number in 2014.?These irresponsible management decisions will create destructive consequences that will be felt by our children, our grandchildren and many future generations,? Yurok Tribal Council Chairman Thomas O?Rourke said in a statement.In a March 2016 letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the National Marine Fisheries Service stated that higher disease risk is expected in dry years and that it is considering to allow more fish to be infected during these drier periods before changes to river management will be considered.The tribes? 60-day notice sent to the U.S. Interior Department?s Bureau of Reclamation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service on Friday intends to initiate discussions of possible solutions before a lawsuit is ever filed.Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Policy Advocate Craig Tucker said the ultimate solution to these disease outbreaks is removing four hydroelectric dams along the river, but said that water releases from the dams can prevent further outbreaks in the meantime.?Until we remove the dams we can?t solve the problem, but we can use flows to help manage the problem and that?s what we need the (Bureau of Reclamation) to do,? Tucker said.National Marine Fisheries Service spokesman Michael Milstein said the agency is amenable to discussing the tribes? concerns.?We?re currently reviewing the notice and, like the tribes, we remain concerned about the health of salmon in the Klamath River,? he wrote in an email to the Times-Standard on Friday. ?We look forward to further discussion about the points the tribes have raised.?Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region Deputy Public Affairs Officer Wilbert ?Louis? Moore declined to comment due to the pending litigation.The notice of intent from the Karuk and Yurok tribes comes nearly a month after the?Hoopa Valley Tribe sent a notice of intent?to the same two federal agencies in May outlining the same concerns. Tucker said the two cases are not connected, though a judge may join them if the lawsuits are eventually filed.The three tribes are united in their claim that the federal agencies violated the federal Endangered Species Act by allowing high numbers of juvenile coho salmon to become infected by a microscopic intestinal parasite known as Ceratomyxa shasta in 2014 and 2015. Coho salmon in the lower Klamath River are listed as a threatened species under the act.During those years, as many as 91 percent of juvenile coho and Chinook salmon were infected by the parasite and likely died from it, Tucker said. Due to the small size of the young fish, Tucker said the die-off was not as ?dramatic to the eye? as an adult salmon die-off where fish carcasses line the banks of the river.The intestinal parasite differs from the gill parasite known as ?ich? which was found to have infected adult fall-run salmon on the Klamath River in 2014 and 2015 ? the first time since the 2002 ?ich? outbreak that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of fish on the river.The National Marine Fisheries Services addressed the intestinal parasite in a 2013 biological opinion to the Bureau of Reclamation. Under that opinion, up to 49 percent of juvenile salmon in the Klamath River are allowed be infected by Ceratomyxa shasta as a result of the bureau?s dam operations. If the infection rates climb above 49 percent, the Bureau of Reclamation is obligated to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service to discuss possible changes of operations.?If fish disease gets too high, you have to go back to the drawing board,? Tucker said.After the disease outbreaks in 2014 and early 2015, the Bureau of Reclamation upheld its obligations and wrote to the National Marine Fisheries Service seeking consultation about the ?unprecedented, multi-year drought conditions? on the river.Nine months later, the National Marine Fisheries Service responded stating that its biological opinion remained valid as it is ?expected that environmental conditions during consecutive dry years would be particularly poor and associated disease risks would be higher.?The service also stated that it plans to revise the biological opinion before April 2017, specifically revising how many salmon would be allowed to be harmed or killed by the parasite in drier, low-flow years.Tucker equated this to ?changing the rules of the game at half-time.??You can?t just say it?s OK when it?s really dry to kill all the fish,? he said. ?The whole reason we have an Endangered Species Act is to take care of these species when times are bad.?To prevent future parasitic outbreaks, the tribes are calling for the federal agencies to draft a plan that would schedule water releases from Iron Gate Dam in the spring and winter in order to flush out the parasites before they are able to latch on to juvenile salmon. Tucker said a water release from the Iron Gate Dam earlier this year showed improvements to juvenile fish.?The Bureau of Reclamation is currently developing a long-term plan for lower Klamath River salmon populations, which would include set protocol for how and when more water should be released from dams to prevent outbreaks of fish diseases and parasites. However, the tribes are seeking water releases on a much quicker timeline.For the Karuk and Yurok tribes, the success of the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement will be paramount to ending these disease outbreaks, which occur more readily in warm, low-flowing waters. The agreement proposes to remove four hydroelectric dams from the river by 2020 to improve flows and fish habitat.?Hoopa Valley Tribal Fisheries Director Mike Orcutt said the agreement would have positive impacts to water quality, but said that there are still several issues to overcome such as water sharing with Klamath Basin irrigators and water quality within the upper basin.?We?re not putting our eggs in one basket,? Orcutt said.The agreement is set to be submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for consideration next month.With drought conditions lifting in most of Humboldt County and other parts of the North Coast, Tucker and Orcutt said that river conditions are looking more favorable for fish overall. However, the river?s had one of its lowest predicted runs of fall Chinook salmon since at least 1992. This has resulted in the Yurok Tribe forgoing all commercial salmon fishing in 2016, according to the tribe?s news release.?Due to the die-offs of juvenile salmon over the past few years, Tucker said these low runs will likely be common on the Klamath River for future seasons.?The reason we?re having these low runs is directly related to these disease issues,? he said.Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jun 28 15:04:29 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 22:04:29 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Small farmer to Westlands management: time for transformation References: <887558152.540880.1467151469166.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <887558152.540880.1467151469166.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article84837882.html Small farmer to Westlands management: time for transformation Westlands farmers should be demanding transparency and restoration of trustIn the face of challenges that require new leadership grounded in solid policy, we are instead made to suffer a series of embarrassing gimmicks.The farmers I know cannot operate their farms in such a slipshod manner and survive, so why are we allowing such management practices?Brad Gleason?Ryan JonesBY BRAD GLEASON - - - - - - I am a farmer in the Westlands Water District. That is not an easy thing to admit these days.My acres there aren?t vast, nor do I wield much power. I have never sat on the board of directors. Like other smaller farmers in Westlands, I?ve had to accept the reality that the direction of the district ? misguided as it has been of late ? is beyond my control.But that doesn?t mean I don?t have a voice. For the past several years, I?ve been speaking out in private meetings with my fellow growers. Now, given the district?s bent toward secrecy and its habit of shooting itself in the foot, I am choosing to speak out publicly.Let?s start with Westland?s reason for existence. The district is there to advocate for its farmers. I am not an enemy of the environment or the Delta. I understand the importance of our fisheries. At the same time, I think we have a righteous case for receiving water as part of the Central Valley Project.What people tend to forget is that the project itself was built in the 1940s in the name of agriculture. The premise was to redistribute some of the state?s water from its flood-prone north and move it to productive soils in the middle.Among our 600,000 acres in Westlands is some of the most fertile soil in the world. Yes, some of it is plagued with salts and selenium, but much of it isn?t. And that distinction gets lost on the public, in part because the present leaders of Westlands keep making foolish decisions that allow us to be portrayed as the big, bad water guzzler of California.The blame lies squarely with our general manager, Tom Birmingham, and a handful of longtime board members who continue to support him even in the wake of news stories that paint Westlands as manipulative, self-serving and, in some cases, highly unethical.Last December, The New York Times ran a front-page story revealing that the district had spent nearly $1 million to prop up a lobbying group called El Agua. The intention of the group is to add the voice of Latino farmworkers to the debate over severe cutbacks in water deliveries to Fresno County?s west side ? a worthy goal but less so when it seems that the puppet master behind the scenes is Westlands.Like many readers, I was surprised to learn that such large sums of money were spent by Westlands to support a front group. And I have been disappointed that public efforts to find out more about the relationship between El Agua and Westlands have been stymied by a lack of transparency on the part of our leadership. Secrecy is not what we need right now.?Then in March, I learned from news accounts that the Securities and Exchange Commission had handed down a penalty of $125,000 to the district and even fined Birmingham $50,000 for issuing misleading financial information crucial for the district?s bond financing.?Birmingham, who serves as both general manager and general legal counsel, stated publicly that the district used ?a little Enron accounting? to help achieve debt-coverage ratios. That is not so funny or smart for someone holding down the fort.Then last week, I picked up the newspaper only to learn that the management of Westlands saw fit to loan $1.4 million, at a ridiculously low interest rate, to a senior-level employee so he could buy a luxury house in Northern California. The interest rate is below 1 percent, and the loan has extended for several years after the initial due date passed.The farmers I know cannot operate their farms in such a slipshod manner and survive. So why are we allowing such management practices during a time when we have endured federal water allocations of just 5 percent of our contract this year and zero percent in the two previous years?Perhaps you?re thinking that somehow the government and indirectly your taxes underwrites all this mismanagement. Not a chance. In fact, it comes from monies charged to me and every other grower in the form of assessments and land based charges.?We should be demanding transparency and restoration of trust. In the face of challenges that require new leadership grounded in solid policy, we are instead made to suffer a series of embarrassing gimmicks.I am proud of the transformation that has taken place in the soil of Westlands over the past two decades. Most of the water we receive now goes to growing high-value nuts, fruits and vegetables that, unlike cotton or grains, receive no federal crop subsidies.Now it is time for a similar transformation to take place in our management. The Central Valley Project succeeded beyond the wildest predictions in turning the fertile soil of Westlands into some of the world?s most productive farms. That story, sadly, has been lost in all these shenanigans.Brad Gleason of Fresno farms and owns acreage in Westlands Water District near Coalinga. Write to him at?bgleason at westhillsfarms.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jun 28 14:59:54 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 21:59:54 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Westlands Water District to split top jobs amid missteps, criticism References: <837322851.544327.1467151194568.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <837322851.544327.1467151194568.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.fresnobee.com/news/business/agriculture/article86330937.html Westlands Water District to split top jobs amid missteps, criticism Westlands General Manager Tom Birmingham will no longer serve dual role as general counselDistrict?s board searching for new legal representationBirmingham will remain the general managerWestlands Water District?s Tom Birmingham speaks during a meeting with farmers in 2013.?MARK CROSSE?Fresno Bee Staff PhotoBY RORY APPLETONrappleton at fresnobee.com - - - - - LINKEDIN - GOOGLE+ - PINTEREST - REDDIT - PRINT - ORDER REPRINT OF THIS STORY Westlands Water District, which has come under fire from farmers and the federal government over its financial and other dealings, has decided it no longer wants its general manager to also function as the district?s top lawyer, agency officials said Monday.Tom Birmingham will no longer serve as both general manager and general counsel of Fresno-based Westlands, the largest agricultural water district in the nation. He will remain as general manager, but the board is seeking new legal representation, said Westlands board President Don Peracchi.??The board concluded that the complexities involved in securing water supply, groundwater management and other challenges facing the district require the full attention of the general manager,? Peracchi said.?Birmingham has served as the general manager since 2000. He had served as general counsel concurrently from October 2000 to May 2010, when the district hired former Assistant Secretary of the Interior Craig Manson as its legal representation. Manson, also a former Sacramento County superior court judge, retired in August 2015, and Birmingham was re-appointed general counsel.?Peracchi said the change will ?promote more transparency and good government practices, and represents the beginning of a process to improve the decision-making and operations of the district.?The district has faced criticism and more recently over transparency and its governing practices.?The Securities and Exchange Commission?fined Westlands $150,000 in March?for allegedly misrepresenting its revenues and debts during the sale of bonds in 2012. It also fined Birmingham $50,000 for negligence related to Westlands? violation.?The Associated Press?reported on June 9?that in 2007 Westlands gave then-assistant general manager Jason Peltier a $1.4 million loan at a low interest rate to buy a riverfront home in Walnut Grove, south of Sacramento. The loan has not been repaid. Westlands told the AP that the deal was legal and had not been disclosed publicly because it was made during a closed-session board meeting.?Westlands spokeswoman Gayle Holman said the move to separate job functions was not designed to punish Birmingham, but rather it will allow him to focus on the challenges surrounding supplying water to 600,000 acres of farmland ? about one-third of which has been left fallow due to lack of water.?Brad Gleason, a Fresno County farmer and Westlands customer, has been?an outspoken critic?of the district?s leadership during a difficult time for the central San Joaquin Valley.?If the board is headed on the wrong path due to someone like the general manager, the counsel can tell them,? Gleason said Monday. ?When you have the same person in both capacities, the board doesn?t get that proper segregation of duties.?Gleason believes some of Westlands? recent issues may not have happened if its board had ?another set of eyes and ears to advise? it. He added that the board still has more work to do.??The board needs to continue to evaluate the capabilities of its leadership, and, given the challenges, make a case that they have the right person making decisions.?Rory Appleton:?559-441-6015,?@RoryDoesPhonics -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Jun 27 11:46:57 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 11:46:57 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Westlands Board Relieves Tom Birmingham of General Counsel Duties In-Reply-To: <10874094-069B-4442-81BC-A07730671C0C@fishsniffer.com> References: <2B21287D-9114-4181-8642-3DB41B3772E0@fishsniffer.com> <6CDE6A7E-5E2A-4049-ADFE-0EF3D1C288B5@fishsniffer.com> <215CF792-1174-444C-86FE-C05ADFB153A1@fishsniffer.com> <2DA33C7A-5403-420B-8253-D6619418FE28@fishsniffer.com> <10874094-069B-4442-81BC-A07730671C0C@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/27/1542932/-Westlands-Board-Relieves-Tom-Birmingham-of-General-Counsel-Duties Westlands Board Relieves Tom Birmingham of General Counsel Duties by Dan Bacher Looking for a job? The scandal-ridden Westlands Water District, considered the ?Darth Vader? of California water politics by Tribes, fishermen and environmentalists, is hiring a new general counsel. The announcement came after the Westlands Board of Directors reported stripping Tom Birmingham, who has served as both the district?s general manager and general counsel, of his general counsel duties. ?The Westlands Water District Board of Directors decided to separate the role of General Manager and General Counsel in order to improve the District's decision-making processes and provide an additional layer of review for the District,? said Don Peracchi, President of the Westlands Board of Directors, in a statement. ?The Legal Affairs Committee of the Board will immediately begin a search to hire a new General Counsel.? The Board concluded that ?the complexities involved in securing water supply, groundwater management, and other challenges facing the District require the full attention of the General Manager.? The new General Counsel will have the responsibility of providing legal advice on proposed changes to existing policies, new policies, personnel matters, and any other matters requested by the Board, according to Peracchi. ?The Board believes the new organizational structure will promote more transparency and good government practices, and represents the beginning of a process to improve the decision-making and operations of the District.? he explained. Westlands has been embroiled in a numbers of scandals in recent months. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on March 10 charged Westlands, California?s largest agricultural water district, with ?misleading investors? about its financial condition as it issued a $77 million bond offering. In addition to charging the district, the SEC also charged Birmingham and former assistant general manager Louie David Ciapponi with misleading investors about its financial condition. ?Birmingham jokingly referred to these transactions as ?a little Enron accounting? when describing them to the board of directors, which is comprised of Westlands customers,? the SEC reported. Westlands agreed to pay $125,000 to settle the charges, making it only the second municipal issuer to pay a financial penalty in an SEC enforcement action. Birmingham agreed to pay a penalty of $50,000 and Ciapponi agreed to pay a penalty of $20,000 to settle the charges against them. And then this month, the Associated Press reported that Westlands loaned $1.4 million at 0.84% interest to Jason Peltier, the district?s former deputy general manager, to buy a riverfront home on the Sacramento River. Nine years later, Peltier?s loan is still unpaid. (http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-ap-exclusive-water-giant-gave-14m-loan-to-official-2016-6 ) On December 31, 2005, the New York Times revealed that Westlands had dumped over $1.1 million into a classic Astrourf group, El Agua Es Asunto de Todos? Water Is Everybody?s Business. The group purports to represent the ?Latino? voice while promoting the diversion of more Delta water for corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. (www.nytimes.com/...) Westlands is one of main backers of the Governor Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels Plan, dubbed the ?California WaterFix,? a project that will hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species. The water district is also one of the main recipients of water from the Trinity River, the largest tributary of the Klamath River, via the Central Valley Project?s Trinity and Whiskeytown reservoirs. Westlands has frequently clashed in court with the Hoopa Valley, Yurok and Karuk Tribes and fishing groups over its attempts to block river flows needed to stop fish kills on the Klamath in recent years. Westlands played a role in the fish kill of September 2002, when over 68,000 adult salmon perished in the lower Klamath on the Yurok Indian Reservation in the largest fish kill of its kind in U.S. history. A lawsuit filed by Westlands and other agencies blocked the needed release of cold water down the river at a time when it was needed to alleviate the impacts of the fishery disaster. The capture of the regulatory apparatus in California by Westlands and other corporate agribusiness interests was exemplified by the Department of Water Resources? hiring of Susan Ramos "on loan" from the Westlands Water District to serve as "a liaison between all relevant parties" surrounding the Delta Habitat Conservation and Conveyance Program (DHCCP) and provide "technical and strategic assistance" to DWR. (www.indybay.org/...) Documents obtained by this reporter under the California Public Records Act revealed that Ramos, the Deputy General Manager of Westlands at the time, was hired in an "inter-jurisdictional personal exchange agreement" between the Department of Water Resources and Westlands from November 15, 2009 through December 31, 2010. The contract was extended to run through December 31, 2011 and again to continue through December 31, 2012. Westlands and other corporate agribusiness, much like the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and Big Oil, have captured state and federal regulators to promote their anti-environmental agenda, exposing California?s reputation as the nation?s ?green leader? to be nothing more than a big, unfounded myth. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: district-map-2014-11-10a.png Type: image/png Size: 21641 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Jun 24 10:39:24 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 10:39:24 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Sacramento Judge Tosses Out Delta Plan In-Reply-To: <2DA33C7A-5403-420B-8253-D6619418FE28@fishsniffer.com> References: <2B21287D-9114-4181-8642-3DB41B3772E0@fishsniffer.com> <6CDE6A7E-5E2A-4049-ADFE-0EF3D1C288B5@fishsniffer.com> <215CF792-1174-444C-86FE-C05ADFB153A1@fishsniffer.com> <2DA33C7A-5403-420B-8253-D6619418FE28@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/06/24/sacramento-judge-tosses-out-delta-plan/ Photo of the Sacramento River at Clarksburg by Dan Bacher. Sacramento Judge Tosses Out Delta Plan by Dan Bacher Judge Michael Kenny of the Sacramento Superior Court on June 23 ruled that the Delta Plan is "invalid" after a successful legal challenge by multiple Delta parties who argued that the controversial plan doesn't protect water quality or the many fish species that depend on fresh water flows for their survival. The Court, in its tentative ruling vacating the plan, said the Delta Stewardship Council must rewrite the Delta Plan to include a number of quantitative measures of performance, including reduced reliance on the Delta for future water needs by exporters. Since the Delta Plan relied heavily on Governor Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels Plan, now called the California WaterFix, to achieve its goals, Delta and public trust advocates see this as significant victory that will delay the twin tunnels for years. The Delta Plan was required by the 2009 Delta Reform Act, a law designed to implement the two "coequal goals" of providing a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Delta ecosystem. "The coequal goals shall be achieved in a manner that protects and enhances the unique cultural, recreational, natural resource, and agricultural values of the Delta as an evolving place," according to the Act. In his decision, Judge Kenny said: ?To be clear, the Delta Plan is invalid and must be set aside until proper revisions are completed. As Respondent itself argued previously, in light of an invalid Delta Plan, there is no proposed project, and consequently nothing before the Court to review under CEQA. The Court does not believe that piece- meal CEQA review is feasible under circumstances in which significant Plan revisions are required.? Representatives of groups who participated in the lawsuits against the weak protections in the Delta Plan praised the tentative ruling. They plan to issue a full press release on Friday, June 24. ?The court invalidated the Delta Plan because it blatantly failed to comply with the law and, consequently, was not protective of the Delta," said Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA). "The Plan failed to mandate specific requirements that would reduce reliance on the Delta, provide for more natural flows, reduce harm from invasive species or increase water supply reliability though increased regional self-sufficiency." "The order will require major changes in the Plan that will reverberate though-out the document necessitating new environmental review. This will delay WaterFix?s efforts to construct the Delta tunnels by years and force the state and federal contractors to reassess whether they wish to expend tens of billions of dollars for a project that will supply less water from the Delta," explained Jennings. Tim Stroshane, policy analyst with Restore the Delta (RTD), said, ?Judge Kenny has told the state that the Delta Reform Act means what it says. The Delta Stewardship Council must go back to the drawing board with the Delta Plan and actually require numeric measures that must reduce reliance on the Delta water. This decision will force reductions in reliance on Delta waters by Metropolitan Water District, Santa Clara Valley Water District, Westlands Water District, Kern County Water Agency, and Alameda County?s Zone 7 Water Agency on the Delta, for their future water needs.? In a statement, Jessica Pearson, Executive Officer of the Delta Stewardship Council, said the Council is "disappointed" with the ruling. "While the Sacramento Superior Court?s May 19th ruling upheld significant aspects of the Council?s Delta Plan, the tentative ruling from today unfortunately moves to set aside the Delta Plan until specified revisions are completed," Pearson stated. "At the same time, the Court validated the Council?s role in creating an enforceable Delta Plan, and the Council?s use of best available science to set direction for the Delta." "While the Council is still considering the full implications of the ruling, we are disappointed that the Court chose to invalidate the entire Delta Plan because of what it identified as inadequacies in two discrete areas," said Pearson. These two "discrete areas" are: ? The lack of legally enforceable, quantifiable targets for achieving reduced Delta reliance, reduced harm from invasive species, restoring more natural flows and increased water supply reliability, and ? Inadequate promotion of options to improve the way water projects move water across the Delta. Pearson said an appeal of Judge Kenny's decision is likely. "The Delta remains in crisis and now isn?t the time to set aside the State?s only comprehensive management plan for the Delta. Because of this, the Council likely will appeal," she said. For the complete statement from the Council, go to: https://mavensnotebook.com/2016/06/23/this-just-in-delta-stewardship-council-issues-statement-on-courts-tentative-delta-plan-ruling/ If constructed, the Delta Tunnels would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperiling the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. A broad coalition of fishing groups, conservation organizations, Tribal leaders, family farmers, environmental justice advocates, Delta residents and elected officials opposes Governor Brown's California Water Fix. The project is designed to ship massive quantities of northern California water to corporate agribusiness interests irrigating drainage impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies conducting fracking and other extreme oil extraction methods. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Sacramento River.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 357063 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jun 29 09:57:07 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 16:57:07 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: The Trinity County RCD is hiring In-Reply-To: <022401d1d223$db578790$920696b0$@tcrcd.net> References: <022401d1d223$db578790$920696b0$@tcrcd.net> Message-ID: <1202967731.969875.1467219427600.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Hi Everyone, ?Trinity County Resource Conservation District is accepting applications for a Project Coordinator I/II. This is a full-time supervisory position with paid leave and medical benefits. The Project Coordinator I/II will help develop, promote and implement resource conservation projects for vegetation management, native plant nursery maintenance, habitat restoration, forest health, fuels reduction and watershed stewardship projects. Applications will be accepted until 4:00 pm, July 22, 2016. To apply mail resum? and cover letter to Trinity County RCD, Attn: Personnel, PO Box 1450, Weaverville, CA 96093, or email to ksheen at tcrcd.net, or bring to TCRCD, #30 Horseshoe Lane, Weaverville. Call (530) 623-6004 or visit www.tcrcd.net for more information. ?Shiloe Braxton: District ManagerTrinity County Resource Conservation DistrictPhone:(530) 623-6004?? Mobile:(530) 638-5159 ? #yiv4367474648 #yiv4367474648 -- filtered {panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}#yiv4367474648 filtered {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}#yiv4367474648 filtered {panose-1:2 11 10 4 2 1 2 2 2 4;}#yiv4367474648 p.yiv4367474648MsoNormal, #yiv4367474648 li.yiv4367474648MsoNormal, #yiv4367474648 div.yiv4367474648MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:11.0pt;}#yiv4367474648 a:link, #yiv4367474648 span.yiv4367474648MsoHyperlink {color:#0563C1;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv4367474648 a:visited, #yiv4367474648 span.yiv4367474648MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:#954F72;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv4367474648 span.yiv4367474648EmailStyle17 {color:windowtext;}#yiv4367474648 .yiv4367474648MsoChpDefault {}#yiv4367474648 filtered {margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}#yiv4367474648 div.yiv4367474648WordSection1 {}#yiv4367474648 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Project CoordinatorI-II_Vacancy_Announcement.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 107475 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jun 30 08:14:55 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2016 15:14:55 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Video on Trinity River water/fish issues References: <663339269.1451012.1467299695300.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <663339269.1451012.1467299695300.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> I think that this video was out last year, but if you didn't see it, go to:http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article86772792.html ?Tom Stokely?V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315 tstokely at att.net? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jun 30 08:26:45 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2016 15:26:45 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Shasta_water_release_plan_has_no_cutbacks?= =?utf-8?q?_to_farmers_=E2=80=93_for_now?= References: <114748264.1485347.1467300405667.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <114748264.1485347.1467300405667.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article86742377.html Shasta water release plan has no cutbacks to farmers ? for now Decision a victory for Central Valley growersFederal fisheries officials reverse their stanceCompromise still expected to save Chinook salmonrsabalow at sacbee.comAfter weeks of uncertainty and pressure from members of Congress, federal officials on Wednesday announced a plan for managing water releases from California?s largest reservoir this summer in a manner that will not involve cutbacks in farm water deliveries ? at least if all goes as hoped.?For more than a month, federal agencies have battled behind the scenes over how to balance the needs of California farms and two endangered fish species whose populations have been decimated by years of drought and environmental decline.?Federal fisheries officials ? who hold considerable sway over how the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation operates Shasta Dam and other federal reservoirs ? had been weighing whether to hold back substantial volumes of water at Shasta Lake into the summer to protect juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon. A companion proposal called for letting more water flow to the Pacific Ocean through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during summer, in hopes of bolstering survival rates for another species teetering on the brink of extinction, the Delta smelt.Both plans met with forceful opposition from Central Valley farmers, who rely heavily on Shasta water deliveries for irrigation. The proposals would have meant another year of curtailed deliveries during key portions of the growing season.ADVERTISINGInstead, the Shasta plan released Wednesday marked a victory for farm interests and a significant about-face for fisheries officials. Rather than the more drastic proposal under discussion, the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reverted to a model for operating Shasta Dam that stays the course for giving farmers more water deliveries than in recent years.?Agency officials said their compromise plan should still result in ample cool water to keep endangered winter-run Chinook from dying in the Sacramento River. The bureau will be required to closely monitor temperatures in Shasta Lake to ensure that cold-water releases are possible through summer and fall. If they determine that Shasta is too warm, they will cut back releases to ensure there is enough cool water for later in the year.?Barry Thom, a deputy regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, acknowledged in a letter signing off on the plan that, even with the monitoring, ?some temperature-dependent mortality is expected? for the winter-run Chinook.Reclamation spokesman Shane Hunt said the less drastic approach was justified following a relatively wet winter in Northern California after four dry years. The reservoir has almost twice as much water this year as it did last year, he said.But he noted that uncertainty remains for California?s water supply, and farm deliveries still could be curtailed if the bureau isn?t able to maintain stable temperatures.??It?s possible there could be changes,? Hunt said. ?That?s always a possibility.?Salmon fishing groups and environmentalists expressed disappointment in the more tepid approach outlined Wednesday, and also skepticism about the federal government?s commitment to rescuing endangered Delta fish.??They agreed to something earlier in the year that would have been more protective; they failed to make that, and now they?re falling back from that,? said Jonathan Rosenfield, a conservation biologist at the nonprofit Bay Institute of San Francisco. ?That?s not a good start.?In 2014, a similar scenario played out: Federal and state officials announced a plan to keep temperatures in key portions of the Sacramento River below 56 degrees, the point above which young salmon start to die. The bureau calculated that the water would be cold enough to ensure survival of 30 percent of the fish. But its calculations proved faulty, and only 5 percent of the juveniles lived.Last year was worse; water temperatures exceeded the maximum 1,600 times and only 3 percent of the juveniles survived.Earlier this year, with Shasta Lake temperatures yet again outpacing predictions, federal fisheries officials expressed frustration with the bureau?s forecasting models, and discussed setting even lower temperature requirements through summer to provide a cushion for the winter run?s survival.Concerned at the prospect of cutbacks, California?s powerful farm lobby and its congressional allies began pressuring the agencies to ensure that promises of increased water deliveries made to Central Valley farmers last spring would be met. On June 9, 15 House members from California sent a letter urging the Obama administration to reject the more stringent Shasta plan under discussion, saying it would cripple the state?s farming economy and possibly lead to water shortages for cities.?In addition, individual lawmakers followed up with the kind of personal lobbying that can amplify influence.Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, for instance, talked to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service, and Deputy Interior Secretary Michael L. Connor, a Westerner who has immersed himself in California water issues. The staff of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield was in contact with Bureau of Reclamation officials.On Wednesday, Costa celebrated the announcement of the revised Shasta proposal.?It is a fair outcome in a very challenging water year,? Costa said in a prepared statement, ?but now, it is incumbent upon the Bureau of Reclamation to meet these performance standards to ensure that communities in the San Joaquin Valley do not have their water supplies cut further, and that the third-year class of winter-run Chinook salmon is not put further at risk.?Michael Milstein, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said improved temperature monitoring this year, among other guarantees, should help avoid a crisis. ?We made some significant additions to the plan to ensure that the cold-water pool is protected for these fish,? he said.The Shasta operating plan is subject to approval by the State Water Resources Control Board. Spokesman Tim Moran said the board will hear an update at its July 6 meeting.Meanwhile, the federal government still has no formal plan to rescue the Delta smelt. Once the plan for Shasta ? the linchpin in the federal Central Valley Project ? is in place, Hunt said, officials will turn their attention to how other reservoirs could be managed this summer to aid in the species? survival.Ryan Sabalow:?916-321-1264,?@ryansabalow Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article86742377.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Jun 29 16:06:34 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 16:06:34 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Groups Expose The Big Lie: "There's No Plan B to Delta Tunnels" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/29/1543745/-Groups-Expose-The-Big-Lie-There-s-No-Plan-B-to-Delta-Tunnels Governor Jerry Brown greenwashes his image at a climate conference in Toronto as he promotes the Delta Tunnels, the most environmentally destructive public works projects in California history, along with pushing the expansion of fracking and overseeing water policies that are driving Delta smelt and salmon closer and closer to extinction, Photo Credit: Salvatore Sacco, Canadian Press Images . Groups Expose The Big Lie: "There's No Plan B to Delta Tunnels" by Dan Bacher On June 27, a coalition of conservation, fishing and environmental justice organizations submitted a letter to the Santa Clara Valley Water District exposing the ?Big Lie? that there is no Plan B to Governor Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels, now renamed the California WaterFix. In their letter, Restore the Delta, AquAlliance, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, California Water Impact Network, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Environmental Water Caucus, Friends of the River, Planning and Conservation League, and Sierra Club California revealed that there is indeed a Plan B ? a comprehensive, well-researched alternative plan to fulfill the dual goals of ecosystem restoration and water supply reliability. ?Our public interest organizations write out of concern that once again, the Big Lie has been repeated that there is no Plan B to the California Water Fix Delta Water Tunnels,? the groups wrote. ?In fact, there is an outstanding Plan B, and for that matter, other alternative plans as well to the Water Tunnels. The self-serving refusal of the proponents of the Water Tunnels to listen to or consider alternative plans does not mean there is no Plan B.? ?We presume that in many cases such as at your meeting on June 21, 2016, when Mr. Matt Maltbie of Californians for Water Security said there is no Plan B, the mistake is innocent and is caused by the continuing efforts of proponent government agencies to ignore and conceal alternatives to the Water Tunnels,? they said. The groups describe Governor Brown's WaterFix as ?the most damaging and controversial water project proposal in California history," as well as ?the most expensive water project proposal in California history.? They also pointed out that the 1970?s version of the Water Tunnels, then known as the peripheral canal, was voted down in a statewide referendum in June 1982 by a 2 to 1 margin. ?The Tunnels would divert enormous quantities of water from the Sacramento River upstream from the Delta near Clarksburg," the letter said. ?As a result of this massive diversion, the freshwater that presently flows through the Sacramento River and sloughs to and through the Bay-Delta before being diverted for export at the south Delta, would no longer reach the Delta. The benefits of those freshwater flows for Delta water flows and water quality, agriculture, industry, residents, and fish and fish habitat would be lost, with the impacts to humans falling particularly heavily on low-income people of color and California Indian Tribes.? ?We presented A Sustainable Water Plan for California (Environmental Water Caucus, May 2015) as a reasonable alternative to the Water Tunnels over a year ago. The plan is at: ewccalifornia.org/.... A copy of A Sustainable Water Plan for California is also attached hereto," the groups said. The actions called for by this alternative include: ? reducing exports to no more than 3,000,000 acre-feet in all years in keeping with State Water Board Delta flow criteria (for inflow as well as outflow); ? water efficiency and demand reduction programs including urban and agricultural water conservation, recycling, storm water recapture and reuse; ? reinforced levees above PL 84-99 standards; ? installation of improved fish screens at existing Delta pumps; ? elimination of irrigation water applied on up to 1.3 million acres of drainage-impaired farmlands south of the Bay-Delta; ? return the Kern Water Bank to State control; ? restore Article 18 urban preference; ? restore the original intent of Article 21 surplus water in SWP contracts; ? conduct feasibility study for Tulare Basin water storage; ? provide fish passage above and below Central Valley rim dams for species of concern; and ? retain cold water for fish in reservoirs. ?We also requested that the range of reasonable alternatives include reducing exports both more and less than the 3,000,000 acre feet limit called for by this alternative," the groups wrote. ?A Sustainable Water Plan for California is a carefully conceived modern, 21st- century Plan B. It should be Plan A.? You can read the entire letter here: restorethedelta.org/? The letter was sent at a time when the Delta Tunnels Plan is a state of chaos, disarray and apparent collapse. In a major defeat for the California WaterFix, Judge Michael Kenny of the Sacramento Superior Court on June 23 ruled that the Delta Stewardship Council's Delta Plan is "invalid" after a successful legal challenge by multiple Delta parties who argued that the controversial plan doesn't protect water quality or the many fish species that depend on fresh water flows for their survival. ?The decision throws a large monkey wrench into the administration?s ?California WaterFix,? a massive water conveyance scheme that would shunt most of the water from the Sacramento River to Southern California via two gigantic subterranean tunnels,? according to a press release from the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN). (www.dailykos.com/...) Background: Jerry Brown's Terrible Environmental Legacy The Governor's Delta Tunnels/California WaterFix "legacy project" poses a huge threat to the ecosystems of the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Klamath and Trinity River systems, but it?s not the only environmentally devastating policy promoted by Governor Jerry Brown. Brown is promoting the expansion of fracking and extreme oil extraction methods in California and is overseeing water policies that are driving winter run-Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt and other species closer and closer to extinction. Jerry Brown also oversaw the "completion" of so-called ?marine protected areas? under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, overseen by a Big Oil lobbyist and other corporate interests, in December 2012. These faux ?Yosemites of the Sea? fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling, fracking, pollution, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. As if those examples of Brown?s tainted environmental legacy weren?t enough, Brown has promoted carbon trading and REDD policies that pose an enormous threat to Indigenous Peoples around the globe; has done nothing to stop clearcutting of forests by Sierra-Pacific and other timber companies; presided over record water exports from the Delta in 2011; and oversaw massive fish kills of Sacramento splittail and other species in 2011. Brown spouts "green" rhetoric when he flies off to climate conferences and issues proclamations about John Muir Day and Earth Day, but his actions and policies regarding fish, water and the environment are among the worst of any Governor in recent California history. For more information about the real environmental record of Governor JerryBrown, go to: www.dailykos.com/? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: la4y60vh24krd.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 240374 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Jul 1 09:58:07 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2016 09:58:07 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] ICYMI - Deep Regulatory Capture Exposed: The Links between Delta Tunnels Plan and MLPA Initiative In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/06/15/18787581.php Photo of the Sacramento River at Clarksburg by Dan Bacher. sm_800_stop_the_tunnels.jpg original image (800x533) Deep Regulatory Capture Exposed: The Links between Delta Tunnels Plan and MLPA Initiative by Dan Bacher One of the least discussed issues in California environmental politics ? and one of the most crucial to understanding Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels plan - is the clear connection between the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative and the California WaterFix, formerly called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP). The privately-funded MLPA Initiative and the California WaterFix to build the peripheral tunnels at first may appear to be entirely different processes. The MLPA Initiative, a process begun in 2004 under the Schwarzenegger administration, purported to create a network of "marine protected areas" along the California coast. The network was supposedly completed on December 19, 2012 with the imposition of contested "marine protected areas" along the North Coast. On the other hand, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan process began under the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations to achieve the so-called "co-equal goals" of water supply reliability and Delta ecosystem restoration. In 2015, the state and federal governments divided the BDCP into two projects, the California WaterFix, the conveyance component and the California EcoRestore, the habitat ?restoration? component. But in spite of some superficial differences, the two processes are united by their leadership, funding, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, junk science and numerous conflicts of interest. When people educate themselves on the links between the two processes, I believe they can more effectively wage a successful campaign against the Delta Tunnels and to restore our imperiled salmon and San Francisco Bay-Delta fisheries. Mike Carpenter, a sea urchin diver and organizer of a fundraiser for the California Fisheries Coalition in Albion on the Mendocino coast, made the vital connection between the MLPA Initiative and Schwarzenegger's campaign to build a peripheral canal back in 2009 when the battle against the creation of questionable "marine protected areas" on the North Coast was amping up. Carpenter emphasized that the MLPA Initiative was just a "cover-up" for the Governor's plans to build a peripheral canal or tunnel around the California Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, through the Delta Vision and Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) process. Carpenter's words have proven very prophetic, considering what has happened since that time. How are the Delta Tunnels plan and MLPA process linked by leadership, funding, conflicts of interest, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, and junk science? 1. Leadership: Phil Isenberg, a former Sacramento Mayor and Assemblyman, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force to create faux "marine protected areas" on the Central Coast from 2004 to 2007. Isenberg then went on to Chair the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force that advocated building a peripheral canal or tunnel. After that process was finished, he went on to chair the Delta Stewardship Council created under the water policy/water bond legislative package of 2009. He recently retired from the Council. Under his leadership, the Council released a Delta Plan that creates a clear path to the construction of the Delta Tunnels. The deeply-flawed plan has been contested by 7 lawsuits from a diverse array of water contractors, agribusiness interests, urban water agencies, environmentalists, Indian Tribes and fishing groups. Likewise, John Laird, former State Senator and the current Natural Resources Secretary, is the key cheerleader for both the MLPA Initiative and the Delta Tunnels. He oversaw the completion of the faux "marine protected areas" for both the South Coast in January 2012 and the North Coast in December 2012, in spite of overwhelming opposition by fishermen, Tribal leaders and grassroots environmentalists. Now Laird promotes the construction of the tunnels at virtually every conference and media event he participates in, along with writing frequent op-eds in mainstream media portraying the WaterFix as the ?solution? to water supply and ecosystem problems. (http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article58494508.html ) 2. Funding: The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation and David and Lucille Packard Foundation both funded the MLPA Initiative, along with giving millions of dollars to the "environmental" NGOs that supported both the MLPA and BDCP processes. (http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/big-corporate-money-behind-fake-marine-protection ) Five non-profits donated a total of $20 million for the creation of "marine protected areas" under the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative. The Packard Foundation, the biggest contributor to the widely-criticized process, contributed $8.2 million to the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation to fund MLPA hearings. The Packard Foundation and Resources Legacy Fund also helped fund, along with the Stephen Bechtel Foundation, several Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) reports advocating the construction of the Delta Tunnels as the "solution" to California's water problems and ecosystem restoration. For example, the PPIC in 2011 published a 500 page book, "Managing California's Water: From Conflict to Reconciliation," designed to greenwash the construction of a Peripheral Canal or Tunnels. The book was funded by the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pisces Foundation, the Resources Legacy Fund, and the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority. (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/03/03/18673760.php ) 3. Conflicts of Interest: The Blue Ribbon Task Forces to create ?marine protected areas? under the MLPA Initiative were filled with individuals with numerous conflicts of interest, including a big oil lobbyist, a marina corporation executive and a coastal real estate developer. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA( and a relentless advocate for offshore oil drilling, fracking, the Keystone XL Pipeline and the weakening of environmental laws, chaired the South Coast MLPA Blue Ribbon Task that developed the MPAs that went into effect in Southern California waters on January 1, 2012. She also served on the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces for the North Coast, North Central Coast and Central Coast. (http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/mpa/brtf_bios_sc.asp ) While Reheis-Boyd served on the task forces to "protect" the ocean, the same oil industry that the "marine guardian" represents was conducting environmentally destructive hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations off the Southern California coast. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and media investigations by Associated Press and truthout.org in 2013 reveal that the ocean has been fracked at least 203 times in the past 20 years, including the period from 2004 to 2012 that Reheis-Boyd served as a "marine guardian.? In the case of the BDCP/California WaterFix, the proverbial fox was also in charge of the hen house. Governor Jerry Brown appointed Laura King Moon of Woodland, a lobbyist for the state?s water exporters, as chief deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/09/18/18743462.php) Moon had been a project manager for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan since 2011 while ?on loan? from the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 public agencies from Northern, Central and Southern California that purchase water under contract from the California State Water Project. Moon passed away from cancer last year. DWR also hired Susan Ramos, Deputy General Manager of the Westlands Water District, "on loan" from the district to serve as "a liaison between all relevant parties" surrounding the Delta Habitat Conservation and Conveyance Program (DHCCP) and provide "technical and strategic assistance" to DWR. Documents obtained by this reporter under the California Public Records Act revealed that Ramos was hired in an "inter-jurisdictional personal exchange agreement" between the DWR and Westlands from November 15, 2009 through December 31, 2010. The contract was extended to run through December 31, 2011 and again to continue through December 31, 2012. (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/12/14/18702762.php ) 4. Greenwashing Goals: Desperately needed actions to restore our ocean, bay and Delta waters have been substituted under the MLPA Initiative with the imposition of more fishing closures on some of the most heavily regulated ocean waters on the planet to further the Governor's "green" facade. The alleged "marine reserves" created under the MLPA scam fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil drilling, pollution, military testing, wind and wave energy projects and all human impacts on the ocean than fishing and gathering - at a time when the ocean is under assault by the oil industry, corporate polluters and ocean industrialists. The greenwashing that occurred under this process become crystal clear during the Refugio Oil Spill of May 2015 when a badly corroded pipeline operated by the Plains All American Pipeline Company burst, fouling more than 9 miles of pristine coastline. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/5/17/1527673/-Grand-Jury-Indicts-Pipeline-Company-on-Criminal-Charges-in-Refugio-Oil-Spill ) Not mentioned in the superficial coverage of the spill by the mainstream media and most of the ?alternative media? is the alarming fact that Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the head of the same oil industry trade association that lobbies for the Plains All American Pipeline corporation, whose pipeline rupture caused the massive oil spill, is the very same person who chaired the panel that created the so-called "marine protected areas" that were fouled by the spill. "Plains All American, the owner of the pipeline, is a member of the Western States Petroleum Association," proclaimed Catherine Reheis- Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), in her blogpost responding to the spill last year. (http://www.wspa.org/blog/post/statement-santa-barbara-oil-spill ) In the case of the Delta Vision and BDCP/California Water Fix processes, the dire need to restore the Delta by decreasing water exports and retiring drainage impaired land on the San Joaquin Valley's west side has been substituted with plans to build twin tunnels and increase water exports to corporate agribusiness, developers and oil companies while taking Delta family farms out of production under the guise of ?habitat restoration.? Meanwhile, California?s fish populations are in a historic crisis. The population of Delta Smelt plummeted to a new low in the annual spring survey conducted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) as the endangered fish moves closer to the abyss of extinction. The 2016 Spring Kodiak Trawl (SKT) index, a relative measure of abundance, is 1.8, a decrease from the 2015 index (13.8) and is the lowest index on record. Only thirteen adult Delta Smelt were collected at 8 stations contributing to the index in 2016. Ironically, Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Allliance (CSPA) pointed out that the State Water Resources Board is now preparing for upcoming hearings on the petitions by the Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation to change their points of diversion in order to proceed with the construction of Governor Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels. ?This plan will deprive the Delta smelt of their habitat by exporting vast quantities of water from the Sacramento River,? said Jennings. ?If the State Board approves the petition, it will only exacerbate things enormously for the Delta smelt and other fish species.? The Delta Tunnels plan will not only hasten the extinction of Delta smelt, but it will also drive longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and other fish species closer and closer to extinction, according to Delta advocates and scientific experts. The WaterFix will also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers, since water from the Trinity, the largest tributary of the Klamath, is diverted to the Sacramento River watershed through a tunnel in the Trinity Mountains from Trinity Lake to Whiskeytown Reservoir. 5. Racism and denial of tribal rights: Tribal and environmental justice communities in both processes have been excluded in a classic example of environmental racism. The institutional racism of the MLPA process was demonstrated when the Yurok Tribe was banned from harvesting abalone, mussels and seaweed off their traditional areas off the False Klamath and Reading Rock as they have done for thousands of years under the "marine protected areas" that went into effect off the coast in December 2012. (http://yubanet.com/california/Dan-Bacher-MLPA-Initiative-based-on-incomplete-and-terminally-flawed-science.php ) And in spite of direct action protests and outrage by Tribal members, fishermen and grassroots environmentalists over the flawed Initiative, the MLPA Initiative still fails to recognize tribal gathering rights in no take "State Marine Reserves," allowing tribal gathering only in "State Marine Conservation Areas" where some fishing and gathering is already allowed. Likewise, the Bay Delta Conservation Plan/California WaterFix has been developed without the required consent from California Tribes including the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, as required under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. In fact, the first formal informational meeting for California Tribes on the BDCP was held on December 10, 2013, in Sacramento - the day after the EIR/EIS for the tunnel plan was released! That is hardly "government-to-government" consultation, as required under state, federal and international law. ?There is no precedent for the killing of an estuary of this size, so how could any study be trusted to protect the Delta for salmon and other fish?" asked Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. "How can they even know what the effects will be? The end of salmon would also mean the end of Winnemem, so the BDCP is a threat to our very existence as indigenous people.? This environmental injustice extends to non-English speakers in California impacted by the Delta Tunnels Plan. Restore the Delta (RTD) and environmental justice advocates charged the Brown Administration with violation of the civil rights of more than 600,000 non-English speakers in the Delta by its agencies' failure to provide for ?meaningful access to and participation? in the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) public comment period. "More than 600,000 Delta residents alone don't speak English, and are being shut out of the public comment process on this massive project that would affect them deeply," said Esperanza Vielma, executive director of Caf? Coop & Environmental Justice Representative, San Joaquin County/San Joaquin Valley Air Quality Board. "The Brown Administration is violating the civil rights of Limited English speaking Californians in its rush to build tunnels to serve the top 1% of industrial agriculture." 6. Junk Science: Both the MLPA Initiative and BDCP/California Water Fix fiasco have relied on false assumptions and flawed data with little or no basis in natural science to advance their goals and objectives. In the case of the MLPA Initiative, the Yurok Tribe said it attempted on numerous occasions to address the scientific inadequacies with the MLPA science developed under the Schwarzenegger administration by adding "more robust protocols" into the equation, but was denied every time. The Northern California Tribal Chairman's Association, including the Chairs of the Elk Valley Rancheria, Hoopa Valley Tribe, Karuk Tribe, Smith River Rancheria, Trinidad Rancheria, and Yurok Tribe, documented in a letter how the science behind the MLPA Initiative developed by Schwarzenegger's Science Advisory Team is "incomplete and terminally flawed." Frankie Joe Myers, Yurok Tribal member and Coastal Justice Coalition activist, exposed the refusal to incorporate Tribal science that underlies the "science" of the MLPA process on the day of the historic direct action protest by a coalition of over 50 Tribes and their allies in Fort Bragg in July 2010. ?The whole process is inherently flawed by institutionalized racism," said Myers. "It doesn't recognize Tribes as political entities, or Tribal biologists as legitimate scientists." (http://klamathjustice.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-21st-2010.html ) To make things even worse, a federal judge in May 2014 sentenced Ron LeValley of Mad River Biologists, the former co-chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Science Advisory Team for the North Coast, to a 10 month federal prison sentence for his role in a conspiracy to embezzle over $852,000 in federal funds from the Yurok Tribe! LeValley pleaded guilty to a single federal charge of conspiracy to commit embezzlement and theft from an Indian Tribal Organization (18U.S.C ?? 371 and 1163) in the complex scheme in collaboration with former Yurok Forestry Director Roland Raymond. According to court documents, LeValley submitted more than 75 false invoices between 2007 and 2010 in payment for ?work? on northern spotted owl surveys that was never performed. The link to the indictment is available at: http://noyonews.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/U.S._v._Ron_LeValley_As_Filed.pdf For many of the Yurok Tribe's documents regarding the MLPA Initiative, go to:http://www.yuroktribe.org/government/tribalattorney/OfficeoftheTribalAttorney-MLPA.htm The BDCP/California WaterFix ?science? is also a sham. For example, on July 18, 2013 scientists from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Marine Fisheries Service exposed the hollowness of claims by Secretary John Laird and other state officials that the BDCP is based on "science." This was done after the federal agencies had already made "red flag" comments stating that the completion of the tunnel plan could hasten the extinction of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species. The federal scientists provided the California Department of Water Resources and the environmental consultants with 44 pages of comments highly critical of the Consultant Second Administrative Draft EIR/ EISDraft, released on May 10, 2013. The agencies found, among other things, that the draft environmental documents were ?biased,? ?insufficient," "confusing," and "very subjective." (http://baydeltaconservationplan.com/Libraries/Dynamic_Document_Library/Federal_Agency_Comments_on_Consultant_Administrative_Draft_EIR-EIS_7-18-13.sflb.ashx ) Then in August 2014 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a scathing 43-page comment letter slamming the Bay Delta Conservation Plan?s draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS). The EPA diagnosis revealed that operating the proposed conveyance facilities ?would contribute to increased and persistent violations of water quality standards in the Delta, set under the Clean Water Act,? and that the tunnels ?would not protect beneficial uses for aquatic life, thereby violating the Clean Water Act." (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/8/30/1325955/-Tunnel-opponents-applaud-EPA-s-scathing-comment-letter ) Bob Wright, the lawyer for Friends of the River, summed up the complete lack of science that the BDCP/California Water Fix is based upon when he said, "The plan is to grab the water and in the process take it away from designated critical habitat for several already endangered and threatened species of fish including Sacramento River Winter-Run and Central Valley Spring-Run Chinook Salmon and drive them into extinction. That is against the law because federal agencies are prohibited from doing that by the Endangered Species Act." Unjust Implementation of MLPA Initiative Continues The MLPA Initiative's unjust implementation continues to forge ahead, in spite of opposition by anglers, conservationists and public trust advocates. On April 13, the California Fish and Game Commission moved forward with a controversial final Marine Protected Area ?Master Plan? that postpones environmental assessments from every 5 years, as originally promised, to every 10 years. (http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/04/13/california-fish-and-game-commission-breaks-promise-to-anglers/ ) The three members of the commission at the time ? President Eric Sklar, Vice President Jacque Hostler-Carmesin, and Member Anthony C. Williams ? postponed the vote for approval to the June meeting. Since the April meeting, the Governor appointed two new Commissioners, Russell Burns of Napa, and Peter Silva of Chula Vista. At the June meeting, the five Commissioners voted to postpone the official approval of the master plan until its August 24 or August 25 meeting in Folsom, due to concerns about the plan from the Yurok and other California Indian Tribes. It's no surprise that both of the new Commissioners have worked for organizations backing the Delta Tunnels. Burns is the business manager at Operating Engineers Local Union 3, a strong supporter of the California Water Fix, since 2006. Silva served as senior policy advisor at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the key organizations pushing the Governor?s Delta Tunnels Plan, from 2005 to 2009 We can see that MLPA and BDCP/California WaterFix processes have much in common in terms of their leadership, funding, conflicts of interest, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, and junk science. I believe that people can more effectively oppose the Governor's Delta Tunnels Plan by understanding the dark links between the MLPA Initiative and BDCP. The unjust implementation of questionable "marine protected areas" under the MLPA Initiative also provides a cautionary tale for activists fighting the California Water Fix - the fact that science, state, federal and international laws and the majority of people are on your side doesn't necessarily mean that you will prevail. The state and federal governments have a long history of implementing projects that don't make any scientific, legal or economic sense because powerful corporate interests effectively bought off and manipulated agency and elected officials to produce a pre-determined outcome. It is vital that people fighting against the California WaterFix and for the restoration of salmon and other fish populations in California learn from both the successes and mistakes of MLPA Initiative opponents so they can more effectively wage a successful campaign to stop the construction of Governor Jerry Brown's Twin Tunnels. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: sm_800_stop_the_tunnels.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 292965 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Jul 3 08:26:46 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2016 15:26:46 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Toxic algae in reservoirs elicits warnings from water board References: <942218518.2583828.1467559606431.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <942218518.2583828.1467559606431.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160702/toxic-algae-in-reservoirs-elicits-warnings-from-water-board Toxic algae in reservoirs elicits warnings from water board By The Times-StandardSaturday, July 2, 2016The California Regional Water Quality Control Board is urging swimmers, boaters and recreational users to avoid direct contact with, or use of waters containing blue-green algae (cyanobacteria), which is currently blooming in the Copco and Iron Gate Reservoirs on the Klamath River.According to a Friday press release by the regional water board, the algal blooms appear as bright green in the water, and blue-green, white or brown foam, scum or mats that can float on the water and accumulate along the shore.The release states that recreational exposures can cause eye irritation, allergic skin rash, mouth ulcers, vomiting, diarrhea, and cold- and flu-like symptoms. It also states that liver failure, nerve damage and death have occurred in rare situations where large amounts of contaminated water were directly ingested.?The reservoirs are posted with health advisories warning against human and animal contact with the water,? the release states. ?Cyanobacteria conditions in the Klamath River below the reservoirs remain below the advisory levels and have not been posted. Residents and recreational water users can still enjoy camping, hiking, biking, canoeing, picnicking, or other recreational activities at the reservoirs while taking precautions to avoid contact with waters near these bloom areas and any scums along the water?s edge.?The warnings are part of a string of recent cyanobacteria advisories within the Klamath Basin, as outlined by the release:On June 27, water samples from the Iron Gate Reservoir showed toxin-producing algae to be above the state of California?s Recommended Threshold for Recreational Waters for harmful algae blooms.On June 24, water samples from the Copco Reservoir didn?t meet the state?s recommended limit for harmful algae blooms.The Statewide Guidance on Harmful Algal Blooms recommends the following for blue-green algae impacted waters:? Take care that pets and livestock do not drink the water, swim through algae, scums or mats, or lick their fur after going in the water. Rinse pets in clean water to remove algae from fur.? Avoid wading, swimming or jet or water skiing in water containing algae blooms or scums or mats.? Do not drink, cook or wash dishes with untreated surface water from these areas under any circumstances; common water purification techniques (e.g., camping filters, tablets and boiling) do not remove toxins.? People should not eat mussels or other bivalves collected from these areas. Limit or avoid eating fish; if fish are consumed, remove guts and liver, and rinse filets in clean drinking water. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Jul 3 08:30:38 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2016 15:30:38 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Hoopa_Valley_Tribe=E2=80=99s_relief_effor?= =?utf-8?q?ts_continue_amid_grocery_crisis?= References: <936651024.2671415.1467559838477.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <936651024.2671415.1467559838477.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160702/hoopa-valley-tribes-relief-efforts-continue-amid-grocery-crisis Hoopa Valley Tribe?s relief efforts continue amid grocery crisis By Diover Duario,?dduario at times-standard.com,?@dioverjd?on TwitterSaturday, July 2, 2016More than two weeks after the Hoopa branch of Ray?s Food Place closed its doors to the public, resources continue to pour into the area to aid residents short of nearby grocery store options.?The USDA was able to provide (food) boxes to serve about 290 homes. The number I think is about 1,500 individuals,? Hoopa Office of Emergency Services Director Serene Hayden said. ?We?re also working with Humboldt Food for People. They come here on a monthly basis but have since stepped it up to weekly. We?re also coordinating with AmeriCorps, the TCCC (Tribal California Conservation Corps), the local food distribution office, the state OES and Humboldt OES to expedite their services throughout the county level.?Hayden said the lack of a local supermarket affects not only residents of Hoopa but also residents in the surrounding area who relied on the market for their grocery needs.?When the Hoopa Ray?s was open, it didn?t just service Hoopa but also people from Weitchpec, Pecwan and Orleans ? all the surrounding community,? Hayden said.?The reality of a ?food desert? situation in the Hoopa Valley area was exacerbated when the local Ray?s Food Place branch was found to have an overwhelming rat infestation, forcing the county to recommended its closure until the problem was eradicated.Since then, negotiations between the Hoopa Valley Tribe ? which owned the building ? and C&K Markets which owns Ray?s broke down. The company opted not to continue business in the area.The contract between the tribe and C&K Markets is slated to last until Aug. 1.??We?re trying to find a business that?s willing to work with the tribe,? Tribal Office Administrative Assistant Manuel Sanchez said. ?We are in a (food) crisis and it?s all hands on deck.??Sanchez said until a permanent grocery solution can be found, the Hoopa Tribal Office will continue to provide resources and services to residents in need.Shuttle services were offered as early as the first weekend Ray?s decided to close up. Though few residents have utilized the shuttles, Sanchez said it will continue to run in the foreseeable future.?Last weekend we only had five people show up but for a lot of people, their food stamps don?t come until next week. We expect an influx of people then, especially when the first of the month comes around,? Sanchez said. ?We want people to know that the tribe is here to help them while we negotiate with stores to bring them in as soon as possible.?The only grocery store within 20 miles of the Hoopa Valley Reservation is the Willow Creek Ray?s Food Place 12 miles down State Route 96. However, many of the residents in Hoopa are reluctant to use the market?s services following the events at the Hoopa branch.?Not everyone feels the same way, but there?s definitely a distrust there,? Hayden said. ?Right now, we?re still in the early stages and I?m still putting the numbers together. We?re trying to connect with local farmers as well to find healthier solutions. But right now, a lot of people don?t know what services are being offered. Those who do are very thankful, but one of the biggest things is lack of transportation. We put up a lot of public service announcements, fliers at the post office but people don?t tend to travel that far because a lot of them are just on foot.?Diover Duario can be reached at 707-441-0510.Tom Stokely? V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315 tstokely at att.net? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Jul 5 09:17:34 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2016 09:17:34 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Governor Brown Launches Attack On CA Environmental Quality Act, Coastal Act (Revised) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9539C2AA-188A-43CF-8B1A-BEF609BB0EAA@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/7/4/1545002/-Governor-Brown-Launches-Attack-On-CA-Environmental-Quality-Act-Coastal-Act Photo of Jerry Brown by Dan Bacher. Governor Brown Launches Attack On CA Environmental Quality Act, Coastal Act by Dan Bacher Jerry Brown, routinely portrayed as a ?green governor? and ?climate leader? by the mainstream media, has launched yet another attack on the state?s environmental laws and openness and transparency in government. That?s right ? the governor is aiming to eviscerate landmark laws that protect the public's right to know about the environmental and public health impacts of large development projects in this legislative land grab by developers. Brown?s latest gambit, expressed in Trailer Bill 707, would allow housing developments ?by right.? ?That means the projects could occur without disclosing environmental impacts about the development, and without going through certain local permitting,? said Kyle Jones, policy advocate for Sierra Club California. ?Transparency and full disclosure before projects are approved are among the few tools everyday Californians have to make sure air and water pollution created by new projects is minimized and mitigated. Responsible developers report that allowing the public to know what's going on in advance helps improve projects,? Jones stated. Jones said ?Irresponsible developers? have spent years trying to dismantle the disclosure and permitting process. Besides being opposed by environmental groups, Trailer Bill 707 is also strongly opposed by Tenants Together and other tenant rights organizations in California. They say the current proposal would have ?huge negative impacts on low-income tenants, workers, and the environment.? Tenants Together and member organizations have identified several ways the Governor's By-Right Development proposal could harm renters. According to Tenants Together, the Governor's proposal would: Increase development of market-rate housing without additional tenant protections against displacement; Bypass community benefits agreements process where community groups are able to get developers to build more affordable housing; Lead to potential demolition of rent-controlled homes because projects would bypass the public approval process. In addition to this being a bad bill, the process used to push this bill through the Legislature shows the disdain that Governor Brown and his developer buddies have for openness and transparency in government. ?Trailer bills are pieces of legislation that change policy as part of the budget process," explained Kyle Jones. ?That means that these bills do not go through various policy committees necessary to vet legislation, and can fly under the public's radar.? (www.citywatchla.com/ ... In June, the California Budget Conference Committee postponed hearing Trailer Bill 707--"By-Right Development," so we still have time to stop this developer land grab. We can?t let Governor Brown ignore the value of the public's right to be a part of the process of environmental review. Take action to oppose the proposal as it stands by signing on to this petition. Brown?s latest attack on CEQA and the Coastal Act must be seen in light of Brown?s overall poor environmental record. Even his grandstanding on ?climate change? and ?green energy? that he gets so much undeserved credit for is based on environmentally unjust carbon trading and REDD policies. Background: Brown?s real environmental ?legacy exposed Jerry Brown?s record on fish, wildlife, water and the environment has been deplorable since he started his third term in January 2011, but you wouldn?t know it, judging by the often fawning coverage Brown receives from mainstream media and much of the ?alternative? media. The Governor?s ?legacy project,? the Delta Tunnels/California Water Fix, poses a huge threat to the ecosystems of the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Klamath and Trinity river systems, but it?s not the only environmentally devastating policy promoted by Governor Jerry Brown. Brown is promoting the expansion of fracking and extreme oil extraction methods in California and is overseeing water policies that are driving winter run-Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt and other species closer and closer to extinction. As if those examples of Brown?s tainted environmental legacy weren?t bad enough, Brown has promoted carbon trading and REDD policies that pose an enormous threat to Indigenous Peoples around the globe; has done nothing to stop clearcutting of forests by Sierra-Pacific and other timber companies; presided over record water exports from the Delta in 2011; and oversaw massive fish kills of Sacramento splittail and other species in 2011. Jerry Brown also oversaw the ?completion? of so-called ?marine protected areas? under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, overseen by a Big Oil lobbyist and other corporate interests, in December 2012. These faux ?Yosemites of the Sea? fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling, fracking, pollution, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. Brown spouts ?green? rhetoric when he flies off to climate conferences and issues proclamations about John Muir Day and Earth Day, but his actions and policies regarding fish, water and the environment are among the worst of any Governor in recent California history. For more information about the real environmental record of Governor JerryBrown, go to: www.dailykos.com/... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Big_OIl_Brown_Photo.png Type: image/png Size: 129303 bytes Desc: not available URL: From njharris30 at gmail.com Wed Jul 6 12:15:57 2016 From: njharris30 at gmail.com (Nathan Harris) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2016 12:15:57 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Willow Creek in-season trap update - July 6th Message-ID: Please see the attached documents for weekly catch data from the Willow Creek outmigration monitoring. Nathan Harris Biologist Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program Trinity River Division 3723 N. Hwy 96 Willow Creek, CA 95573 Office: (530) 629-3333 x1703 Cell: (707) 616-8742 njharris30 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: trapping update summary 7.6.16.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 14440 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Willow Creek RST raw catch update 2016.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 31436 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Jul 10 09:10:29 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2016 16:10:29 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] My address book was hacked References: <665599510.1520717.1468167029583.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <665599510.1520717.1468167029583.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Env-trinity subscribers, My e-mail address book was hacked. ?If you receive a suspicious e-mail from me (they have a different return address), please DON'T OPEN THE LINKS! My apologies for any inconvenience.?Tom Stokely?V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315 tstokely at att.net? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Jul 11 11:14:55 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2016 18:14:55 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Water for Pot No Longer Unregulated References: <2011232485.2050576.1468260895859.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2011232485.2050576.1468260895859.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Water for Pot No Longer Unregulated The water consumed by California marijuana growers will now be regulated by state officials under a new program that could be up and running within a year. The goal is to protect wildlife and habitats.? | WRITTEN BYMatt Weiser | PUBLISHED ON???Jul. 11, 2016 | READ TIMEApprox. 6 minutes | In this Feb. 1, 2011, file photo, medical marijuana clone plants are shown at a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland, Calif.Jeff Chiu, APWITHIN LESS THAN?a year, as many as 50,000 marijuana growers in California could be required to obtain state permits for the irrigation water they consume. It is an unprecedented step aimed at preventing harm to the environment and other water users resulting from the rapid growth of marijuana cultivation in the state.?Most of them are operating below the radar,? said Cris Carrigan, chief of enforcement at the State Water Resources Control Board. ?As a result, we?ve gotten ourselves into an acute problem with streamflow and pollution associated with these activities.?This new ability to regulate water for marijuana growing is a result of?SB 837, a state law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on June 27. It?s a budget trailer bill, which specifies numerous operating details of the?Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, signed into law on Ocober 9, 2015. This law establishes a comprehensive system to regulate cannabis growing in California, for the first time.It?s a huge new water management effort that has never been attempted in the United States, not even among states that are already regulating marijuana cultivation.Perhaps most remarkable of all, marijuana grower groups support the regulations.?This community is ready to be part of the mainstream,? said Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the?California Growers Association, a group that represents cannabis cultivators and helped draft the new legislation last year. ?What we are trying to do is move people into the regulated class. Lots absolutely want that legitimacy.?The ongoing California drought brought new attention to the environmental damages caused by?unregulated marijuana growing. And while the amount of water it consumes is still the subject of some uncertainty and debate, there is little question that it has?compromised aquatic habitat?in many locations and reduced water access for some property owners with legitimate water rights.But Carrigan says the rules do not necessarily target marijuana growers. Instead, they?re meant for small agricultural irrigators growing any sort of crop. The intent, however, is to get control of unregulated marijuana irrigation, which has dried up some streams, starved endangered fish of water and contributed to water quality problems caused by erosion, pesticides and herbicides.?It?s a really significant breakthrough,? said Jay Ziegler, director of external affairs and policy for?The Nature Conservancy?in California, which worked with CalTrout and Trout Unlimited to help shape the rule package. ?I don?t think it?s lost on anybody that this is our largest value agricultural crop. So we?re long overdue to acknowledge what are becoming increasingly overwhelming impacts of marijuana on the landscape.?The regulations are a statewide followup to?pilot programs?that began last year in the water board?s North Coast and Central Valley regulatory regions.Ed Willey, at left, and Sol Posada harvest at a marijuana farm in Davenport, Calif., on Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2010. Many such farms will have to obtain state permits for their water diversions under a new regulatory program. (Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP)The new program starts by directing the State Water Resources Control Board and Department of Fish and Wildlife to set up a task force to assess environmental damages from marijuana growing. This task force is also empowered to collect fees and penalties from growers to pay for programs to correct the damage.Fish and Wildlife will also assess streamflow needs to sustain the environment in watersheds where marijuana is cultivated. This level of baseline flow must then be sustained at all times, and will be used to guide the issuance of water diversion permits to growers.Some growers will be able to successfully prove that they have ?riparian? water rights, meaning a right to divert water from a creek that flows on or adjacent to their land. But they will not be allowed to cut into the baseline flow that sustains wildlife.One problem with marijuana growing is that the crop often needs water when it is least abundant: in the summer. Thus, historically, many have taken water from streams when it is most needed to sustain sensitive fish and other species that are struggling to survive long, hot summer months.So under the new regulations, even if a grower has a verified riparian water right, they will not be allowed to divert water whenever they want. Instead, they will be directed to build water storage, such as ponds or tanks, and collect what they need for a full year when streams are flush in the winter.For example, a relatively large grower might need 30 acre-feet (37,000 cubic meters) of water annually for his crop ? enough to sustain 60 average California households for a year. Under the new rules, the water board ? guided by the streamflow baseline ? will likely require them to build storage for 15 acre-feet, and only draw water from that storage during the summer months.?It?s a very unique condition specifically aimed at this industry, as a new entrant, in exercising what may be historic water rights,? Ziegler said. ?What?s really unique about this is, the (water) board and DFW have the leverage of a permit that the growers need and want to separate themselves and demonstrate they are good-faith producers and stewards of the environment out there. In effect, this process applies that leverage.?The new rules require a grower to obtain a growing permit from a new Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation. And they can?t get that permit unless they first certify where their water is coming from.The state Department of Finance is authorized to provide a $10 million loan to get the regulatory program started. This money, among other things, will allow the water board and Fish and Wildlife to hire about two dozen new employees to launch the program, conduct inspections and oversee the new permits.The seed money will be paid back from licensing fees paid by marijuana growers. These fees will also become the source of funds to sustain the program into the future.The water permitting process could be adopted by the water board within a year as an emergency regulation. The legislation gives the board the power to do so without the usual lengthy analysis required under the California Environmental Quality Act. But the board hasn?t yet decided, Carrigan said, whether to take that route.It?s possible there won?t be enough water for all growers in a particular region. Some may have to try their luck with drilling a well, buying water in tanker trucks or some other means.?Once we set the flow requirements for fish safety in the streams,? Carrigan said, ?we may very well be issuing curtailment notices to riparians in those streams in the drier months. And if you don?t have a permit for storage, your straw is going to be cut off.?This isn?t all there is to the regulatory program. A range of other state agencies will be involved in overseeing water quality, pesticide use, licensing, fee collection ? even certifying regional marijuana ?appellations.?The rules don?t apply to individual patients growing medical marijuana for their own use on 100 square feet (10 sq meters) or less; or to caregivers growing for five patients or less on no more than 500 square feet.All parties agree there may be as many as 50,000 growers who could be subject to licensing under the program. A subset of these ? perhaps half ? will be required to prove their water rights and possibly install water storage systems.It?s a massive regulatory effort. For example, in the entire state of California the water board currently regulates about 40,000 water rights that have come into the system over a century. So the new program could add to that by more than half in just a year or two.Carrigan said there?s nothing else like it in the U.S., even in Washington and Colorado, where marijuana has been a government-sanctioned crop for several years.?What we?re hoping for is more clean water for fish at the right time,? he said. ?To me, it?s amazing we have this whole underground economy and industry that?s been unregulated. And now, all of a sudden, there?s this paradigm shift.?Allen said most marijuana growers require only a very small amount of water compared to traditional farming operations. But he acknowledged a lot of cannabis growing does take place in sensitive watersheds, and that there have been ?acute? impacts on endangered species, like coastal coho salmon.?That is something we need to take very seriously as an industry,? he said. ?But it?s not true to say we?re a major factor in the statewide water shortage. I?m pretty sure the rest of the world is going to be surprised just how careful this community is with water, and how many conservation-minded agricultural practices are being used.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Jul 11 15:44:52 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2016 22:44:52 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1586102340.2133714.1468277092874.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, July 11, 2016 3:30 PM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: ?Date? ? ? ? ? ? ??Time? ? ? ? ? ? From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 7/18/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1100 7/18/2016?? ? ? ?1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1100 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1000 7/19/2016?? ? ? ?1800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 900 7/21/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 800 7/22/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 750 7/23/2016?? ? ? ?0000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 750 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 700 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Trinity?Pulse?Flow?-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "trinity-releases" group. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Jul 11 10:34:50 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2016 17:34:50 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Advanced Registration Ends July 25th for the 19th Annual Coho Confab In-Reply-To: <5783d83ed1cbb_66c9a343dac6287e@asgworker-qmb2-i-e4f81b7b.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> References: <5783d83ed1cbb_66c9a343dac6287e@asgworker-qmb2-i-e4f81b7b.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: <875097105.2052865.1468258490118.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, July 11, 2016 10:32 AM, Kate Rowe wrote: NationBuilder#yiv7417102107 #yiv7417102107 body{background-color:#e5effd;}#yiv7417102107 table{border-spacing:0;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;}#yiv7417102107 table td{border-collapse:collapse;}#yiv7417102107 p{margin-bottom:1em;line-height:140%;}#yiv7417102107 h1.yiv7417102107site-title{font-size:28px;}#yiv7417102107 .yiv7417102107body-content img{max-width:100%;}#yiv7417102107 hr {border:1px solid #3887a8;margin:20px 0;}#yiv7417102107 @media screen and (max-width:600px){#yiv7417102107 table[class="yiv7417102107container"] {width:100%!important;}}#yiv7417102107 @media screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv7417102107 table[class="yiv7417102107container"] {width:100%!important;}#yiv7417102107 div[class="yiv7417102107body-content"]img {width:100%;}#yiv7417102107 h1[class="yiv7417102107site-title"] {font-size:25px!important;}}#yiv7417102107 @media screen and (max-width:600px){#yiv7417102107 #yiv7417102107 table[class="yiv7417102107container"] {width:100%!important;}#yiv7417102107 h1[class="yiv7417102107site-title"] {font-size:22px!important;}} | | Visit ourWebsite | Join us onFacebook | | | | | | SalmonidRestoration Federation | | | | | Hi Tom,? SRF will behosting the?19thAnnual Coho Confab?on August 26 - 28, 2016 at thebeautiful?JugHandle Creek Farm?on the Mendocino Coast. The Confab willfeature tours of large wood augmentation projects, restorationforestry, and various restoration techniques employed from the UsalForest near the Navarro River. The 2016 Coho Confab Agenda is nowonline.?Clickhere for a detailed schedule of presentations and fieldtours. Youcan?register online?or?bycompleting and returning this?registration form.?Register by July25th to reserve a space and take advantage of discountedpricing. Registration is $200 until July 25th. Lateregistration is $225. Your registration fees will cover field tours,workshops, meals, and camping accommodations. For an additional $100per person, participants can sign-up to stay in the JugHandle Farmhouse or cabins on a first-come, first-requested basis.To make a reservation to stay in the house or cabins, please emailinfo at calsalmon.org. Help us spread the word!?Pleasefeel free to print and post the event poster at your place ofwork. Please let us know if you have any questions byemailing?info at calsalmon.org?orcalling our office at 707-923-7501. We hope you can join us forthis special event in August, Kate Rowe ProjectCoordinator Salmonid Restoration Federation (707)923-7501 (707) 923-3135 fax | | | | | | | | | | Created with NationBuilder, the essential toolkit forleaders. | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jul 12 10:08:11 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2016 17:08:11 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Suit Challenges Delta Pumping Restrictions References: <745135166.2500722.1468343291537.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <745135166.2500722.1468343291537.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2016/07/12/suit-challenges-delta-pumping-restrictions Suit Challenges Delta Pumping Restrictions SACRAMENTO BEE: Another legal dispute has erupted over the regulation of water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as a group of water agencies has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. | WRITTEN BYRyan Sabalow | PUBLISHED ON???Jul. 12, 2016 | READ TIMEApprox. 2 minutes | A lawsuit filed Friday challenges restrictions to the federal government?s pumping plant on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta near Tracy, California.U.S. Bureau of ReclamationIN A FAILED?effort to protect endangered fish, the federal government decided without proper study to default to restricting the giant pumps at the bottom of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.So argues a lawsuit filed Friday at the U.S. District Court in Sacramento by a powerful consortium of water agencies. They?re hoping for a larger share of Delta water. It?s the latest salvo in a political and legal dispute over how to manage the competing demands on the fragile estuary.Friday?s suit, filed by the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, alleges that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation failed to seek alternatives other than cutting water supplies to people when it adopted its operations plans for the massive Central Valley Project in 2008 and 2009.Jason Peltier, the authority?s executive director, said in an interview Friday that in spite of the pumping restrictions, fish populations continue on a precipitous decline.Peltier said that before that happened, Reclamation failed to ask a critical question: ?Are there actually going to be benefits to the dramatic cuts in water supply??Reclamation spokesman Shane Hunt said his agency doesn?t comment on pending litigation.The Central Valley Project includes Shasta and Folsom lakes and a massive federal pumping station near Tracy. From there, Delta water is channeled along canals to 2.1 million acres (850,000 hectares) of farmland in the western San Joaquin Valley, and to urban water districts in San Benito and Santa Clara counties.San Joaquin Valley farmers say they?ve had to let tens of thousands of acres of farmland go fallow in recent years due to the pumping restrictions. But environmental groups counter that recent economic analyses show the state?s farming economy continues to do well ??even adding 30,000 new jobs last year?? in spite of the ongoing drought.Environmentalists have long argued that excessive human demand for Delta water is the primary reason why native Delta fish are dying. Two species in particular, delta smelt and winter-run Chinook salmon, are hovering on the edge of extinction.In April, a trio of environmental groups sued in federal court alleging?that regulators repeatedly relaxed water quality standards ? that would have protected the fish ? to keep Central Valley water flowing to farms and cities.This?story?first appeared in the Sacramento Bee.?For more coverage of the California drought and water issues, please visit the?Sacramento Bee. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From t.schlosser at msaj.com Tue Jul 12 10:47:56 2016 From: t.schlosser at msaj.com (Thomas P. Schlosser) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2016 10:47:56 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Suit Challenges Delta Pumping Restrictions In-Reply-To: <745135166.2500722.1468343291537.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <745135166.2500722.1468343291537.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <745135166.2500722.1468343291537.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8e194dda-c7fb-5475-fc66-0a8328ce2672@msaj.com> Here's the complaint that SLDMDWA filed. Tom On 7/12/2016 10:08 AM, Tom Stokely wrote: > https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2016/07/12/suit-challenges-delta-pumping-restrictions > > > Suit Challenges Delta Pumping Restrictions > > SACRAMENTO BEE: Another legal dispute has erupted over the regulation > of water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as a group of water > agencies has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. > WRITTEN BYRyan Sabalow PUBLISHED ON? Jul. 12, 2016 READ TIMEApprox. > 2 minutes > > A lawsuit filed Friday challenges restrictions to the federal > government?s pumping plant on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta near > Tracy, California.U.S. Bureau of Reclamation > > IN A FAILED effort to protect endangered fish, the federal government > decided without proper study to default to restricting the giant pumps > at the bottom of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. > So argues a lawsuit filed Friday at the U.S. District Court in > Sacramento by a powerful consortium of water agencies. They?re hoping > for a larger share of Delta water. It?s the latest salvo in a > political and legal dispute over how to manage the competing demands > on the fragile estuary. > Friday?s suit, filed by the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, > alleges that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation failed to seek > alternatives other than cutting water supplies to people when it > adopted its operations plans for the massive Central Valley Project in > 2008 and 2009. > Jason Peltier, the authority?s executive director, said in an > interview Friday that in spite of the pumping restrictions, fish > populations continue on a precipitous decline. > Peltier said that before that happened, Reclamation failed to ask a > critical question: ?Are there actually going to be benefits to the > dramatic cuts in water supply?? > Reclamation spokesman Shane Hunt said his agency doesn?t comment on > pending litigation. > The Central Valley Project includes Shasta and Folsom lakes and a > massive federal pumping station near Tracy. From there, Delta water is > channeled along canals to 2.1 million acres (850,000 hectares) of > farmland in the western San Joaquin Valley, and to urban water > districts in San Benito and Santa Clara counties. > San Joaquin Valley farmers say they?ve had to let tens of thousands of > acres of farmland go fallow in recent years due to the pumping > restrictions. But environmental groups counter that recent economic > analyses show the state?s farming economy continues to do well ? even > adding 30,000 new jobs last year > ? > in spite of the ongoing drought. > Environmentalists have long argued that excessive human demand for > Delta water is the primary reason why native Delta fish are dying. Two > species in particular, delta smelt and winter-run Chinook salmon, are > hovering on the edge of extinction. > In April, a trio of environmental groups sued in federal court > alleging > that > regulators repeatedly relaxed water quality standards ? that would > have protected the fish ? to keep Central Valley water flowing to > farms and cities. > /This //story > first > appeared in the Sacramento Bee./ /For more coverage of the California > drought and water issues, please visit the Sacramento Bee > ./ > > > > _______________________________________________ > env-trinity mailing list > env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: SLDMWAvJewell-NEPA-Complaint03318959259.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 204948 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jul 13 08:16:45 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2016 15:16:45 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Collaborative to meet Friday- Presentation on Trinity Lake minimum pool and enforceable temperature standards for Trinity River References: <1617143210.3031964.1468423005290.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1617143210.3031964.1468423005290.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> I will be giving the presentation on Trinity Lake minimum pool. ?I think it is at 1 pm, but there is no agenda posted yet. TShttp://www.trinityjournal.com/news/environment/article_a661d698-4894-11e6-a865-133518b04dd5.html ?Seeing the Forest? to be shown - - - - - - - - - The Trinity County Collaborative Group will meet from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, July 15, at the Weaverville Fire Hall on Bremer Street.The meeting agenda includes updates and ongoing business, the Joint Chiefs Project, Collaborative Committee reports, viewing of the film ?Seeing the Forest,? and a presentation on a Trinity Lake minimum pool and enforceable temperature standards for the Trinity River.For more information and a complete agenda go to?www.trinitycollaborative.net/.The Collaborative?s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 16 in Hayfork. - -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jul 13 08:20:18 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2016 15:20:18 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Restoration program public float shares projects, goals References: <1609856353.3036608.1468423218271.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1609856353.3036608.1468423218271.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/environment/article_9d20d9ae-4893-11e6-b900-ffc0745c9f57.html Restoration program public float shares projects, goals - By AMY GITTELSOHN The Trinity Journal ?- 2 hrs ago ?- ?0 - - - - Amy Gittelsohn | The Trinity Journal Aaron Martin, habitat restoration biologist with the program, explains the reasoning and history behind a constructed side channel on the river where wood has been added. - Amy Gittelsohn | The Trinity Journal Brandt Gutermuth, environmental scientist with the restoration program, prepares to jump off Painted Rock into the river. The float winds up in the area of Lorenz Gulch. - - Trinity River Restoration Program staff took about 40 members of the public on a Trinity River float Thursday to provide them with an up-close look at projects on the river aimed at restoring fisheries affected by the construction of Trinity Dam.The rafts put in at the Steel Bridge Campground and floated a nine-mile section of the river to Lorenz Gulch downstream from Douglas City.A restoration program staff member was on each raft to answer questions and talk about the projects and river. A fisheries biologist with the program, Kyle De Juilio, rowed one of the groups and fielded questions regarding water temperature, gravel entering the river by natural and artificial means, projects and lessons learned. Also on-board was Don Anderson, interim executive director of the program.The release to the Trinity River is steadily dropping at this point after a spring peak flow that hit 10,000 cfs twice in May. It?s thought that the ?double-peak? will be more effective at moving gravel placed in the upper river to make up the deficit caused when tributaries upstream of Trinity and Lewiston reservoirs were cut off by the dams.The gravel provides spawning habitat, forms bars and makes for a more diverse river channel, according to program staff.The flotilla moved through an older restoration site in the Vitzthum Gulch area where chunks of vegetation were taken out in a project about 10 years ago.Due to decades of very low flows after the dams were constructed, vegetation formed berms along the river forming ?a real confined U-shaped channel,? De Juilio said, locking the river into a ?bowling alley? appearance that he pointed out at several locations.The Vitzthum project created some habitat with slower moving water used by juvenile fish, but the flows weren?t enough to keep the notches open and most filled back in with willows.Farther along the route the rafts pulled into a constructed side channel upstream of Douglas City. The side channels are also meant to let the river spread and slow, but this one initially built in 2007 needed some revision, said Brandt Gutermuth, environmental scientist with the restoration program.Fisheries biologists did a snorkel survey and found that fish weren?t using it. It was flowing too fast.It was that undesirable U-shape, noted Aaron Martin, habitat restoration biologist with the program. The project was reworked last year.?We kicked it around so it?s not so straight anymore,? Martin said.Wood was added as well. Martin said this isn?t done with cables but is braced using only dirt, rock and wood. That does mean that things don?t stay right in place.?We want things to be changing and evolving,? Martin said.The result has been increased use by fish.There were questions regarding how the projects are assessed and fish numbers.?We know when we build something like this the fish really like it and they use it,? Martin said.But restoration staff noted that they can?t control everything such as the ocean conditions that also has a big impact on fisheries.There were questions also about the river flow which restoration staff acknowledged at the moment is considerably higher than if the dams didn?t exist ? 1,400 cfs on the day of the float. The Trinity River Record of Decision from 2000 determines how much water is released to the river based on water year type.Martin said water is the most important restoration tool, and he tries to bring home to people not just the amount sent down the river but also the amount diverted through pipes for Central Valley Project use. On average, approximately half of the river?s water is diverted.The river restoration program has had its share of controversy, including complaints that the gravel injections have filled in deep holes used by fish. Geomorphologist Dave Gaeuman has said that while there have been instances of holes filling due to widening of the river by the program in spots which reduced water velocity, a sonar study showed that most holes did not change. At one site known as Painted Rock, Gaeuman dove and Brandt Gutermuth jumped into the river from the rock to demonstrate the depth.Gaeuman said, ?In the last five or so years we?ve really made an effort to design differently so we?re not impacting those holes.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jul 13 08:22:03 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2016 15:22:03 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Two Letters to the Editor on TRRP References: <354396319.3052687.1468423323209.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <354396319.3052687.1468423323209.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_e6a6f5c0-4890-11e6-9287-0f78540cfaff.html River tour opened eyes - From Pastor Jay Underwood First Baptist Church, Weaverville ?- 1 hr ago ?- ?0 - - - - - - - - I had the wonderful opportunity last week to float down part of the Trinity River from Steele Bridge to Lorenz Gulch just below Douglas City. The float was free and open to the public in an effort by the Trinity River Restoration Program for people to see some of the work done by the agency and be able to talk to some of its employees including their engineers and scientists. Let me just say, kudos to the TRRP.Each raft was led by a professional guide with a TRRP staff person on board ? everyone from hydrologists, ecologists and geologists (and many other ?ists? I?m sure) including the interim executive director. As we floated down, the TRRP folks gave us a play by play of some of the projects they have been involved with on that particular section of river and were open to questions, thoughts and comments from us, the public. At one point we all got out to more closely observe a side channel that was constructed to increase habitat for juvenile salmon. The engineer of this project made the point that all the materials used to do this were natural to the area; there were no cables, rebar, metal or other unnatural materials used. ?One of the things that stood out in my mind that was shared by the hydrologist on our raft was that while maintaining a healthy salmon population is a very high priority, there is an emphasis on maintaining a healthy river, in every respect. All in all I found the agency to be transparent, gracious and with a great desire to reach out to the public.Most importantly, what I found from the TRRP from the top to the bottom was a group of people who genuinely love and care for the Trinity River and the communities it flows through. Wondering what?s going on with this incredible and very valuable resource? Just ask the TRRP, or better yet, go on their next public float trip and experience what they?re doing first-hand. I?m so glad I did.http://www.trinityjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_049a142c-4891-11e6-852e-ff33af9f5e9c.html Just another mess on the river - From Jackie Johnson Douglas City? ?- 1 hr ago ?- ?0 - - - - - - - - Response to ?TRRP?s ridiculous river of failure? (Journal, June 29).Thank you Jerry for your letter, and thank you Trinity Journal for printing it. I?ve lived next to the river for 25 years and have witnessed the carnage first hand. I?ve also gotten the runaround when trying to get some answers.My river frontage is now a huge log jam. No one wants to dull their chain saw on wood full of river silt. The last time they did this, it costed us $1,500 to get our beach back. I wonder if TRRP?s grant money allowed for cleaning up their mess, not to mention the baby duck and geese who perished in the flood, or the osprey who went hungry and failed to raise their young. The family of beavers I so enjoyed watching come out of the hut across the river from me are gone, haven?t seen them since.After so many phone calls, and having been passed to the next so many times, I finally released my rage when RR came flying up and down the river in a big motor boat. I assume looking for the black rocks. I screamed at them to put those rocks where the sun doesn?t shine and go for a swim.We are tired of government spending for the sake of jobs that do nothing but secure a paycheck for unethical self-serving people. You may want to join (TAMWG) but be careful. If they find an endangered flea on your property, you could lose everything. You can?t trust the government. Period. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jul 13 08:47:08 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2016 15:47:08 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Collaborative to meet Friday- Presentation on Trinity Lake minimum pool and enforceable temperature standards for Trinity River In-Reply-To: <1617143210.3031964.1468423005290.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1617143210.3031964.1468423005290.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1617143210.3031964.1468423005290.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <740184502.3277145.1468424828191.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> My presentation is at 1:30 pm. ?See agenda below.?Tom Stokely?V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315 tstokely at att.net? ?Trinity County Collaborative Group - Agenda, July 15, 2016; 10:00 am ? 4:00 pm?Weaverville ? Fire Hall?General Business 10:00 ? 10:15?? Public Observation, Proxies, Review Collective Memory from 5/20/16?? Time Sensitive Items?? Public Input**? Updates & Ongoing Business 10:15 ? 11:45?USFS ??Six-Rivers NF?? Mad River- Dan Dill? Shasta Trinity NF?? SFMU- Tom Hall?? TRMU- Tina Lynsky? Joint Chiefs Project-- USFS, NRCS?NRCS ? Heidi Harris?BLM ? Jennifer Mata?NOAA Fisheries -- Staff?USFWS -- Staff?CALFIRE ? Dan Dresselhaus?TCRCD/WRTC?Shiloe Braxton/Nick Goulette?? Fire Safe Council, Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP)? Collaborative Committee Reports 11:45 ? 12:45?NRA Work-Group ? Lesley Yen?Forestry Work-Group?Fuelbreak Work Group ??? Update Field Trips? BREAK 12:45-1:30-FILM ?Seeing the Forest??Guest Presentation 1:30-2:30?Tom Stokely- Trinity Lake minimum pool and enforceable temperature standards for the Trinity River through amendment of the Bureau of Reclamation's water rights by the State Water Resources Control Board?New Business 2:30 ? 3:15?USFS/BLM-Federal Agencies use of Temporary Duty (Staff Detailing) and how it affects the POW, planning and implementation of projects.?USFS/BLM-Managing/using wildfire for resource benefits?Concluding Business 3:15 ? 4:00?Public Input**?Facilitation Team?? Agenda Building: Request items for next meeting? Next meeting- date: September 16th 2016 in Hayfork?*Actionable item?** Public input is reserved for members of the public for topics not on the current agenda.? On Wednesday, July 13, 2016 8:16 AM, Tom Stokely wrote: I will be giving the presentation on Trinity Lake minimum pool. ?I think it is at 1 pm, but there is no agenda posted yet. TShttp://www.trinityjournal.com/news/environment/article_a661d698-4894-11e6-a865-133518b04dd5.html ?Seeing the Forest? to be shown - - - - - - - - - The Trinity County Collaborative Group will meet from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, July 15, at the Weaverville Fire Hall on Bremer Street.The meeting agenda includes updates and ongoing business, the Joint Chiefs Project, Collaborative Committee reports, viewing of the film ?Seeing the Forest,? and a presentation on a Trinity Lake minimum pool and enforceable temperature standards for the Trinity River.For more information and a complete agenda go to?www.trinitycollaborative.net/.The Collaborative?s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 16 in Hayfork. - _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Wed Jul 13 11:36:21 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2016 18:36:21 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] The TRP trapping season to commence! Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010AE5ED@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Just an FYI, folks! The Junction City weir (barring any unforeseen circumstances) will be installed, and trapping commence, Tuesday July 19th. The flows from Lewiston Dam should be down to 1000 cfs or so by that point. Expect your first TRP weekly trapping summary a week or two after that. If you have any questions about Junction City weir please direct them to John.Hileman at wildlife.ca.gov or about the program as a whole to Wade.Sinnen at wildlife.ca.gov. The Willow Creek weir will go in right around the 23rd of August. Cheers! MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Tue Jul 19 14:13:28 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2016 14:13:28 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] FW: CA Water Blog: Instream flows: Five features of effective summer flow strategies Message-ID: <005f01d1e202$666608f0$33321ad0$@sisqtel.net> https://californiawaterblog.com/2016/07/10/instream-flows-five-features-of-effective-summer-flow-strategies/ UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences posted: "By Ann Willis As summer begins and stream flows drop throughout California, concerns resurface about whether there?s enough water to support critical ecosystems. Environmental flows have long been a contentious issue, often presented in conflict with e" Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on California WaterBlog Instream flows: Five features of effective summer flow strategies by UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences By Ann Willis As summer begins and stream flows drop throughout California, concerns resurface about whether there?s enough water to support critical ecosystems. Environmental flows have long been a contentious issue, often presented in conflict with existing water use. But there are five key ideas worth remembering as water users and regulators throughout the state consider [?] Read more of this post UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences | July 10, 2016 at 8:00 pm | Tags: Ann Willis | Categories: California Water, Conservation, Planning and Management, reconciliation, Sustainability | URL: http://wp.me/p17k4l-1Eh Comment See all comments Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from California WaterBlog. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://californiawaterblog.com/2016/07/10/instream-flows-five-features-of-effective-summer-flow-strategies/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Tue Jul 19 14:13:48 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2016 14:13:48 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Klamath River Study: Cold Water Refuges Also Function As Disease Refuges For Juvenile Salmon Message-ID: <006401d1e202$71556990$54003cb0$@sisqtel.net> THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN: Weekly Fish and Wildlife News www.cbbulletin.com July 15, 2016 Issue No. 797 * Klamath River Study: Cold Water Refuges Also Function As Disease Refuges For Juvenile Salmon The effects of a naturally-occurring parasite in the Klamath River -- Ceratonova shasta ? decline when juvenile salmon move into areas of cooler water where exposure to the parasite is lower and where the effects of the disease declines in severity, according to a recent study. In effect, the cold water refuge also functions as a disease refuge. The same parasite is present throughout the Columbia River basin, including in the Willamette River where high levels of C. Shasta have been found in the past couple of years when mainstem river temperatures warm. (See CBB, July 10, 2015, ?Bacteria Associated With Warm Water Taking Toll On Salmon, Steelhead In Northwest,? http://www.cbbulletin.com/434489.aspx) While the authors of the study surmise that cold water refuges could offer the same protections in the Columbia basin, they noted that the study was of just one river and that other rivers may differ, according to co-author Dr. Sascha Hallett, senior research associate, Department of Microbiology, Oregon State University. C. Shasta causes enteronecrosis in salmon, a disease that increases in severity as temperature and parasite doses increase. Infections by this parasite cause severe intestinal disease, ceratomyxosis (enteronecrosis), often resulting in death, the study says. ?The study investigated the abundance of the salmon parasite C. shasta in a thermal refuge compared to the warmer mainstem Klamath River during the summer, when high numbers of juvenile salmonids rely on these cold water patches,? Hallett said. Salmonids in the Klamath River mainstem must contend with summer water temperatures that reach levels that stress the fish and can sometimes be lethal. With climate change, the water temperature in the Klamath River has been rising 0.5 degrees Celsius every decade since the early 1960s, the study says. The final study was the result of a combination of field work and lab studies. The field observations included juvenile chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead. The lab study tested juvenile chinook and coho. ?In the field, we found that temperature was 2-8 (about 4 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit) degrees Celsius lower and that levels of the parasite that cause the disease were lower in the refugium compared to the mainstem, but the disparity in parasite load decreased later in the summer,? she said. ?Our lab studies showed that the fluctuating temperature that fish would experience as they moved from the warm mainstem to the cooler refuge did not impact disease severity, compared to a constant midrange temperature.? The authors found that juvenile salmon move between the main-stem river and thermal refuge habitats diurnally, seeking food which is more plentiful in the main stem and seeking cooler water in the refuge. In the process, fish infected with C. shasta during the summer experience fluctuating thermal regimes rather than simply lower temperatures, the study says. Field work focused on one large, ?well-characterized refuge formed by Beaver Creek (rkm 261) that provides thermal relief for juvenile salmonids during peak main-stem water temperatures,? the study says. High densities of juvenile salmon have been observed during snorkel surveys in this cool water refuge, particularly when the Klamath River exceeds 22?C. The study, ?Klamath River Thermal Refuge Provides Juvenile Salmon Reduced Exposure to the Parasite Ceratonova shasta? (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00028487.2016.1159612), was published online in June in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. Hallett?s co-authors are Luciano V. Chiaramonte, senior microbiologist, Dr. Adam Ray, quantitative analyst, and Dr. Jerri L. Bartholomew, professor, all with the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, OSU; and Alex Corum and Toz Soto, both fisheries biologists with the Karuk Tribe in Orleans, Calif. C. Shasta responds to water temperature, according to Hallett, a ?universal finding? that ?applies to the parasite throughout its range - all rivers in the Pacific Northwest, including the Columbia River Basin. Here?s how the parasite proliferates, according to the study: The parasite requires a salmonid host and the benthic freshwater polychaete Manayunkia speciosa for completion of its life cycle. An infected salmonid sheds C. shasta myxospores that are ingested by M. speciosa. Infection in the polychaete host culminates in the release of actinospores into the water column, where they encounter salmon. The outcome of infection is primarily influenced by temperature and exposure dose, but is also affected by host susceptibility and parasite genetics. ?Elevated water temperatures cause increased and faster mortality in infected fish (e.g. 69 percent mortality and 31 mean days to death (MDD) at 13?C, compared with 98 percent mortality and 16 d at 21?C for Chinook Salmon and a sufficient parasite dose (i.e. 10 spores/L) exacerbates the effects of temperature,? the study says. It also applies to all aspects of the parasite?s life cycle, Hallett added. ?For example, the parasite proliferates more quickly at higher temperatures in both its fish and its invertebrate (polychaete worm) hosts,? she said. ?Thus, disease is more severe in salmonids at higher water temperature ? a combination of higher proliferation as well as fish being less capable of dealing with infection when they are stressed at higher river temperatures. But higher temperatures also mean that polychaete host populations increase more rapidly and that parasite release occurs earlier in the year.? Dr. Bartholomew is also studying areas and timing of C. Shasta in the Willamette River through water sample monitoring at specific sites. However, her studies have not compared levels of the parasite in Willamette River refugia with the mainstem, nor investigated whether refugia-usage in the Willamette River also decreases the severity of enteronecrosis in salmonids, Hallett added. As in the Klamath River, the parasite is mainly present in the Willamette mainstem, but parasite levels in the Willamette are lower and the pattern of distribution along the mainstem gradient differs to the Klamath. Thermal refugia likely play an important role in salmonid health and thus preservation and restoration of these habitats is important for salmon/trout populations, Hallett concluded. ?Both the fish and worm hosts of C. shasta as well as the parasite are native to these rivers,? she said. ?The high levels of parasite and associated population-level impacts on wild and free-ranging salmonids have only been recently documented and are highly variable between years. Thus, the goal of our research is to better understand these shifts in host-parasite dynamics and how disease effects can be lessened.? Identification and preservation of these cooler habitats is important for juvenile and adult salmonids during summer (e.g. through preservation or restoration of riparian vegetation along river margins and restoration/maintenance of snow-fed or spring fed streams that provide refuges where they connect with the river mainstem), she said. Also see: --CBB, December 19, 2014, ?Inoculation For C. Shasta, Salmon Parasite, Fails But Researchers Hope For Better Outcomes In Future,? http://www.cbbulletin.com/432803.aspx --CBB, October 10, 2014, ?Stream Flows Increased In Klamath River By 75 Percent To Fight Parasite Threatening Coho, Chinook,? http://www.cbbulletin.com/432360.aspx --CBB, August 22, 2014, ?Parasite-Driven Disease Hitting Klamath Salmon Hard Also Found To Lesser Degree In Columbia Basin,? http://www.cbbulletin.com/431827.aspx -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Tue Jul 19 14:14:30 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2016 14:14:30 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Water Deeply: AB 2480 to officially designate critical watersheds for CA's water infrastructure Message-ID: <006901d1e202$8afccb90$a0f662b0$@sisqtel.net> Trinity River watershed is included. News Deeply water Deeply https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2016/06/23/bill-to-aid-water-suppl y-by-restoring-watersheds A bill in the California Legislature aims to improve water supplies by restoring key watersheds in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. Critics say that's an important step, but the bill needs to go further. Written byMatt Weiser Published ons Jun. 23, 2016 Read time Approx. 5 minutes Scott Grant of Palo Alto, Calif., fly-fishes below the backdrop of volcanic Mount Lassen in 1995. This region is the focus of a bill in the state Legislature that aims to improve the health of California forests in order to improve water supply. Bob Galbraith, AP It has been estimated that more than 60 percent of California's freshwater comes from mountain storm runoff and snowmelt. Yet these mountain watersheds have never been officially recognized for their role in delivering and filtering this enormous share of the state's vital water supply. That may change soon. A bill in the state Legislature, AB 2480 (authored by Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica), would officially recognize five critical Sierra Nevada and Cascade watersheds as important pieces of the state's water infrastructure. It would enshrine in state policy the importance of restoring forests, meadows and streams in these watersheds, and make such projects eligible for state water-project grant funding. The bill was approved in the Assembly on June 2. Next up is a hearing on June 28 in the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee. "It's never been acknowledged before that watersheds are this important," said Laurie Wayburn, president of Pacific Forest Trust, a nonprofit that works to preserve privately owned forest lands and a sponsor of the bill. "Fundamentally, we have not been looking at our source watersheds for what they are, which is integral infrastructure for our water system." It has been recognized for several decades that Sierra forests are in trouble. A century of fire suppression has left forests overcrowded with trees. Many of those trees are approximately the same age, an unnatural condition resulting from clearcut logging practices. Greater forest density not only poses more fire risk, but it also means more water consumption by trees. The overgrown forests have encroached on the Sierra's meadows, harming their function as natural sponges that absorb and filter storm runoff. Many meadows have also been degraded by livestock grazing. As a result, rainfall and snowmelt run off too quickly, resulting in erosion, diminished water quality and reduced groundwater recharge. Because of these and other factors, runoff from the Upper Feather River Watershed, according to one estimate, has been reduced by 400,000 acre-feet (493 million cubic meters) annually. That's more than 10 percent of the capacity of Lake Oroville downstream, and enough water to serve nearly 1 million households for a year. The Feather River is one of five watersheds that would get special attention under AB 2480 because it feeds the state's two largest reservoirs: Shasta and Oroville. Others are the Trinity, Pitt, McCloud and Sacramento rivers. In total, said Wayburn, these watersheds encompass some 7 million acres (2.8 million hectares), about 62 percent of which is publicly owned, mainly by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. "There's a real synergy where we can do good things for forests, and also do really vital things for watershed function," Wayburn said. Juan Flores stands in the middle of a charred forest as he chops down trees in Manton, Calif. in 2012, that were burned by the Ponderosa Fire. Many of California's forests are overgrown with trees, which has increased fire risk and water consumption. (Jose Sanchez, AP) The bill states that projects in these watersheds may be eligible for state funding if they engage in vegetation management, meadow restoration, road removal and repair, and stream channel restoration. It also states that purchasing conservation easements to preserve private forest lands may be eligible for state funding to prevent "conversion and degradation" of these lands. The bill has officially been supported by several conservation groups, including Audubon California, the California League of Conservation Voters, Defenders of Wildlife, Trust for Public Land and the Mono Lake Committee. Others have expressed concern about the bill, although they have not yet announced any formal opposition. Among them is Jonathan Kusel, executive director of the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, which is based in the Feather River watershed. The bill's emphasis on conservation easements causes him to worry that landowners will be paid to manage their forests for water supplies to the exclusion of other issues, such as wildlife habitat, greenhouse gas emissions and forest health. He would like to see the bill include prescriptions for forest management that would boost overall ecosystem health. "Trying to manage just for water is as stupid as trying to manage for any other single output," Kusel said. "We simply are not going to solve the problem and, in fact, we might do worse if what we do is only utilize conservation easements." Katherine Evatt, president of the Foothill Conservancy, shares this concern. She also noted that the bill states projects may be eligible for funding if they show "a demonstrated likelihood of increasing conditions for water and snow attraction, retention and release." This, she said, is a pretty weak test. For example, some studies have suggested the Sierra could deliver more water if forested areas were cleared to create open space. The reasoning is that these areas would accumulate snowpack that would otherwise evaporate from the tree canopy. But the science on this is not robust, and it doesn't take into consideration other effects on the ecosystem. Clearcuts also cause snow to melt too fast, because they are exposed to the sun, thereby generating more erosion. They also disturb wildlife habitat. "We don't think the state should fund these projects until there is more evidence they can be done in an ecologically sound way," she said. John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, said the bill should be broadened to allow state funding of other Sierra watersheds, besides those that feed the Shasta and Oroville reservoirs. Several other rivers also serve millions of Californians and their watersheds could be considered equally important, including the Mokelumne, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers. Buckley also noted the legislation does not earmark any specific funding amounts for watershed projects, nor does it change any state policies to reform how forests are managed. "Although there is a very positive intent made clear in the bill for source watersheds to be better managed, the actual wording simply makes it a state policy that source watersheds should be 'considered' for financing to do positive maintenance and repair," he said. Wayburn said she is open to refinements in the bill as it moves forward. But she also defended it as written. In particular, she said the focus on conservation easements is appropriate, and the details will follow practices now common in the state for such easements, which require an emphasis on preserving social and environmental benefits. "The goals are pretty clear in the bill that it's to enhance and to maintain watersheds," she said. "You're not looking at trying to support otherwise commercial activities." The move to begin protecting Sierra watersheds got a boost last year when the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) released an important policy document. It recognizes the importance of mountain headwaters to the state, and calls for focused restoration efforts. The report is significant, because ACWA represents hundreds of water agencies that deliver 90 percent of California's urban and agricultural water supplies. Critics of AB 2480 are pleased to see the bill take this recognition a step further. But they'd like to see it do a bit more. "It is perhaps one small mini-step for the California Assembly to recognize forests and watersheds as important components of the state's overall water supply system," Buckley said. "However, most 4th and 5th graders already learn that in elementary school. What is urgently needed . is significant mandated funding to actually achieve the desired source watershed enhancement." About the Author Matt Weiser Matt Weiser is a contributing editor at Water Deeply. Contact him at matt at newsdeeply.org or via Twitter at @matt_weiser. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Jul 19 15:08:43 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2016 22:08:43 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Klamath River Study: Cold Water Refuges Also Function As Disease Refuges For Juvenile Salmon In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <938877895.1724585.1468966123934.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, July 19, 2016 2:34 PM, "Carter, Katharine at Waterboards" wrote: Hello KFHAT members, ? The following article provides interesting information about the importance of colder water refugia, not only for relief from high mainstem water temperatures but as disease refuges for juvenile salmon.? ? ? Great work by members of Jerry Bartholomew?s Lab (including Dr. Sascha Hallett) at Oregon State University and ?the Karuk Tribe fisheries department (Alex Corum and Toz Soto). ? Katharine ? Katharine Carter Adaptive Watershed Management Unit North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board 5550 Skylane Blvd. Suite A Santa Rosa, CA 95403 707-576-2290 Katharine.Carter at waterboards.ca.gov ? From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 2:14 PM To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Klamath River Study: Cold Water Refuges Also Function As Disease Refuges For Juvenile Salmon ? THE COLUMBIA BASIN BULLETIN: Weekly Fish and Wildlife News www.cbbulletin.com July 15, 2016?????? Issue No. 797 ? ? * Klamath River Study: Cold Water Refuges Also Function As Disease Refuges For Juvenile Salmon ? The effects of a naturally-occurring parasite in the Klamath River -- Ceratonova shasta ? decline when juvenile salmon move into areas of cooler water where exposure to the parasite is lower and where the effects of the disease declines in severity, according to a recent study. ? In effect, the cold water refuge also functions as a disease refuge. ? The same parasite is present throughout the Columbia River basin, including in the Willamette River where high levels of C. Shasta have been found in the past couple of years when mainstem river temperatures warm. ? (See CBB, July 10, 2015, ?Bacteria Associated With Warm Water Taking Toll On Salmon, Steelhead In Northwest,?http://www.cbbulletin.com/434489.aspx) ? While the authors of the study surmise that cold water refuges could offer the same protections in the Columbia basin, they noted that the study was of just one river and that other rivers may differ, according to co-author Dr. Sascha Hallett, senior research associate, Department of Microbiology, Oregon State University. ? C. Shasta causes enteronecrosis in salmon, a disease that increases in severity as temperature and parasite doses increase. Infections by this parasite cause severe intestinal disease, ceratomyxosis (enteronecrosis), often resulting in death, the study says. ? ?The study investigated the abundance of the salmon parasite C. shasta in a thermal refuge compared to the warmer mainstem Klamath River during the summer, when high numbers of juvenile salmonids rely on these cold water patches,? Hallett said. ? Salmonids in the Klamath River mainstem must contend with summer water temperatures that reach levels that stress the fish and can sometimes be lethal. With climate change, the water temperature in the Klamath River has been rising 0.5 degrees Celsius every decade since the early 1960s, the study says. ? The final study was the result of a combination of field work and lab studies. The field observations included juvenile chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead. The lab study tested juvenile chinook and coho. ? ?In the field, we found that temperature was 2-8 (about 4 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit) degrees Celsius lower and that levels of the parasite that cause the disease were lower in the refugium compared to the mainstem, but the disparity in parasite load decreased later in the summer,? she said. ?Our lab studies showed that the fluctuating temperature that fish would experience as they moved from the warm mainstem to the cooler refuge did not impact disease severity, compared to a constant midrange temperature.? ? The authors found that juvenile salmon move between the main-stem river and thermal refuge habitats diurnally, seeking food which is more plentiful in the main stem and seeking cooler water in the refuge. In the process, fish infected with C. shasta during the summer experience fluctuating thermal regimes rather than simply lower temperatures, the study says. ? Field work focused on one large, ?well-characterized refuge formed by Beaver Creek (rkm 261) that provides thermal relief for juvenile salmonids during peak main-stem water temperatures,? the study says. High densities of juvenile salmon have been observed during snorkel surveys in this cool water refuge, particularly when the Klamath River exceeds 22?C. ? The study, ?Klamath River Thermal Refuge Provides Juvenile Salmon Reduced Exposure to the Parasite Ceratonova shasta? (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00028487.2016.1159612), was published online in June in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. ? Hallett?s co-authors are Luciano V. Chiaramonte, senior microbiologist, Dr. Adam Ray, quantitative analyst, and Dr. Jerri L. Bartholomew, professor, all with the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, OSU; and Alex Corum and Toz Soto, both fisheries biologists with the Karuk Tribe in Orleans, Calif. ? C. Shasta responds to water temperature, according to Hallett, a ?universal finding? that ?applies to the parasite throughout its range - all rivers in the Pacific Northwest, including the Columbia River Basin. ? Here?s how the parasite proliferates, according to the study: ? The parasite requires a salmonid host and the benthic freshwater polychaete Manayunkia speciosa for completion of its life cycle. An infected salmonid sheds C. shasta myxospores that are ingested by M. speciosa. Infection in the polychaete host culminates in the release of actinospores into the water column, where they encounter salmon. The outcome of infection is primarily influenced by temperature and exposure dose, but is also affected by host susceptibility and parasite genetics. ? ?Elevated water temperatures cause increased and faster mortality in infected fish (e.g. 69 percent mortality and 31 mean days to death (MDD) at 13?C, compared with 98 percent mortality and 16 d at 21?C for Chinook Salmon and a sufficient parasite dose (i.e. 10 spores/L) exacerbates the effects of temperature,? the study says. ? It also applies to all aspects of the parasite?s life cycle, Hallett added. ? ?For example, the parasite proliferates more quickly at higher temperatures in both its fish and its invertebrate (polychaete worm) hosts,? she said. ?Thus, disease is more severe in salmonids at higher water temperature ? a combination of higher proliferation as well as fish being less capable of dealing with infection when they are stressed at higher river temperatures. But higher temperatures also mean that polychaete host populations increase more rapidly and that parasite release occurs earlier in the year.? ? Dr. Bartholomew is also studying areas and timing of C. Shasta in the Willamette River through water sample monitoring at specific sites. However, her studies have not compared levels of the parasite in Willamette River refugia with the mainstem, nor investigated whether refugia-usage in the Willamette River also decreases the severity of enteronecrosis in salmonids, Hallett added. ? As in the Klamath River, the parasite is mainly present in the Willamette mainstem, but parasite levels in the Willamette are lower and the pattern of distribution along the mainstem gradient differs to the Klamath. ? Thermal refugia likely play an important role in salmonid health and thus preservation and restoration of these habitats is important for salmon/trout populations, Hallett concluded. ? ?Both the fish and worm hosts of C. shasta as well as the parasite are native to these rivers,? she said. ?The high levels of parasite and associated population-level impacts on wild and free-ranging salmonids have only been recently documented and are highly variable between years. Thus, the goal of our research is to better understand these shifts in host-parasite dynamics and how disease effects can be lessened.? ? Identification and preservation of these cooler habitats is important for juvenile and adult salmonids during summer (e.g. through preservation or restoration of riparian vegetation along river margins and restoration/maintenance of snow-fed or spring fed streams that provide refuges where they connect with the river mainstem), she said. ? Also see: ? --CBB, December 19, 2014, ?Inoculation For C. Shasta, Salmon Parasite, Fails But Researchers Hope For Better Outcomes In Future,?http://www.cbbulletin.com/432803.aspx ? --CBB, October 10, 2014, ?Stream Flows Increased In Klamath River By 75 Percent To Fight Parasite Threatening Coho, Chinook,?http://www.cbbulletin.com/432360.aspx ? --CBB, August 22, 2014, ?Parasite-Driven Disease Hitting Klamath Salmon Hard Also Found To Lesser Degree In Columbia Basin,?http://www.cbbulletin.com/431827.aspx ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3812 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Jul 20 12:24:44 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2016 19:24:44 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Invitation to Klamath Basin Water Temperature Model Demo In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1246638362.2068948.1469042684459.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 12:11 PM, "Hetrick, Nick" wrote: The USGS WesternFisheries Research Center, in cooperation with the USFWS Arcata Fish andWildlife Office, will host a WebEx presentation on Thursday August 4th at 9:30-11:30 am to demo the Klamath River Basin RBM10 Water Temperature Model. The sessionwill include a walk-thru of the graphical user interface (GUI) developed by theUSGS Center to help users?in running the model, creating alternativescenarios, and summarizing model output.?Feedback from participants on potential improvements and utilities thatcould be incorporated into the GUI will be encouraged following the demo. Participantswill also be provided with a link to download this stand-alone softwareapplication following the demonstration. ? Nicholas J. Hetrick?JOIN WEBEX MEETING Topic: Klamath Basin Water Temperature Model?Date: Thursday, August 4, 2016?Time: 9:30 am-11:30 am, Pacific Daylight Time (San Francisco, GMT-07:00)?Meeting number: 713 305 087?Meeting password: (This meeting does not require a password.)? Please click the link below to see more information, or to join the meeting.?https://usgs.webex.com/usgs/j.php?MTID=ma947401208c039b74a1fce39ff70a85e? JOIN BY PHONE Teleconference: Dial in number: 703-648-4848?Conference Security Code: 17349 followed by the # sign? SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS: ?Perry, R.W., J. C. Risley, S. J. Brewer, E. C. Jones, and D. W. Rondorf. 2011. Simulating daily water temperatures of the Klamath River under dam removal and climate change scenarios: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2011-1243, 78 p. ?http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1243/ Jones, E.C., R. W. Perry, J. C. Risley, N. A. Som, and N. J. Hetrick. ?2016. Construction, calibration, and validation of the RBM10 water temperature model for the Trinity River, northern California: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File?Report 2016?1056, 46 p. ?http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20161056. ANNUAL WATER TEMPRATURE MONITORING REPORTS:?Several annual water temperature monitoring reports for the Klamath and Trinity rivers are available on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Service website at:https://www.fws.gov/arcata/fisheries/reportsDisplay.html ?? -- Nicholas J. HetrickProgram LeadFish & Aquatic Habitat Conservation ProgramArcata Fish and Wildlife OfficeArcata, CA 95521office (707) 822-7201 fax (707) 822-8411 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Jul 21 11:30:15 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2016 18:30:15 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Dam removal plan to feds by end of 2016? References: <136778302.2523734.1469125815361.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <136778302.2523734.1469125815361.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160720/dam-removal-plan-to-feds-by-end-of-2016&template=printart Dam removal plan to feds by end of 2016? By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardWednesday, July 20, 2016A plan to decommission and remove four dams along California and Oregon?s Klamath River may go before a federal agency for consideration before the end of the year.?But Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Policy Adviser Craig Tucker said that a decision on the now 6-year-old dam-removal proposal could still face obstacles.?There may be attempts to litigate to prevent us from removing the dams,? Tucker said. ?... I feel like things are getting better for the Klamath in the near future.? Decommissioning dams Signed on by state governors, federal officials, tribal government leaders, environmental groups and the dam-owning company PacifiCorp in April, the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement seeks to remove the four hydroelectric dams ? Copco 1, Copco 2, Iron Gate and J.C. Boyle ? by 2020 in order to improve water quality for fish and downstream water users. The agreement must gain approval of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission before dams can be removed as well as water quality permits from both California and Oregon.If implemented, the project is purported to be the largest river restoration project in U.S. history.The project is set to cost around $450 million, with PacifiCorp ratepayers contributing $200 million and California contributing $250 million through its 2014 water bond, Proposition 1.A nonprofit company, the Klamath River Restoration Corporation, was created earlier this year to take ownership of the four dams from PacifiCorp and to submit the dam decommissioning plan to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Tucker said the plan is expected to be submitted ?within the next few weeks.?Meanwhile, the Klamath River Restoration Corporation is selecting its board of directors, picked by the nearly 40 signatories to the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. The Karuk Tribe announced its own appointment on Wednesday, appointing Hoopa Valley Tribe member and former tribal councilwoman Wendy ?Poppy? George who has confronted PacifiCorp?s parent company ? American entrepreneur Warren Buffet?s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. ? and the former dam owner Sottish Power over the last decade.?We couldn?t find a more qualified or trustworthy individual to take on this important responsibility,? Karuk Natural Resources Director Leaf Hillman said in a statement.?We know Wendy will fight for our river and overcome whatever hurdles are put between us and dam removal.?Other board members include former Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski, Kulongoski?s former natural resource advisor Michael Carrier, and former California Natural Resources Secretary Lester Snow, according to Tucker.?To me I just feel like they?re putting together the A-Team to do this,? Tucker said.The board will be tasked with setting up funding contracts with various public utility commissions, finding a contractor to remove the dams and maintaining a line of communication between federal regulators during the decommissioning process. Anticipated litigation In an April letter to the signatories of the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors stated that a lawsuit was imminent.?The lawsuits are already lined up and ready to define the next significant era of water/politics for the Klamath River,? the letter states. ?The ham-handed handling of this latest effort (with ?secret? meetings, lack of transparency, and lack of authority, to name the most obvious examples) to force some parties? one-and-only solution on the Klamath Basin has only provided even more gist for the legal battle that will come.?The blatant violation of the federal Endangered Species Act and the potential extirpation of the coho salmon from the Klamath River is only the most egregious violation of federal law,? the letter continues.Attempts to contact several Siskiyou County supervisors went unreturned on Wednesday. Siskiyou County Administrator Terry Barber was unavailable for comment.New York City-based attorney Lawrence Kogan also states that a lawsuit is warranted ?to put the government on notice that it has to be held to account for all of its misrepresentation and lies.?Kogan said he had previously worked as a specialty counsel by Siskiyou County and the Klamath Irrigation District and was a former advisor for the George W. Bush administration. The attorney further states that the dam removal agreement fails to address toxic sediments in the dam reservoirs.Sweet River Sciences fish biologist Joshua Strange said that $1 million in funding was used to conduct a sediment assessment of the dams and their reservoirs. The results found there to be very little contaminants that are typically a concern in dam removals, such as mercury or the industrial chemical polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), in the reservoir sediments.?The analysis showed there to be no significant concerns in terms of contaminants of sediment in the reservoirs slated for removal,? Strange said.Strange further stated that Upper Klamath Lake and its wetlands have acted as natural sediment traps.?Those sediment traps have greatly decreased the amount of sediment that was moving down the main-stem Klamath into those reservoirs,? Strange said. ?That combined with the stable geology of the Cascade region means there is not a problematic level sediments when it comes to removing these dams and reservoirs.?Kogan also claims that Klamath Basin irrigators will lose access to water, which will lead to a loss of crops and a greater reliance on internationally imported produce.?It?s all about the fish,? Kogan said about the agreement. ?The people don?t matter.?A bill known as the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, or KBRA, was meant to address these water sharing concerns between tribes and irrigators in the Klamath Basin.The Klamath Tribes of Oregon ? the tribal government made up of the Klamath and Modoc tribes and Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians ? had began a process in 1975 known as adjudication to settle water rights in the Sycan, Wood and Williamson rivers, which flow through the former reservation lands of the Klamath Tribes into Upper Klamath Lake. The process ended in 2013 with the tribes gaining senior water rights, causing irrigators to challenge the decision.The KBRA and another agreement known as the Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement reached in April 2014 would ensure irrigators would have more water for their land than would be allowed if the tribes called upon their fully adjudicated water rights, according to proponents.However, the KBRA expired in late December 2015 after Republicans in the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee failed to advance the bill. California?s 1st District Congressman Doug LaMalfa, who represents Siskiyou County, was one of the committee members who openly opposed any dam removal provisions.A new agreement announced this year ? known as the 2016 Klamath Power and Facilities Agreement (KPFA) ? seeks to help Klamath Basin irrigators and farmers deal with the expected arrival of fish into waters currently blocked by the four hydroelectric dams. The agreement also commits stakeholders to work over the next year to form other agreements meant to resolve water rights conflicts and provide protections for endangered fish in Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon.?Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Jul 24 10:43:30 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2016 17:43:30 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Low flows, low run expected for Klamath River salmon this fall References: <102159489.3660935.1469382210450.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <102159489.3660935.1469382210450.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/environment-and-nature/20160723/low-flows-low-run-expected-for-klamath-river-salmon-this-fall Low flows, low run expected for Klamath River salmon this fall Researcher calls for ?vigilant? oversight; county requests Trinity River dam releases By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardSaturday, July 23, 2016While conditions on the Klamath River are looking more favorable for fish compared to recent years of drought and disease, North Coast researchers and tribes are not expecting fall-run salmon to have an easy journey.On top of that, predicted salmon runs are so low this year that for the first time in its 54-year history, the Yurok Tribe?s annual Klamath Salmon Festival on Aug. 20 will not be serving any salmon.??There are not enough fish to feed our families, many of which will need food assistance, as a result of this manmade catastrophe,? Yurok Tribal Chairman Thomas O?Rourke said in a statement.O?Rourke and other local tribes including the Karuk and Hoopa Valley are pointing the finger of blame at federally regulated dams and are claiming that not enough water is being released to prevent deadly parasitic outbreaks on salmon.Sweet Water Sciences fish biologist Joshua Strange said the expected low returns of spawning salmon are caused by widespread disease outbreaks that have occurred in recent years as well as poor ocean conditions.?When you put those two together, you would expect to have lower returns to spawn,? Strange said. ?Conversely, when those conditions do improve you would expect the number of spawners to bounce back.?While increased precipitation this past winter has improved the flows in the Klamath River, Strange said it was not enough to replenish the creeks, springs and other river tributaries that salmon normally use to spawn.?They?re worse than we would expect given the amount of precipitation compared with the previous years of drought,? Strange said. ?That combined with the fact that disease problems were really bad during the last couple years means we need to remain vigilant and take appropriate preventative action as warranted to ensure fish health.?Over the last two years, spawning salmon and their offspring experienced harsh and often deadly conditions on the river including the first outbreak of a deadly gill parasite since the 2002 Klamath River fish kill.?The drought conditions also resulted in warm, low flowing waters that further stressed fish immune systems. Recent studies conducted by local tribes show that up to 91 percent of juvenile salmon were infected by an intestinal parasite in both 2014 and 2015, with most expected to have died from it.The dam-controlling Bureau of Reclamation made several dam water releases to try and combat these outbreaks, including an unprecedented emergency water release in 2014.In anticipation of what is projected to be another low-flow year, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors has filed a formal request for 50,000 acre-feet of Trinity River water to be released from Lewiston Dam.?When that water will be released is still up for discussion, 3rd District Supervisor and board Chairman Mark Lovelace said, but what is known is that it will be used to improve flows for incoming fish while also flushing away parasites and their intermediate hosts.?The 50,000 acre-feet of water was promised to Humboldt County in a 1955 congressional act and subsequent contract between the county and Bureau of Reclamation in 1959. A solicitor?s opinion from the U.S. Interior Department ? which oversees the Bureau of Reclamation ? in 2014 affirmed Humboldt County?s right to the 50,000 acre-feet and clarified that the bureau?s routine dam releases do not count toward that water allocation.Lovelace said that the county is also considering releasing this water at different times of the year, but said those uses will require more stakeholder outreach and possibly further environmental reviews.?After 65 years of waiting to get this (water) right affirmed, I think it?s good for us to move cautiously in terms of how we go forward with this,? he said. ?We want to make sure we?re using this water for the best long-term interest of the Trinity River and all downstream communities.?While fall-run salmon are not expected to move into the river until late August, Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Policy Adviser Craig Tucker said that river conditions in the months preceding their arrival have been favorable. This spring, the Bureau of Reclamation ramped up flows, which churned and flushed the gravel on the river bed that often contain worms known to host intestinal parasites.?Disease rates have been much lower,? Tucker said. ?... A healthy river system depends on high water events to maintain the quality of the river channel.?Tribes and environmental organizations are calling on federal agencies to quickly draft a defined schedule for dam water releases until four hydroelectric dams are removed from the river in 2020 as proposed by?the pending Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. Should such a plan not be drafted, these entities intend to file federal lawsuits.The Bureau of Reclamation is currently developing a long-term plan for lower Klamath River salmon populations, which would include set protocol for how and when more water should be released from dams to prevent such outbreaks.Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Jul 25 14:03:21 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2016 14:03:21 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Article Submission: HUGE CA WATER STORY: Water Contractors Launch Another Attack on Striped Bass, Black Bass (revised) In-Reply-To: <500D8406-EBE6-4676-BE30-2DB2768A97A6@fishsniffer.com> References: <09A18101-8C7B-46D4-8A90-F8BAB775BBF4@fishsniffer.com> <500D8406-EBE6-4676-BE30-2DB2768A97A6@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <80C29517-7FF1-418F-9ABE-79F6A16BE9F1@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/07/25/water-contractors-launch-attack-on-striped-bass-black-bass/ Photo of Prospect Island fish kill in the California Delta in November 2007. Water Contractors Launch Another Attack on Striped Bass, Black Bass by Dan Bacher | posted in: Spotlight | 0 Agribusiness interests and Southern California water agencies have launched a new attack in their campaign to eradicate striped bass as they scapegoat the popular gamefish for salmon and Delta smelt declines caused by decades of water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Dleta. The Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, the Astroturf group bankrolled by Beverly Hills agribusiness tycoon Stewart Resnick, on June 9 submitted a new petition to the California Fish and Game Commission to raise the bag limit and reduce the size limit on striped bass in an attempt to reduce their population. This time they?ve added black bass as a so-called ?predator? to their petition. The ?Coalition? is joined by a who?s who of the state?s agribusiness, water agency and corporate interests, including the California Chamber of Commerce, the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California, San Joaquin Tributaries Authority, Southern California Water Committee, State Water Contractors, Western Growers Association, California Farm Bureau Federation, Northern California Water Association and Kern County Water Agency. When the water contractors last tried to eradicate striped bass by slashing the size limit and increasing the bag limit, anglers were able to defeat their proposal with a large showing of people at the February 2012 Fish and Game Commission meeting after Fish Sniffer Editor Cal Kellogg and I helped organize a campaign mobilizing over 450 anglers to show up for a CDFW meeting on the issue in Rio Vista in November 2011. Coalition for a Sustainable Delta spokesman Michael Boccadoro, the president of the Dolphin Group, claimed the purpose of the petition is to ?help preserve? Sacramento River Chinook salmon and Delta smelt. ?California families, businesses and farms have sacrificed considerably during this drought to provide water to help preserve salmon and smelt,? Boccadoro stated. ?Modifying size and bag limits for striped bass is an important next step to better protect and begin restoring these endangered species. It is clear that more needs to be done to halt the continuing declines.? The proposed changes would increase the bag limits and decrease the size limits for black bass and striped bass in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and rivers tributary to the Delta, according to Boccadoro. The black bass size limit would be decreased from 12 inches to 8 inches and the daily bag limit would be increased from 5 fish to 10 fish. The striped bass size limit would be decreased from 18 inches to 12 inches and the daily bag limit would be increased from 2 fish to 6 fish. The Coalition also criticized state regulators for focusing on increased flows and water pumping restrictions while ?predation by non- native species has gone largely unaddressed.? Anglers oppose the proposal because they say it will reduce the population of stripers and black bass and not address the real causes of salmon, Delta smelt and other fish declines ? water diversions, overpumping and mismanagement by the state and federal governments. Dave Hurley of the Allied Fishing Groups explained the gravity of the matter in an action alert to anglers. ?Those wanting to blame introduced species for the water contractors? sins of overpumping the Delta are back on another attack on species that have co-existed in the Delta for over 100 years,? said Hurley. The petition will be addressed at the California Fish and Game Commission meeting on Aug 24-25 at the Lake Natoma Inn and Conference Center, 702 Gold Lake Dr. Folsom Ca 95630. The agenda for the meeting has not been posted yet, but will be posted soon at: http://fgc.ca.gov/meetings/2016/index.aspx Prominent scientists disagree strongly with the contention of Boccadaro and the water contractors that the proposed regulations would ?help protect? endangered salmon and smelt, pointing out the lack of any peer-reviewed science backing this claim. ?There is NO new peer-reviewed science that would change anything regarding this issue from the last time they tried the regulation change until now,? said David J. Ostrach Ph.D., Chief Scientist of Ostrach Consulting. ?There has been some special interest group directed ?studies? by the water contractors and their allies, most of which are bogus or focus on hot spots and then expand that notion to the entire estuary e.g. if they?re eating them in mass at the hotspots there eating them everywhere.? ?Most importantly. predation at hot spots and throughout the Delta has not been shown to affect population levels of salmon or endangered species; it is a lower-level stressor. The biggest predators known to affect population levels of endangered species in the system are the state and federal water project pumping operations, where it?s clearly documented that they?ve killed tens of millions of endangered salmon, Delta smelt, striped bass and any other fish that enters Clifton Court Forebay,? said Ostrach. In fact, Ostrach points out that Dr. Sean Hayes, NOAA?s lead scientist on this topic, made a 45 minute presentation to the State Water Resources Control Board concluding that removing striped bass and other predators from the system would likely not only do no good, but could potentially cause serious harm to endangered species and the ecosystem. ?So the federal agency?s own scientists working on this problem have come to this conclusion, yet his words are twisted to suit the needs of the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta and others,? said Ostrach. Ostrach emphasized that if the Commission does change the regulations so that smaller striped bass are being caught and kept, it would likely cause a decrease in striped bass predation on other fish more dangerous to the endangered species such as the inland silverside. ?If you remove young (up to 3-4-year-old) striped bass by fishing or otherwise reduce their numbers, then the silverside population would increase,? said Ostrach. ?The silversides are direct competitors with salmon smolts for the same food sources, and they also are known to eat Delta smelt larvae, juveniles and eggs. This is just one example of how trying to perturb an ecosystem already in collapse would likely make things much worse rather than do anything better,? he said. A UC Davis study released in May confirms Ostrach?s argument. The study, ?Understanding predation impacts on Delta native fishes,? written by Peter Moyle, Andrew Sih, Anna Steel, Carson Jeffres, William Bennett, asked the question: Will endangered fishes, such as Chinook salmon, delta smelt, and longfin smelt, benefit from control of predators, especially of striped bass? (californiawaterblog.com/?) After a review of the scientific literature and research, their conclusion was ?unlikely.? ?It seems unlikely that a large-scale predator removal program focused on striped bass would have a sustainable, measurable effect on populations of its prey species, specifically protected smelts and salmon,? the scientists concluded. Like Ostrach, they pointed out that predator control can have unintended consequences, including potentially adversely impacting endangered native species. ?For example, reducing striped bass populations might cause an increase in important prey species, such as Mississippi silverside, that prey on delta smelt eggs and larvae. In other words, controlling striped bass may backfire and increase predation on delta smelt,? they wrote. ?Striped bass get blamed for declines of native fishes because they are an abundant, voracious, non-native predator. Yet striped bass have been part of the Delta ecosystem for nearly 150 years, plenty of time for co-adaptation of predator and prey. In periods when delta smelt, longfin smelt, and salmon were abundant in the past, striped bass were much more abundant than they are today, suggesting that the same factors that drive native fish declines are also driving striped bass populations,? the scientists said. Dr. Ostrach described the petition as ?just another diversion by the water contractors and their allies to focus attention on predation rather than the real cause of the demise of the San Francisco Bay Delta ecosystem ? mismanaging the water such that we have an environment very much similar to an Arkansas lake where things like egeria /water hyacinth and freshwater species like smallmouth bass largemouth bass can thrive and is not conducive to survival of plants and animals that live in an estuary.? ?The key to stabilizing the Delta would be to restore habitat, restore the appropriate flows to the river system, and in the case of hot spots, reengineer those places that have created a haven for predators rather than trying to do things that simply won?t work like removing the predators and taking them to lakes and out of the system,? he said. ?Don?t blame the fish ? blame the structures in engineering and the way they are managed,? he concluded. The composition of the Fish and Game Commission has changed dramatically since they last addressed this issue ? and turned down a petition by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), under pressure by the water contractors, to increase striped bass bag bag limits and decrease size limits. Only one Commissioner ? Jacque Carmenin Hostler- has been on the Commission for over two years. Even more troubling, the two newest Commissioners, Russell Burns of Napa and Peter Silva of Chula Vista, work for or have worked for groups pushing Governor Jerry Brown?s Delta Tunnels plan, a water grab by the same water contractors that have proposed changing the limits on stripers and black bass. Burns works as business manager at Operating Engineers Local Union 3, a supporter of the California WaterFix, while Silva served as senior policy advisor at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the sponsors of the petition and one of the leading backers of the Delta Tunnels. As the water contractors submit their petition, the numbers of Delta smelt, once the most abundant fish in the estuary, have plummeted to a new low, according to this spring?s CDFW smelt survey. Only thirteen adult Delta Smelt were collected at 8 stations contributing to the index in 2016. The Delta smelt collapse is part of an overall ecosystem decline driven by water diversions by the federal and state water projects. The CDFW?s 2015 Fall Midwater Trawl demonstrates that, since 1967, populations of striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 98.3, 99.9, 97.7, 98.5 and 93.7 percent, respectively, according to Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA). The California Striped Bass Association (CSPA) has posted an on line petition to the Fish and Game Commission opposing the Coalition? s proposal. Their petition can be found at: https://www.change.org/p/california-fish-and-game-commission-save-the-delta-fisheries . Stewart Resnick, the billionaire funder of the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta Astroturf group, is the co-owner with his wife, Lynda, of The Wonderful Company, the largest grower of orchard fruit in the world. For more information about the Resnicks and their connections with the University of California system, read my piece, ?The story that disgraced UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi didn?t want you to read,? at: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/22/1529480/-The-story-that-disgraced-UCD-Chancellor-Linda-Katehi-didn-t-want-you-to-read -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: prospect_island_fish_kill.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 25033 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Wed Jul 27 10:43:41 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2016 10:43:41 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] SF Chron Editorial: Invest in water infrastructure - forests Message-ID: <004401d1e82e$6aacbc60$40063520$@sisqtel.net> AB2480 bill includes Trinity River, Upper Sac River watersheds. Invest in water infrastructure - forests San Francisco Chronicle July 23, 2016 Updated: July 24, 2016 5:04pm Photo: Tom Stienstra, The Chronicle . This photo shows muddy water flowing into the McCloud River watershed. As California has struggled to live with drought, cries have gone up for new dams, expanded reservoirs, and construction of a pair of enormous water tunnels to store and deliver water more reliably. But what about the need to maintain the capacity of the land to soak up and slowly shed rainwater and snowmelt? Shouldn't we consider the water-gathering capabilities of our forests as part of our water infrastructure, too? AB2480, carried by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, would recognize watersheds as essential to water storage and delivery as the pipes, canals, dams and aqueducts that make up our state's water infrastructure. This would mean watershed maintenance and restoration would receive the same consideration for financing as building a dam. Laurie A. Wayburn, the co-founder and president of Pacific Forest Trust, which is working with Bloom on the legislation, suggests improvements in the five key watersheds of California - the Trinity, the McCloud, the Feather, the Pit and the Upper Sacramento - could yield 5 to 20 percent more water. These five watersheds, all located in the northeastern corner of the state, provide 80 percent of California's water, including 85 percent of the water flowing into San Francisco Bay. The concept, though, could apply to any watershed. The northeastern forests, however, are not in the best of shape - Bloom described their condition to the state Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee as "distinctly suboptimal." These logged-over forests are now crowded with young, second- or third-growth pine and fir. Most of the land (62 percent) is federal forest, with 32 percent private lands, and much of the rest tribal domains. To bring them back to their natural best, land managers would need to thin the forest to create more gaps between the trees. A less dense forest canopy would allow more snow to fall to the ground than cling to treetops, where it evaporates quickly. The shade would slow the snowmelt and cool the air, allowing the watershed to store more water and - importantly - shed it into streams and rivers later into the spring and summer. Thinning, and other activities such as stream restoration, would provide 7,000 jobs (direct, indirect and induced) in a region of high unemployment. "We need to invest in the state's water infrastructure," Wayburn said. "This is the cheapest thing we can do to get more water and more reliable water." Climate models show that as the state warms, this northeastern corner will become cooler and wetter - and thus potentially yield more water in the future. Wayburn's trust and a host of environmental organization are on board in support of AB2480. The Association of California Water Agencies supports the objectives (which are also embodied in the state water plan), but is opposed to any scheme to tax water users to finance watershed restoration. While "who pays" is always the question, it is one to take up another day. AB2480 recognizes nature's work as valuable as human-engineered parts of our water infrastructure - and just as worthy of restoration, care and maintenance. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sat Jul 30 09:35:21 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2016 16:35:21 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Feds sued over Klamath River salmon parasite outbreaks References: <1026660861.6567409.1469896521909.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1026660861.6567409.1469896521909.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160729/feds-sued-over-klamath-river-salmon-parasite-outbreaks Feds sued over Klamath River salmon parasite outbreaks Tribes call for improved flows, dam releases By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardFriday, July 29, 2016The Hoopa Valley Tribe has followed through on its threat to sue two federal agencies if they did not take steps to prevent parasite outbreaks on threatened Klamath River coho salmon.In its lawsuit, the North Coast tribe claims that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and National Marine Fisheries Service knowingly violated the Endangered Species Act and its own biological guidelines by allowing up to 91 percent of coho salmon juveniles to become infected by intestinal parasites in 2014 and 2015.?It is unfortunate that it will take this lawsuit to gain the attention of the federal agencies,? Hoopa Valley Tribal Chairman Ryan Jackson said in a statement on Friday. ?However, this action is unavoidable if we are to protect our fishery resources for future generations.??This (Endangered Species Act) suit is not the warning of a miner?s canary; it is the tsunami siren alerting North Coast communities of impending environmental catastrophe and cultural devastation for the Hoopa Valley Tribe.??Representatives from the Bureau of Reclamation and National Marine Fisheries Service declined to comment Friday as they were still reviewing the litigation.?A series of meetings between the federal agencies and two other North Coast tribes are set to occur in the coming weeks that will seek to prevent further lawsuits.The Hoopa Valley Tribe?s lawsuit is calling for the two agencies to revise their management of the river?s flows through the use of dam water releases. Tribal and other local researchers claim that well-timed dam water releases in the spring and winter can help reduce the risks of parasite outbreaks.?This is accomplished by flushing away the parasites and their intermediate hosts as well as cooling the water, which reduces the stress on salmon immune systems.The Hoopa Valley Tribe?s litigation may be one of three lawsuits the Bureau of Reclamation and National Marine Fisheries Services could face over concerns of Klamath River salmon and alleged Endangered Species Act violations. Nearly a month after the Hoopa Valley Tribe?s sent their 60-day notice in May, the Yurok and Karuk tribes sent a separate 60-day notice to the two federal agencies. Earlier this month, four environmental organizations also filed a third 60-day notice to the federal agencies.The impetus of these legal actions is a March 2016 letter the National Marine Fisheries Services sent to the Bureau of Reclamation, which stated that the high parasite infection rate of coho salmon is ?expected? during dry years and therefore does not require an immediate change in river management.A 2013 biological opinion created by the National Marine Fisheries Service currently allows up to 49 percent of juvenile coho salmon in the Klamath River to be infected by the parasite as a result of the bureau?s dam operations. Coho salmon are listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.Should the infection rates climb above 49 percent, the Bureau of Reclamation is obligated to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service to discuss possible changes of operations.However, the National Marine Fisheries Service?s letter states that it plans to change its 2013 biological opinion before April 2017, specifically revising how many salmon would be allowed to be harmed or killed by the parasite in these drier, low-flow years.?The effect of these actions stands the law on its head,? the Hoopa Valley Tribe?s attorney Thomas Schlosser said in a statement. ?The Hoopa Valley Tribe?s fishery, not irrigation and dam operations, has priority for Klamath River water under both federal Indian law and reclamation law.?The Karuk Tribe?s Natural Resources Policy Adviser Craig Tucker said the Karuk and Yurok tribes have met with federal representatives to negotiate possible solutions.?If those meetings don?t resolve the issue, we?ll be in court too,? Tucker said. ?So far the agencies have indicated a willingness to solve it outside of court.?Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504.??URL: http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160729/feds-sued-over-klamath-river-salmon-parasite-outbreaks? 2016 Eureka Times-Standard (http://www.times-standard.com) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Aug 1 08:28:23 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2016 15:28:23 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Hearing on fix to Delta tunnels plan rekindles old disputes References: <41662817.7265835.1470065303989.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <41662817.7265835.1470065303989.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.eastbaytimes.com/breaking-news/ci_30190610/delta-tunnels-plan-rekindles-water-disputes Hearing on fix to Delta tunnels plan rekindles old disputes?By Denis Cuffdcuff at bayareanewsgroup.comA half-century after building the largest water-delivery system in America, California officials say they now realize they put their giant straws to capture Delta water in the wrong place.Last week, state and federal water project operators opened the case to win permission for a fix ? construction of three diversion points near Sacramento tied to twin underground tunnels to shunt Delta water for 25 million people throughout the state.Not surprisingly, the hearingbefore the state water board rekindled old wounds and produced two sharply different portrayals of what the proposed $17 billion California WaterFix would do for the state?s deeply troubled plumbing system.Critics in Northern California call the plan a water grab destined to harm the Delta environment,?fish and farmers. The 700-square-mile mile region of rivers and sloughs will end up with dirtier, saltier water with more toxic algae, while very little will be done to improve overall water supplies, they say.?The whole ecosystem of theSeeDelta?on Page 6DeltaContinued from Page 1Delta is going to be damaged,? Contra Costa County Supervisor Karen Mitchoff, of Concord, said after testifying last week. ?This will deprive the Delta of freshwater flows and threaten water quality, fish and farming. It?s the wrong way to go, and it won?t produce a single extra drop of water.?But state and federal water project managers see the plan as a long overdue upgrade to provide more stability to Delta water supplies now routinely interrupted by regulatory orders to help protect fish.Delta water is shipped far and wide to San Jose, Livermore, Fremont, Los Angeles, San Diego and many other communities.Water from the Sacramento, San Joaquin and other rivers currently meanders through a maze of Delta channels until it is pumped near Tracy into the state aqueduct that goes to Los Angeles. The new diversion points would allow the water to flow by gravity into two underground tunnels under the Delta to the Tracy pumps.Giant pumpsAdding the new diversion points will reduce the many ills caused by southern Delta pumps that suck up wild fish, disrupt fish-migration routes and hurt food supplies. The giant pumps near Tracy are so powerful they cause water to flow uphill in some waterways.?The existing infrastructure does not work well ? not for the ecosystem or people,? said John Laird, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. ?If we could build the project again, we would put the intakes in a difference place.?Laird said giving the state a second option to divert Sacramento River water from Courtland near Sacramento would reduceharm to fish.?State officials say they do not plan to take more Delta water but change where itis taken.?The state water board hearings are being held this year and in 2017 to determine the impact of the newdiversion points.State and federal officials have argued no harm would occur. But some Delta boaters,farmers and fishermendisagree.Kathleen Updegraff, a marina operator in Courtland, said Delta water quality will suffer from more seawater intrusion, toxic algae and pollutants when the high-quality Sacramento River is shipped south instead of allowed to flow through the Delta.?The tunnels will hurt fish,? she said. ?The boaters will go elsewhere.?The Bay Institute, an environmental group, contends it?s premature to plan the new diversion points because the state has failed to upgrade its Delta water quality standards to require greater freshwater flows through the region to help declining wild fish.?Simply moving the diversion point does not solve the problem,? said Gary Bobker, director of the Bay Institute Rivers and Delta Program. ?If we continue to increase water diversions from the Delta or just maintain them, we will continue to see a downward spiral of fish.?Until the state makes clear how it would operate the tunnels, it?s impossible to judge the impact of the project, he said.One large association for federal water users worries that the California Water-Fix project may not be able to deliver enough to make it worth it for farmers to pay their share. Water users are paying for the project.?We still can?t tell how much water we will get and, therefore, how much it?s going to cost our members,? said Jason Peltier, executive director of the San Luis Delta Water Authority.Fish problemsPeltier said he is concerned that state and federal resource managers have focused so heavily on water flow as a cause of fish problems that they haven?t done enough to look at other causes such as invasive species, sewage and toxic pollution.The state water board presiding over the new water-diversion points includes five members appointed by the governor.To build the twin tunnels, water officials also will need the approval of state and federal fish and wildlife regulators that have jurisdiction over endangered species.The tunnels could be sidetracked by a November ballot measure that would require voter approval for projects that require the state to borrow more than $2 million, as is the likely case with the twin tunnels.Contact Denis Cuff at 925-943-8267. Follow him at Twitter.com/deniscuff or facebook.com/denis.cuff. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu Jul 28 10:45:53 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2016 10:45:53 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Article Submission - Delta Tunnels: Restoring An Estuary by Diverting Its Water? In-Reply-To: <500D8406-EBE6-4676-BE30-2DB2768A97A6@fishsniffer.com> References: <09A18101-8C7B-46D4-8A90-F8BAB775BBF4@fishsniffer.com> <500D8406-EBE6-4676-BE30-2DB2768A97A6@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/7/27/1553375/-Delta-Tunnels-Restoring-An-Estuary-by-Diverting-Its-Water Barbara Daly of North Delta Cares, marina owner and Clarksburg resident, tells the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento on July 27 how the Delta Tunnels will harm her business, family, community, and recreation on the Sacramento River. Photo by Dan Bacher. Delta Tunnels: Restoring An Estuary by Diverting Its Water? by Dan Bacher After covering fish, water, and environmental justice issues in California and the West for over 30 years as an investigative journalist, I?ve concluded that the California Water Fix, the new name for the Delta Tunnels, is the most environmentally devastating public works project I've ever encountered. I?ve published hundreds of articles about the Delta Tunnels, Governor Jerry Brown's plan to divert Sacramento River water 30 miles under the California Delta to facilitate its export to corporate agribusiness and Southern California water agencies, in a wide array of publications. In my reporting, I?ve covered many aspects of the controversial plan. These include: ? How the project won?t create one drop of new water while spending up to $67 billion of taxpayer and ratepayer?s money. ? How the project?s former point man Jerry Meral, in a moment of candor in 2013, claimed the Delta ?cannot be saved,? after years of promoting the peripheral canal and tunnels as the solution to the co- equal goals of water supply reliability. ? How the reports of scientific panels, ranging from the Delta Independence Science Board to federal EPA scientists, that have given the alleged ?science? of the tunnels project a failing grade. ? How the project won?t help Californians during the drought, fund innovative water conservation, storm water capture, or water recycling projects that are desperately needed. ? How the plan will push endangered fish species, such as Delta and longfin smelt, winter Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead and green sturgeon, over the abyss of extinction, while failing to address the state's long-term water supply needs. ? How the project will devastate not only San Francisco Bay and Delta fisheries, but recreational, commercial and subsistence fisheries up and down the West Coast; the salmon fishery alone is worth $1.5 billion annually. ? How the tunnels will also imperil the salmon, steelhead and other fish populations on the Klamath and Trinity Rivers that are an integral part of the culture and livelihoods of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley tribes. ? How the tunnels would devastate the Delta?s $5.2 billion agricultural economy and $750 million recreation and tourism economy. ? How the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and other California Indian Tribes have been excluded or marginalized in the Delta Tunnels process. ? How documents for the tunnels projects, in an overt case of environmental injustice, have not been translated into Spanish and other languages, as required under an array of state and federal laws. ? How the current petition before the State Water Resources Control Board and all of the previous plans, EIRs and documents of the plan have failed to address other alternatives, such as the Environmental Water Caucus? Sustainable Water Plan for California, for achieving the dual goals of ecosystem restoration and water supply. I?ve also covered the lack of scoping meetings for the new plan; lack of details regarding financing, addition of 8,000 new pages for public comment on top of the existing 40,000 pages that were previously submitted by the state and federal governments last year; and the lack of a cost-benefits analysis. But in the many hours I?ve spent covering the California WaterFix and its predecessors, there?s one terminal flaw with the project that stands out among all others: the false assumption the project is based upon. The Water Fix is based on the absurd contention that taking up to 9,000 cubic feet per second of water from the Sacramento River at the new points of diversion, as requested in the petition by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to the State Water Resources Control Board, will somehow ?restore? the Delta ecosystem. I am not aware of a single project in US or world history where the construction of a project that takes more water out of a river or estuary has resulted in the restoration of that river or estuary. Based on this untenable premise and all of the flaws that thousands of Californians have uncovered about the project, I am strongly urging the State Water Resources Control Board to reject the petition of DWR and Reclamation requesting permits for new water diversion intakes on the Sacramento River and water quality certification under the Clean Water Act. These are essential permits required before the Delta Tunnels could be constructed. The California WaterFix is a massive water grab for corporate agribusiness interests and Southern California water agencies, subsidized by the taxpayers, that must not be allowed to go forward. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Barbara_Daly__marina_owner.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 80455 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Aug 1 10:02:40 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2016 17:02:40 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fishing groups win lawsuit to overturn Delta water delivery contracts References: <1219162388.7563240.1470070960590.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1219162388.7563240.1470070960590.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> https://mavensnotebook.com/2016/08/01/fishing-groups-win-lawsuit-to-overturn-delta-water-delivery-contracts/ Fishing groups win lawsuit to overturn Delta water delivery contracts August 1, 2016?Maven??Other News Item? >From the law offices of Stephan C. Volker:On July 25, 2016 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations (?PCFFA?) and the San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association in their longstanding battle with the United States Bureau of Reclamation and San Joaquin Valley agribusinesses that divert millions of acre feet of water annually from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.? Following four years of court proceedings, the Court of Appeals ruled that the Bureau of Reclamation had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (?NEPA?) by failing to consider reducing the quantity of water diverted from the Delta for farming uses and increasing the Delta?s fresh water flows to San Francisco Bay to restore its imperiled salmon and wildlife.The Court held that in approving eight 2-year contracts for the delivery of up to 1.2 million acre feet of water annually from the Delta to Central Valley water districts, Reclamation had failed to consider the alternatives of reducing the quantity of water delivered, or terminating the contracts altogether and delivering no water.? The Court stated that ?Reclamation?s decision not to give full and meaningful consideration to the alternative of a reduction in maximum interim contract water quantities was an abuse of discretion.?? Opinion at p. 6.? The Court ?reject[ed] Reclamation?s argument that the contracts themselves mandated [their] renewal,? pointing out that ?NEPA imposes obligations on agencies? to consider less impactful alternatives, and Reclamation ?may not evade these obligations by contracting around them.?? Opinion at p. 5.The Court also rejected Reclamation?s arguments that reducing the quantity of water delivered under the contracts was infeasible, and agreed with the Fishing Groups that ?Reclamation acted unreasonably by relying on stale water needs data.?? Opinion at p. 7.? The Fishing Groups had pointed out that Reclamation had improperly assumed that irrigation water still needed to be delivered to vast tracts of land contaminated by selenium and other pollutants in the western and southern San Joaquin Valley.The Fishing Groups were elated at the Court?s ruling.? PCFFA Executive Director Tim Sloane stated that ?The Court?s decision sends the message that NEPA requires federal agencies to consider alternatives that would reduce the environmental impact of their actions.?? He added that ?We are running out of time to save our salmon.? Populations are crashing and commercial fishermen are losing their livelihoods.? Reclamation?s refusal to consider reducing diversions of water from the Delta in order to save our fish from extinction was irresponsible, and its decision to do so without complying with NEPA was simply outrageous.?Stephan Volker, attorney for the Fishing Groups, stated that ?the courts have once again come to the rescue of the Bay-Delta and its beleaguered fisheries.? We commend Judges Silverman, Fisher and Tallman for their courageous action in upholding the law and enforcing NEPA?s lofty requirements.?? Mr. Volker added that ?This ruling pulls the rug out from underneath the Governor?s so-called WaterFix project, because the WaterFix assumes incorrectly that Reclamation must strive to deliver the ?full contract amounts? under its interim contracts.? That assumption violates federal law, as the Ninth Circuit clearly holds in this ruling.?The Court?s Ruling filed July 25 is attached in PDF format.? Additional documents pertaining to the litigation can be obtained from the Volker Law Offices. Click here to read the ruling. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From njharris30 at gmail.com Mon Aug 1 11:49:19 2016 From: njharris30 at gmail.com (Nathan Harris) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2016 11:49:19 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Willow Creek in-season trap update - August 1st Message-ID: Please see the attached documents for weekly catch data from the Willow Creek outmigration monitoring. Nathan Harris Biologist Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program Trinity River Division 3723 N. Hwy 96 Willow Creek, CA 95573 Office: (530) 629-3333 x1703 Cell: (707) 616-8742 njharris30 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Willow Creek RST raw catch update 2016.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 31755 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: trapping update summary 8.1.16.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 14570 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Mon Aug 1 12:56:54 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2016 12:56:54 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] USGS: Effects of groundwater pumping on agricultural drains in the Tule Lake subbasin, Oregon and California Message-ID: <009f01d1ec2e$da91e420$8fb5ac60$@sisqtel.net> thumbnail Effects of groundwater pumping on agricultural drains in the Tule Lake subbasin, Oregon and California Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5087 Prepared in cooperation with the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service By: Esther M. Pischel and Marshall W. Gannett . Document: Report (4.3 MB pdf) . Download citation as: RIS First posted July 24, 2015 For additional information, contact: Director, Oregon Water Science Center U.S. Geological Survey 2130 SW 5th Avenue Portland, Oregon 97201 http://or.water.usgs.gov Abstract Since 2001, irrigators in the upper Klamath Basin have increasingly turned to groundwater to compensate for reductions in surface-water allocation caused by shifts from irrigation use to instream flows for Endangered Species Act listed fishes. The largest increase in groundwater pumping has been in and around the Bureau of Reclamation's Klamath Irrigation Project, which includes the Tule Lake subbasin in the southern part of the upper Klamath Basin. Agricultural drains on the Klamath Project are an important source of water for downstream irrigators and for the Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuges. U.S. Geological Survey regional groundwater-flow model simulations and records of irrigation-return flow pumped from the Tule Lake subbasin into the adjacent Lower Klamath Lake subbasin have indicated that water-level declines from pumping may be causing decreased flow of shallow groundwater to agricultural drains. To better define the effect of increased pumping on drain flow and on the water balance of the groundwater system, the annual water volume pumped from drains in three subareas of the Tule Lake subbasin was estimated and a fine-grid, local groundwater model of the Tule Lake subbasin was constructed. Results of the agricultural-drain flow analysis indicate that groundwater discharge to drains has decreased such that flows in 2012 were approximately 32,400 acre-ft less than the 1997-2000 average flow. This decrease was concentrated in the northern and southeastern parts of the subbasin, which corresponds with the areas of greatest groundwater pumping. Model simulation results of the Tule Lake subbasin groundwater model indicate that increased supplemental pumping is the dominant stress to the groundwater system in the subbasin. Simulated supplemental pumping and decreased recharge from irrigation between 2000 and 2010 totaled 323,573 acre-ft, 234,800 acre-ft (73 percent) of which was from supplemental pumping. The response of the groundwater system to this change in stress included about 180,500 acre-ft (56 percent) of decreased groundwater discharge to drains and a 126,000 acre-ft (39 percent) reduction in aquifer storage. The remaining 5 percent came from reduced groundwater flow to other model boundaries, including the Lost River, the Tule Lake sumps, and interbasin flow. Suggested Citation Pischel, E.M., and Gannett, M.W., 2015, Effects of groundwater pumping on agricultural drains in the Tule Lake subbasin, Oregon and California: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2015-5087, 44 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/sir20155087. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 11287 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Tue Aug 2 12:25:44 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2016 19:25:44 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Project Trapping Summary through JW30 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010B085E@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> It's here! Finally. Thank you for your patience. Attached please find the TRP trapping summary through Julian Week 30. Julian weeks are through Thursdays this year, so you can normally expect your updates on Friday or Monday throughout the sampling season, barring lag on data input. MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 4674 bytes Desc: image003.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW30.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 59939 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW30.xlsx URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Aug 2 14:17:53 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2016 21:17:53 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Draft EA on Supplementing Flows in the Lower Klamath River with Trinity Reservoir Water In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1408631811.8253542.1470172673796.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, August 2, 2016 2:05 PM, Janet Sierzputowski wrote: Show original message Draft EA on Supplementing Flows in the Lower Klamath River with Trinity Reservoir WaterMid-Pacific Region Sacramento, Calif.MP-16-165Media Contact: Shane Hunt, 916-978-5100, shunt at usbr.govFor Release On: Aug. 2, 2016Reclamation Releases Draft Environmental Document to Supplement Flows in the Lower Klamath River with Trinity Reservoir WaterSHASTA LAKE, Calif. ? The Bureau of Reclamation has released the Draft Environmental Assessment for the possible release of Trinity Reservoir-stored water to supplement flows to the lower Klamath River in late summer 2016.The proposed action to supplement flows was prepared as a contingency plan if environmental conditions present an elevated risk of a large-scale fish die-off from the fish disease Ichthyophthirius multifiliis (Ich). Real-time environmental and biological monitoring would be used to determine if and when to implement the proposed action.The Draft EA was prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act and is available at http://www.usbr.gov/mp/nepa/nepa_projdetails.cfm?Project_ID=26477. If you encounter problems accessing the document online, please call 916-978-5100 (TTY 800-877-8339) or email mppublicaffairs at usbr.gov.Comments are due by close of business Monday, August 8, 2016, to Paul Zedonis, Northern California Area Office, 16349 Shasta Dam Blvd., Shasta Lake, CA 96019 or bor-slo-kff2016ea at usbr.gov.For additional information or to request a copy of the Draft EA, please contact Zedonis at 530-276-2047. The document may also be viewed at Reclamation's Northern California Area Office at the above address.# # #Reclamation is the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in the 17 Western States. Its facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. Visit our website at http://www.usbr.gov and follow us on Twitter @USBR. If you would rather not receive future communications from Bureau of Reclamation, let us know by clicking here. Bureau of Reclamation, Mid-Pacific 2800 Cottage Way, Sacramento, CA 95825 United States -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Aug 2 20:29:02 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2016 03:29:02 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Jeffrey Michael: Some thoughts for Bruce Babbitt References: <826520713.8498854.1470194942434.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <826520713.8498854.1470194942434.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Valley Economy: Some thoughts for Bruce Babbitt | ? | | ? | | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | Valley Economy: Some thoughts for Bruce BabbittIn the 1990s, I was a graduate student writing a dissertation on the economics of the Endangered Species Act, and Bruce Babbitt was Secretary of the Interior active... | | | | View on valleyecon.blogspot.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | ? | Tuesday, July 26, 2016 Some thoughts for Bruce Babbitt In the 1990s, I was a graduate student writing a dissertation on the economics of the Endangered Species Act, and Bruce Babbitt was Secretary of the Interior actively utilizing habitat conservation plans as tools to negotiate agreements to more effectively implement the Endangered Species Act. ?I used to quote him in some of my presentations at the time, so I was fascinated and a bit encouraged to hear the news that Governor Brown has hired him to help with the delta tunnels (aka WaterFix) proposal.??However, the quotes in this article in the Sac Bee make me a little concerned.? I trust that?Secretary Babbitt will eventually be venturing out beyond the?his?state DWR?office?to get some alternative information and perspectives. ?Maybe he will even venture onto this blog???I?offer?these 5?thoughts to help Secretary Babbitt?consider solutions to the Delta problem.? The Tunnels Do Not Have a Strong Enough Value Proposition to Support a Negotiated Deal. According to the article,?Secretary Babbitt's state office is stocked with?40,000 pages of documents produced by DWR to support the project, but nowhere in those volumes?has the state put forward an?economic feasibility analysis. ?? The cost of the project is disproportionate to even the most optimistic assessment of potential benefits, and?many interests that would pay for the tunnels are openly questioning whether they are worth the investment, despite the risk of antagonizing a Governor who strongly supports it.??When economic merit of the project is this questionable to its beneficiaries, there is no basis to negotiate a credible deal between them and opponents. Electricity and the Remarkable Phase-Out of Nuclear Power Can Be a Model The state's electricity and energy system has made remarkable transformation in its supply portfolio over 15 years. ?Electricity is even more important to the state's economy than water, and its relative importance is increasing. ?During this time, the electricity system also endured a reliability crisis in the early 2000s that was more economically damaging than the recent drought.? The transformation of the state's electricity grid is much more significant and economically challenging than what would be required to truly reduce reliance on the delta for water. A decade ago, nuclear power was 15% of California's electricity portfolio, and?water exported from the Delta through the State Water Project and Central Valley Project were about?15% of California's water portfolio. ?In addition to being a similar percentage of the statewide portfolio for their critical infrastructure system, both nuclear and the SWP/CVP represent 1960s visions of technology and modern infrastructure, and both can be made obsolete by new technology and improved conservation. Nuclear power is now about 7% of California's electricity power and with the closure of Diablo Canyon will bring it down to 0% in a decade. ?The SWP/CVP are still about 12-13% of California's current proposal, and the WaterFix hopes to keep it at that level indefinitely.? When it comes to water, not even the most extreme environmental proposals say we should completely shut-down Delta pumping the way we suggest , they propose cutting from 5 million acre feet to 3 million acre feet of exports per year. ?That represents only 5% of California's water portfolio, in other words, even the most extreme environmental proposal for the Delta would be a much smaller change to the state's water portfolio that we have achieved in replacing nuclear with alternative technologies.? The state has taken a much more innovative and aggressive approach to its energy policy (nuclear is just one example).??Read PG&E's?statement on closing Diablo Canyon?and think about the divergence between?California's energy and water policies. Underpinning the agreement is the recognition that California's new energy policies will significantly reduce the need for Diablo Canyon's electricity output. There are several contributing factors, including the increase of the Renewable Portfolio Standard to 50 percent by 2030, doubling of energy efficiency goals under SB 350, the challenge of managing overgeneration and intermittency conditions under a resource portfolio increasingly influenced by solar and wind production, the growth rate of distributed energy resources, and the potential increases in the departure of PG&E's retail load customers to Community Choice Aggregation.The Joint Proposal would replace power produced by two nuclear reactors at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) with a cost-effective, greenhouse gas free portfolio of energy efficiency, renewables and energy storage..."California's energy landscape is changing dramatically with energy efficiency, renewables and storage being central to the state's energy policy. As we make this transition, Diablo Canyon's full output will no longer be required. As a result, we will not seek to relicense the facility beyond 2025 pending approval of the joint energy proposal. Importantly, this proposal recognizes the value of GHG-free nuclear power as an important bridge strategy to help ensure that power remains affordable and reliable and that we do not increase the use of fossil fuels while supporting California's vision for the future," said PG&E Corporation Chairman, CEO and President Tony Earley. Only twenty years ago, people in the energy industry laughed off suggestions that we would ever see this kind of announcement and phase out nuclear without devastating economic effects. ?Water agency leaders today sound a lot like energy executives from the last generation.? Don't Believe the Apocalyptic Talk, and Do Not Engage In It? Tunnel proponents make many outlandish claims of economic disaster that would ensue if water exports were disrupted or reduced. ?Unfortunately, Governor Brown himself often makes these unsubstantiated claims and the media laps up the disaster scenarios. ?There is no credible basis for these apocalyptic claims, even the worst case scenario of completely cutting off Delta exports would have costs in the single-digit billions in a $2.5 trillion state economy. As discussed above, the 5 million acre feet of water exported from the Delta is 12-13% of the state's water portfolio. ?In the past two years, the state has dealt with a surface water supply reduction of 11 million acre feet (more than double the amount of surface water exported from the Delta in a typical year) and the overall economy has boomed. ?Losses from water shortages across all economic sectors were a few billion dollars. ?Even in the very unlikely case that all Delta water exports were shut-down, we have ample evidence to show that the state's economy could continue to grow. ?This not to say that there would not be economic costs, and that they could be acute in some communities, but the apocalyptic talk is irresponsible and unwarranted. ? ?? ?In fact, the delta earthquake argument is not only economically wrong, it is immoral. ?The state's own study of this scenario shows that only 20% of the billions in economic costs is due to water exports, and the tunnels would protect 0% of the hundreds of lives the state's report says would be lost in such an event. ?The real devastation would be in the Delta region itself. ?While I agree that sea-level rise and earthquakes are real risks, solutions should be considered in a comprehensive fashion rather than pursue multi-billion dollar individual solutions for water, transportation, public safety, etc. Consider a No-Tunnel Habitat Conservation Plan As?Secretary of the Interior,?Mr. Babbitt?greatly expanded the use of HCP's. ?Thus,?he should understand the argument that in the BDCP, the habitat conservation plan, created more valuable for water exporters than the physical infrastructure of the tunnels. ?When the administration abandoned the BDCP, they ditched the HCP and kept the tunnels, the wrong approach. ?An HCP in the Delta does not require the tunnels, and I believe there is potential for a long-term deal to stabilize the regulatory environment and improve habitat for endangered species once the tunnels are off the table.? There are a lot of other alternatives too, and they are not mutually exclusive. ?However,?Secretary Babbitt is uniquely qualified to restart the HCP process and perhaps salvage something useful from the BDCP process. ?If nothing else, I think that process illustrated the value of an HCP to all parties, and the science program is increasing knowledge of the efficacy of various habitat improvements. ?A No-tunnel HCP need not be limited to the Delta itself, but could support actions to improve spawning habitat, get fish around some of the rim dams, increase Delta outflows, and more. Consider Institutional Incentives and Structural Changes to Agencies Returning to the electric utility comparison, it is worth noting that electric utilities have diverse power portfolios and sell power at both the retail and wholesale level. ?If Southern Cal Edison or PGE were wholesalers that only owned a nuclear power plant,?they would not have agreed to shut-down their nuclear power plants.? The main water agencies pushing the tunnels are wholesalers of a single-product, surface water moved long distances. ?DWR and Metropolitan are wholesalers and the only product they sell is water imported from hundreds of miles away. ?Under their current structure, they have an interest in preserving the status quo. ?How can we change their incentives and their business models? ?Should they be required to develop a more diverse water supply portfolio of their own? ? I have not thought deeply enough about this to make specific proposals, but I am increasingly convinced that some institutional restructuring is needed to create new business models and incentives that encourage water agencies to invest in new technologies, diversify their portfolios, and invest in research and development of new technologies. While this list is by no means a comprehensive survey of all the options that are superior to the tunnels, I hope it can spark some new ways of thinking and reduce the tunnel vision so prevalent in the state bureaucracy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Aug 4 13:15:48 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2016 20:15:48 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Invitation to Klamath Basin Water Temperature Model Demo In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1156084160.9766709.1470341748320.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> ?Tom Stokely?V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315 tstokely at att.net?On Thursday, August 4, 2016 12:55 PM, "Hetrick, Nick" wrote: Thank you all for the overwhelming interest in today's WebEx ?demo of the Klamath Basin Water Temperature Model.? To those who were successful in logging in and participating in the demo, we hope you found the presentation useful to to orient yourself with the model's GUI, it's many functions, and potentials uses.? We estimated participation in today's demo to be about 60-70 individuals... ? For those that were able to watch the WebEx but were unable to hear the audio due to exceeding the maximum capacity of the conference line, we apologize.? As such, we want to direct you to an on-line Help Documentation webpage that USGS created to help walk you thru many of the steps and functions that were discussed and demonstrated during today's presentation.? You can access the On-line Help site for the model at ? ? ? ? ? https://sites.google.com/site/klamathtrinityinterfacehelp/ The on-line help webpage can also be assessed via the Help menu once the model with its integrated GUI is installed. The current version of the Klamath Basin RBM10 Water Temperature Model (ver. 1.2 beta) showcased in today's presentation is available to download at: https://www.adrive.com/public/vXkrnv/Klamath-Trinity_RBM10-(1.2Beta-32bit)Installer.zip Password:?Rbm10 Please note that the first time the GUI is installed, it will require a system reboot to load properly.? Also note that you will likely need administrative rights to complete the install. As Nick Swyers pointed out during the presentation, we are interested in hearing back from users regarding any needed fixes, bugs, improvements, etc. Again... ? many thank for your interest in the model. ? Nicholas J. Hetrick ? On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 12:10 PM, Hetrick, Nick wrote: The USGS WesternFisheries Research Center, in cooperation with the USFWS Arcata Fish andWildlife Office, will host a WebEx presentation on Thursday August 4th at 9:30-11:30 am to demo the Klamath River Basin RBM10 Water Temperature Model. The sessionwill include a walk-thru of the graphical user interface (GUI) developed by theUSGS Center to help users?in running the model, creating alternativescenarios, and summarizing model output.?Feedback from participants on potential improvements and utilities thatcould be incorporated into the GUI will be encouraged following the demo. Participantswill also be provided with a link to download this stand-alone softwareapplication following the demonstration. ? Nicholas J. Hetrick?JOIN WEBEX MEETING Topic: Klamath Basin Water Temperature Model?Date: Thursday, August 4, 2016?Time: 9:30 am-11:30 am, Pacific Daylight Time (San Francisco, GMT-07:00)?Meeting number: 713 305 087?Meeting password: (This meeting does not require a password.)? Please click the link below to see more information, or to join the meeting.?https://usgs.webex.com/usgs/j.php?MTID=ma947401208c039b74a1fce39ff70a85e? JOIN BY PHONE Teleconference: Dial in number: 703-648-4848?Conference Security Code: 17349 followed by the # sign? SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS: ?Perry, R.W., J. C. Risley, S. J. Brewer, E. C. Jones, and D. W. Rondorf. 2011. Simulating daily water temperatures of the Klamath River under dam removal and climate change scenarios: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2011-1243, 78 p. ?http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1243/ Jones, E.C., R. W. Perry, J. C. Risley, N. A. Som, and N. J. Hetrick. ?2016. Construction, calibration, and validation of the RBM10 water temperature model for the Trinity River, northern California: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File?Report 2016?1056, 46 p. ?http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20161056. ANNUAL WATER TEMPRATURE MONITORING REPORTS:?Several annual water temperature monitoring reports for the Klamath and Trinity rivers are available on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Service website at:https://www.fws.gov/arcata/fisheries/reportsDisplay.html ?? -- Nicholas J. HetrickProgram LeadFish & Aquatic Habitat Conservation ProgramArcata Fish and Wildlife OfficeArcata, CA 95521office (707) 822-7201 fax (707) 822-8411 -- Nicholas J. HetrickProgram LeadFish & Aquatic Habitat Conservation ProgramArcata Fish and Wildlife OfficeArcata, CA 95521office (707) 822-7201 fax (707) 822-8411 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Aug 5 09:58:58 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2016 16:58:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] EE News: Meet the polarizing leader who personifies Westlands References: <935834591.6288457.1470416338757.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <935834591.6288457.1470416338757.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> WESTERN WATER:? Meet the polarizing leader who personifies Westlands? Debra Kahn, E&E reporterGreenwire: Thursday, August 4, 2016Rows of lettuce stretch into the horizon.??Photo by Debra Kahn.Tom Birmingham's name is synonymous with the Westlands Water District, the pugnacious California water agency that serves as a self-appointed bulwark against environmental overreach.As general manager of Westlands, Birmingham has been in charge of the district's efforts to provide water to its 700 farms for the past 15 years. His methods of doing so have made Westlands a key player in some of the state's bitterest water battles.But his management style has begun to ruffle feathers both inside and outside the district. AN E&E SERIES A?Greenwire?two-part series. Water is scarce in California. Westlands Water District is at the center of the fight for more access ? but it's facing increased scrutiny over its finances, leadership and politics.?Click here?to read the first partIn late June, Westlands' board announced a demotion of sorts for Birmingham, who serves as both general manager and general counsel. The district's board decided to split up the two jobs, citing the difficulty of "securing water supply, groundwater management and other challenges."Board President Don Peracchi said the move to make Birmingham the general manager and to hire a new general counsel would "promote more transparency and good government practices and represents the beginning of a process to improve the decisionmaking and operations of the district."Four days earlier, a farmer in Westlands had taken to?The Fresno Bee?to complain about Birmingham. "[T]he present leaders of Westlands keep making foolish decisions that allow us to be portrayed as the big, bad water guzzler of California," Brad Gleason?wrote. "The blame lies squarely with our general manager, Tom Birmingham, and a handful of longtime board members who continue to support him even in the wake of news stories that paint Westlands as manipulative, self-serving and, in some cases, highly unethical."External criticism of Westlands has also been growing louder. A water blogger who goes by the name On the Public Record and is a self-described "low-level civil servant who reads reports"?wrote?about Westlands' tactics earlier in June amid reports that the district gave a former deputy general manager, Jason Peltier, a $1.4 million home loan on generous terms."Westlands Water District is going for dominance," the blogger wrote. "They have chosen to buy the influence to force their agenda through in political capitols. They are also, frankly, powerful male assholes talking to other powerful male assholes."Westlands GM Tom Birmingham.?Photo courtesy of the Westlands Water District.Birmingham may be the most polarizing person in the California water community, but with round-framed glasses and an owlish bent, he doesn't look the part.Under his leadership, Westlands has turned to Congress to help shore up its unstable water deliveries, and its farmers have increasingly pursued lucrative permanent crops like almonds and pistachios, which require more stable water supplies than crops that get planted annually.In an interview earlier this year, Birmingham said his political activism is a function of the times."My tenure has been at a time when there are some very fundamental questions that need to be resolved about farming in the San Joaquin Valley, and that's really what it comes down to, is do we want to sustain agriculture ? irrigated agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley?" he asked. "Those are issues that have arisen predominantly over the course of the last 20 years, and I've been the general manager for 15."Birmingham, 60, is only the third general manager in Westlands' history. He reckons he is the second most political of the three, after Ralph Brody, who left his position as water adviser to former Gov. Pat Brown (D) ? the father of current Gov. Jerry Brown (D) ? to become Westlands' first general manager and chief counsel.As director of the state Department of Water Resources, Brody marshaled the political and economic clout to build the State Water Project, the largest state-financed water system ever built. He became Westlands' general manager upon voter approval of the SWP in 1960 and served until 1977.Birmingham ? who favors new water storage projects but is still mulling the economics of a state proposal to build tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ? is indeed following in the footsteps of giants who ushered in the grand water projects and proposals of midcentury."Ralph Brody would make Birmingham look like a diplomat," said Lloyd Carter, a former United Press International and?Fresno Bee?reporter who has made a career of following Central Valley water issues.Birmingham hails from Yreka (pronounced why-REE-ka), a tiny town about 20 miles south of the California-Oregon border. That informs his conviction that "everything is perspective." He challenges many of the conventional wisdom around California water, including the assumption that Southern California is out to steal Northern California's ample supplies."Frequently when I talk about water around the state of California, I start by observing that I'm from Northern California, and from my perspective, Southern California starts at the Shasta County line," he said. "I do that to put these issues into perspective. Sometimes there's a perception it's a north-versus-south issue. It really is not."Westlands Water District in fact occupies a 75-by-15-mile swath of land in the San Joaquin Valley ? almost the exact center of the state longitudinally. It has a host of defenders in Congress who have backed legislation to revamp water allocation laws to its benefit, and they hail from all around the state. Westlands Water District? The Westlands Water District occupies a 75-by-15-mile swath of the San Joaquin Valley.??Map courtesy of the Westlands Water District.In college, he said, "I became very adept at drawing a map of California, because people would say, 'Where are you from?' and I would say, 'I'm from Northern California,'" he said. "They said, 'Oh, you must be close to Sacramento.' I was going to school in Los Angeles, and I said, 'Well, no, closer than you are.' And the reason I tell that story is because from the perspective of people in Los Angeles, everything north of the Tehachapis [Mountains] is Northern California."That is just one example of the subjectivity of reality that Birmingham touts. From varying perspectives, Westlands' 700 farms, with an average size of 875 acres, are either family-owned or corporate ? Birmingham prefers the term "vertically integrated." Their planting of permanent crops is a logical reaction to the rising cost of water and the continued demand for nuts. And from Birmingham's perspective, his efforts to shape legislation are meant to help the endangered delta smelt, one of the species that receives water formerly meant for farmers as a result of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992."I personally am as interested in trying to protect fish as anybody in the state of California," he said. "It's a question of trying to effectively or efficiently protect those fish and do it in a way that creates some balance."Legislation that California representatives have sponsored the past two years would revise the rules that protect the smelt under the Endangered Species Act by changing the way they are monitored and counted, among other things. Other provisions would loosen environmental restrictions on how much water can be pumped from the delta.Some in Congress resent his influence. "He comes before the committee all the time, and people take everything he says as gospel," said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). Huffman is among several Democrats calling for the House Natural Resources Committee to investigate a controversial proposed settlement that would solidify Westlands' water contract in perpetuity in exchange for the district taking responsibility for cleaning up its persistent irrigation runoff problem (E&E Daily, April 15).Birmingham, a lawyer by training, doesn't hesitate to jerk the conversation to a side track to interrogate the slightest innuendo or unexamined assertion, such as the perception that Westlands has benefited primarily from its relationship with Republican lawmakers, rather than Democrats, or that its support is limited to the Central Valley region."I read an editorial in?The Sacramento Bee?in opposition to the House bill that was being considered last year, and the comment was the Northern California members of Congress are all opposed to this. Well, I don't know anybody who's more northern than Mr. [Doug] LaMalfa [R], and he was actively supporting it," Birmingham said, referring to the lawmaker whose district is adjacent to Huffman's.Birmingham is a prolific political donor, giving about $110,000 to political groups and candidates since 1994, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The majority of recipients are Republicans, but the largest individual recipient is Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), who received $23,600. Another major beneficiary is Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), whom Birmingham calls "an incredible woman and an incredible leader."Feinstein, who said she has known Birmingham since he became general manager, doesn't always agree with him but appreciates his expertise."Tom Birmingham certainly knows a lot about California water policy," she said. "Tom comes at the issue with experience in both the public and private sectors, and while I know his top priority now is representing Westlands, I do appreciate the breadth of knowledge he brings to the table. Tom and I don't always see eye to eye, but I've known him for 15 years, and I do appreciate the experience and concern he brings to the debate."Before taking the job, Birmingham worked for Westlands as a lawyer for the Sacramento firm Kronick Moskovitz Tiedemann & Girard. Birmingham still lives in Sacramento, about 170 miles northwest of Westlands' Fresno headquarters, but he says he spends more time in Washington, D.C.He has an acerbic sense of humor that his wife, he says, cautions him to keep in check. He enjoys hunting and fly fishing, but he only kills animals he enjoys eating, which include elk, pheasant and quail."Some of the fondest memories I have of my childhood is fishing on the Klamath River with my father," he said. He still avails himself of the recreational benefits of California's water system, keeping a sailboat on Folsom Lake, and he often takes his nephew fishing and hunting."I don't know why anyone would want to drive around in a boat that makes noise," he said. "Being on a sailboat is just one of the most relaxing activities that anybody could engage in."Twitter:?@debra_kahn?Email:?dkahn at eenews.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Aug 7 14:58:42 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2016 21:58:42 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Despite dam agreement, Klamath battles rage on References: <151503495.10388804.1470607122334.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <151503495.10388804.1470607122334.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.redding.com/news/local/despite-dam-agreement-klamath-battles-rage-on-39201e65-fbd8-3a8f-e053-0100007fae6f-389344291.html Despite dam agreement, Klamath battles rage on FILE - This Aug. 21, 2009 file photo shows the J.C. Boyle Dam diverting water from the Klamath River to a powerhouse downstream near Keno, Ore. The U.S. Department of Interior on Thursday, April 4, 2013, issued a final environmental impact statement recommending this and three other dams be removed from the Klamath River to help struggling wild salmon runs. (AP Photo/Jeff Barnard)Posted:?Yesterday 6:00 p.m.1 CommentSHARE????FILE - This Aug. 21, 2009 file photo shows the J.C. Boyle Dam diverting water from the Klamath River to a powerhouse downstream near Keno, Ore. The U.S. Department of Interior on Thursday, April 4, 2013, issued a final environmental impact statement recommending this and three other dams be removed from the Klamath River to help struggling wild salmon runs. (AP Photo/Jeff Barnard)In this Aug. 21, 2009 file photo, water trickles over Copco 1 Dam on the Klamath River outside Hornbrook, Calif.??An Oregon Republican congressman has released a proposal to resolve disputes over scarce water in the Klamath Basin ? but it doesn't include the removal of four aging dams, a central point in historic settlement agreements.By?Damon Arthur?of the Redding Record SearchlightAn agreement this past spring to remove four dams on the Klamath River has not brought an end to the legal battles over water in the river.The four dams had long been viewed as obstacles to improving conditions in the river for salmon and other fish. So when governors, a CEO and other political and tribal officials gathered along the Klamath River in April to sign the accord, it was considered a historic pact.But by this summer, threats of litigation ? and at least one actual lawsuit ? were flying.The Hoopa Valley tribe sued two federal agencies, claiming they did not adequately protect threatened coho salmon that spawn in the river. Other tribes and environmental and fisheries groups have sent letters to federal agencies threatening to sue them for not taking action to improve conditions in the river."Water quality issues are not resolved," said Konrad Fisher, executive director of Klamath Riverkeeper, an environmental group that joined with Earthjustice and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations in sending 60-day notices of their intent to sue federal agencies.The Yurok and Karuk tribes also sent notices of intent to sue, claiming the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation were not doing enough to protect coho salmon, which are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.The groups claim that in 2015 up to 90 percent of the young salmon in the river were being infected by a parasite called ceratonova nova.The groups want the federal agencies to consult with them over the problem and to increase the amount of water coming out Klamath River dams during the winter and spring to eradicate the parasite and prevent spread of the disease.Until the four dams are removed, the groups want the National Marine Fisheries Service and the bureau to require the dams' owner, PacifiCorp, to release more water in the winter and spring.Removing Irongate, Copco No. 1 and 2, and the J.C. Boyle dam should also provide better flows in the river to prevent ceratonova outbreaks, said Craig Tucker, natural resources policy advocate for the Karuk Tribe.Officials also hope removing the dams help lower the river temperature in the summer, preventing outbreaks of another fish disease called ich, which spreads among adult spawning salmon crowded into pools when the river is running low and warm.Fisher said there are three parts to restoring the lower Klamath ? habitat restoration, dam removal and proper river flow levels."Dam removal in and of itself will not solve the flow problem," Fisher said.Felice Pace, who writes a blog on Klamath Basin environmental issues, said removing the four dams is not a panacea. Water quality will improve in the river after the dams are taken out, but not to the extent needed, he said.The environmental impact statement on dam removal appears to back that up. Taking them out will eliminate toxic algae blooms in the reservoirs and restore more natural water temperatures.Other water quality goals, though, such as reducing harmful levels of nutrients "would be accelerated but could still require decades to achieve," the report says."That fact has tended to be overshadowed by the romance of dam removal and the exaggerated claims of its promoters," Pace said in an email.Creating wetlands of tule marshes upstream of the Keno Dam would reduce harmful levels of nutrients in the water and lower the water temperature ? both beneficial to fish, he said.All four of the dams will be removed in one year, so the release of sediment behind the dams is not spread out over several years, Tucker said.An estimated 13.1 million cubic yards of sediment is stored behind in the reservoirs, according to the environmental reports. While the sediment is harmful to fish in the river, federal officials say the impact to salmon and other species would be less than two years.Much of the sediment is so fine it would be carried out into the ocean rather deposited in the river, the report says. About Damon Arthur Damon Arthur covers resources, environment and the outdoors for the Record Searchlight and Redding.com. - Facebook ? - @damonarthur_RS ? - damon.arthur at redding.com - 530-225-8226 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Mon Aug 8 17:43:22 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2016 00:43:22 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW-Trinity River Project trapping summary thru JWeek 31 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010B1BF7@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Greetings! Attached please find TRP trapping summary through JWeek 31. The water has ramped down in velocity (and, to a lesser degree, temperature) the last few days; not a lot of fish on the move. There is potential for augmentation flows starting up the 20th of the month, so the Willow Creek weir is scheduled to go in Friday August 19th. Thanks for all the feedback. We appreciate knowing that many of you value getting the summary! MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW31.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 59980 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW31.xlsx URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Aug 10 13:10:19 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 20:10:19 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: 19th Annual Coho Confab Registration Still Open In-Reply-To: <57aa5d25b7769_74869e54c4c30599@asgworker-qmb2-i-bf9eab21.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> References: <57aa5d25b7769_74869e54c4c30599@asgworker-qmb2-i-bf9eab21.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: <826397296.12158119.1470859819798.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, August 9, 2016 3:46 PM, Kate Rowe wrote: NationBuilder#yiv2902158748 #yiv2902158748 body{background-color:#e5effd;}#yiv2902158748 table{border-spacing:0;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;}#yiv2902158748 table td{border-collapse:collapse;}#yiv2902158748 p{margin-bottom:1em;line-height:140%;}#yiv2902158748 h1.yiv2902158748site-title{font-size:28px;}#yiv2902158748 .yiv2902158748body-content img{max-width:100%;}#yiv2902158748 hr {border:1px solid #3887a8;margin:20px 0;}#yiv2902158748 @media screen and (max-width:600px){#yiv2902158748 table[class="yiv2902158748container"] {width:100%!important;}}#yiv2902158748 @media screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv2902158748 table[class="yiv2902158748container"] {width:100%!important;}#yiv2902158748 div[class="yiv2902158748body-content"]img {width:100%;}#yiv2902158748 h1[class="yiv2902158748site-title"] {font-size:25px!important;}}#yiv2902158748 @media screen and (max-width:600px){#yiv2902158748 #yiv2902158748 table[class="yiv2902158748container"] {width:100%!important;}#yiv2902158748 h1[class="yiv2902158748site-title"] {font-size:22px!important;}} | | Visit ourWebsite | Join us onFacebook | | | | | | SalmonidRestoration Federation | | | | | Hi Tom,? SRF will behosting the?19thAnnual Coho Confab?on August 26 - 28, 2016 at thebeautiful?JugHandle Creek Farm?on the Mendocino Coast. The Confab willfeature tours of largewood placement, water conservation efforts,streambank stabilization, and fish passage projects.?Clickhere for a detailed schedule of presentations and fieldtours. You can?registeronline?or?by completing andreturning this?registrationform.? Registration is $225, which covers fieldtours, workshops, meals, and camping accommodations. For an additional$100 per person, participants can sign-up to stay in the JugHandle Farmhouse or cabins on a first-come, first-requested basis.To make a reservation to stay in the house or cabins, please emailinfo at calsalmon.org. Help us spread the word!?Please feel freeto print and post theevent poster at your place of work. Please let us know ifyou have any questions by emailing?info at calsalmon.org?or calling ouroffice at 707-923-7501. We hope you can join us for thisspecial event in August, Kate Rowe ProjectCoordinator Salmonid Restoration Federation (707)923-7501 (707) 923-3135 fax | | | | | | | | | Salmonid Restoration Federation ? United States This email was sent to tstokely at att.net. To stop receivingemails, clickhere. | Created with NationBuilder, the essential toolkit forleaders. | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Aug 11 09:30:38 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2016 16:30:38 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Legislative panel OKs audit of huge Delta tunnels References: <1071356258.13347336.1470933038519.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1071356258.13347336.1470933038519.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Legislative panel OKs audit of huge Delta tunnels?By Don ThompsonAssociated PressSACRAMENTO ? Critics of Gov. Jerry Brown?s nearly $16 billion plan to bore two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta won a state audit of its ongoing costs on Wednesday, though state officials don?t expect the audit to delay theproject.?The Joint Legislative Audit Committee also voted to have California?s state auditor investigate prison suicides, University of California spending and certain charter schools that were the subject of a recent investigativeseries by theBay Area News Group.The twin 40-foot tunnels, each 35 miles long, would funnel Sacramento River water south to dry farmland and millions of residents, but are opposed by Deltaarea lawmakers and others who say it will further harm the environment while siphoning water from Northern California.?This is one of the largest infrastructure projects ever that the state of California is going to be undertaking,? said Democratic state Sen. Lois Wolk, of Davis. Yet the long-term costs remain unclear, said Wolk and eight other lawmakersof both political parties who sought the audit.The cost is supposed to be covered by water agencies that will benefit and not directly by taxpayers, but Wolk and David Wolfe of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association both predicted that the growing price tag will increase pressure to use public funds.Department of Water Resources chief counsel Spencer Kenner did not object and said the audit, which lawmakers approved on a 9-2 vote, won?t slow the project.Meanwhile, a recent spike in suicides at the California InstitutionforWomen prompted lawmakers toapprove a system-wide audit of suicide prevention policies and practices in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.Democratic state Sen. Connie Leyva of Chino cited two reported suicides this year at the prison east of Los Angeles, while the rate was eight times the national average for female prisoners in an 18-month period in 2014-15, when The Associated Press first wrote about the spike. There were four suicides and at least 35 attempts during that period.Diana Toche, the department?s undersecretary for health care services, did not object to the unanimouslyapproved audit, but noted the department has already made changes at the prison.Officials said they increased mental health treatment and suicide prevention efforts. And the wardens at both of California?s major women?s prisons retired last month after correctional officials said a change in leadership was needed.State auditors will also examine school districts that are authorizing charter schools outside their boundaries. Democratic Sen. Carol Liu, of La Canada Flintridge, said the districts appeared to authorize the charters to raisemoney through ?oversight fees? and that the charter schools they authorized have student performance scores dramatically below state and county averages. Those problems were highlighted in April?s two-part series by the Bay Area News Group. The series revealed that school districts tasked with overseeing online schools by K12 Inc., a Virginia company, have a strong financial incentive to turn a blind eye to poor academic performance because the districts receive a cut of K12 revenue in exchange for the oversight. The audit was approved on an 8-1 vote. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Aug 15 10:38:33 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 17:38:33 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] East Bay Times Protecting state watersheds is important step References: <1648884218.14547443.1471282713223.JavaMail.yahoo.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1648884218.14547443.1471282713223.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> East Bay Times?|?Page A11Monday, 15 August 2016Protecting state watersheds is important step?Gov. Jerry Brown?s misguided tunnel vision on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has taken the focus off other valuable water projects California should be implementing.Unlike the governor?s $17 billion twin-tunnel disaster, Assemblyman Richard Bloom?s AB 2480 would produce additional water for California, improve the state?s environment and help ward off or at least mitigate climate change.It?s a no-brainer of an idea that should have been prioritized years ago. The bill has passed the Assembly and is currently winding its way through the Senate. The Senate should pass the bill and send it to the governor forhis signature.?The Santa Monica Democrat?s legislation is aimed at maintaining the health of California?s watersheds, with a particular focus on five watersheds in the Northern Sierra that account for 80 percent of the state?s water.Experts say that improvements to the Feather, McCloud, Pit, Trinity and Upper Sacramento watersheds could add an additional 5-20 percent to the state?s water supply. These watersheds already account for the water that 25 million Californians enjoy.The bill would make the state?s watersheds eligible for water-project grant funding by proclaiming them an essential part of the state?s water infrastructure. The anticipated cost, roughly $2.5-$3 billion, is a fraction of the price tag for the Delta tunnel?project, less than the estimated cost of the Sites dam project and far more environmentally sound.In some areas, fire suppression tactics have allowed forests to become overgrown, hurting their capacity to absorb water. Logging and overgrazing by livestock have created areas in which erosion diminishes optimum conditions.Bloom anticipates that the funds would be used to preserve and protect private and public forest lands and restore vital meadows.It?s counterintuitive, but climate change experts believe that as Western states warm, the area where the Northern California watersheds are located will actually become cooler and likely wetter.The projections give the state a rare opportunity to take advantage of the conditions and make preparations now that will result in additional water supply in later years.Another important aspect of this is that these five watersheds provide about 80 percent of the water that flows into the San Francisco Bay. It?s essential that the state formally recognize its watersheds as part of our water infrastructure.California?s lawmakers should pass AB 2480 and work toward crafting a strategy to fully integrate watershed management into the state?s long-term water infrastructure plan. There is much work to be done in this area, and passing this measure should be an important first step. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Tue Aug 16 16:27:25 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2016 23:27:25 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Project trapping summary through JWeek 32 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010B2FA4@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Greetings! Here is your through JW32 trapping update. JC weir is still the only thing we've got going, and there aren't a lot of fish moving with this warm weather. We are in final prep for WCW installation this Friday, though it will be two weeks before you'll see any trapping summary for that. It looks like the Bureau will be releasing flows down the Trinity to try to cool the lower Klamath off while the Fall Chinook run happens, so we shall see how well we can fish those higher flows. MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW32.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 60053 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW32.xlsx URL: From GHughes at foe.org Mon Aug 15 14:41:01 2016 From: GHughes at foe.org (Hughes, Gary) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 21:41:01 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] East Bay Monthly, Logging for Water Message-ID: <77A81C2AB01EE748A51B40A059517A1194669919@maildag2c.NETWORKALLIANCE.NET> To: 'stopspi at googlegroups.com' Subject: [StopSPI] East Bay Monthly, Logging for Water http://www.themonthly.com/feature1608.html LOGGING FOR WATER | A battle is brewing over whether cutting down trees will increase California's water supply. | By Will Parrish The day after an unseasonal June rain swelled the streams of the northern Sierra Nevada, Marily Woodhouse steered her 2003 Dodge Dakota through 65 miles of winding mountain roads near Mount Lassen. Woodhouse first traversed the area on horseback shortly after moving here 25 years ago. Back then, the land was lush with life, and its towering conifer forests furnished refreshingly cool air on days that were blistering hot beyond the canopy's shade. Now, acre after acre of land of the Battle Creek Watershed is parched as far as the eye can see. Nonnative plants like star thistle and mullein compete to cover bare ground that was once studded with pines, firs, and cedars. Rather than finding sanctuary in the forests, Woodhouse now collects data that she says demonstrates the epic damage that has been wrought by the state's largest timber corporation, Sierra Pacific Industries, or SPI. Nearly every week, for more than seven years, Woodhouse has stopped at the same 13 stream locations in the watershed. At each spot, the founder of the environmental group Battle Creek Alliance uses specialized equipment to examine and record water temperature, water pH, soil temperature, and "turbidity": a measure of individual particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye, similar to smoke in the air. In 2012, the Ponderosa Fire torched 27,234 acres in the watershed. But Woodhouse says SPI inflicted much greater harm through post-fire "salvage logging," which involved removing virtually every large- and medium-sized tree in the burned area?both living and dead?and deep-ripping the denuded soil to a depth of three feet with heavy machinery in order to accelerate the growth of newly planted trees. "I used to think clear-cutting was the worst thing, but it's not," Woodhouse said regarding the salvage logging. "They took everything down to bare dirt. The water quality went crazy bad." SPI officials have repeatedly defended their logging practices in Battle Creek and elsewhere, and have even argued that they eventually improve the health of forests and streams. For decades, environmentalists have countered that industrial logging, in fact, damages watersheds because it involves removing vegetation that anchors hillsides and constructing logging roads that cause chronic erosion that chokes streams and rivers with sediment. However, during the past year, a growing chorus of academics and conservationists has given comfort to the state's logging industry by arguing that California would actually benefit from more logging, especially after years of punishing drought. At the heart of the debate is the increasing realization that forests throughout the Sierra, Klamath, Siskiyou, and Coast mountain ranges?like the forests that once stood in Battle Creek?are important components of California's water system. Not only do the trees store and filter huge amounts of water, but they also provide shade for the mountain snowpack so that it will melt gradually to fill the state's reservoirs with a steady, year-round supply of water. And an expanding number of scientists and environmental groups are now arguing that many of California's forests, because of years of fire suppression and other unsound ecological practices, have become overcrowded with trees and that these forests are holding too much water in the soil. Cutting or thinning the trees, they say, will release the groundwater into streams and rivers so that California's dams and reservoirs can capture it. A leading proponent of this thinking is UC Merced chemical engineering professor Roger Bales, chairman of UC's Sierra Nevada Research Institute. The institute operates 1,300 sensors that measure the geochemical balance of water in the Sierra Nevada's forests, meadows, and streams. "Our groundwater is our largest storage reservoir," Bales noted in a May presentation at Yosemite National Park. Given that 60 percent of the water supply used in California comes from the Sierra Nevada alone, Bales encourages people to think of the iconic mountain range as "California's water tower." Another proponent of logging for water is the environmental group the Nature Conservancy, which is helping to bankroll Bales' work. Last year, the group caused a stir in the state's environmental community when it published a report called "Estimating the Water Supply Benefits from Forest Restoration in the Northern Sierras." The report mainly focused on how thinning national forests impacts the forest's ability to store snow and use water more efficiently. "The broad point we are making is that the Sierra Nevada and other forested watersheds are the source of most of California's water," said David Edelson, co-author of the report and the Nature Conservancy's Sierra Nevada project director, in an interview. The report concluded that, if the current rate of forest thinning in the Sierra Nevada increases three-fold, there could be up to a 6 percent increase in the average annual streamflow for some watersheds that supply the state's reservoirs. But many environmentalists reject the idea of cutting down more trees in order to increase water supplies. While some do not oppose thinning forests that are dense with young trees, many agree that the claims of increased water runoff via more logging are greatly exaggerated, and that such an approach could wreak havoc on forests and river systems alike. "Saying that more logging produces more water is Orwellian 'lies are truth' speak," Woodhouse said. "It's amazing that this idea has cropped up again," said veteran hydrologist Jonathan Rhodes, referring to logging for water. "I've seen it come and go throughout my career, and it always ends up thoroughly debunked." Earlier this year, Rhodes and fisheries biologist Christopher Frissell released a comprehensive study that found the Nature Conservancy's report to be deeply flawed. Rhodes and Frissell's study?which was commissioned by the private environmental foundation Environment Now and drew on roughly 230 scientific research citations?concluded that in order to substantially increase the state's water supplies, California would have to do much more than thin forests. "If people really want to take the approach of creating more water runoff through logging, we will be looking at draconian levels of forest removal in this state," Rhodes warned in an interview. Nonetheless, the logging-for-water idea has recently gained traction in Sacramento and among some other environmental organizations. The conservation group Pacific Forest Trust is currently sponsoring legislation, Assembly Bill 2480, written by Assemblymember Richard Bloom, D-Hollywood, that could increase forest thinning in certain watersheds to release more water for the state's reservoirs. The state Assembly has approved AB 2480, and it's scheduled for another hearing in the state Senate later this summer. It if passes, it would head to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk. Many of the state's municipal water agencies oppose the bill, however, because it could require ratepayers?California consumers?to pick up the tab for forest thinning. "Our principal concern is the financing methods," San Diego County Water Authority representative Glen Farrell noted at a June 28 state Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee meeting. Environment Now director Doug Bevington said in an interview that it's crucial for municipal ratepayers to scrutinize claims being made by logging-for-water proponents. "Bay Area water users are being asked to subsidize damaging logging to the Sierra Nevada and won't see any supply benefits," he said. "They may even have to pay more later on to address the damage to watersheds from all that logging." ??? The theory of thinning or clearing forested areas in order to significantly increase water supplies has been around since at least the 1950s, and has always enjoyed timber industry backing, environmentalists say. Bevington, the author of the 2009 book, The Rebirth of Environmentalism, compares the logging-for-water theory to the logic used by deer hunters as they contributed to the extinction of wolves in the American West. "The claim that cutting more trees would get us more water is similar to the old idea of slaughtering wolves to improve deer hunting, which actually wound up messing up deer populations," he said. "In both notions, a simplistic mindset ignores natural complexity, leading to harmful results." Over the years, the logging-for-water arguments never gained widespread acceptance, in part because of the deepening recognition of logging's monumental impacts on watersheds. A case in point is the primary watershed serving the East Bay. The Mokelumne River is the main water source for 1.4 million East Bay residents, including those in Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, and Alameda. The river's headwaters are in the Stanislaus National Forest in the central Sierra Nevada, and a major reservoir?the Pardee?traps the Mokelumne's water before releasing up to 325 million gallons per day into the 95-mile-long Mokelumne Aqueduct, which conveys it to the East Bay Municipal Utility District's distribution system. Research suggests that 60 percent of the Mokelumne's flow comes from water stored in the Sierra soil, as opposed to snowmelt. According to Katherine Evatt, one of the state's leading experts on the Mokelumne, historic logging has damaged the watershed through road-building and soil compaction. Logging roads are the main source of soil erosion and landslides in disturbed forests, and they also alter runoff patterns and permanently disrupt subsurface water flows. Further damage comes from the use of heavy logging machinery, the cutting of trees, and then dragging them out of the forest. Burning leftover brush and applying herbicides create even more havoc. In the late-1990s, Sierra Pacific Industries purchased approximately 78,000 acres in the Mokelumne watershed. And SPI has conducted a considerable amount of clear-cutting in the area, which Evatt said has greatly increased the amount of sedimentation in EBMUD's reservoirs?a cost that is ultimately passed onto utility ratepayers, because it reduces the reservoirs' storage capacity. But it's not just the Mokelumne and Battle Creek watersheds that have experienced these impacts. From 1997 to 2014, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection approved more than 512,000 acres of clear-cutting in the state, or about 800 square miles: an area approximately as large as Alameda County. And SPI has completed most of these clear-cuts. From overhead images, such as those from Google Earth, the checkerboard pattern of clear-cuts in watersheds like the Mokelumne gives the land a disturbed appearance reminiscent of leprosy on human skin. Other large timber firms, such as Seattle-based Green Diamond Resources Company, which owns more than 400,000 acres of mainly redwood and Douglas fir forestland in Humboldt, Del Norte, and Trinity counties, also rely heavily on clear-cutting. "If you walk in a more natural forest, you'll hear birds, insects, see evidence of small mammals, feel moisture in the soil?it looks, feels, sounds, and smells like a forest," said Evatt. She is also president of the environmental group Foothill Conservancy, which is dedicated to protecting the Mokelumne River and its watershed. "But when you walk into a clear-cut or young plantation, it's nearly devoid of life?dry and hot." The main architect of SPI's success is Archie Aldis "Red" Emmerson, who, according to Forbes magazine, is worth $3.6 billion. Emmerson's son, Mark Emmerson, argued during a 2011 presentation to the UC Berkeley School of Forestry that his company's techniques are helping restore forests over the long run and are essential in the fight against climate change. "In the next 70 years, we will triple the inventory in our forest," he said. "Our tree size will go up from 17 to 30 inches in diameter. We will have pulled 500 million tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere." But critics say SPI's claims are based on scientific models that are calculated to put a happy face on the company's activities, which they say are permanently degrading the forests through converting them to plantations. Healthy forests are layered, with multiple canopies, small openings where the sun shines through, and darkened hollows where it does not. Different plants and animals thrive in the different habitats. "SPI is very good at growing trees," said Calaveras County resident Susan Robinson of the conservation group Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch. "But they are also very good at turning forests into something more like cornfields or almond orchards." SPI is the state's largest private landowner and controls more than 1.8 million acres of forestland. Roughly 80 percent of California's timber production currently comes from logging on private lands, with 20 percent of logs sourced from national forests. Thirty years ago, however, it was the reverse: 80 percent of logging occurred in national forests. The timber industry has relentlessly lobbied to open up more logging on public lands. According to critics, that is partly because of the pace at which many logging companies are decreasing forest stocks on property they own. ??? Currently, there is little disagreement over the fact that national and private forestlands have sustained enormous damage from logging practices and from a century of fire suppression. Numerous forests today are more crowded with trees than ever before. And many of the trees are approximately the same age, an unnatural condition resulting from clear-cutting and other harvesting methods known as "even-aged management." Some proponents of forest thinning, including UC Merced's Bales, see a synergy between removing trees to guard against fire and extracting more water from mountain runoff. "From a water-resources perspective, there is a sweet spot in between too many and too few trees," Bales wrote to The East Bay Monthly in an email. The ideal forest pattern, Bales argues, involves creating openings in the forest that are big enough to allow snow to pile deeply, while leaving a sufficient number of large trees to shade the snow and extend the melting season until late summer. In June, during a presentation to the California Senate Committee on Water and Natural Resources concerning AB 2480, Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust, made a similar assertion to that of Bales. She argued that "overly dense, even, closed-canopy forests" had altered runoff patterns in the national forests, and that thinning?followed by the reintroduction of prescribed fires?would be a means of restoring "more water-rich forests." At the June 28 meeting, committee chairwoman state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-LA, said Wayburn had given a "fantastic presentation" showing that increasing water supply through improved forest management would be a cost-effective measure. But the Center for Biological Diversity's Justin Augustine contends that such claims are fodder for "a get-rich-quick scheme" that will ultimately benefit timber companies like SPI, rather than watersheds and downstream water users. And Hydrologist Rhodes and fisheries biologist Frissell, who wrote the Environment Now report, say the benefits of logging for water are vastly overstated, and that proponents are omitting its enormous downsides. "The idea is that if you aggressively cut timber, then you'll have a bigger timber supply, more water, and less fires," Rhodes said in an interview. "Well, only one of those things is true." Overall, Rhodes and Frissell's report found that "the effects of logging on water flows are often negligible, nonexistent, or negative, and even in the more optimistic scenarios, the potential effects are small, transient, and ill-timed." The report concluded that during drought years, water supply increases from logging would be minuscule. In addition, logging produces substantial environmental harms: Rhodes and Frissell identified nine types of damage that result from logging-for-water projects, such as increased water pollution from logging and erosion from logging roads. These effects can also be expensive to the downstream communities using the water, Frissell and Rhodes wrote. According to their report, numerous scientific studies have also concluded over the years that sustaining increased runoff through tree removal would mean clearing large areas of forest at a high frequency?as much as 25 percent of a watershed area every 10 years. The physical principle involved is straightforward: When forests are thinned, the trees that remain tend to consume whatever water becomes available. As a result, loggers would have to fell large numbers of trees in order to substantially increase water runoff, Rhodes noted, and that runoff would invariably be heavily polluted with sediment because of the amount of logging involved. Many environmentalists have a mixed view of the ideas touted by the Pacific Forest Trust and the Nature Conservancy, as well as of AB 2480. The bill, for example, calls for reducing the number of rural roads through forests, a move that all involved agree would be beneficial to watersheds. But it also includes language that could pave the way for logging-for-water projects. Environmental groups' divided positions on the bill are reminiscent of the political battles concerning the 2014 state water bond, Proposition 1, which earmarked hundreds of million of dollars for environmental restoration projects but also furnished $2.7 billion for new water storage projects, a compromise that many fear will lead to the construction of new dams in California. Izzy Martin, CEO of the Nevada City-based Sierra Fund, supports the ideas on which AB 2480 based. She labels it a great starting point for restoring forests through thinning, though her organization has not taken a position on the bill due to concerns that it may finance ineffective projects. John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, said he is withholding support from AB 2480 because it focuses only on five watersheds, rather than addressing the totality of California's forests, and also because the bill doesn't address logging practices or other impacts to watersheds. He supports the idea of thinning to enhance watersheds, but said he would rather the bill create incentives for selective logging practices that thin out overly crowded forests, resulting in "lower levels of bare soil, greater protection for watersheds, and significant other ecological benefits." Martha Davis, who helped lead the campaign to restore Mono Lake in the eastern Sierra in the 1980s and '90s, has promoted stronger links between forest restoration and water supply planning as an adviser to state agencies during the last decade. But while she has not taken a public stance on AB 2480, she said that some of the ideas about increased water yield through logging are far too one-dimensional. "Some of the studies I've seen so far are treating watersheds like a dam, such that if you just tweak the knob, there could be more water coming out of these systems," said Davis, now the policy director for the Inland Empire Water Agency in Riverside County. "That's not the way it works at all." Evatt of the Foothill Conservancy has supported a new collaboration by the U.S. Forest Service and the Amador Water Agency to thin forests to reduce wildfire risk, protect water quality, and improve water yield. But she says legislation like AB 2480 is dangerous, because it would fund forest-thinning projects specifically for a single purpose: increasing water yield. "Watershed management and restoration approaches should be more holistic, not focused on a single output or commodity, whether that's timber products, recreation, or more water," she said. Given what opponents describe as AB 2480's vague language, which promises funding for projects that improve watersheds, some fear that companies like SPI may receive public financing for damaging projects that they claim are beneficial. The Feather River is one of five watersheds that would get special attention under AB 2480. Others are the Trinity, Pit, McCloud, and Sacramento river watersheds. In total, these watersheds encompass some 7 million acres, about 62 percent of which is publicly owned, mainly by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. SPI also owns a considerable amount of land in the watersheds, and the company is the largest purchaser of logs from logging on public forests in those areas. ??? Battle Creek is a 350-square-mile drainage fed by water from melting snow that drips down the western slope of Mount Lassen. It's also one of the most critical watersheds of the northern Sierra. Because of the creek's ample year-round flow of cold water, state and federal wildlife managers have deemed it the most welcoming area in California for the reintroduction of endangered Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon. Baby Chinook must have cold water to survive. As a result, Battle Creek is the focus of an ongoing $128 million state and federal restoration effort that involves dynamiting hydroelectric dams and constructing fish ladders. The Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Project is one of the most expensive aquatic species restoration programs ever undertaken on the West Coast. Only the removal of two dams on Washington's Elhwa River in 2014 entailed a bigger investment. But critics say the fisheries agencies' progress in restoring the winter-run Chinook has been persistently undermined by SPI's destructive logging practices upstream. In addition to the salvage logging, the company has clear-cut thousands of acres of Battle Creek's forests in 20-to-40-acre swaths since the 1990s. The impacts from erosion in the area have been dramatic. Jim Smith, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is one of numerous state and federal agency employees administering the Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Project. "Since the fire, we've seen an extremely high level of sediment input into the watershed," he said. "Some of our deep pools in the south fork, which were some of the best areas for the salmon, just aren't deep anymore." The question is how much of it has to do with the 2012 Ponderosa Fire versus SPI's logging practices. Smith, as with other state and federal employees, pins most of the blame on the fire. And SPI Research and Monitoring Manager Cajun James asserted in a report that her company's salvage logging actually reduced soil erosion, contending that sites in Battle Creek "disturbed only by fire produced substantially more water runoff and soil erosion than did sites that received post-wildfire salvage logging." However, most studies of fire-induced erosion show that it dramatically declines a year later, once grasses and forbs grow back. By contrast, the use of heavy equipment in post-fire logging compacts the soil, and the application of post-fire herbicides prevents vegetation from re-establishing itself. Without adequate vegetation to anchor them, hillsides erode into roads, ditches, and culverts for years afterward. Woodhouse has hired Jack Lewis, a retired statistical hydrologist from the U.S. Forest Service, to analyze the data that she collects on her weekly trips through the watershed. His findings strongly support her claims, pointing to significantly increased erosion in areas impacted by salvage logging and clear-cutting. Following a 2011 Sacramento Bee investigation of SPI's logging in Battle Creek, the California Natural Resources Agency directed four state agencies, including the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, to study the impact of clear-cutting on creating sediment-filled runoff, but reported finding "only one instance of low-magnitude sediment delivery (less than 1 cubic yard) directly associated with a clearcut." Woodhouse said the study's participants failed to find any evidence of logging-induced erosion because they conducted their study at the worst possible time: early fall, before winter rains that would have begun washing sediment into the creek basin. In an email, which was obtained via the California Public Records Act, Cal Fire forester Duane Shintaku later wrote to SPI executive staff members asking permission to conduct further studies, which, he said, "would provide the evidence we need if anyone questions the validity of the Task Force's findings." Despite the friendly nature of this entreaty, the SPI staff turned down the request. The 1973 California Forest Practice Act was designed to strengthen protections against streamside logging and compel timber companies to harvest selectively. And in a 2009 letter to the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, a nine-member governor-appointed board that is the policymaking branch of state forestry, Deputy Attorney General Anita E. Rudd opined that the 1973 law "requires the [b]oard to adopt regulations that include . . . measures for soil erosion control, water quality and watershed control, [and] flood control." But many environmentalists say this isn't really happening in California, and the main reason is the pro-timber bias of the state Board of Forestry. The board includes three representatives of the timber industry, and over the years, a majority of the board's members have had some association with logging. Currently, two of the seven members of the board have worked for SPI?company forester Richard Wade and Stuart Farber, now of the timber consulting firm Beatty & Associates?while two other members currently or formerly have worked for other timber companies Under California law, a lumber company must submit a timber harvest plan?a sort of scaled-down version of an environmental impact report?to the state before logging a forest. The so-called "lead agency" for reviewing timber harvest plans is Cal Fire. In an interview, Russ Henly, assistant secretary of Forest Resources Management for the California Natural Resources Agency, said he thinks Cal Fire staffers are "doing a very good job" with their timber harvest plan review responsibilities. "I know they give a hard look to the cumulative impacts of logging as part of the harvesting plans," he said. But critics contend that Cal Fire is uniquely favorable to the industry it regulates and that it routinely rubber stamps logging companies' plans. The agency's approvals also greatly aid the industry when environmentalists attempt to challenge timber plans through litigation. "In court, it's not about who gave the better argument, but rather about whether an agency?in this case, Cal Fire?simply has some basis in evidence for their conclusion," said Augustine of the Center for Biological Diversity. Augustine has been involved in several lawsuits against SPI timber harvest plans. "That's a very low bar, unfortunately, that allows agencies to do bad things and still get away with it." If organizations like the Nature Conservancy are keen on protecting the state's water supply, some say, they should be advocating for reforms of the Board of Forestry and Cal Fire. Instead, the Conservancy has teamed up with the state's main timber-lobbying firm?the California Forestry Association, or CalForests?to promote logging-for-water proposals. Shortly after the release of the Conservancy's 2015 report, CalForests Chairman David Bischel and the Nature Conservancy's Edelson co-authored an op-ed in the Mercury News, calling for an increase in "the pace and scale of fuels reduction in [national] forests as an important part of the state's water strategy." The fact that SPI also claims that clear-cutting helps restore forests?and, thus, improves the health of watersheds?worries opponents of logging for water, like Environment Now's Bevington: "SPI's promotion of clear-cutting is a particularly audacious example of a disturbing trend in which harmful logging projects get repackaged to seem like they are somehow beneficial to forests, when, in fact, they are not." He says that the Nature Conservancy's collaboration with CalForests is roughly akin to collaborating with SPI itself. SPI CEO Mark Emmerson is the board chairman of CalForests. And according to CalForests' financial statements, SPI gave $71,500 to the organization from 2011 to 2015, more than any other company. ??? Given that avenues for increased forest protection are largely blocked at the state level, environmental activists have sought other options to build momentum for change, including an effort to create a groundswell for reform in cities and counties. In 2015, the city of Berkeley became one of seven California cities to call on the state Legislature to enact a ban on clear-cutting, joining San Francisco, Daly City, Davis, Menlo Park, Monte Sereno, and Brisbane. The resolution cited Berkeley's desire to protect its water supply from sedimentation and pollution caused by SPI. "We've talked to lots of legislators," said Sierra Club volunteer Karen Maki, who is an organizer of the campaign for a statewide clear-cutting ban and a resident of Los Gatos. "They're sympathetic, but they aren't doing much yet. We figured if we got a lot of cities to pass the resolutions, it would start to have some influence." Maki acknowledges that a ban on clear-cutting is not a cure-all. But it is an important step, she said, in terms of protecting California's water supply and quality alike, and one that most environmentalists should be able to rally around. In 1990, a ballot initiative called Forests Forever that would have banned clear-cutting throughout the state lost by only three percentage points. Menlo Park City Councilmember Catherine Carlton presented her city's resolution calling for a clear-cutting ban to the League of California Cities annual convention in 2014, and she said she received a strongly favorable response from other city councilmembers and mayors. "It's an idea that makes sense, so I'm sure it will keep coming up," she said. The municipal resolutions call attention to another aspect of forest degradation: climate change. The Berkeley version asserts that the timber industry accounts for roughly 10 percent of the state's greenhouse gas emissions. According to scientific predictions, global warming is causing more variability in California's climate, with more intense storms, longer dry periods, and less snowpack, with more precipitation falling as rain instead of snow. Hydrologist Rhodes says the renewal of logging-for-water claims is particularly frustrating given that there are lower-cost ways of restoring these watersheds on public lands that don't involve logging. Three of these methods include the reduction or cessation of livestock grazing near streams and meadows in headwaters, reductions in the extensive network of logging roads in national forests, and the restoration of beaver populations, which helps to slow water on its course downstream so that it trickles into the ground. But Bevington said it's not surprising that the logging-for-water claim has gained renewed attention in California during the recent intense drought. "In desperate times, people are more susceptible to believing promises of easy water, rather than looking closely at the problems with those claims," he continued. "But if EBMUD or other utilities end up subsidizing logging in the Sierra Nevada and other mountain ranges, Bay Area residents are likely to see no significant benefits in terms of water flows." ____ Will Parrish is an independent journalist who specializes in investigative and environmental reporting and lives in Ukiah. His work also appears in the Anderson Valley Advertiser, East Bay Express, North Bay Bohemian, and Counterpunch. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "StopSPI" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to stopspi+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to stopspi at googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/stopspi. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vina_frye at fws.gov Wed Aug 17 14:53:20 2016 From: vina_frye at fws.gov (Frye, Vina) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2016 14:53:20 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Meeting Announcement Message-ID: Dear Mailman, I have attached the Federal Register. Please post to the list server. Thank you, Vina Vina Frye Fish Biologist U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Arcata FWO 1655 Heindon Road Arcata, CA 95521 Telephone: (707) 822-7201 Fax: (707) 822-8411 vina_frye at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: DOC_20160817142406.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 168015 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Mon Aug 22 08:47:41 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 15:47:41 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Project trapping summary through JW33 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010B377C@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Good morning! Attached please find the TRP trapping summary through JW33 (August 19). Junction City weir is still the only thing trapping at this point. We did get the Willow Creek weir in on Friday, but we aren't fishing yet as the water temperature is too high (above our upper trapping limit of 21?C / 69.8?F ). MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com ? Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW33.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 60050 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW33.xlsx URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Aug 22 10:48:41 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 17:48:41 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Klamath River dam removal plan delayed References: <1651973525.353047.1471888121891.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1651973525.353047.1471888121891@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/article/NJ/20160819/NEWS/160819855 Klamath River dam removal plan delayed Proponents expect September submission By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardFriday, August 19, 2016A plan to remove four Klamath River dams to improve water quality and habitat for fish and river communities will likely be submitted to the federal government in September, according to plan proponents.The plan was originally set to be submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by the end of July, but has been delayed in order to address other steps needed to progress it forward.?Everything is still very much on track in our point of view,? Bob Gravely, a spokesman for the dam-owning company PacifiCorp, said on Thursday. ?Our expectation is by the end of next month, it will be filed.?Signed on by California?s and Oregon?s governors, federal officials, tribal government leaders, environmental groups and PacifiCorp in April, the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA) would remove the four hydroelectric dams ? Copco 1, Copco 2, Iron Gate and J.C. Boyle ? by 2020 in order to improve water quality for fish and downstream water users.A nonprofit corporation known as the Klamath River Renewal Corporation was created earlier this year to take ownership of the dams from PacifiCorp, but this transfer will also need to be approved by FERC.The vice president of the nonprofit?s board of directors, Lester Snow, said they are still working to build a relationship with FERC and PacifiCorp in order to ensure a smooth transfer.?The next big step is for us to actually submit the transfer application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,? Snow said. ?We?re on the verge in the next week of sending a joint letter with PacifiCorp to FERC letting them know when we anticipate submittal.?There are still other regulatory hurdles the KHSA must clear before it can be put into effect, such as obtaining water quality permits from California and Oregon. Funding agreements are also having to be modified due to the KHSA having originally been written to be approved through Congress. The agreement was originally signed in 2010, but the bill was unable to progress through Congress for over five years due to Republican opposition in the House of Representatives? Natural Resources Committee.The $450 million price tag for the dam removal project will be split between PacifiCorp?s ratepayers in California and Oregon, who will contribute $200 million, and California?s Proposition 1 water bond, which will contribute $250 million.Gravely said the company has collected $116.2 million so far.If the plan is ultimately approved, dam removal would likely not begin until 2020.?That?s still down the road a ways but there is a lot of work until we get there,? Snow said.Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Aug 24 08:35:14 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 15:35:14 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] The Latest: Court rules against gold mining technique References: <817378973.1594239.1472052914184.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <817378973.1594239.1472052914184@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/business/20160822/the-latest-court-rules-against-gold-mining-technique The Latest: Court rules against gold mining technique Monday, August 22, 2016SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? The Latest on the California Supreme Court's ruling on a gold mining technique (all times local):10:50 a.m.The California Supreme Court has upheld a state ban on using powerful underwater vacuums to extract gold from rivers.The court said in a unanimous ruling Monday that a 19th century federal law that allows people to mine U.S.-owned land for gold and other minerals doesn't overrule the ban.Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar said the federal law doesn't regulate how gold is mined and supports local control over mining land.The vacuums, called suction dredges, suck up rocks, gravel and sand from riverbeds to filter out gold.Miners say preventing use of the devices amounts to an illegal ban on gold mining because mining by hand is labor intensive and makes the enterprise unprofitable.A message for an attorney representing a gold miner who was the defendant in the case wasn't immediately returned.___12:30 a.m.The California Supreme Court is set to rule on the legality of the state's ban on the use of suction dredges to extract gold from rivers.At issue in the decision expected on Monday is whether the ban is overruled by a 19th century federal law that allows mining of gold and other minerals on federal land.Suction dredges are powerful underwater vacuums that suck up rocks, gravel and sand from riverbeds to filter out gold.Miners say the state's ban on dredges amounts to a ban on gold mining because mining by hand is labor intensive and makes the enterprise unprofitable.State officials say suction dredge mining risks killing fish and stirring up toxic mercury. They say they have a right to protect the state's environment that is not pre-empted by federal mining law. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Aug 24 08:37:28 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 15:37:28 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] State Supreme Court upholds suction dredge mining moratorium (CBD Press Release) References: <1911547752.1591884.1472053048571.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1911547752.1591884.1472053048571@mail.yahoo.com> State Supreme Court upholds suction dredge mining moratorium By The Times-StandardMonday, August 22, 2016From a Center for Biological Diversity press release:?SAN FRANCISCO>>The California Supreme Court today upheld a statewide moratorium on recreational suction dredge mining for gold and said regulations protecting water supplies, fisheries, wildlife and cultural resources from the practice are valid. Suction dredge miners had asked the court to prevent the California Department of Fish and Wildlife from enforcing the current moratorium on the destructive practice. The moratorium, in place since 2009, is designed to prevent mercury pollution and damage to wildlife, waterways and cultural resources caused by suction dredge mining until protective rules are adopted.?Suction dredging is a continuation of the genocidal legacy of goldminers that started over 150 years ago,? said Leaf Hillman, the Karuk tribe?s director of natural resources. ?We will continue the fight to protect our cultural and natural resources from this reckless form of river mining.?Suction dredge mining uses machines to vacuum up gravel and sand from streams and river bottoms in search of gold. It threatens important cultural resources and sensitive wildlife species, and the California Native American Heritage Commission has condemned its impacts on priceless tribal and archeological resources. It pollutes waterways with mercury and sediment and destroys sensitive habitat for important and imperiled wildlife, including salmon and steelhead trout, California red-legged frogs and sensitive migratory songbirds.?Suction dredging is a reckless form of hobby mining that tears up rivers and threatens our waterways, imperiled salmon and other wildlife,? said Jonathan Evans, environmental health legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. ?In this time of drought and climate change, we can?t afford to have California?s waterways trashed by a small but vocal group of gold miners.?The suction dredge mining decision results from the case of The People of the State of California v. Brandon Lance Rinehart, in which a suction dredge miner was convicted of mining without a permit in 2012 in the Plumas National Forest, north of Lake Tahoe. California law prohibits in-stream suction dredge mining until the state develops regulations that will pay for the program and protect water quality, wildlife and cultural resources, and until Clean Water Act permits are issued for the polluting hobby. California agencies have not yet developed those regulations or permits.The harm done by suction dredging is well documented by scientists and government agencies. It harms state water supplies by re-suspending toxic mercury, sediment and heavy metals. The Environmental Protection Agency and State Water Resources Control Board urged a complete ban on suction dredge mining because of its significant impacts on water quality and wildlife from mercury pollution.?The unanimous decision handed down by the California Supreme Court this morning correctly holds that state regulations protecting our riverbeds from being vacuumed up by suction dredge gold mining has not been preempted by federal law,? said Friends of the River Senior Counsel Bob Wright. ?This is a victory for sanity and common sense as well as the effort to protect our crashing fish populations.?A coalition of tribal, conservation and fisheries groups have been seeking to uphold California?s laws regulating suction dredge mining. This coalition includes the Center for Biological Diversity, the Karuk tribe, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Friends of the River, The Sierra Fund, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Foothills Anglers Association, North Fork American River Alliance, Upper American River Foundation, Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, Environmental Law Foundation and Klamath Riverkeeper. Members of the coalition are represented by Lynne Saxton of Saxton & Associates, a water-quality and toxics-enforcement law firm.??URL: State Supreme Court upholds suction dredge mining moratorium | ? | | ? | | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | | State Supreme Court upholds suction dredge mining mor...From a Center for Biological Diversity press release: SAN FRANCISCO>>The California Supreme Court today upheld a statewide moratorium on recreational suction... | | | | View on www.times-standard.com | Preview by Yahoo | | | | ? | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Aug 24 10:03:00 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 17:03:00 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] TAMWG float trip meeting Thursday morning References: <406977927.1536082.1472058180668.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <406977927.1536082.1472058180668@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/environment/article_ca28aa10-6988-11e6-b31d-e7bfc28a60e1.html TAMWG float trip meeting Thursday morning - 2 hrs ago ?- ?0 - - - - - - - - The Trinity River Adaptive Management Working Group will meet from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 25. This will be a float trip along the Trinity River. The meeting float will begin at Lorenz Gulch parking lot.The meeting agenda:? Introduction of new TAMWG and TMC members? Float trip to view river and restoration sites? TAMWG and TMC coordination communication? Review of 2016 flow releasesTo attend this meeting you must make reservations with Elizabeth Hadley, TAMWG chair, at 530-339-7308, or Joe Polos (TAMWG DFQ) at 707-822-7201 or by email at?joe_polos at fwsgov. - -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Wed Aug 24 14:16:26 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 14:16:26 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Western Water -- Outdated Dams: When Removal Becomes an Option Message-ID: <006401d1fe4c$c687e760$5397b620$@sisqtel.net> New Western Water Magazine Issue Available The latest digital issue (Summer 2016) of Western Water Magazine - Outdated Dams: When Removal Becomes an Option - is now available for viewing. http://www.watereducation.org/digital-western-water-magazine/western-water-s ummer-2016?utm_campaign=New%20Western%20Water%20Magazine%20Issue%20Available &utm_medium=email&utm_source=bundle_and_blast In the summer issue, Writer Gary Pitzer delves into the issue of site-specific decisions to remove dams because they are obsolete - choked by accumulated sediment, seismically vulnerable and out of compliance with federal regulations that require environmental balance. As Pitzer writes, many dams, especially the large, rim dams at the base of most major river systems in California, serve a vital purpose - storing water that is used to irrigate farms and drinking water to millions of people as well as providing critical flood protection. In other locations across the West, however, some dam owners have determined that the cost of removal is less expensive than effecting the necessary modifications such as fish ladders or seismic safety retrofits Pitzer details situations when removing a dam, typically smaller local facilities, is necessary because it is unsafe or does not function any longer. The process involves much more than simply tearing down the physi-cal structure and letting a river or creek return to its former state. It's a major undertaking involving a multitude of groups trying to ensure the process does no harm and ulti-mately achieves the desired results. The article discusses the renewed effort to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, explores the process to demolish San Clemente Dam, and looks at ongoing discussions of removing two dams with silted-up reservoirs in Southern California. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Aug 24 16:16:34 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 23:16:34 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Reclamation to Release Additional Water from Trinity Reservoir to Supplement Flows in the Lower Klam In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <950364889.1875739.1472080594705@mail.yahoo.com> On Wednesday, August 24, 2016 4:01 PM, Loredana Potter wrote: Reclamation to Release Additional Water from Trinity Reservoir to Supplement Flows in the Lower KlamMid-Pacific Region Sacramento, Calif.MP-16-175Media Contact: Shane Hunt, 916-978-5100, shunt at usbr.govFor Release: Aug. 24, 2016Reclamation to Release Additional Water from Trinity Reservoir to Supplement Flows in the Lower Klamath River; Environmental Documents Released SHASTA LAKE, Calif. ? The Bureau of Reclamation will release additional water from Trinity Reservoir for the lower Klamath River to help protect returning adult fall run Chinook salmon from a disease outbreak and mortality. Supplemental flows from Lewiston Dam will commence on August 25 and extend into late September.On August 2, Reclamation released a Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) for the plan to use water from Trinity Reservoir for the supplemental flows. The Draft EA also analyzed using a potential emergency volume, if needed, to avoid a significant die-off of adult salmon. Real-time monitoring and adaptive management will help guide implementation of supplemental flow releases.Releases from Lewiston Dam will be adjusted to target 2,800 cubic feet per second (cfs) in the lower Klamath River starting August 25. To meet this target, releases from Lewiston Dam will increase from 450 cfs up to 1,300 cfs before dropping to 450 cfs in late September. Additional information will be provided if higher peak flows are needed in early-to-mid-September as part of the preventive action.Flows from Lewiston could be raised as high as 3,500 cfs for up to five days if real-time monitoring information suggests a need for additional supplemental flows as an emergency response.Over the next several weeks, releases could increase as quickly as 250 cfs every two hours, and flow reductions could drop as quickly as 100 cfs every four hours. The public is urged to take all necessary precautions on or near the river while flows are high.The Final EA and Finding of No Significant Impact are available at http://www.usbr.gov/mp/nepa/nepa_projdetails.cfm?Project_ID=26477. If you encounter problems accessing the documents online, please call 916-978-5100 (TTY 800-877-8339) or email mppublicaffairs at usbr.gov.For additional information, please contact Paul Zedonis, Supervisory Natural Resource Specialist, at 530-276-2047.# # #Reclamation is the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in the 17 Western states. Its facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. Visit our website at http://www.usbr.gov. Follow us on Twitter @USBR and @ReclamationCVP. If you would rather not receive future communications from Bureau of Reclamation, let us know by clicking here. Bureau of Reclamation, Denver Federal Center, Alameda & Kipling Street PO Box 25007, Denver, CO 80225 United States -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Aug 24 21:02:00 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 21:02:00 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Fwd: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River References: Message-ID: Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: > From: "Washburn, Thuy" > Date: August 24, 2016 at 5:14:43 PM PDT > To: "Aguilar, Burney" , "Alpers, Charles N." , "Anderson, Craig" , "Anderson, Donald" , "Anderson, Larry D" , "Angerer, Stuart A" , "Bader, Donald P" , "Bairrington, Phil" , "Boardman, Tom" , "Brown, Matt" , "Bui, Tuan" , "Burditt, Wayne" , "Center, River Forecast" , "Chamberlain, Charles" , "Commerce, Trinity Chamber of" , , "Dispatch, Trinity" , "Dispatchers, DWR" , "EMPLOYEES, BOR CVO-400" , "EMPLOYEES, BOR CVO-650" , "Employees, BOR SLO NCAO All Weaverville Office, (TRRP)" , "Ferguson, Jon E." , "Franklin, Robert" , "Gaeuman, David A" , "Giorgi, Bryant" , "Group-DWR, OCO Export Management" , "Harral, Sheryl M, (Sheri)" , "Hilts, Derek" , "Hirabayashi, Joni" , "Jackson, Deanna L" , "Jackson, Pliny" , "Kabat, Tom" , "Kiteck, Elizabeth G" , "Leahigh, John" , "List, COE Distribution" , "Matilton, Billy" , "Matilton, Clyde" , "Mendes, Rod" , "Miller, Aaron" , "Milligan, Ronald E" , "Mortimeyer, Barry S" , "MP-140, BOR MPR All Public Affairs Employees" , "O'Neil, Christine S." , "Operators, BOR SLO NCAO Control" , "Petros, Paul" , "Pettit, Tracy" , , pokerbarbill , "Polos, Joe" , "Reed, Timothy J." , , "Rieker, Jeffrey" , "ROBERTSON, RICHARD" , "Rogers, Rick" , "Rueth, John" , "Sandhu, Amerit" , "Shackleton, Chris" , "Shahcheraghi, Reza" , "Singh, Amardeep" , "Sinnen, Wade" , "Smith, Stacey M" , , "Swart, Brycen" , "Tran, Loi" , "Trent, Cory A." , "Vermeyen, Tracy B" , "Wheeler, Brian" , "Wilbur, Ryan" , "Wong, Greg" , "Yamanaka, Dan" , "Yip, Garwin" , "Zedonis, Paul A" , "Thuy Washburn" > Subject: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River > > Please make the following changes to the Trinity River: > > Date Time From (cfs) To (cfs) > > 8/25/2016 0600 450 750 > 8/25/2016 1400 750 1000 > > 8/26/2016 0600 1000 1200 > > 8/27/2016 0600 1200 1250 > > 9/02/2016 0600 1250 1200 > > > Issued by: Thuy Washburn > Comment: Trinity Preventative Flow > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "trinity-releases" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to trinity-releases+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Aug 26 09:34:39 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 09:34:39 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Article Submission: Reclamation releases Trinity Reservoir water to stop a fish kill on lower Klamath In-Reply-To: <994696DB-77DA-4A80-BBB0-34D21768A83E@fishsniffer.com> References: <2964801439.-745857443@wfc.wfcDB.reply.salsalabs.com> <0B9BFA5A-5256-45A6-A577-5B2E6D455E89@fishsniffer.com> <32E6B72F-CC86-4B4A-B483-BEF6B346A3ED@fishsniffer.com> <45168B06-EFD6-4CA6-80E5-5B5286F9CCC8@fishsniffer.com> <516975A4-BA26-4DF5-9E17-C430303C2AAC@fishsniffer.com> <994696DB-77DA-4A80-BBB0-34D21768A83E@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/25/1563916/-Reclamation-releases-Trinity-Reservoir-water-to-stop-a-fish-kill-on-lower-Klamath Photo of Trinity River below Lewiston Dam by Dan Bacher. Reclamation releases Trinity Reservoir water to stop a fish kill on lower Klamath by Dan Bacher Following on the heels of the Yurok Tribe?s discovery of deadly fish disease in lower Klamath River salmon last week, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced on August 24 that it will release additional water from Trinity Reservoir to help protect returning adult fall run Chinook salmon in the Klamath from a disease outbreak. The water release is designed to stop a fish kill like the one of September 2002, when an estimated 35,000 to 68,000 migrating adult salmon died in the lower Klamath River, due to the outbreak of disease under low, warm water conditions spurred by the Bush administration?s water mismanagement. The supplemental flows into the Trinity River, the largest tributary of the Klamath, from Lewiston Dam began on August 25 and will extend into late September. On August 19, Yurok Fisheries crews conducting routine fish disease monitoring found that salmon in the Klamath River on the Yurok Reservation are infected with a potentially deadly disease. Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, commonly known as ich (pronounced ?ick?). Ich was the primary pathogen that caused the 2002 fish kill. (fishsniffer.com/...) On August 2, Reclamation released a Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) for the plan to use water from Trinity Reservoir for the supplemental flows. Supplemental flows have been also released from the reservoir over the past several years in response to the presence of deadly fish disease in lower Klamath salmon facing low, warm water conditions. ?The Draft EA also analyzed using a potential emergency volume, if needed, to avoid a significant die-off of adult salmon. Real-time monitoring and adaptive management will help guide implementation of supplemental flow releases,? according to Shane Hunt of Reclamation in a press release. Reclamation adjusted releases from Lewiston Dam to target 2,800 cubic feet per second (cfs) in the lower Klamath River starting August 25. To meet this target, the agency increased releases from Lewiston Dam from 450 cfs up to 1,300 cfs before dropping to 450 cfs in late September. The agency said additional information will be provided if higher peak flows are needed in early-to-mid-September as part of the preventive action. ?Flows from Lewiston could be raised as high as 3,500 cfs for up to five days if real-time monitoring information suggests a need for additional supplemental flows as an emergency response,? Hunt said. ?Over the next several weeks, releases could increase as quickly as 250 cfs every two hours, and flow reductions could drop as quickly as 100 cfs every four hours. The public is urged to take all necessary precautions on or near the river while flows are high.?. The Final EA and Finding of No Significant Impact are available at www.usbr.gov/ .... If you encounter problems accessing the documents online, please call 916-978-5100 (TTY 800-877-8339) or email usbr.gov. A record low fall Chinook salmon run is expected this season as the Klamath River Tribes and fishing groups are engaged in litigation against the federal government and water contractors over their failure to protect the river?s salmon. On July 29, the Hoopa Valley Tribe filed a lawsuit against the federal government for violations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) over management actions that have imperiled Coho salmon on the Klamath. (www.dailykos.com/...) The Tribe filed the litigation against Reclamation and the National Marine Fisheries Service in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland Division, to protect the Coho salmon, listed as an endangered species under the ESA. ?This ESA suit is not the warning of a miner?s canary; it is the tsunami siren alerting North Coast communities of impending environmental catastrophe and cultural devastation for the Hoopa Valley Tribe,? said Ryan Jackson, Chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe. The Hoopa lawsuit is expected to be followed by several other lawsuits. On July 20, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations (PCFFA), Institute for Fisheries Resources, and Klamath Riverkeeper, represented by Earthjustice, put Reclamation and NMFS on 60-day notice that they could be sued under the federal Endangered Species Act if they fail to ?reopen and improve? water management in the Klamath River. Earthjustice's 60-day notice followed similar notices filed by the Yurok and Karuk Tribes in June, citing a disease infection rate of 90% of sampled juvenile salmon in 2015. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Lewiston-Dam-790x527-729x486.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 173510 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Aug 26 09:25:52 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 09:25:52 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] The big corporate money behind Governor Jerry Brown In-Reply-To: <610B90D4-8F0C-469D-8297-76DBA71024E3@rmiller.com> References: <00e901d1fe34$f96586f0$ec3094d0$@net> <011901d1fe51$25dbc160$71934420$@TheThallers.com> <345801d1fe54$09259160$1b70b420$@earthlink.net> <82AF746B-809C-431F-B844-33FEAD8391F2@lionslair.com> <347101d1fe54$e2941ac0$a7bc5040$@earthlink.net> <131786131.1921628.1472099435965@mail.yahoo.com> <000001d1fe99$862c0be0$928423a0$@net> <610B90D4-8F0C-469D-8297-76DBA71024E3@rmiller.com> Message-ID: <4D3B4154-3B53-453A-AF45-1CE6A78ADC6C@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/23/1563062/-The-21-8-million-dumped-into-Prop-1-campaign-revealed-the-Big-Money-behind-Jerry-Brown Photo of Jerry Brown by Dan Bacher. The big corporate money behind Governor Jerry Brown Big Money interests dumped $21.8 million into Yes on Prop. 1 campaign by Dan Bacher This November 4 will be the second anniversary of the passage of Proposition 1, Governor Jerry Brown?s controversial water bond, a measure that fishing groups, California Indian Tribes, grassroots conservation groups and environmental justice advocates opposed because they considered it to be a water grab for corporate agribusiness and Big Money interests. Proponents of Proposition 1 contributed a total of $21,820,691 and spent a total of $19,538,153 on the successful campaign. The contributors are a who?s who of Big Money interests in California, including corporate agribusiness groups, billionaires, timber barons, Big Oil. the tobacco industry and the California Chamber of Commerce. They provide a quick snapshot of the corporate interests behind the questionable environmental policies of Brown. Many people voted for the proposition only because Brown said no bond funds would be used for the widely-unpopular Delta Tunnels. However, after the election, as Proposition 1 opponents expected, the Brown administration did indeed admit that it could use water bond funds for the massive tunnels project. In April 2015, an administration official admitted that the state could use money from Proposition 1, the water bond, to pay for "habitat mitigation" linked to the construction and operation of the massive Delta Tunnels. Richard Stapler, spokesman for the California Department of Natural Resources, "acknowledged that the money [for delta habitat restoration] could conceivably come from Proposition 1, the $7.5 billion water bond that California passed last year,? according to Peter Fimrite in the San Francisco Chronicle.(www.sfgate.com/...) Restore the Delta and other public trust advocates at the time slammed Governor Brown for breaking his campaign promise that bond money wouldn't be used to mitigate the environmental damage caused by the tunnels, a $67 billion project designed to export Sacramento River water to agribusiness interests, Southern California water agencies and oil companies conducting fracking and steam injection operations. (www.eastbayexpress.com/...) More recently, on August 10, 2016, the state?s Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted to conduct an audit into funding for the tunnels, as requested by Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman and state Senator Lois Wolk. It will be interesting to see what this audit turns out, including possible use of Prop. 1 money to fund planning for the Delta Tunnels, now called the ?California WaterFix.? (www.oaklandmagazine.com/...) The vote for the audit was spurred by the U.S. Department of Interior?s Inspector General?s opening of an investigation into the possible illegal use of millions of dollars by the California Department of Water Resources in preparing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Delta tunnels Plan. The investigation resulted from a complaint that the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed on the behalf of a U. S. Bureau of Reclamation employee on February 19, 2016. The complaint, made public in a statement from PEER on April 11, details how a funding agreement with DWR is ?illegally siphoning off funds that are supposed to benefit fish and wildlife to a project that will principally benefit irrigators? under the California Water Fix, the newest name for the Delta Tunnels Plan. While mainstream media covered both the audit and the federal investigation into the tunnels funding, the corporate media and most ?alternative? media outlets have completely failed to cover the much bigger issue of the Big Money, $21,820,691, behind the passage of Proposition 1. Guess who was one of the contributors to the Prop. 1 campaign? Yes, Stewart Resnick, the Beverly Hills agribusiness tycoon, owner of The Wonderful Company and largest orchard fruit grower in the world, contributed $150,000. Corporate agribusiness interests, the largest users of federal and state water project water exported through the Delta pumping facilities, contributed $850,000 to the campaign, including the $150,000 donated by Resnick. The California Farm Bureau Federation contributed $250,000, the Western Growers Service Association donated $250,000 and California Cotton Alliance contributed $200,000. Resnick and his wife, Lynda, have been instrumental in promoting campaigns to eviscerate Endangered Species Act protections for Central Valley Chinook salmon and Delta smelt populations and to build the fish-killing peripheral tunnels - and have made millions off reselling environmental water to the public. (www.dailykos.com/...) The largest individual donor in the Yes on Prop. 1 campaign was Sean Parker, who contributed $1 million to the campaign. Parker is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist who cofounded the file-sharing computer service Napster and served as the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also cofounded Plaxo, Causes, and Airtime. Four members of the Fisher family, who own the controversial Gap stores, collectively donated $1.5 million to the Yes. on Prop. 1 and Prop. 2 campaign. They also own the Mendocino Redwood Company and Humboldt Redwood Company, formerly the Pacific Lumber Company (PALCO), more than half a million acres of redwood forest lands in total. Doris F. Fisher contributed $499,000, John J. Fisher $351,000, Robert J. Fisher $400,000 and William S. Fisher $250,000. The Gap become notorious among labor and human rights advocates for employing sweatshop labor in the Third World to produce its clothes. In a major conflict of interest, Robert Fisher profits by logging North Coast forests while he serves as co-chair of a little-known cabinet-level body in Sacramento called the "California Strategic Growth Council (SGC)," according to reporter Will Parrish in the East Bay Express. (www.eastbayexpress.com/...) "Enacted by the state legislature in 2008, the SGC is a cornerstone of Governor Jerry Brown's efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions," Parrish wrote. "The panel has the broad and unprecedented mandate of coordinating implementation of California's climate change prescriptions across all levels of state government, while also preparing the state to accommodate a projected population of 50 million by the year 2050." "As such, Robert Fisher, whose close relationship with Brown is well- known within the corridors of the state Capitol, is not only in charge of helping set California climate change policy, but he also profits handsomely from harvesting living species that are increasingly being recognized as one of our last best hopes for forestalling the catastrophic impacts of global warming," said Parrish. Aera Energy LLC, a company jointly owned by affiliates of Shell and ExxonMobil, contributed $250,000 to the Yes on Proposition 1 and 2 campaign, according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). Aera Energy LLC is one of California's largest oil and gas producers, accounting for nearly 25 percent of the state's production, according to the company?s website. (www.aeraenergy.com/...) Tobacco giant Philip Morris also contributed $100,000 to Governor Brown?s ballot measure committee established to support Propositions 1 and 2. On October 20, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) called on the governor to return that money. A total of eleven ballot measure campaign committees registered in support of Proposition 1 and 2, according to Ballotpedia (ballotpedia.org/..._(2014) In contrast with the $21,820,691 contributed and the $19,538,153 spent by backers of Prop. 1, opponents of the measure raised only $101,149 and spent $86,347 during the campaign. To put that in perspective, note that just one big grower, Stewart Resnick, contributed $150,000 to the Prop. 1 campaign, more than all of the opponents combined. And Resnick wasn?t even one of the top 23 donors, with Sean Parker being the largest individual donor at $1,000,000! In spite of Jerry Brown?s cynical rhetoric about ?green energy? and ?climate change? at climate conferences and carefully choreographed greenwashing events, the money spent by corporate, big money interests on the Yes on Proposition 1 and 2 campaign reveals who really is behind the Governor?s anti-environmental policies. Consumer Watchdog report reveals that Big Oil & utilities donated $9.8 to Brown A groundbreaking report released by Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica- based consumer organization, on August 10 puts Governor Brown in an even less flattering light. The group reported that twenty-six energy companies including the state?s three major investor-owned utilities, Occidental, Chevron, and NRG?all with business before the state?donated $9.8 million to Jerry Brown?s campaigns, causes, and initiatives, and to the California Democratic Party since he ran for Governor. ?Donations were often made within days or weeks of winning favors,? Consumer Watchdog said. ?The three major investor-owned utilities alone contributed nearly $6 million.? ?An exhaustive review of campaign records, publicly-released emails and other documents at PUCPapers.org, court filings, and media reports, shows that Brown personally intervened in regulatory decisions favoring the energy industry, and points to Brown and his operatives having used the Democratic Party as a political slush fund to receive contributions from unpopular energy companies in amounts greater than permitted to his candidate committee," the group claimed. "Between 2011 and 2014, the energy companies tracked by Brown?s Dirty Hands donated $4.4 million to the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party gave $4.7 million to Brown?s re-election. Earmarking to the Democratic Party is illegal. Consumer Watchdog is forwarding its report to the Fair Political Practices Commission.? ?The timing of energy industry donations around important legislation and key pro-industry amendments, as well as key regulatory decisions in which Brown personally intervened, raises troubling questions about whether quid pro quos are routine for this administration,? said consumer advocate Liza Tucker, author of the report, Brown?s Dirty Hands. ?While Brown paints himself as a foe of fossil fuels, his Administration promoted reckless oil drilling, burning dirty natural gas to make electricity, and used old hands from industry and government, placed in key regulatory positions, to protect the fossil fuel-reliant energy industry.? You can download the report here: www.consumerwatchdog.org/... View a video on the report here: www.youtube.com/... Donations to Yes on Prop. 1 & 2 Campaign The committees and money raised for the Yes on 1 and 2 campaign are as follows: ? California Business Political Action Committee, Sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce: $1,169,500 ? Wetlands Conservation Committee, Sponsored by Ducks Unlimited, Audubon California and The Nature Conservancy, Yes on Prop. 1: $265,000 ? Conservation Action Fund - Yes on Proposition 1 and 2 - Sponsored by Conservation Organizations: $1,042,526 ? Sac. Valley Water & Rice for Prop 1: $72,356 ? Brown; Yes on Props 1 and 2 A Bipartisan Coalition of Business, Labor, Republicans, Democrats and Governor: $17,690,658 ? Think Long Committee, Inc., Sponsored by Nicolas Berggruen Institute Trust, Supporting Propositions 1 & 2 (Non-Profit 501(C)(4)): $250,000 ? Western Plant Health Association, Supporting Propositions 1 and 2 (Non-Profit 501 (C) (6)): $100,000 ? NRDC Action Fund California Ballot Measures Committee - Yes on Prop. 1: $12,653 ? Southern California District Council of Laborers Issues PAC $203,662 ? Laborers Pacific Southwest Regional Organizing Coaltion Issues PAC - Yes on Props 1 and 2: $842,896 ? The California Conservation Campaign: $171,440 These committees raised a total of $21,820,691 and spent a total of $19,538,153. Top 23 Contributors to Prop. 1 and 2 Campaign: Brown for Governor 2014 $5,196,529 Sean Parker $1,000,000 L. John Doerr $875,000 California Alliance for Jobs - Rebuild California Committee $533,750 The Nature Conservancy $518,624 California Hospitals Committee $500,000 Doris F. Fisher $499,000 Health Net $445,600 Robert Fisher $400,000 John Fisher $351,000 Aera Energy LLC $250,000 California American Council of Engineering Companies $250,000 California Farm Bureau Federation $250,000 California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems $250,000 Dignity Health $250,000 Kaiser Permamente $250,000 Northern California Carpenters Regional Council Issues PAC $250,000 Reed Hastings $250,000 SW Regional Council Of Carpenters $250,000 Think Long Committee, Inc. $250,000 Western Growers Service Corporation $250,000 William Fisher $250,000 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: sm_big_oil_brown.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 49890 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Mon Aug 29 12:45:48 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 19:45:48 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River trapping summary through Julian week 34 (August 26th) Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010B54DC@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Greetings! Attached please find the TRP trapping summary through JW 34. We fished Wednesday night at Willow Creek before the temperature came back up...but now that the extra releases from Lewiston have hit we should be good to go the rest of the season temperature-wise (we are fishing in these flows, we just don't have a lot of freeboard in the trap boxes). The Chinook that we saw Thursday morning (and again today) looked like they were likely Springers. Junction City was also able to remain in the river with these higher flows, for now, anyway. Cheers! MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW34.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 60403 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW34.xlsx URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Tue Sep 6 13:39:38 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2016 20:39:38 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Project trapping summary through JW35 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010D5E79@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Happy Tuesday! Here's the trapping summary through JWeek 35 (September 2). With the Labor Day weekend I'm a little slow getting this out, but hopefully few of you noticed. We are still seeing mostly springer Chinook at WCW (based on their greenish, older appearance), but imagine we'll be seeing the Falls any time now. Water is cooler (58 degrees F at WCW this morning), Fall is in the air. MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW35.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 60492 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW35.xlsx URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Sep 7 08:54:49 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2016 15:54:49 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <695426092.373432.1473263689755@mail.yahoo.com> On Wednesday, September 7, 2016 8:29 AM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: Please make the following changes to the Trinity River:? ?Date? ? ? ? ? ? ??Time? ? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 9/07/2016?? ? ? ?0900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1200 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1100 9/07/2016?? ? ? ?1300 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1100 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1000 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Conserve storage-- View online at http://www.trrp.net/restore/flows/release-email/ --- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Sep 8 08:04:09 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2016 15:04:09 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Tribes, feds discussing solution to Klamath River salmon infections- Karuk, Yurok delay filing lawsuit over coho salmon infections References: <1395985457.1022078.1473347049512.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1395985457.1022078.1473347049512@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/environment-and-nature/20160902/tribes-feds-discussing-solution-to-klamath-river-salmon-infections Tribes, feds discussing solution to Klamath River salmon infections Karuk, Yurok delay filing lawsuit over coho salmon infections By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardFriday, September 2, 2016The Karuk and Yurok tribes have decided to hold off on suing two federal agencies over parasite outbreaks on juvenile Klamath River salmon as they discuss possible solutions.The two tribes had given the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation a 60-day notice in June of its intent to file a lawsuit over alleged Endangered Species Act violations.The tribes claim that the two federal agencies? management of the river?s flows through dam water releases led to over 90 percent of juvenile coho salmon ? a species listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act ? became infected by a deadly intestinal parasite in the spring of 2014 and 2015.Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Policy Advocate Craig Tucker said on Friday that the Karuk and Yurok tribes are now working with the two federal agencies to develop a dam release schedule that could prevent future parasite outbreaks.?We think we have the right team of experts with the expertise in both fish pathology and hydrology at the table,? he said. ?We?re optimistic we?ll be able to come up with some solution that is reasonable.?The Yurok Tribe relayed similar optimism on Friday.?The tribe hopes to resolve the issue through collaborative technical work with the federal government that will result in improved habitat for salmon,? Yurok Tribe Public Relations Manager Matt Mais said in a statement to the Times-Standard.?Should these discussions fail to generate a compromise, Tucker said there is nothing keeping them from moving ahead with the lawsuit.The Hoopa Valley Tribe had already filed an Endangered Species Act lawsuit against the two federal agencies in late July, but the tribe?s Fisheries Director Mike Orcutt states that they plan to reconsult with the agencies.?There is nothing that has precluded us from having those discussions,? Orcutt said. ?Once you get to court, the first step the court is going to take is to ask if there is a settlement on the issues and to encourage dialogue. That?s where we?re at.?Three environmental organizations represented by the nonprofit law organization Earthjustice also filed?a notice of intent to sue the two agencies in July. While there is still some time left before the notice period is over, Earthjustice managing attorney Patti Goldman said they are also waiting to see what the discussions generate before filing their lawsuit.?We?re hoping that the work being done by the tribes and federal agencies will lead to a revamping for how the water management will be handled next spring,? she said.The various legal actions were sparked by a letter that the National Marine Fisheries Services sent to the Bureau of Reclamation in March, which stated that the high parasite infection rate of coho salmon is ?expected? during dry years and therefore does not require an immediate change in river management.The tribes claim this is a clear violation of a 2013 biological opinion created by the National Marine Fisheries Service which currently allows up to 49 percent of juvenile coho salmon in the Klamath River to be infected by the parasite as a result of the bureau?s dam operations. If the infection rates climb above 49 percent, the Bureau of Reclamation is obligated to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service to discuss possible changes of dam operations.?The National Marine Fisheries Service?s March letter states that it plans to change its 2013 biological opinion before April 2017, specifically revising how many salmon would be allowed to be harmed or killed by the parasite in these drier, low-flow years.Tucker said that these lawsuits are part of the fallout of Congress? inaction on a plan that proposes to remove four Klamath River dams to restore fish habitat and improve water quality. The dam removal plan, known as the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, is now set to go before?another federal agency for consideration?later this year.??We predicted that if Congress fell back last year that we would slowly slide back into this ?community suing community? strategy of problem solving,? Tucker said. ?It?s really unfortunate that these communities worked really hard over a number of years to find a solution and Congress couldn?t bother to enact it.?Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Sep 8 11:41:16 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2016 18:41:16 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Vacancy Announcement Notification - Project Coordination Specialist References: <229557446.1127091.1473360076397.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <229557446.1127091.1473360076397@mail.yahoo.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From:?Chang, Barbara? Date: Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 10:34 AM Subject: Vacancy Announcement Notification - Project Coordination Specialist To: BOR MP All Mid-Pacific Employees Good morning, The Northern California Area Office is currently recruiting for a Project Coordination Specialist in Weaverville, CA.?The following?announcement?has been prepared via Reclamation's HireMe on-line application system. BR-MP-2016-295, Project Coordination Specialist, GS-1101-09/11 FPL 11 Interested Applicants?can view the?announcement?through USAJOBS at the following link:?https://www.usajobs.gov/ GetJob/ViewDetails/449977700 First time applicants must register with USAJOBS at?https://www.usajobs.gov/Acc ount/Account?to create an account. For additional information regarding this?vacancy, please call Barbara Chang at 916-978-5498 or email?barbarachang at usbr.gov. --? Thank you,?Barbara Chang Barbara Chang, HR SpecialistDivision of Human Resources Bureau of Reclamation, Mid-Pacific Region 2800 Cottage Way (MP-500), Sacramento, CA 95825 Office (916) 978-5498 ?Fax (916) 978-5496 E-mail:?barbarachang at usbr.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Sep 13 13:17:16 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 20:17:16 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Stream Salmonid Simulator (S3) Chinook Salmon Population Dynamics Model Roll-Out In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <25905984.389803.1473797836712@mail.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, September 13, 2016 1:00 PM, "Hetrick, Nick" wrote: Klamath Basin Partners... We're pleased to share the final agenda for the upcoming S3 Model roll-out workshops for the Trinity River (Wednesday October 5) and the Klamath River (morning of Thursday October 6).? Both sessions will be held at the Humboldt Bay Aquatic Center located in Eureka, CA.? If you have questions regarding either the Trinity or Klamath sessions, please contact Nicholas Hetrick or Nicholas Som (nicholas_som at fws.gov) of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Arcata Fish and Wildlife Office. Note that we are not planning to host either of the sessions via Webex or conference telephone line. We encourage in-person attendance to provide participates the opportunity to effectively interact with the model developers. ? Project Background: ?The Stream Salmonid Simulator (S3) Model is an integrated set of sub models that can be used to predict the effects of water management and restoration alternatives on the production of Chinook Salmon.? In the Klamath Basin, the S3 Model tracks causes of mortality throughout the sub-adult life history of Chinook Salmon over time within the 233-mile section of the mainstem Klamath River spanning from Keno Dam in Oregon to its confluence with the Pacific Ocean in California.? The S3 Model is ?also being extended by including the Trinity Basin. ? Future additions to the S3 Model include the addition of an ocean component, an upstream adult migration sub-module, and the addition of the Coho Salmon sub-module.? These improvements will transform the S3 Model into a full life-cycle model that can be used by the Klamath and Trinity basin Managers and the Trinity River Restoration Program to help evaluate the potential effectiveness of various management actions, channel rehabilitation projects, and water management alternatives on salmon production in the Basin. ? We look forward to seeing you on Oct 5/6. ? ? Nicholas J. Hetrick ?? -- Nicholas J. HetrickProgram LeadFish & Aquatic Habitat Conservation ProgramArcata Fish and Wildlife OfficeArcata, CA 95521office (707) 822-7201 fax (707) 822-8411 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: S3 Meeting Oct 2016 Agenda.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 82753 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Tue Sep 13 17:40:23 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 00:40:23 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Project trapping summary through JWeek 36 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010D839B@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Here it is, folks, attached. We have started to see some shiny fresh fish at the WCW, and TRH has now begun their trapping for the season as well. Cheers! MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW36.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 60500 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW36.xlsx URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Sep 13 18:28:43 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 01:28:43 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] SACBEE Oped: Delta tunnels proposal a muddled gamble References: <1252018304.738621.1473816523465.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1252018304.738621.1473816523465@mail.yahoo.com> SEPTEMBER 9, 2016 1:00 PM Delta tunnels proposal a muddled gamble Jeffrey MichaelYou would think that after a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on planning and analysis, the plan would be clear. Instead, uncertainties regarding the proposed project, environmental impacts, costs, financing and authority over operations loom larger than ever. Why the muddle?Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gov. Jerry Brown sought to improve water supply reliability and Delta ecosystem issues, the co-equal goals of the 2009 Delta Reform Act. However, the Delta tunnels proposal was initiated, developed and advocated for by water export interests and the Department of Water Resources, operator of the State Water Project, putting ecosystem and species protection agencies and interests in reactive roles.As stated in the proposed project, now known as the California WaterFix, ?Real-time operations will be implemented to maximize water supply for the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, subject to providing necessary protections for threatened and endangered species.? Importantly, exports are not limited to those proposed in WaterFix but to the maximum possible until stopped by state and federal agencies protecting species from risk of extinction, a one-sided statement of ?co-equal.?This approach to operating the twin tunnels will perpetuate, if not increase, ongoing conflict and uncertainty about water supplies and the survival of fish.THE STATE COULD REDUCE THE CONFUSION OVER THE WATERFIX IF IT WERE TO FOLLOW ITS OWN PLANNING GUIDELINES AND PREPARE A FEASIBILITY STUDY THAT ADDRESSES ENGINEERING, OPERATIONS, ENVIRONMENTAL, ECONOMIC AND FINANCE CONCERNS IN A CONSISTENT AND UNIFIED ANALYSIS.Uncertainty and confusion are also increased through a fragmented policy process. If water or environmental interests do not prevail in decisions of a state agency or state court, going to a federal agency, federal court or the Congress is common, and shifting battles to new arenas can continue for decades without final decision.Moreover, paying for the tunnels depends on the decisions of numerous local water districts, with significant differences among agricultural and urban districts.The state could reduce the confusion over the WaterFix if it were to follow its own planning guidelines and prepare a feasibility study that addresses engineering, operations, environmental, economic and finance concerns in a consistent and unified analysis. Instead, the WaterFix proposal advances engineering proposals and environmental analyses that are disconnected from the project?s financial needs, combined with opaque descriptions of governance and authority.An economic analysis and detailed financial plan were promised last summer by the Department of Water Resources, but nothing has been released even as critical hearings are underway at the State Water Resources Control Board.Recent analysis by the University of the Pacific?s Center for Business Policy Research illustrates the problem with this approach. As described in its documents before the water board, the twin tunnels cannot be economically justified as the meager boost to water supply relative to its estimated $16 billion construction cost generates only 23 cents in benefits for each $1 in costs.While many water contractors have expressed concern over the tunnels? cost, no major water agencies have walked away from the proposal despite the plan?s low return on investment.A closer look at the WaterFix proposed governance and authority suggests how water agencies could believe the proposal may prove a better value than modeling projections show.After construction, the critical issues for the tunnels will be operation in real time and adjustments to rules over time. The draft ?adaptive management? framework is notable for placing the Collaborative Science and Adaptive Management Program created by state and federal water contractors at the center of processes to establish science priorities and to make recommendations on possible changes in water operations.In addition, the WaterFix plan states that after only a single dry year, state and federal agencies can develop a drought contingency plan that could adjust operations and regulations. These governance provisions increase the power of export water agencies to adjust operations after the tunnels are built, and confuse current efforts to evaluate environmental impacts.Advocates for the tunnels argue that much of the economic value of the WaterFix is in avoiding future cuts in water export levels to protect endangered and threatened fish species. However, such restrictions could also apply to the tunnels, as a key issue is flows past the tunnel intakes and through the Delta. Water exporters could hope that these new governance provisions, combined with spending billions to build the tunnels, shift the balance of regulations.As a result, there is widespread confusion over whether the WaterFix will actually be operated as is shown in the current models and simulations. This uncertainty, and the hope for increased water supplies, are essential to persuading water agencies to finance the tunnels.This uncertainty over how the tunnels will be operated is creating anxiety for environmentalists and those who live and farm in the Delta and upstream who note the tunnels have physical capacity to export much more water than the roughly 5 million acre-feet in the current plan.Greater clarity and transparency regarding what is proposed, its effects and responsibility for future decisions are needed. As currently proposed, the tunnels are a high-stakes gamble.Jeffrey Michael, an economist, is director of the Center for Business and Policy Research and professor of public policy at the University of the Pacific. Contact him at jmichael at pacific.edu. John Kirlin is distinguished professor of public policy and director of the master?s degree programs in public administration and public policy at McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. He was executive director of Delta Vision. Contact him at jkirlin at pacific.edu.reprints -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Sep 14 12:55:28 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 19:55:28 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Maven=3A_This_just_in_=E2=80=A6_Delta_tun?= =?utf-8?q?nels_would_need_federal_funding?= References: <1791938206.1166045.1473882928344.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1791938206.1166045.1473882928344@mail.yahoo.com> https://mavensnotebook.com/2016/09/14/this-just-in-delta-tunnels-would-need-us-funding/ This just in ? Delta tunnels would need federal funding September 14, 2016?Maven??Breaking News This just in from the Associated Press:? California water tunnels would need US funding ?Giant tunnels that Gov. Jerry Brown wants to build to haul water across California are economically feasible only if the federal government bears a third of the nearly $16 billion cost because local water districts may not benefit as expected, according to an analysis that the state commissioned last year but never released.The findings counter longstanding state pledges that the local agencies that would get water from the tunnels would bear the full cost. Restore the Delta, a group opposing the project, obtained the fall 2015 cost analysis and subsequent state emails on revising the report through open record laws and provided them to The Associated Press on Wednesday. ? ? Click here to read the full story from the Associated Press. Restore the Delta: Unreleased Economic Analysis Shows Delta Tunnels Will Require $6.5B Subsidy from State and Federal Taxpayers >From Restore the Delta:A recent Public Records Act request from the CA Department of Water Resources, delivered to Restore the Delta, uncovered a?draft economic analysis?for Governor Brown's Delta tunnels project authored by Dr. David Sunding of the Brattle Group from Fall 2015.Read the PRA documents?here.The state's cost benefit analysis calls for a $4.6 billion Federal taxpayer subsidy for the project to cover expenses for Central Valley Project water users, and additional subsidies to be paid for by California taxpayers.?In total, CA WaterFix will require a $6.5 billion taxpayer subsidy.The Central Valley Project water users who are proponents of the Delta tunnels project include the San?Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority, and their member Westlands Water District, who in July had its credit rating?upgraded?by Fitch Ratings from ?Negative Watch? to ?Negative.?In a?memo?reviewing the Brattle Group's analysis of CA WaterFix, Dr. Jeffrey Michael, Director of the Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific, notes, ?Clearly, this huge subsidy is in stark contrast to ten years of public statements that all construction and mitigation costs would be paid by water users.?Dr. Michael's review finds that WaterFix,??passes a cost-benefit test in aggregate,? but when the results are disaggregated by urban and agricultural uses, the report?finds ?benefits fall short of allocated costs for most agricultural water users.?Dr. Michael says, ?Because costs exceed benefits for agricultural users, the report actually finds that the tunnels are not economically feasible as this requires benefits to exceed allocated costs for all users. Thus, much of the rest of the report attempts to rationalize public subsidies to lower the costs for agricultural contractors.?Even more troubling in the Brattle Group?s draft economic analysis is the assumption that?water yields (the difference in export water delivery with and without the tunnels) are four times higher than in official WaterFix documents including its RDEIR/SDEIS and petition to the State Water Resources Control Board.Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta said, ?As we have suspected, the economic planning for the tunnels is forecasting a water yield far higher than what proponents are telling the State Water Resources Control Board at hearings on permits for the project.?Because drought is the new normal, the only way for CA WaterFix to deliver four times more water within the calculated difference is to deplete the Bay-Delta estuary and the upstream watersheds.?Additional emails in the PRA request show that the next version of the economic analysis will contain only aggregated economic results, meaning the public version of the report will cover up all the negative results about the project not penciling out for agricultural users, even with a subsidy.?In addition to providing no evaluation of the economic harm that will be inflicted on Delta communities, it is clear CA WaterFix planners have no qualms about Californians paying for the project through higher water rates, property taxes, and state and federal income taxes ? all for the benefit of big agricultural growers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, and special interest water districts, like Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.? Southern Californians and Silicon Valley water ratepayers should be very concerned as they will end up subsidizing big agriculture four different ways,? added Barrigan-Parrilla. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Wed Sep 14 16:13:47 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 16:13:47 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River spawn survey update for September 9, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, We are back! The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have the first 2016 weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full updated is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update September 9, 2016. This week our crews mapped 1 redd (1 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Pigeon Point. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ?Myself and the survey crews are excited to be back on the Trinity River. It won't be long until the spawning action really starts to pick up. If you have any questions about our survey please feel free to give me a call. Thank you for your interest and I hope to see you out there! Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9275 bytes Desc: not available URL: From njharris30 at gmail.com Wed Sep 14 16:25:38 2016 From: njharris30 at gmail.com (Nathan Harris) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 16:25:38 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Willow Creek in-season trap update - Final 2016 Message-ID: Please see the attached documents for weekly catch data from the Willow Creek outmigration monitoring. Nathan Harris Biologist Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program Trinity River Division 3723 N. Hwy 96 Willow Creek, CA 95573 Office: (530) 629-3333 x1703 Cell: (707) 616-8742 njharris30 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Willow Creek RST raw catch update 2016.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 32094 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: trapping update summary final 2016.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 14659 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Sep 19 10:08:16 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2016 17:08:16 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] New Yorker: Patagonia's Philosopher-King References: <1129549948.1053507.1474304896538.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1129549948.1053507.1474304896538@mail.yahoo.com> Here is a link to an interesting article about Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. ?Patagonia's grant program funds a number of non profit environmental and fishery groups working on salmon restoration efforts in the region. TS Patagonia?s Philosopher-King | | | | | | | | | | | Patagonia?s Philosopher-King By Nick Paumgarten How Yvon Chouinard turned his eco-conscious, anti-corporate ideals into the credo of a successful clothing company. | | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Mon Sep 19 11:35:24 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2016 11:35:24 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: La Nina Prediction for NW Winter now neutral, could mean warmer-than-average temperatures - plus more on The Blob Message-ID: <00cc01d212a4$96bd71a0$c43854e0$@sisqtel.net> Columbia Basin Bulletin La Nina Prediction For Northwest Winter Now Neutral, Could Mean Warmer-Than-Average Temperatures Posted on Friday, September 16, 2016 (PST) NOAA is reporting that summer temperatures across the contiguous United States, June through August of this year, were the fifth highest on record, and a forecast for a La Nina weather pattern emerging has been downgraded to a "neutral" forecast that could mean continued warmer-than-average temperatures in the Pacific Northwest through the fall and winter. Climate and weather experts recapped summer weather on Thursday, showing that the Northwest states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana all experienced warmer-than-average temperatures over the summer. But temperatures were well below record highs in California and most East Coast states. Meanwhile, below-average or near-average precipitation was recorded in Columbia Basin states, with the exception of much-below average rainfall in Idaho for the summer. A U.S. Drought Monitor report issued Sept. 13 shows that "abnormally dry" conditions persist in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, with scattered pockets of "moderate" or "severe" drought conditions. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center issued an updated El Nino/La Nino forecast on Sept. 8, scaling back earlier predictions for a La Nina forecast for the fall and winter to instead a "neutral" forecast. Overall, "neutral conditions are slightly favored (between 50 to 60 percent) during the upcoming Northern Hemisphere fall and winter 2016-2017," the forecast states. "La Nina would normally lead to cooler temperatures across the Northwest," said Peter Rosencrans, head of forecast operations with the Climate Prediction Center. "We have changed our forecast to go with slightly higher-than-average temperatures in the Pacific Northwest." Complicating the forecast picture for the Pacific Northwest is "The Blob" - a large pocket of warm water that has persisted in the northern Pacific Ocean since 2013. Asked how The Blob may influence El-Nino/La Nina forecasting, Rosencrans said it has an influence, but the primary drivers behind El Nino or La Nina weather patterns are very powerful influences of water temperatures that are monitored by zones in the rest of the Pacific, including the tropics. Rosencrans said it's somewhat of a chicken-or-egg situation. The Blob is known to mostly be caused by persistent high-pressure weather that curbs churning currents in the ocean, causing warm water to settle in. "The problem is the blob is caused by a decrease in Pacific wind speeds . But if you get a couple of good storms go through it can really churn," Rosencrans said. "We could go back to La Nina and the conditions that go with it. We go with the data and where that takes us." Just over the last week or so, it became apparent the warm water mass known as The Blob has been re-established in the Pacific off the Northwest coast, as noted by Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. Water temperatures off the Pacific Northwest were "slightly above normal. Nothing exceptional" since early July, Mass stated on his blog, showing corresponding graphics from NOAA. "But fast forward to a few days ago (Sept. 8) and you will notice MUCH warmer temperatures over the Northeast Pacific. The Blob is back." The potential for warmer-than-average fall and winter over Columbia Basin states, as noted in the latest Climate Prediction Center report - raises concerns of water supply for fisheries managers. Generally, it can cause below-average snowpacks, earlier runoff periods and warmer water temperatures in rivers that support salmonids. In addition, recent research by NOAA Fisheries and University of California, Santa Cruz, scientists assessed marine ecology effects of the 2015-2016 El Nino pattern and The Blob for the first time. "Last year there was a lot of speculation about the consequences of 'The Blob' and El Nino battling it out off the West Coast of the United States," said Michael Jacox, lead author of the research. "We found that off California El Nino turned out to be much weaker than expected. The Blob continued to be a dominant force, and the two of them together had strongly negative impacts on marine productivity." The combination of El Nino and The Blob were shown to slow the flow of nutrients from the deep ocean, reducing the productivity of coastal ecosystems. Water temperatures at or near five degrees above average are also believed to be responsible for sightings of warm-water marine life far to the north of their typical ranges, and the temperatures likely contributed to the West Coast's largest harmful algal bloom ever recorded in 2015. The current forecast for El Nino/La Nino neutral conditions can make forecasting at the regional level challenging, said Laurel McCoy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland. Neutral conditions can pave the way for powerful storm systems that can cause widely varying weather, McCoy said. "The Climate Prediction Center is thinking we'll probably have temperatures slightly above normal but precipitation could go either way," she said. The last La Nina pattern recorded was in 2013-2014, before it gave way to the El Nino pattern that influenced the region in 2015-2016. More information on El Nino/La Nina and The Blob can be found at: -- CBB, July 15, 2016, "Study: The Warm-Water 'Blob,' Combined With El Nino, Depressed Marine Productivity Off West Coast" http://www.cbbulletin.com/437129.aspx -- CBB, April 10, 2015, "'Warm Blob' Of Water Off West Coast Linked To Warmer Temps, Disruption Of Marine Food Web" http://www.cbbulletin.com/433648.aspx -- CBB, Dec. 18, 2015, "Study: In Warmer Ocean Years Juvenile Salmon Consume More Food, But End Up Smaller, Skinnier" http://www.cbbulletin.com/435732.aspx Bookmark and Share Bottom of Form -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.gif Type: image/gif Size: 8928 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.gif Type: image/gif Size: 596 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Sep 19 14:07:55 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2016 14:07:55 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Press Release: DAMS, DEAD FISH, TUNNELS and INDIANS In-Reply-To: References: <26338741-3571-41FF-94DC-7E927655480D@fishsniffer.com> <1B41EB23-1F84-4C28-9256-88D847E3B7DA@fishsniffer.com> <2B158043-C537-4887-805A-A71B70BA0327@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DAMS, DEAD FISH, TUNNELS and INDIANS Sacramento, CA September 20, 2016 ? In the midst of a 300-mile trek and prayer journey to bring salmon back to the McCloud River, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and their allies converge on the State Capitol to demand a change in California?s water policy. With plans to build new Dams and expand existing ones, and proposing to build two forty-foot Tunnels to divert more water out of the Delta, the stakes could not be higher for all of Californian. Fish species are on the verge of extinction. Disadvantaged Communities, subsistence fishermen, and small family farmers could see their water and way of life disappear altogether. And, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, who suffered over 90% loss of their traditional homeland, sacred sites, and cultural gathering sites along the Sacramento, McCloud and Pit Rivers when Shasta Dam was built, will again suffer the brunt of this destructive water policy. The Winnemem Wintu and their allies have embarked on a 300-mile prayer journey from Sogorea Te (Glen Cove, Vallejo) to the historical spawning grounds of the winter-run salmon on the McCloud River. This journey is a walk/run/boat/bike and horseback ride to bring attention to the plight of all the runs of salmon in California, and the water management practices that have brought some of those runs to the edge of extinction. It is a prayer to let Californians know that the water they enjoy has come to them at the cost of others and the threat of death and extinction to species necessary for a healthy California. Chief Caleen Sisk of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe says, ?We consider Shasta Dam a weapon of mass destruction. It has already taken our homes, sacred sites, burial sites, and stopped the salmon from returning to their historical spawning grounds. If these tunnels are built, Governor Brown?s so called ?California WaterFix?, they will not only cause more death and destruction to the already endangered salmon, but they will encourage and motivate plans to enlarge Shasta Dam. An enlarged Shasta Dam will flood what remaining sacred sites, and cultural sites that we still use today.? Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director for Restore the Delta states, ?Restore the Delta stands today with the Winnemem Wintu calling on Governor Brown to abandon a failed water plan for California. The era of unlimited water resource development is over. As we revealed last week in the state's own economic analysis, the only way to make the Delta tunnels pencil out in terms of water delivery is to take even more water from the Delta -- which will finish off its fisheries, its entire ecosystem. And to make matters worse, the government expects you and me to pay for this destruction with our taxes.? Trent Orr, a lawyer for Earthjustice, which represents the Winnemem Wintu in various legal fights to protect and restore salmon, said: ?The Sacramento River's salmon runs are an emblem of wild California and its mountain-born rivers. The Winnemem Wintu Tribe has long fought to save these fish, which are central to their culture, and to restore health to the waters they need to thrive. But it has been an uphill battle. Much of the Tribe's homeland was drowned by Shasta Dam, and the salmon's access to the cold, clean spawning grounds above the dam, to which they had returned for eons, was blocked. Plans to raise the dam and to pump even more fresh water out of the Sacramento River via the governor's proposed giant tunnels could doom the salmon, already perilously close to extinction. The dam raise would also drown much of what's left of the Tribe's homeland. Earthjustice is proud to have represented the Tribe in many of its legal battles to save and restore the salmon. On behalf of the Tribe and its allies, we will continue to fight for the day when wild salmon again spawn in the headwaters of the Sacramento.? In written testimony submitted to the State Water Resources Control Board, for the ongoing hearings regarding the Bureau of Reclamation?s and the Department of Water Resource?s water diversion change petition regarding the California WaterFix, Winnemem Wintu Governmental Liaison Gary Mulcahy asks.?Drowned cultures, dead and extinct fish, broken promises, stolen lands, environmental destruction, water grabs, and years and years of litigation ? is it truly worth it? PRESS CONFERENCE: West Steps of State Capitol ? Tues, Sept. 20th, 2016 10:30 ? 12:00 Speakers: Chief Caleen Sisk, Winnemem Wintu Tribe; Trent Orr, Earthjustice; Barbara Barrigan-Parilla, Restore the Delta; Eric Wesselman, Friends of the River. For more information on the 300-mile journey: Contact: Gary Mulcahy www .run4salmon .org 916 -214-8493 gary @ranchriver.com For more information on the Winnemem Wintu: www.winnememwintu.us -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 15616 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Mon Sep 19 15:20:19 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2016 22:20:19 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] TRP trapping summary through JWeek 37 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010DA185@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Attached please find the Trinity River Project trapping summary for Julian week 37 (through September 16th). Cheers! MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW37.xlsx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet Size: 60669 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW37.xlsx URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Mon Sep 19 17:10:05 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2016 17:10:05 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for September 16, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update September 16, 2016. This week our crews mapped 12 redds (13 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat (excluding Pigeon Point). The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ?During the mainstem Trinity River spawn surveys there are three populations of salmon that are encountered: spring-run Chinook, fall-run Chinook, and Coho salmon. We generally see spring-run Chinook Salmon begin spawning the earliest, around mid-September. This is followed by peak fall-run Chinook Salmon spawning in mid-October. Coho salmon begin spawning late in the year, around late-November. Our surveys only partially cover the Coho Salmon spawning season, which continues beyond our last surveys in December. ? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9291 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Sep 22 15:22:45 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2016 22:22:45 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: [Trinity Releases] Change Order - Trinity River In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1534299949.3111158.1474582965631@mail.yahoo.com> On Thursday, September 22, 2016 2:32 PM, "Washburn, Thuy" wrote: Please make the following changes to the Trinity River:? ?Date? ? ? ? ? ? ??Time? ? ? ? ? ??From (cfs)?? ? ? ??To (cfs) 9/23/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ?1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 900 9/24/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?900 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 800 8/25/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?800 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 700 9/26/2016?? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?700 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 600 9/27/2016 ? ? ? ?0600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?600 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 500 9/27/2016 ? ? ? ?1000 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?500 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 450 Issued by: ?Thuy WashburnComment: ?Conserve storage-- View online at http://www.trrp.net/restore/flows/release-email/ --- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sat Sep 24 10:38:49 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 17:38:49 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?b?4oCYTWlsZXN0b25l4oCZIG1vbWVudDogS2xhbWF0?= =?utf-8?q?h_River_dam_removal_plan_submitted_to_feds?= References: <1900894150.165489.1474738730011.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1900894150.165489.1474738730011@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20160923/milestone-moment-klamath-river-dam-removal-plan-submitted-to-feds ?Milestone? moment: Klamath River dam removal plan submitted to feds Water rights issues still need addressing By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardFriday, September 23, 2016The largest dam removal project in U.S. history which seeks to remove four Klamath River dams by 2020 is once again in the hands of the federal government for consideration as of Friday.Having worked on revising the plan since the start of the year, proponents called Friday?s plan submission a ?milestone? for the 337-mile long Klamath River while also recognizing it as the beginning of a much larger effort to restore the river.?There is a lot that has to be done, but a lot of those will be moving forward simultaneously,? Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Policy Advocate Craig Tucker said Friday.The Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA) seeks to remove the four California and Oregon hydroelectric dams ? Copco 1, Copco 2, Iron Gate and J.C. Boyle ? to improve water quality for wildlife and downriver communities. Signed by dozens of parties including tribes, state and federal officials, irrigators, and environment groups in 2010, the agreement along with two others sought to resolve decades of water rights disputes between Klamath Basin irrigators and tribes as well as to protect Endangered Species Act listed fish.However, all three agreements failed to gain traction by Congress by the end of 2015 due to Republican opposition.?On Friday, a revised version of the KHSA was submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by PacifiCorp, which owns the dams, and the recently created nonprofit Klamath River Renewal Corporation.The federal commission will now hold a series of public meetings to decide whether or not to allow PacifiCorp to transfer ownership of the dams to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation for the purpose of decommissioning and then removing the dams by 2020.The process will not likely be quick or go unchallenged.?The agreement and the timeline call for this all to move forward starting in 2020,? PacifiCorp spokesman Bob Gravely said, ?but FERC will have to be comfortable with the plans and we certainly don?t expect that will happen real quickly. ... No one will expect that FERC will approve the transfer of the license or decommission or removal plan until they have a high level of comfort that this is done in a way that protects the resources and surrounding areas.??Before FERC can approve the plan, the plan must obtain Clean Water Act permits from both California and Oregon. With several environmental analyses and studies having already been completed for the KHSA several years back, Tucker said obtaining these permits will likely not be an issue.Tucker said he hopes that FERC will make a final decision on the dams next year.With lower Klamath River communities currently experiencing one of the worst salmon seasons in recent memory following years of fish disease outbreaks, local tribes said the agreement could not have waited much longer.?The deplorable water quality, back-to-back disease outbreaks and bottomed-out fish runs have taken a tremendous toll on our people,? Yurok Tribe Chairman Thomas P. O?Rourke Sr. said in a Friday statement. ?We welcome this major step toward restoring Klamath fish populations and providing salmon once again to our upstream neighbors, the Klamath Tribes.??But dam removal is only a piece of the puzzle toward restoring the river, proponents say. The KHSA?s companion agreement, known as the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement or KBRA, would have worked to resolve long-standing water rights disputes between Upper Klamath Basin irrigators and tribes. However, this second agreement expired at the start of the year while stalled in Congress.The new version of the KHSA as well as a new agreement known as the Klamath Power Facilities Agreement call on Klamath Basin stakeholders to work over the next year to come up solutions to water rights issues as well as prepare basin irrigators for the return of fish should the dams be removed.Tucker said not a lot has happened in this effort so far. But should a new agreement be drafted, Tucker said it will likely require congressional funding appropriations or authorization.?My gut tells me we probably won?t make a whole lot of progress until we see the (November) election results,? Tucker said. ?... I still believe that to resolve the water controversy in the Klamath will require a negotiated agreement with the irrigators in the upper basin and the Klamath tribes.?While the Hoopa Valley Tribe has advocated for dam removal, it has not supported the provisions of the KBRA. Hoopa Valley Tribal Fisheries Director Mike Orcutt said that the KBRA only served to prolong PacifiCorp?s ability to bring in revenue.Orcutt said he thinks it would be a challenge to convince Congress to approve the nearly $1 billion originally proposed to resolve Klamath Basin disputes in the KBRA.?At the end of the day, there is not a lot of room for authorizations for appropriations in the federal budget,? he said.Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sat Sep 24 14:10:25 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 14:10:25 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] FPPC launches probe into Democratic Party in response to Consumer Watchdog report In-Reply-To: <1900894150.165489.1474738730011@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1900894150.165489.1474738730011.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1900894150.165489.1474738730011@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2503515D-C5DB-44D1-9089-E442938C30EF@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/24/1573828/-FPPC-launches-probe-in-response-to-Consumer-Watchdog-s-Brown-s-Dirty-Hands-report Governor Jerry Brown speaks at a climate conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Photo by Salvatore Sacco, Canadian Press Images. FPPC launches probe into Democratic Party in response to Consumer Watchdog report by Dan Bacher The California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) announced on September 23 that it has opened an investigation into the California Democratic Party in response to a report by a prominent consumer group claiming that the party acted as a ?laundry machine? to funnel donations from oil, energy and utility companies to Brown?s 2014 election campaign. In her letter to the Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, Galena West, Chief of the FPPC?s Enforcement Division, said the division ?will investigate the California Democratic Party for alleged violations of the Political Reform Act?s campaign reporting provisions resulting from information contained in your sworn complaint (Brown?s Dirty Hands Report.)? She said the FPPC will not not be opening an investigation into ?the other persons,? including Governor Brown, identified in the complaint at this time. West said Consumer Watchdog will next receive notification upon final disposition of the case, but didn't provide any time frame for the case?s disposition. ?However, please be advised that at this time we have not made any determination about the validity of the allegations you have made or about the culpability, if any of the persons you identify in your complaint,? she said. After receiving the FPPC letter, Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, said, ?We are pleased that the FPPC has launched an investigation into the troubling pattern of contributions to the California Democratic Party by oil, utility and energy companies uncovered in ?Brown?s Dirty Hands.?? ?The Party and members of the Administration who worked for it have a lot of questions to answer. Political parties shouldn?t be used as laundry machines for money from unpopular companies or for campaign contributions in excess of candidate-permitted limits,? he stated. Consumer Watchdog released Brown?s Dirty Hands on August 10, 2016, at a time when Brown faces increasing criticism from environmental, consumer and public interest groups regarding administration policies they say favor oil companies, energy companies and utilities over fish, water, people and the environment. The report tabulated donations totaling $9.8 million dollars to Jerry Brown?s campaigns, causes, and initiatives, and to the California Democratic Party since he ran for Governor from 26 energy companies with business before the state, according to Court. The companies included the state?s three major investor-owned utilities, as well as Occidental, Chevron, and NRG. ?An exhaustive review of campaign records, publicly-released emails and other documents at PUCPapers.org, court filings, and media reports, showed that Brown personally intervened in regulatory decisions favoring the energy industry, and points to Brown and his operatives having used the Democratic Party as a political slush fund to receive contributions from unpopular energy companies in amounts greater than permitted to his candidate committee,? Court said. The report alleges that energy companies donated $4.4 million to the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party gave $4.7 million to Brown?s re-election between 2011 and 2014. Consumer Watchdog submitted its report to the FPPC as a sworn complaint. ?The timing of energy industry donations around important legislation and key pro-industry amendments, as well as key regulatory decisions in which Brown personally intervened, raises troubling questions about whether quid pro quos are routine for this administration,? said consumer advocate Liza Tucker, author of the report. ?While Brown paints himself as a foe of fossil fuels, his Administration promoted reckless oil drilling, burning dirty natural gas to make electricity, and used old hands from industry and government, placed in key regulatory positions, to protect the fossil fuel-reliant energy industry.? In response to my request for a comment on the FPPC probe, Deborah Hoffman, Governor Brown?s Deputy Press Secretary replied, ?Thanks for reaching out. Questions are best directed to the party being investigated. As noted in the response letter, the FPPC ?will not be opening an investigation regarding the other persons identified? in the complaint. I don't expect we?ll be commenting.?? Brown spokesman Evan Westrup told the San Diego Union Tribune on August 10, in response to the report, ?The governor?s leadership on climate is unmatched. These claims are downright cuckoo.? ?Westrup cited a host of Brown policies and decisions since he was elected in 2010 that were aimed at protecting the environment," the publication said. (www.sandiegouniontribune.com) In the Sacramento Bee?s early September 25 edition. Michael Soller, a spokeperson for the Democratic Party, said, ?We received the letter, we?re aware of it and we?ve been fully cooperating with the FPPC.? State law limits the amount that individuals, businesses and committees can contribute to political candidates. In the 2014 election cycle, a single donor was limited to $54,400 for a candidate for governor, according to Tucker. However, donors can give unlimited amounts of money to political parties. During the 2014 cycle, parties were allowed to give up to $34,000 from each donor to a candidate per year. In one of many examples of the alleged use of the party as a ?laundry machine? for political contributions to Brown cited in the report, Chevron donated a total of $350,000 to the Democratic Party on December 23, 2013. Seven days later, the Democratic Party donated $300,000 to Brown for Governor 2014. On the same day Chevron donated the maximum to Brown?s campaign, $54,400. ?Less than two months later after Brown came out publicly to oppose a proposed oil severance tax,? according to Tucker. ?The weakened fracking bill also helped Brown aide Nancy McFadden, who held up to $100,000 in Linn Energy that would acquire Berry Petroleum and its 3,000 California fracking wells.? Following an ethics complaint filed by Consumer Watchdog against McFadden, the FPPC on March 24 opened an investigation into her failure to report the dates and times of stock sales in PG&E, her former employer. The FPPC said there was ?insufficient evidence? to pursue an investigation into whether McFadden violated other conflict of interest laws. However, the agency said it would look into the ?apparent failure of Ms. McFadden to disclose the status of her stock ownership in Pacific Gas and Electric.? Tucker said she was pleased that the FPPC was continuing their investigation into McFadden. ?It?s a very good sign that the investigation is still open,? she said. In the report, Tucker said the timing of certain donations ?coincided with legislative or regulatory action on behalf of these companies.? Among the examples detailed in the report are the following: ? ?Southern California Edison donated $130,000 to the California Democratic Party, its largest contribution up until that time, on the same day PUC President Michael Peevey cut a secret deal with an SCE executive in Warsaw, Poland to make ratepayers cover 70 percent of the $4.7 billion cost to close the fatally flawed San Onofre nuclear plant. Brown backed the dirty deal, telling Edison?s CEO personally, according to an email from the CEO uncovered by the Public Records Act, that he was willing to tell the media on the day of the plant?s shuttering that the company was acting responsibly and focused on the right things. Three days prior to SCE?s announcement that it would close San Onofre permanently, the company donated $25,000 to the California Democratic Party. ?Emails from PG&E?s top lobbyist Brian Cherry to his boss claim that Brown personally intervened with a PUC Commissioner to persuade him to approve a natural gas-fired power plant called Oakley for the utility. In a January 1, 2013 email, Cherry described a New Year?s Eve dinner with Peevey where Peevey reminded him ?how he and Governor Brown used every ounce of persuasion to get [Commissioner Mark] Ferron to change his mind and vote for Oakley?Jerry?s direct plea was decisive.? PG&E donated $20,000 to the California Democratic Party the day after the PUC voted for the project. An appeals court would later strike down the decision because PG&E had not proved its necessity. ?While PG&E?s lobbyist and then-PUC President Michael Peevey fed names to Brown?s executive secretary, former PG&E vice president Nancy McFadden, to appoint the critical swing-vote PUC commissioner who would cast pro-utility votes, PG&E donated $75,000 to the California Democratic Party. The same day that Brown appointed ex-banker Mark Ferron to the commission, PG&E donated another $41,500. The appointment lifted the value of PG&E?s stock and the PG&E stock held by McFadden and valued as high as $1 million. ?Chevron donated $135,000 to the California Democratic Party the same day lawmakers exempted a common method of well stimulation from legislation meant to regulate fracking. After the bill passed with an amendment dropping a moratorium on fracking permits, Occidental gave $100,000 to one of Brown?s favorite causes, the Oakland Military Institute. Brown signed the weakened bill.? For the FPPC letter announcing the investigation, go here: www.consumerwatchdog.org/ ... To read Brown?s Dirty Hands, go here: www.consumerwatchdog.org/... For a video on the report, go here: www.youtube.com/? As this FPPC investigation proceeds, the big corporate money behind Governor Jerry Brown's controversial environmental policies is facing increasing scrutiny from public trust advocates. November 4 will be the second anniversary of the passage of Proposition 1, Governor Jerry Brown?s controversial water bond, a measure that fishing groups, California Indian Tribes, grassroots conservation groups and environmental justice advocates opposed because they considered it to be a water grab for corporate agribusiness and Big Money interests. Proponents of Proposition 1 contributed a total of $21,820,691 and spent a total of $19,538,153 on the successful campaign. The contributors are a who?s who of Big Money interests in California, including corporate agribusiness groups, billionaires, timber barons, Big Oil. the tobacco industry and the California Chamber of Commerce. They provide a quick snapshot of the corporate interests behind the questionable environmental policies of Brown. For more information, go to: www.counterpunch.org/...) Jerry Background: Brown?s real environmental legacy exposed While Jerry Brown often receives fawning coverage from the mainstream media when he appears at climate conferences in California and across the globe, his policies on fish, wildlife, water and the environment are among the most destructive of any governor in recent California history. The Governor?s ?legacy project,? the Delta Tunnels/California Water Fix, poses a huge threat to the ecosystems of the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Klamath and Trinity river systems. The project is based on the untenable premise that taking more water out of a river before it reaches the estuary will somehow ?restore? the San Francisco Bay Delta and its precious fish and wildlife species. Unfortunately, the California WaterFix is not the only environmentally devastating policy promoted by Governor Jerry Brown. Brown is promoting the expansion of fracking and extreme oil extraction methods in California and is overseeing water policies that are driving winter run-Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt and other species closer and closer to extinction. As if those examples of Brown?s tainted environmental legacy weren?t bad enough, Brown has promoted carbon trading and REDD policies that pose an enormous threat to Indigenous Peoples around the globe; has done nothing to stop clearcutting of forests by Sierra-Pacific and other timber companies; presided over record water exports from the Delta in 2011; and oversaw massive fish kills of Sacramento splittail and other species in 2011. Jerry Brown also oversaw the ?completion? of so-called ?marine protected areas? under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, overseen by a Big Oil lobbyist and other corporate interests, in December 2012. These faux ?Yosemites of the Sea? fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling, fracking, pollution, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. Brown spouts ?green? rhetoric when he flies off to climate conferences and issues proclamations about John Muir Day and Earth Day, but his actions and policies regarding fish, water and the environment should be challenged by all of those who care about the future of California and the West Coast. For more information about the real environmental record of Governor JerryBrown, go to: www.dailykos.com/...; -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Brown.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 18608 bytes Desc: not available URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Mon Sep 26 08:44:02 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2016 08:44:02 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for September 22, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update September 22, 2016. This week our crews mapped 68 redds (81 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Pigeon Point. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). [image: Inline image 1] Redd numbers should start to pick up soon, as fall-run Chinook make it to the spawning grounds. ? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9311 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Tue Sep 27 12:37:50 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2016 19:37:50 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW-TRP trapping summary through Julian week 38 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010E7806@057-SN2MPN2-112.057d.mgd.msft.net> Here, attached, is the trapping summary through JW 38 (September 23). I've left the historical pages off this week as I'm reformatting the workbook a little. They'll be back next week. Cheers! MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW38.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 71643 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW38.pdf URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Sep 28 14:00:03 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2016 21:00:03 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Fw=3A_Donald_Bader_Selected_as_the_New_Ar?= =?utf-8?q?ea_Manager_for_Reclamation=E2=80=99s_Northern_California_Area_O?= =?utf-8?q?ffice?= In-Reply-To: <6ed0c7d27d204a7bbe4c283e73864151@usbr.gov> References: <6ed0c7d27d204a7bbe4c283e73864151@usbr.gov> Message-ID: <1457874899.2360254.1475096403730@mail.yahoo.com> On Wednesday, September 28, 2016 1:59 PM, Loredana Potter wrote: Donald Bader Selected as the New Area Manager for Reclamation?s Northern California Area OfficeMid-Pacific Region Sacramento, Calif.MP-16-191Media Contact: Shane Hunt, 916-978-5100, shunt at usbr.govFor Release: Sept. 28, 2016Donald Bader Selected as the New Area Manager for Reclamation's Northern California Area OfficeSHASTA LAKE, Calif. ? The Bureau of Reclamation's Mid-Pacific Region announces that Donald Bader has been selected as the Area Manager for the Northern California Area Office (NCAO) at Shasta Dam.?Don has successfully collaborated with both internal and external stakeholders to meet our diverse and challenging goals,? stated Deputy Regional Director Pablo Arroyave. ?Based on his impressive tenure with Reclamation and experience with supervision, Operations and Maintenance (O&M), resources management, security, Safety of Dams and recreation management, Don will be a great asset in his new position.?As the Area Manager, Bader is responsible for managing a staff of 170 people, all programs and facilities within the Shasta and Trinity Divisions of the Central Valley Project, along with the Orland Project and the Trinity River Restoration Program (TRRP). These divisions include thirteen dams with a combined storage capacity of nearly 9 million acre-feet and six powerplants with a combined nameplate capacity of over 1,200 megawatts.Bader was formerly the NCAO Deputy Area Manager. His duties included directly overseeing the Environmental, Security and Safety, and Water and Lands Divisions, as well as providing oversight for the TRRP. He also served as the O&M Director, and responsible for all O&M Program accomplishments for NCAO power plants, dams and associated facilities.?Prior to his position at NCAO, he was responsible for the?O&M Program at Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, Boulder City, Nevada.Bader graduated from the University of Wyoming with a degree in Civil Engineering; he is a registered Professional Engineer. His wife, Julie, is a Reclamation Electrical Engineer at the Mid-Pacific Regional Office. They have three daughters, Andrea, Rachel and Natalie.# # #Reclamation is the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in the 17 Western states. Its facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. Visit our website at http://www.usbr.gov. Follow us on Twitter @USBR and @ReclamationCVP. If you would rather not receive future communications from Bureau of Reclamation, let us know by clicking here. Bureau of Reclamation, Denver Federal Center, Alameda & Kipling Street PO Box 25007, Denver, CO 80225 United States -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Sep 28 16:11:38 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2016 23:11:38 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Agenda for September 28-29 Trinity Management Council Meeting References: <518354421.2344755.1475104298833.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <518354421.2344755.1475104298833@mail.yahoo.com> Better late than never! TS?TRINITY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL?Trinity River Restoration Program Office?Weitchpec, CA?Agenda for September 28-29, 2016?Call in number: 866-721-5952?Passcode: 4702048?Wednesday, September 28, 2016?Time Topic, Purpose and/or Decision to be Made Discussion Leader?Regular Business:?9:30 Introductions: Seth Naman, Chair?? Welcome?? Approval of Agenda?? Approval of June minutes? 10:00 Open Forum: Comments from the public Seth Naman?10:15 Report from TAMWG Elizabeth Hadley?10:45 Federal/Regional Updates Don Bader, Vice Chair?? TRRP staffing update?? TRRP refinements process updates?? Klamath Long-Term Plan update? 11:15 Break All?Information / Decision Items:?11:25 Report from Acting Executive Director Mike Dixon?? Work Group Quarterly summary?? Science Update?? Well and landowner issues?? Outreach update?? Compliance issues? 11:55 Open Forum: Comments from the public Seth Naman?12:00 Lunch All?1:00 Implementation Review Mike Dixon?? Review of 2016 construction projects?? Successes and challenges?? Lessons learned? 1:30 2017 Budget Linsey Walker/Caryn Huntt DeCarlo?? Review of FY17 Budget Decision document?? Current 2017 budget shortfall?? Decision items to balance 2017 budget? 2:30 Break All2:45 2017 Budget Continued Linsey Walker/Caryn Huntt DeCarlo?3:15 Bylaws Seth Naman?? Changes to bylaws o Teleconference voting?o Succession planning? ? Approval of bylaws?? Signature of bylaws? 4:15 Public forum?4:30 Adjourn?6:00 Group Dinner-Location TBD?Thursday, Septmeber 29, 2016?Regular Business:?9:00 Open Forum: Comments from the public Seth Naman?Information / Decision Items:?9:15 Flow Planning Andreas Krause?? Input on DSS output matrix table for WY17 flow scheduling?? Potential flow releases prior to official water year determination?? Types of releases being considered (informational)?? Input on sideboards and concerns?? Is a formal policy review needed?? 10:15 Break All?10:30 Flow Planning Cont. Andreas Krause?? Developing a public outreach plan for WY17 flow scheduling and release?? Potential request for funding to support riparian DSS modeling for WY17 flow scheduling?? Precision of water volume conversion factor?? Workgroup recommendation to update the Maximum Fishery Flow / protected infrastructure map? 11:15 Break All?11:25 TRRP Website Eric Peterson?11:55 Open Forum: Comments from the public Seth Naman?12:00 Lunch All?1:00 Central Valley Operations Reclamation?? Current reservoir level, carryover storage ? Release temperatures?? Cold water storage? 1:30 Water temperature/carryover storage Tom Stokely?2:15 Lewiston Power Plant Retrofit Keith Groves?3:00 Public forum?3:15 Action items Seth Naman?3:30 Adjourn -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Oct 3 09:36:17 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2016 16:36:17 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] WHAT WOULD ERIN BROCKOVICH SAY? HUMBOLDT HAS CHROMIUM 6 IN MUCH OF ITS MAJOR WATER SOURCES References: <1298534478.4354394.1475512577577.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1298534478.4354394.1475512577577@mail.yahoo.com> http://kymkemp.com/2016/10/03/what-would-erin-brockovich-say-humboldt-has-chromium-6-in-much-of-its-major-water-sources/ WHAT WOULD ERIN BROCKOVICH SAY? HUMBOLDT HAS CHROMIUM 6 IN MUCH OF ITS MAJOR WATER SOURCES October 3, 2016?Kym Kemp 8 commentsAccording to a?new and well regarded study, water in Humboldt County contains?Chromium 6,?a known cancer causing chemical,?in levels exceeding California?s?public health goal.?Local water managers, however, point out that all the water tested exceeds?current legal water standards for that chemical.In the video clip above from a movie based on a true story,?Erin Brockovich, played by Julia Roberts, tells an?attorney for PG&E about to drink a glass of water, ?We had that water brought in special for you folks. It came from a well in?Hinkley.? The visibly worried?attorney slowly sets down the glass. The water in Hinkley contained high levels of Chromium 6 which Brockovich and her group contended had leaked from a plant near their town and contaminated their drinking water. As a result, Brockovich argued that residents of the town got high levels of cancer.Last month,?The Environmental Working Group released the results of a nationwide study of water systems. (PBSand?CNN?reported on the study. Follow the links to read more.)??According to an interactive map produced by the group, water tested in Humboldt County* for Chromium 6 are far?over the .02 parts per billion recommended in a public health goal for California.?(See screenshot below.)The seven tested water systems in Humboldt County exceed California?s recommended levels according to this?screenshot from a study by the Environmental Working Group.?The most concerning?results are from?the Humboldt CSD. Chromium 6 appears at over 2 parts per billion (ppb) in several water sources.?The water from the wells in Hinkley, the town that Erin Brockovich fought to help,?were 1.19 ppb with spikes occasionally far over 3 ppb.Some of our local wells tests show Chromium 6 levels?almost twice as high as that of Hinkley?s. For instance,?it?occurs in the Humboldt CSD?s South Bay Well at 110 times the recommended maximum recommended limits. The lowest level in any of the water sources tested is one?for the City of Arcata?which is ?only? .05 ppb (parts per billion) or 2.5?times the maximum level.Nationally, there is no limit on the amount of the chemical that can occur in drinking water. California, however, in 2014,?set a standard?of 10 parts per billion which all local water falls safely under. But many scientists and health researchers want the standard amount allowed lowered to .02 parts per billion. That?s one five hundredth of the current standard and much of Humboldt?s?water tested in?the study does not meet that goal.According to?Paul Helliker, General Manager of Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District, the public health goal is really ?not relevant to whether the water is safe.? He explained, ?The State Water?Resources Control Board, that sets the [current legal] standard,?they factor in many things. It is a full scale analysis.?Hilliker points out?that current Chromium 6 standard for testing is what local water districts are required to meet. The public health goal is ?merely a number that is put together that looks at potential health effects mostly from animal studies.??This study, according to Hilliker, doesn?t adequately look at ?the risk for human beings.?He points out that?Chromium 6 occurs naturally.?Hilliker said that the Humboldt County wells producing most of water in the tests come from so deep that they could not be affected by industrial waste.According to the manager of the Humboldt CSD, David Hull, the water which tested?the highest came from wells that were not currently being used to provide drinking water to local residents.In addition, Hilliker said?that drinking bottled water would not be a good way to avoid Chromium 6. ??Bottled water does not have to go through the rigorous testing we do,? he said. ?If you buy water in plastic water bottles, you get all those plastic components leaching into the water.?There are, however, filters that can be purchased that do remove Chromium 6. In fact, PG&E is using ion?exchange water treatment filters?to address?the drinking water in Hinkley. These, however, are difficult for private consumers to get and use. But?reverse osmosis filters?which?have been certified to remove Chromium 6 can be found in local stores. The? Environmental Working Group has?information on which filters might work best?for your situation.Click on the links below to see what test results in different local districts were.Humboldt Bay MWDCity of EurekaHumboldt CSDCity of ArcataMcKinleyville CSDCity of FortunaManila Community Services District*NOTE:?Remember the wells tested did not include private wells which are the water sources for?most people in our area. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Tue Oct 4 08:24:39 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2016 08:24:39 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for September 30, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update September 30, 2016. This week our crews mapped 251 redds (332 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat (excluding Pigeon Point). The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ? The Trinity River Salmon Festival will be held this Saturday (October 8th) from 10:00-4:00 in the Highland Art Center Meadow in Weaverville. I hope to see you out there! ? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9365 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Oct 4 11:40:51 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2016 18:40:51 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] $16 Billion Delta Tunnels May Hit Taxpayers References: <1897562099.5170032.1475606451263.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1897562099.5170032.1475606451263@mail.yahoo.com> https://www.kcet.org/redefine/16-billion-delta-tunnels-may-hit-taxpayers $16 Billion Delta Tunnels May Hit Taxpayers - Chris Clarke September 29, 2016This KCET story is viewer-supported.?BECOME A MEMBERShare on FacebookShare on TwitterSend EmailMoreCommentYou could end up paying for this at tax time. | Photo:?Christina Hendricks,?some rights reservedA plan to build two huge tunnels to shunt fresh water around the Sacramento Delta is supposed to be funded entirely by the people who receive?the water. But taxpayers may end up paying a substantial amount of the tab.That?s according to documents obtained by the Stockton-based environmental group?Restore the Delta?that discuss the cost of the California WaterFix project, which is projected to cost at least $16 billion to build. According to an unpublished 2015 draft analysis obtained by the group, California WaterFix would require a federal subsidy of nearly $4 billion in order to be cost-effective for agricultural water users.That runs counter to state promises that the tunnels project would be funded entirely by water users. And even with a federal bailout, most of the project?s expenses may end up being paid for primarily by Southern California households.?I believe that next to Delta people, Southern California people will be the most harmed [by this project],? Restore The Delta?s executive director Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla told KCET.California WaterFix?s hefty price tag comes as no surprise. The project would involve burying two 30-mile long, 40-foot wide tunnels as much as 150 feet under the Delta, bringing fresh water from intakes near Clarksburg on the Sacramento River to the State Water Project?s Banks Pumping Plant near Livermore. There, the water would be pumped into the California Aqueduct for use by farms and cities, most of them in the Central Valley and Southern California.The tunnels purport to address a significant problem with California?s existing water delivery system by bypassing the Delta. At present, the Banks Pumping Plant and its federal counterpart, the Central Valley Project?s Jones Pumping Plant, pump water directly from the southern Delta, reversing the flows of some rivers and sloughs, and causing salt water from San Francisco Bay to infiltrate the Delta?s freshwater ecosystem.The revised version of the Peripheral Canal, now an underground project called the California?WaterFix, is still on the drawing board.By shunting Sacramento River water directly to the plants through tunnels instead of through a circuitous network of Delta channels, California WaterFix would, in theory, provide benefits to Delta wildlife and cleaner water for Southern California farms and cities.But critics charge that the tunnels, capable of diverting the entire flow of the Sacramento in dry years, would provide justification for increased water exports from an ecosystem already reeling from both exports and drought.And while the state has long pledged that no taxpayer funds would go toward the project?s construction costs, the November 2015 cost-benefit analysis obtained by Restore the Delta projects that making water users pay for the whole project could prompt agricultural users to opt out altogether.The analysis, prepared for the state?s Natural Resources Agency by U.C. Berkeley economist David Sunding for the consulting firm the Brattle Group, found that even with a $3.6 billion boost from the federal government or some other source, California WaterFix still didn?t make economic sense for agricultural water users. ?Under the currently negotiated operating criteria,? Sunding writes in the report, ?the WaterFix does not provide benefits in excess of costs for most agricultural water users.?While Sunding did find that the project made economic sense for urban water customers, dissatisfaction from ag water companies could make that a whole lot more complicated. Among the documents Restore the Delta obtained through its Public Records Act request was an April 8, 2016 email from David Sunding to the Hallmark Group, a financial services firm hired to act as program manager for the WaterFix project. In the email, Sunding mentions a draft ?exit ramp? option available to WaterFix customers who choose not to stay with the project, and a discussion of which remaining customers would pick up their financial obligations.Keeping the California Aqueduct full may not be easy from now on. | Photo:?Wikimedia CommonsIf disenchanted agricultural water companies merge onto that exit ramp, one company likely to be asked to pick up their share of the expenses is the Metropolitan Water District, the project?s largest potential customer. MWD agreed in 2014 to bankroll the project?s pre-construction expenses on behalf of other State Water Project customers.A September 2014 memo detailing a draft agreement between MWD and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) said that ? at least in the draft agreement ? MWD would be financing up to $400 million in pre-construction costs by issuing ?commercial paper,? a finance industry term for short-term unsecured promissory notes. RELATED - New Sea Level Rise Study Calls Delta Tunnels Into Doubt - You Can Thank Sylvia McLaughlin for a Healthier SF Bay - California's 'Passenger Pigeon' Wins Protection... For Now And that raises the possibility of another route by which taxpayers might end up footing some of the bill for the project: MWD has the authority to levy property taxes, the proceeds from which the company typically uses to fulfill debt obligations. In the 2014 draft agreement, DWR would collect money from other SWP customers to pay down those companies? share of MWD?s debt. But if those companies are unable to pay, MWD property owners could end up shouldering that burden.?Metropolitan water users will pay for the tunnels four ways,? Barrigan-Parrilla told KCET. ??Higher water rates, property taxes, state taxes, and federal taxes.?Unsecured commercial paper is an instrument available only to companies with impeccable credit. That option may not be open to all prospective WaterFIx customers. The Westlands Water District, to pick the most obvious example, had its?credit rating dinged?after revelations that the district had misrepresented earnings to potential bond buyers. As a robust company that will account for at least 27 percent of whatever water supplies the WaterFix project delivers, it?s not hard to imagine MWD ? and its customers and taxpayers ? being asked to shoulder more and more of the project?s costs if ag customers fall by the wayside.?Let?s just say ag decides you can?t participate; you?re not going to build a project.? Metropolitan is not going to build the project.? ? Roger Patterson, MWDMWD spokesperson Bob Muir downplayed the potential cost of the WaterFix project to SoCal households. ?We project the impact on our customers will be $5 per family per month,? Muir told KCET. He said that Met?s projected contribution to the whole project would run between three and four billion dollars, and pointed out that the company already pays half a billion a year for its share of water from the State Water Project. ?That?s a flat fee,? Muir said. ?We pay that regardless of how much SWP water we get each year.?Muir couldn?t comment on whether the 2014 draft agreement reflects current financial agreements between MWD and DWR over preconstruction financing for the WaterFix project. MWD General Manager Jeff Kightlinger has informed his Board of Directors that MWD won?t spend any additional funds on the project until a financing agreement is in place. And in April, at a?statewide water conference?sponsored by Capitol Weekly, MWD Assistant General Manager Roger Patterson told attendees that MWD has no interest in going it alone on California WaterFix. ?Let?s just say ag decides you can?t participate; you?re not going to build a project.? Metropolitan is not going to build the project.?At that same conference, panelist Jeff Michael, Director of the Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific, implied that MWD isn?t the only water company thinking about financing its WaterFix expenditures through property taxes:it is important to note that urban water districts are talking about raising property taxes for this and not putting all of the costs into water rates, and so that would be a mispricing of water by paying for it with property taxes, which I understand is increasingly part of the plan.Earlier this year, project proponents were hoping to complete both financing agreements and environmental review of the project by the end of the year. That?s becoming increasingly unlikely as we reach October, and with each year?s delay costs of the project increase.All this for a project that may not bring southern water users any additional security if the drought hangs on. University of the Pacific's?Jeff Michael pointed?out?in a response to Sunding's draft cost-benefit analysis?that Sunding based his benefit?figures on the assumption that the tunnels would provide four times as much water as the project's own environmental documents assume. If an updated analysis now being prepared by Sunding addresses this, it may be that the drought itself makes the state's main drought defense strategy not worth the cost. - ABOUT THE AUTHOR CHRIS CLARKE Chris Clarke is KCET's?Environment Editor. He is?a veteran environmental journalist and ?natural history writer currently at work on a book about the Joshua tree. He lives in Joshua Tree.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Tue Oct 4 13:07:12 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2016 13:07:12 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Modesto Bee: Who will go extinct first, salmon or Valley farmers? Message-ID: <007601d21e7a$e5c286a0$b14793e0$@sisqtel.net> http://www.modbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/mike-dunbar/article105292486.html MODESTO BEE Mike Dunbar October 1, 2016 5:32 AM Who will go extinct first, salmon or Valley farmers? A Worth Your Fight sign is pictured near a canal Sept. 21 on McHenry Avenue south of Ladd Road in Modesto, Calif. A Worth Your Fight sign is pictured near a canal Sept. 21 on McHenry Avenue south of Ladd Road in Modesto, Calif. Joan Barnett Lee jlee at modbee.com By Mike Dunbar mdunbar at modbee.com Here, on the front lines of the state?s recently declared water war, we have more questions than ammunition. Is the State Water Resources Control Board serious? Is the water board even in charge? Was Gov. Jerry Brown?s call for ?voluntary agreements,? instead of regulatory demands, a suggestion or an order? Who will go extinct first ? salmon or farmers? OK, that?s a rhetorical question; salmon have a huge head start. But the race isn?t over. To recap: ? Battle was enjoined Sept. 15 when the water board re-released its justification for taking more water from the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers ? which combine to create the San Joaquin before it reaches the Delta. In the original 2012 Substitute Environmental Document, the state demanded 35 percent of unimpaired flows from all three rivers for salmon?s sake. The re-released version grew (from 1,200 pages to 3,100), as did the state?s water demands. Regulators now want 40 to 50 percent of the rivers ? up to 2 1/2 times more than the state takes now. Such demands are a clear threat to a way of life that has evolved here over the past 150 years. ? Howls of outrage arose across the entire Northern San Joaquin Valley ? with good reason. The state guessed its water grab would cause $64 million in economic damage across three counties. People who live here say impacts will run into the hundreds of millions in each. Yet, in Sacramento, professional environmentalists insist it?s still not enough ? they want 60 percent, farming be damned. Both sides got 60 days to respond. ? Four days later, the first response arrived ? from Gov. Brown. He told the water board he wants the Natural Resources Agency to start working out ?voluntary agreements? with water districts, and he wants a comprehensive plan including the Sacramento River and Delta, not just the San Joaquin?s tributaries. That looks like a lifeline, but we?re never sure. Brown is the most astute politician in living memory and everyone knows his highest water priority is the two tunnels that will send much of the Sacramento?s flow south before it ever reaches the Delta. Only higher San Joaquin flows will be left to keep the Delta from getting salty. ? Les Grober, one of the state?s top water staffers, bravely came to Modesto to explain the board?s thinking. But when questioned about developing a comprehensive plan, as the governor demanded, he deflected. That would be in ?Phase 2?; he could speak only of Phase 1. Phase 1 is taking our region?s water. Phase 2 is re-evaluating how much flows down the Sacramento and out of the Delta. But there?s also a Phase 3 ? a ?water rights proceeding,? in the words of one state staffer. Those should be chilling words for any California farmer. Yes, state officials always point out that 50 percent of the Sacramento already goes to the ocean. Nothing to worry about, Wheatland. But last February, environmentalists demanded even more and colder Sacramento water be used to help 500,000 salmon reach the sea. Front and center in those demands was a Bay Area salmon-fishing group, repeating its claim that fishing is a $1.4 billion industry statewide and implying the salmon catch is as economically important as agriculture ? an absurd assertion. California?s entire commercial salmon catch in 2014 was worth $8.1 million ? about half the value of crabs ($17.4 million). That?s about a fifth of what Stanislaus County farmers got for almond hulls last year. If fishing is a $1.4 billion industry, then ag should also count the contents of every backyard garden and flower pot in the state. ? Finally, the same day Grober was being grilled in Modesto, two highly respected fish scientists conducted a symposium in Davis. Professors Peter Moyle and Jason Baumsteiger explained that fish owing their existence to conservation efforts, even in natural environments, are already extinct ? humans have interfered. Fish raised in hatcheries and spawning in gravel beds shaped by front loaders are little more than aquarium specimens. It?s already happened on our rivers. FishBio biologists say the 10,000 salmon that spawned on the Stanislaus River last fall were all hatchery fish. They same is true for the few fish found on the Tuolumne and Merced. They wandered up our rivers because they didn?t know where else to go. The salmon on the San Joaquin aren?t genetically distinct from the salmon spawning on the Sacramento or Russian or Klamath rivers. There?s very little difference between them and the 720 million pounds of salmon caught in the Pacific Ocean each year. Salmon aren?t endangered or even rare (unless undercooked). After vast water releases failed to help fish migrate last year, no one here has faith in the state?s single-focus salmon solution ? ever-increasing flows. Hicham Eltal, Merced Irrigation District deputy general manager, told Grober that his district has run the environmental models. ?If you use 50 percent unimpaired flows, it won?t be enough,? said Eltal. ?If you use 60 percent flows ? it won?t be enough.? In fact, even 100 percent of the Merced?s flow won?t work. Under the state?s assumptions, he said, ?the fish are doomed.? Eltal said his agency doesn?t accept that verdict, and will keep trying to help salmon survive ? as must every water agency in the region. Farmers might not be so lucky. Eltal noted they will either ?crash? immediately under the state?s flow demands, or crash in the not-so-distant future under new state groundwater requirements. Yes, the salmon have a head start on extinction. The only way farmers can avoid the same fate is to resist, but also commit to helping our rivers recover. Mike Dunbar: mdunbar @modbee.com or 209-578-2325 Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/mike-dunbar/article105292486.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 4293 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Oct 3 09:45:33 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2016 09:45:33 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Fishing and environmental groups ask agencies to dump Delta Tunnels or start over In-Reply-To: <1298534478.4354394.1475512577577@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1298534478.4354394.1475512577577.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1298534478.4354394.1475512577577@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51F49AA3-6433-4D6F-AA01-9D2786D9929D@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/10/03/fishing-and-environmental-groups-ask-agencies-to-dump-delta-tunnels-or-start-over/ Fishing and environmental groups ask agencies to dump Delta Tunnels or start over by Dan Bacher | posted in: Spotlight | 0 One day after Governor Jerry Brown once again posed as a ?green governor? and ?climate leader? while delivering the opening remarks at the 26th Annual Conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, a coalition of fishing, conservation and public interest groups sent a letter to the state and federal agencies overseeing the proposed Delta Tunnels urging them to either drop the plan, or develop a new Draft EIR/EIS for the project that includes newly released information. The letter concludes that approving the project as proposed threatens to tarnish President Obama?s environmental legacy. Groups signing the letter include AquAlliance, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, California Water Impact Network, Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Environmental Water Caucus, Friends of the River, Planning and Conservation League, Restore the Delta, and Sierra Club California. Delta advocates consider the two 35-mile long Delta Tunnels ? Governor Jerry Brown?s California WaterFix ? to be the most destructive public works project proposed in California history. The tunnels will hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperiling the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers. The letter, written by Robert Wright, senior counsel at Friends of the River (FOR), is addressed to the California Natural Resources Agency, the U.S. Departments of the Interior & Commerce, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House. ?The letter focuses on new information discovered by Restore the Delta through the California Public Records Act that revealed an unreleased economic analysis showing the Tunnels would require taxpayer subsidies and would export far more water from the San Francisco Bay-Delta than has been disclosed to the public. Without a full accounting of the projects costs, who will pay, and impacts to the environment, federal and state agencies have no legal way to move forward,? according to a news release from Restore the Delta. The main points in the letter are: 1. Rather than water districts covering the entire cost of the Delta Tunnels, the proposal simply doesn?t pencil out without taxpayer subsidies. ??in November of 2015, the economic consultant for the project, David Sunding of The Brattle Group, prepared a draft CalWater Fix Economic Analysis for the California Natural Resources Agency. That Economic Analysis, purporting to justify the economic feasibility of the project, assumed that the federal government or some other entity would need to provide a subsidy of $6.5 billion to make the Water Tunnels a breakeven proposition for agricultural users of the water.? 2. The amount of water that must be exported from the San Francisco Bay-Delta to make the Tunnels viable is far larger than proponents have claimed in the draft environmental documents. ?As explained by Dr. Jeffrey Michael, Director of the Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific the subject Analysis ?assumes water yields (the difference in export water delivery with and without the tunnels) are 4 times higher than in official Water Fix documents including its RDEIR/SDEIS and petition to the State Water Resources Control Board.? 3. Groups promoting the Delta Tunnels have not been truthful with the public or federal oversight agencies. ?This project reeks of misrepresentation by the proponent agencies. The public is told the beneficiary users will pay all costs of the project. In secret, the proponent public agencies have received information from their own economic consultant that a substantial public subsidy would be necessary for the project. The public is told one thing in public about water yields and corresponding impacts on the Delta and fisheries. In secret, the proponent public agencies base financial feasibility decision-making on assuming far higher water yields than disclosed to the public.? 4. Because of this new information the project in on shaky legal ground. ?That new Draft EIR/EIS must include disclosure of whether taxpayers as well as ratepayers will be paying for the project and disclosure of the true quantities of freshwater flows that will actually be diverted for the Water Tunnels. The truth needs to start. The lying needs to stop. If instead, you allow Reclamation and DWR to issue a Final EIR/ EIS for this project, that will constitute failure to proceed in the manner required by law. We are confident that you will decide to honor President Obama?s legacy and our laws by proceeding in the manner required by law.? 5. President Obama?s environmental legacy is on the line. ?President Obama has established a legacy of honesty, scientific integrity, and commitment to conservation and protection of our precious natural resources. There is no acceptable reason for you to allow the California Water Fix Project to go forward at this time staining that legacy in the process of contributing to the destruction of the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary. You must either require Reclamation and DWR to drop the Water Fix project or require their issuance of a new accurate and honest Draft EIR/EIS for public review and comment.? California Water Fix, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, Delta Tunnels, fishing, Governor Jerry Brown,Sacramento River chinook salmon, striped bass -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Mon Oct 3 15:14:12 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2016 22:14:12 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW-TRP trapping summary through Julian week 39 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010E8B66@057-SN2MPN2-112.057d.mgd.msft.net> Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 39 (September 30). JW39 was Junction City weir's final week of trapping for the year, and it was pulled Friday. We are not seeing huge numbers of fish coming through the Willow Creek weir, but the fish we are seeing are in generally fine shape, and some of them have been real lunkers! If you are a steelhead angler you should be out on the river as we are seeing some really beautiful fish, and quite a few have been in the 30" range. We are seeing some plenty big Chinook too, so if you are so inclined, go wet a line! MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW39.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 71930 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW39.pdf URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Oct 5 08:10:55 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2016 15:10:55 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fishing Quota Met For Klamath Salmon References: <321947159.5648464.1475680255240.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <321947159.5648464.1475680255240@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.redding.com/news/local/north-state-in-brief-oct-5-2016-3e132d76-9999-78aa-e053-0100007fb76a-395943021.html Fishing Quota Met For Klamath Salmon Beginning Wednesday, anglers fishing within a large stretch of the Klamath River will no longer be able to keep salmon 22 inches or longer, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.Anglers will have caught the quota of 183 adult salmon 22 inches or longer by Wednesday, the state said. Reaching the quota means anglers must not keep any salmon longer than 22 inches. The area affected is from the Highway 96 bridge in Weitchpec to 3,500 feet below Iron Gate Dam.The Klamath River area downstream of the Highway 96 bridge had previously met its quota.The quota on the Trinity River is 183 adult chinook from the confluence with the Klamath River upstream to Cedar Flat, and 183 adult chinook from Cedar Flat to the Old Lewiston bridge.Those two fisheries are still open, the state said. Anglers can call 800-564-6479 to find out which areas of the Klamath and Trinity rivers are still open. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu Oct 6 13:12:35 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2016 13:12:35 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Jerry Brown admits Delta Tunnels is "unpopular" as legislators slam projec In-Reply-To: References: <7e8beffe-1375-8412-9e01-ba3cb1ad6619@goldcountrymedia.com> <59619B69-8A00-446C-A026-53A930E30E6D@fishsniffer.com> <93E3041B-8F25-4D85-B597-58978D978C75@fishsniffer.com> <6b4711ad-b330-c98d-bce4-bd501366b968@goldcountrymedia.com> <952D578B-E3AD-49AE-867B-D1472A17F0AC@fishsniffer.com> <256E5625-9F10-42B5-87F8-15752730A326@fishsniffer.com> <42155AFB-1352-48B4-9D8A-4361918BC2E3@fishsniffer.com> <9A33FDA3-D9FB-404A-A62A-F382F911359C@fishsniffer.com> <767EB0C9-2CF2-4CC3-AE90-1373212D092E@fishsniffer.com> <1BB3056C-F709-4CBC-A6AE-B1E9CF4E93C6@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <6B00290D-F93D-40C0-9BFC-69371944D438@fishsniffer.com> Photo meme courtesy of Restore the Delta. http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/6/1578495/-Jerry-Brown-admits-Delta-Tunnels-is-unpopular-as-legislators-slam-project Jerry Brown admits Delta Tunnels is "unpopular" as legislators slam project by Dan Bacher On the same day that Governor Jerry Brown jokingly praised former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for saddling him with the Delta Tunnels and other ?unpopular policies,? four Northern California Congress Members and twelve state legislators issued letters strongly opposing the tunnels project. Brown lauded Schwarzenegger for focusing on environmental issues at the tenth anniversary celebration of the passage of Assembly Bill 32, the legislation that established the state?s greenhouse emissions reductions, in the California Museum in Sacramento on Wednesday, October 5. ?Arnold, thanks for being for climate change, cap and trade, the tunnels project, high speed rail and all the other unpopular policies that I?m saddled with,? quipped Brown. You can listen to Brown?s comments here 1:01:24: bit.ly/... Restore the Delta (RTD) responded to Brown?s quote, noting that ? Jerry Brown thanked former Governor Schwarzenegger for saddling him with unpopular issues such as the Delta Tunnels -- even though, since he was first elected, he's been pursuing the tunnels like Captain Ahab pursuing Moby Dick!? As an acknowledgement of the growing resistance by Californians to the WaterFix, Brown for the first time recognized the Delta Tunnels as "unpopular, according to RTD. Of course, neither Schwarzenegger nor Brown mentioned the many other controversial neo-liberal environmental policies that they are responsible for. These include authorizing record water exports out of the Delta; driving Delta and longfin smelt, winter run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and other fish species closer and closer to extinction; overseeing the creation of faux ?marine protected areas? under the oil industry-lobbyist overseen Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative; appointing Big Oil executives, Big Ag lobbyists, and other corporate officials with numerous conflicts of interest to state agencies and regulatory bodies; and doing everything they can to weaken the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other environmental laws. Nor did Schwarzenegger and Brown mention one of the least discussed issues in California environmental politics ? and one of the most crucial to understanding the Delta Tunnels Plan - the clear connection between the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative and the California WaterFix, formerly called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP). In spite of some superficial differences, the two processes are united by their leadership, funding, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, junk science and numerous conflicts of interest. To read my report, Deep Regulatory Capture Exposed: The Links Between Delta Tunnels Plan & MLPA Initiative, go to: www.dailykos.com/... Congress Members ask for responses to Dr. Jeffrey Michael?s cost- benefit analyis As Brown, Schwarzenegger and other state officials were delivering their comments at the AB 32 anniversary commemoration, Representatives John Garamendi, Jerry McNerney, Mike Thompson and Doris Matsui (D-CA) sent a letter to the Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) calling for responses to a recent cost-benefit analysis of the California WaterFix Tunnels project conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Michael at the University of the Pacific (UOP). Michael?s analysis raises ?key questions? about the plan, according to a joint news release from the Representatives. The letter also raises a number of questions based upon another recent and unofficially released cost-benefit analysis prepared by David Sunding for the California Natural Resources Agency. ?Both reports confirm what we?ve long suspected ?WaterFix doesn?t make good financial sense for California,? said Rep. Thompson. ?Under these analyses, water users and even federal taxpayers would be on the hook for investments in a project that can?t promise better water deliveries. State and federal water agencies must not be allowed to squander taxpayer dollars on infrastructure that would devastate the Delta without any guaranteed benefit.? ?The analysis done by Dr. Michael shows that the advertised benefits of the Twin Tunnels simply don?t hold water,? said Congressman Garamendi. ?Both cost-benefit breakdowns of the WaterFix that have been released to the public raise major questions about the viability of the project, and its funding sources.? ?The numbers don?t pencil out for farmers south of the Delta,? said Congressman McNerney. ?Delta farming operations could be severely disrupted, and endangered species are at risk of not surviving the consequences of this massive project. The WaterFix plan?s costs do not outweigh the alleged benefits and would require a large federal subsidy, while causing irreparable harm to Delta and Northern California communities who have not been adequately included in project negotiations.? McNerney urged the state to ?move away? from Governor Brown?s flawed WaterFix tunnels plan and ?implement the cost-effective policy solutions already outlined in the California Water Action Plan ? like conservation, recycling, increased efficiency, and storage ? that will ensure sustainable water supplies for a healthy Delta ecosystem and California?s farmers and communities statewide.? You can view the letter here 12 Delta/Bay Area legislators slam proposed California Water Fix diversions Also on Wednesday, twelve state legislators representing the Delta and Bay Area regions urged the State Water Resources Control Board to reject a petition to change water rights that would reduce fresh water flows to the Delta as part of the controversial WaterFix proposal, a move the lawmakers say will ?cause catastrophic damage to the environment and economies of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay region.? The letter by Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis) and 11 other legislators denounced the proposed water diversions, citing evidence that doing so will cause ?serious and potentially irreparable harm to hundreds of plant and wildlife species, and also significantly damage the agricultural, fishing, tourism and recreation industries that rely upon the Delta.? ?Contrary to its name, the WaterFix fixes nothing," said Wolk, who represents four of the five counties in the Delta, in a press release. ?The project won?t provide any additional water supply or increase water deliveries, and will only exacerbate conditions in the Delta. Further reducing fresh water flows to the Delta will cause serious and potentially irreparable harm to the Delta?s fragile ecosystem, as well as its communities and economy. That includes the Delta?s $5.2 billion agricultural economy, as well as the iconic Delta and Coastal fishing industries, which are worth billions annually.? The Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the principal backers of the California WaterFix Project, submitted the petition to the Water Board to add three new points of diversion from the Sacramento River. Wolk, a long-time opponent of the Tunnels project, was the lead author of the letter to the Water Board. The letter?s other authors include Senators Mark Leno, Loni Hancock, Jerry Hill, Cathleen Galgiani, Steve Glazer, Dr. Richard Pan, and Bob Wieckowski, and Assembly Members Bill Dodd, Susan Eggman, Catharine Baker, Ken Cooley, and Phil Ting. Wolk and the other legislators urged the Water Board to consider the effects of diverting up to two-thirds of the Sacramento River from the Delta, including increased salinity that would contribute to further declines in species including the critically endangered Delta Smelt, the endangered Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, and the Greater Sandhill Crane. Wolk said the letter notes the ?widespread concern from scientific bodies including the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Delta Independent Science Board that flawed science is being used to advocate for the WaterFix?s proposed benefits to the Delta environment and water quality.? ?Current water diversions are already overtaxing the Delta ecosystem. Reducing stress on the Delta by reducing reliance on fresh water exports is a fundamental and necessary step to ensure the sustainable and resilient water supplies needed by the economies, communities and ecosystems in the Delta and throughout the state. It?s time for a Plan B that can succeed where the WaterFix has failed, a plan that help us achieve the coequal goals established by The Delta Reform Act, while protecting the Delta as a place,? Wolk stated. Winnemem Wintu: Shasta Dam Raise, Sites Reservoir and Delta Tunnels are one project While the state and federal governments and mainstream media try to portray the Shasta Dam raise plan, Sites Reservoir proposal, and Delta Tunnels as ?separate? projects, Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, believes they ?need to be considered as one project.? ?Without one, you can?t have the others," Chief Sisk told me during the historic Run4Salmon prayer journey from Vallejo to the McCloud River from September 17 to October 1. ?If the tunnels are built, there will be no water to put in them. You need Sites Reservoir to provide the water for the tunnels and the Shasta Dam raise to provide water for Sites.? ?Although the state and federal governments are saying they are separate projects, they are all really one project,? noted Sisk. ?Why do you think Westlands Water District, the Resnicks, Metropolitan Water District and other water districts are all pushing for the Shasta Dam Raise, Sites Dam and the Delta Tunnels?? ?We consider Shasta Dam a weapon of mass destruction,? said Chief Sisk. ?It has already taken our homes, sacred sites, burial sites, and stopped the salmon from returning to their historical spawning grounds. If these tunnels are built, Governor Brown?s so called ?California WaterFix?, they will not only cause more death and destruction to the already endangered salmon, but they will encourage and motivate plans to enlarge Shasta Dam. An enlarged Shasta Dam will flood what remaining sacred sites, and cultural sites that we still use today.? In written testimony submitted to the State Water Resources Control Board for the ongoing hearings regarding Reclamation and DWR?s water diversion change petition required to build the California WaterFix, Winnemem Wintu Governmental Liaison Gary Mulcahy asks: ?Drowned cultures, dead and extinct fish, broken promises, stolen lands, environmental destruction, water grabs, and years and years of litigation ? is it truly worth it?? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 14516492_10154179382784563_1336715880803160614_n.png Type: image/png Size: 144999 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Oct 7 10:32:36 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2016 17:32:36 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Central Valley Project Begins Water Year 2017 with 4.9 Million Acre-Feet of Storage In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <84413232.202040.1475861556162@mail.yahoo.com> On Friday, October 7, 2016 10:22 AM, Janet Sierzputowski wrote: Central Valley Project Begins Water Year 2017 with 4.9 Million Acre-Feet of StorageMid-Pacific Region Sacramento, Calif.MP-16-195Media Contact: Janet Sierzputowski, 916-978-5100, jsierzputowski at usbr.govFor Release: Oct. 7, 2016Central Valley Project Begins Water Year 2017 with 4.9 Million Acre-Feet of StorageSACRAMENTO, Calif. - The Bureau of Reclamation?s Central Valley Project (CVP) began water year 2017, which runs from Oct. 1, 2016, to Sept. 30, 2017, with 4.9 million acre-feet of water in six key CVP reservoirs (Shasta, Trinity, Folsom, New Melones and Millerton reservoirs and the federal share of the joint federal/state San Luis Reservoir). This is 82 percent of the 15-year average annual carryover of 6.0 million acre-feet and 2 million acre-feet more than the amount with which the Mid-Pacific Region began WY 2016 on Oct. 1, 2015.?Although overall CVP water supply conditions improved in WY 2016 compared to WY 2015 and WY 2014, we continue to face difficult circumstances as we deal with the ongoing effects of the drought,? said Mid-Pacific Regional Director David Murillo. ?We got through WY 2016 by working closely with our water users and their willingness to work together to develop creative solutions to a multitude of challenges. We hope that water supply conditions improve as we move into WY 2017 but know we could be facing a sixth consecutive year of drought. Regardless of conditions, we will continue to collaborate with our water users, stakeholders and agency partners to best manage our critical water resources.?The below table shows capacities and end-of-year storages in WY 2015 and WY 2016 for key CVP reservoirs; the next table compares end-of-year storages from WY 2012 to WY 2016. The amount of stored water at the end of the water year reflects the amount carried over into the new water year. One acre-foot is the volume of water sufficient to cover an acre of land to a depth of one foot, enough water to sustain a typical California household of four for one year. In spring 2017, Reclamation anticipates making a preliminary assessment of WY 2017 CVP water supply conditions. | CVP Reservoir Capacities and End of WY 2015 & 2016 Storage in Million Acre-feet | | Reservoirs | Annual Storage Comparisons | 15-Year Average Storage | | CVP Reservoirs and Capacities | 2016 ? | % of? Capacity | % of 15 Year Avg | 2015 | % of? Capacity | % of 15 Year Avg | 2000-2016 | | Shasta? 4.552 | 2.8 | 62 | 117 | 1.6 | 35 | 68 | 2.39 | | New Melones? 2.420 | .53 | 22 | 43 | .27 | 11 | 21 | 1.23 | | Trinity? 2.448 | .97 | 40 | 69 | .55 | 22 | 38 | 1.41 | | Folsom? .977 | .31 | 31 | 67 | .17 | 18 | 38 | .46 | | Millerton? .520 | .23 | 44 | 94 | .19 | 37 | 79 | .25 | | Federal San Luis? .966 | .071 | 7 | 28 | .074 | 8 | 27 | .2576 | | Total? 11.8 | 4.9 | 41 | 82 | 2.9 | 24 | 46 | 6.00 | ?? | Comparison of Previous End-of-Year Storage in Key CVP Reservoirs | | Million Acre-feet | | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 1977 (Driest Year) | 1983 (Wettest Year) | | 4.9 | 2.9 | 3.1 | 5.1 | 6.9 | 1.5 | 9.8 | ?The CVP is the largest single source of irrigation water in the state, typically supplying water to about 3 million acres of agricultural land in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys and along California?s central coast. The CVP also provides urban water for millions of people and industrial water essential to the San Francisco Bay Area?s economy. Water from the CVP is also crucial for the environment, wildlife and fishery restoration, and hydroelectric power production.During WY 2016, CVP powerplants generated about 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours. Project use consumed about 25 percent of this energy; the remaining energy was made available for marketing. The Mid-Pacific Region?s hydroelectric generators have a combined capacity of approximately 2.1 million kilowatts.During the course of 2017, Reclamation will continually monitor and evaluate hydrologic conditions and will adjust water supply allocations, as warranted, to reflect updated snowpack and runoff. Current allocations and background information are available at www.usbr.gov/mp/cvp-water/.For additional storage information, please visit www.usbr.gov/mp/cvo or contact the Public Affairs Office at 916-978-5100 (TTY 800-877-8339) or mppublicaffairs at usbr.gov.# # #Reclamation is the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in the 17 Western states. Its facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. Visit our website at http://www.usbr.gov. Follow us on Twitter @USBR and @ReclamationCVP. If you would rather not receive future communications from Bureau of Reclamation, let us know by clicking here. Bureau of Reclamation, Mid-Pacific 2800 Cottage Way, Sacramento, CA 95825 United States -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Oct 7 17:34:19 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2016 17:34:19 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] The Big Dig: International Tunneling Conference in LA Promotes Destructive Delta Tunnels In-Reply-To: <6B00290D-F93D-40C0-9BFC-69371944D438@fishsniffer.com> References: <7e8beffe-1375-8412-9e01-ba3cb1ad6619@goldcountrymedia.com> <59619B69-8A00-446C-A026-53A930E30E6D@fishsniffer.com> <93E3041B-8F25-4D85-B597-58978D978C75@fishsniffer.com> <6b4711ad-b330-c98d-bce4-bd501366b968@goldcountrymedia.com> <952D578B-E3AD-49AE-867B-D1472A17F0AC@fishsniffer.com> <256E5625-9F10-42B5-87F8-15752730A326@fishsniffer.com> <42155AFB-1352-48B4-9D8A-4361918BC2E3@fishsniffer.com> <9A33FDA3-D9FB-404A-A62A-F382F911359C@fishsniffer.com> <767EB0C9-2CF2-4CC3-AE90-1373212D092E@fishsniffer.com> <1BB3056C-F709-4CBC-A6AE-B1E9CF4E93C6@fishsniffer.com> <6B00290D-F93D-40C0-9BFC-69371944D438@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <99AA34BD-969A-444E-BED2-D44D1CFE3AEE@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/6/1578678/-The-Big-Dig-International-Tunneling-Conference-In-LA-Promotes-Destructive-Delta-Tunnels Niria Garcia and Hawane Rios, who participated in the entire length of the Winnemem Wintu Run4Salmon from September 17 to October 1, appear at a press conference against the Shasta Dam raise, the Delta Tunnels and new dams at the State Capitol in Sacramento on September 19. Photo by Dan Bacher. The Big Dig: International Tunneling Conference in LA Promotes Destructive Delta Tunnels by Dan Bacher Only in the so-called ?environmentally enlightened? state of California would the mainstream media, state officials and some NGO representatives praise Jerry Brown as a ?climate leader? and ?green governor? while he is promoting the Delta Tunnels, the most environmentally devastating public works project in the state?s history. But it gets worse ? a lot worse. State agencies under the helm of Jerry Brown, who claimed the Delta Tunnels (CA WaterFix) will create jobs for Californians, are participating in an International Tunneling conference in Los Angeles called ?Cutting Edge? from November 6-9. The conference announcement declares: ?...California?s tunneling industry is booming. In 2016, the fifth annual Cutting Edge Conference will convene in Los Angeles to look at the latest advances in tunneling technology and methodology and how they can be harnessed to assist the region?s major upcoming underground projects.? The invitation email states: ?Among the many organisations [British spelling] in attendance will be: ?California Water Fix.? Why should anybody attend the conference? ?This conference is highly focused on urban tunneling and will provide technical sessions to help you grow professionally and personally by learning from the problems others have faced,? the announcement explains. ?Cutting Edge is the must-attend urban tunneling conference of the year. Featuring a wide variety of technical sessions and speakers focusing on key industry events and issues, Cutting Edge will be a professional event you will truly enjoy and remember,? the announcement proclaims. Why is the conference being sponsored in Los Angeles at this time? Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, believes it?s because of the opportunities for international corporations to secure a lucrative contract for the multi-billion dollar California WaterFix. ?A chance to get a contract for a $17 billion project has attracted many international firms to sponsor this conference,? said Barrigan- Parrilla. ?State and Metropolitan Water District officials will surely get wined-and-dined, but we think their international suitors should know the Delta Tunnels are as real as a day at Disneyland.? ?The Delta Tunnels have received none of the required state or federal permits, and the project has no finance plan. Water ratepayers and California taxpayers don?t want the tunnels, and agricultural districts cannot afford the tunnels. The project lacks a completed biological opinion and has been rejected twice by the EPA,? she said. ?Why are state agencies seeking international contractors for a project that was supposed to create jobs for Californians? Are agencies also seeking international funding for a project that was to be paid for by California water districts? Are our water resources for sale on the international market? Californians would like to know,? she concluded. These are very good questions. The tunneling conference ? and Governor Brown's frantic rush to build the Delta Tunnels as his ?legacy? project ? take place at a time when the WaterFix is becoming increasingly unpopular with Californians. In fact, Brown admitted for the first time that his tunnels project is ?unpopular? when he lauded former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for focusing on environmental issues at the tenth anniversary celebration of the passage of Assembly Bill 32, the legislation that established the state?s greenhouse emissions reductions, in the California Museum in Sacramento on Wednesday, October 5. ?Arnold, thanks for being for climate change, cap and trade, the tunnels project, high speed rail and all the other unpopular policies that I?m saddled with,? quipped Brown. You can listen to Brown?s comments here 1:01:24: bit.ly/? The Delta Tunnels project is based on the absurd premise that diverting more water out of the Sacramento River before it flows into the Delta would somehow ?restore" its fish populations and ecosystems. In fact, the construction of the two 35-mile long tunnels under the Delta would hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species. The project would also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers, a fishery that for thousands of years has played an integral part in the culture, religion and food supply of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley Tribes. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Niria & Hawane at Capitol.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 161888 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Tue Oct 11 14:13:46 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2016 14:13:46 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Brown administration applies for permit to take endangered species in Delta Tunnels In-Reply-To: <99AA34BD-969A-444E-BED2-D44D1CFE3AEE@fishsniffer.com> References: <7e8beffe-1375-8412-9e01-ba3cb1ad6619@goldcountrymedia.com> <59619B69-8A00-446C-A026-53A930E30E6D@fishsniffer.com> <93E3041B-8F25-4D85-B597-58978D978C75@fishsniffer.com> <6b4711ad-b330-c98d-bce4-bd501366b968@goldcountrymedia.com> <952D578B-E3AD-49AE-867B-D1472A17F0AC@fishsniffer.com> <256E5625-9F10-42B5-87F8-15752730A326@fishsniffer.com> <42155AFB-1352-48B4-9D8A-4361918BC2E3@fishsniffer.com> <9A33FDA3-D9FB-404A-A62A-F382F911359C@fishsniffer.com> <767EB0C9-2CF2-4CC3-AE90-1373212D092E@fishsniffer.com> <1BB3056C-F709-4CBC-A6AE-B1E9CF4E93C6@fishsniffer.com> <6B00290D-F93D-40C0-9BFC-69371944D438@fishsniffer.com> <99AA34BD-969A-444E-BED2-D44D1CFE3AEE@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <8429625C-A0D3-4047-891A-60C73008012F@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/10/1580366/-Brown-administration-applies-for-permit-to-take-endangered-species-killed-by-Delta-Tunnels Photo of Delta smelt courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Brown administration applies for permit to take endangered species in Delta Tunnels by Dan Bacher Governor Jerry Brown and other state officials have constantly claimed the Delta Tunnels project will ?restore? the Delta ecosystem, but they revealed their real plans on October 7 when the administration applied for a permit to kill winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other endangered species with the project. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) submitted an ?incidental intake? application for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) in alleged ?compliance? with the California Endangered Species Act (CESA) in order to build the Delta Tunnels, also known as the California WaterFix. In other words, they are applying for a permit to kill endangered species in the construction and operation of the three new water intakes on the Sacramento River and other facilities planned as part of the multi-billion dollar project. The state and federal water export pumps on the South Delta that deliver subsidized water to corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley have killed hundreds of millions of fish over the past several decades. These fish include Sacramento splittail, a native minnow; endangered species such as winter-run Chinook, spring-run Chinook, Central Valley steelhead and Delta and longfin smelt; and introduced fish including striped bass, threadfin shad, American shad, black bass and white catfish. The California WaterFix website announced, ?Consistent with the federal Endangered Species Act process where DWR and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently submitted the California WaterFix biological assessment addressing incidental take of federally-listed species, DWR has submitted this application to DFW in compliance with Section 2081(b) of CESA to address incidental take of state-listed species for the California WaterFix.? ?As identified in CESA, projects that may cause ?take? (translate: killing) of a state-listed species must obtain authorization from DFW prior to implementing the action,? California WaterFix officials stated. ?Because California WaterFix would potentially cause incidental take associated with its construction and operation, DWR is required to apply for an incidental take permit (also known as a 2081(b) permit.? Key elements in the 2081(b) application include ?documentation that the impacts of the incidental take are minimized and fully mitigated; funding is available for the minimization and mitigation measures; and incidental take authorized by the permit would not jeopardize the continued existence of a CESA-listed species,? the officials declared. The California Code of Regulations (Title 14, Sections 783.0 - 783.8) provide details on the application and review requirements related to the 2081(b) permit. For the complete incidental take permit, appendices and figures, go here: cms.capitoltechsolutions.com/? Responding to DWR?s application for an incidental take permit, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD), noted, ?The California WaterFix , aka the Delta tunnels, was sold as protecting fish. All the years of propaganda about how Delta Smelt would do better were laid out month after month for Californians. Well, the WaterFix has applied for a take permit to kill DeltaSmelt with the tunnels.? As DWR submitted it?s application, Delta and longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook, and other fish species continued to move closer and closer to the abyss of extinction. The population of Delta Smelt plummeted to a new low in the annual spring survey conducted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The 2016 Spring Kodiak Trawl (SKT) index, a relative measure of abundance, is 1.8, a decrease from the 2015 index (13.8) and is the lowest index on record. Only thirteen adult Delta Smelt, an indicator species that demonstrates the health of the San Francisco Bay-Delta, were collected at 8 stations contributing to the index in 2016. ?This is the lowest catch in SKT history, and a steep decline from the 2015 then-record-low catch of 88,? said Scott Wilson, Regional Manager of the CDFW Bay Delta Region, in a memo. ?Once the most abundant species in the estuary, we can now name smelt rather than count them," said Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA). On October 7, Tom Cannon on the California Fisheries Blog responded to the Sacramento Bee?s report on August 31 citing claims by Dr. Ted Sommer of the California Department of Water Resources that Delta smelt are starving. ?Dr. Sommer related recent success in stimulating the north Delta food web by increasing flow through the Yolo Bypass in July as part of the state?s new strategy to help Delta smelt,? said Cannon. ?I had reported earlier on the experiment and the strategy. While Dr. Sommer was not implying that just adding some fertilizer to the north Delta would save the smelt, he was deflecting discussion and treatment away from the overriding cause of the collapse of Delta smelt: lack of spring-through-fall outflow to the Bay.? ?During August of this year, the normal heavy hand of Delta exports again reached out to degrade the critical habitat of what few smelt are left,? Cannon said. To read the complete article, ?Are Delta Smelt Starving,? go to: calsport.org/? The Delta smelt collapse is part of an overall ecosystem decline driven by water diversions by the federal and state water projects. The CDFW's 2015 Fall Midwater Trawl demonstrates that, since 1967, populations of striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 98.3, 99.9, 97.7, 98.5 and 93.7 percent, respectively, according to Jennings. Background on the Delta Tunnels The Delta Tunnels plan, Governor Jerry Brown?s ?legacy project,? is based on the absurd premise that diverting more water out of the Sacramento River before it flows into the Delta would somehow ?restore" its fish populations and ecosystems. In reality, the construction of the two 35-mile long tunnels under the Delta would hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species. The project would also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers, a fishery that for thousands of years has played an integral part in the culture, religion and food supply of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley Tribes. To read a transcript of my testimony before the State Water Resources Board regarding the petition by the Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to add three new points of diversion from the Sacramento River for the Delta Tunnels, go to: www.dailykos.com/ ... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: delta_smelt_in_hand2_usfws_peter_johnsen_2008.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 72644 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Tue Oct 11 14:22:51 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2016 21:22:51 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW - TRP trapping summary through Julian week 40 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010F9FB0@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 40 (October 07). Julian week 40 was likely the final week of spring Chinook at TRH, and while not a lot of fish seem to have come in to TRH, we have gotten a few more fish than for the same time last year. The same can be said of our season-to-date totals at WCW, for both Chinook totals and steelhead totals (season-to-date, mind you), although we seem to be fairly low on ad-clipped fish for both species. We have seen 2 total coho at WCW so far this year (one's not yet showing as we got it Monday), but word is there are still fish coming in the mouth of the Klamath so I'm not giving up hope yet (which is maybe why I've been teased about being "Miss Mary Sunshine" lately, but it could happen). We supposedly have a gully washer on tap for Thursday - Sunday of this week; we'll decide how much conduit to pull at WCW tomorrow, and will likely lose a couple days of trapping. Maybe that's when the fish will decide to run by?! Have a good rest of your week, and let's hope for rain! Mary Claire PS. TomN, and others, this hopefully is the last reformat on the summary for a while. I think I've got the bugs out. I'm sure you'll let me know if not. J ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW40.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 114032 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW40.pdf URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Oct 12 07:29:29 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2016 14:29:29 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?County_seeks_=E2=80=98fair_impact_fees?= =?utf-8?q?=E2=80=99_for_diverted_Trinity_water?= References: <1001109221.2363884.1476282569338.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1001109221.2363884.1476282569338@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_57e73f68-9014-11e6-85c4-37acbc2291a1.html County seeks ?fair impact fees? for diverted Trinity water - By Sally Morris The Trinity Journal ?- 44 min ago ?- ?0 - - - - - - - - In a resolution adopted by unanimous support last week, the Trinity County Board of Supervisors is seeking to collect ?fair impact fees? for out-of-basin transfers of water from Trinity Lake, diverted through the Judge Francis Carr Tunnel beyond the lake and dam.Citing numerous drought impacts including declining tourism, increased infrastructure demands, loss of property values, loss of economic activity, loss of fisheries and severe environmental damage, the board resolution is seeking accelerated payment of impact fees as the lake levels drop lower and lower. No such fees have ever been paid to the county since Trinity Dam was built.The resolution was drafted by the Board of Supervisors? ad hoc water committee of Sups. Bill Burton and Keith Groves, and was tabled from the board?s Sept. 20 meeting after additional input was received from other board members to be included in the final wording.The proposal favors full, or nearly full, operation of Trinity Lake, noting greater water storage benefits communities - -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kierassociates at att.net Wed Oct 12 08:16:26 2016 From: kierassociates at att.net (Kier Associates) Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2016 08:16:26 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?County_seeks_=E2=80=98fair_impact_fees?= =?utf-8?q?=E2=80=99_for_diverted_Trinity_water?= In-Reply-To: <1001109221.2363884.1476282569338@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1001109221.2363884.1476282569338.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1001109221.2363884.1476282569338@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001001d2249b$9ab15750$d01405f0$@att.net> Tom Who knows what the Trinity Supes had to say about the county?s water being shipped out of the county/the need for the County to collect a tax on it ? ? even the Trinity Journal now has a pay-wall/ one must create an account to read its articles in full. But the headline, alone, takes me back 40+ years to when I was the CA State Senate?s principal natural resources staffer and a Siskiyou County delegation, the particulars of which I can?t now recall other than it appeared their ringleader was the rascally publisher of a Ft Jones-based weekly (did I get that right?), wanted me to advise them on how to construct legislation which would put Siskiyou County in the water marketing business. The publisher, in particular, kept emphasizing in our meeting that ?southern California?s desperate for water, and we?ve got more water than we need ?? I asked the Siskiyou-ians how that was going to work ? how were they going to get out of the water delivery business when they finally needed the water in Siskiyou County? They didn?t think that would be a problem at all. But it got me thinking hard for the first time about the issues surrounding water marketing ? issues with which I?m still concerned/ concerns which I expressed in a recent posting to ?On the Public Record? https://onthepublicrecord.org ?Sorry to be a wuss about the Trinity Journal thing but I?m suffering from password overload. Bill Kier From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Tom Stokely Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 7:29 AM To: Env-trinity Subject: [env-trinity] County seeks ?fair impact fees? for diverted Trinity water http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_57e73f68-9014-11e6-85c4-37acbc2291a1.html County seeks ?fair impact fees? for diverted Trinity water ? By Sally Morris The Trinity Journal ? 44 min ago ? 0 * * * * * * * * In a resolution adopted by unanimous support last week, the Trinity County Board of Supervisors is seeking to collect ?fair impact fees? for out-of-basin transfers of water from Trinity Lake, diverted through the Judge Francis Carr Tunnel beyond the lake and dam. Citing numerous drought impacts including declining tourism, increased infrastructure demands, loss of property values, loss of economic activity, loss of fisheries and severe environmental damage, the board resolution is seeking accelerated payment of impact fees as the lake levels drop lower and lower. No such fees have ever been paid to the county since Trinity Dam was built. The resolution was drafted by the Board of Supervisors? ad hoc water committee of Sups. Bill Burton and Keith Groves, and was tabled from the board?s Sept. 20 meeting after additional input was received from other board members to be included in the final wording. The proposal favors full, or nearly full, operation of Trinity Lake, noting greater water storage benefits communities * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Oct 12 08:53:58 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2016 15:53:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?County_seeks_=E2=80=98fair_impact_fees?= =?utf-8?q?=E2=80=99_for_diverted_Trinity_water?= In-Reply-To: <001001d2249b$9ab15750$d01405f0$@att.net> References: <1001109221.2363884.1476282569338.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1001109221.2363884.1476282569338@mail.yahoo.com> <001001d2249b$9ab15750$d01405f0$@att.net> Message-ID: <219580528.2450360.1476287638620@mail.yahoo.com> Bill et al, I posted the full article from behind the paywall. ?The article didn't talk about what the Supervisors had to say. The agenda item and all the backup can be found at:http://docs.trinitycounty.org/Departments/Admin-Bos-Cao/AgendaMin/Backup20161004/501.pdf ?Tom StokelySalmon and Water Policy AnalystPacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations?V 530-926-9727 Cell 530-524-0315?tstokely at att.net? On Wednesday, October 12, 2016 8:16 AM, Kier Associates wrote: #yiv2334222327 #yiv2334222327 -- _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Tahoma;panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Garamond;panose-1:2 2 4 4 3 3 1 1 8 3;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Lato;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 3;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:inherit;panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;}#yiv2334222327 #yiv2334222327 p.yiv2334222327MsoNormal, #yiv2334222327 li.yiv2334222327MsoNormal, #yiv2334222327 div.yiv2334222327MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;}#yiv2334222327 h1 {margin-right:0in;margin-left:0in;font-size:24.0pt;}#yiv2334222327 a:link, #yiv2334222327 span.yiv2334222327MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv2334222327 a:visited, #yiv2334222327 span.yiv2334222327MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv2334222327 span.yiv2334222327Heading1Char {color:#365F91;font-weight:bold;}#yiv2334222327 span.yiv2334222327EmailStyle18 {color:#1F497D;}#yiv2334222327 .yiv2334222327MsoChpDefault {font-size:10.0pt;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}#yiv2334222327 div.yiv2334222327WordSection1 {}#yiv2334222327 _filtered #yiv2334222327 {} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Symbol;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Symbol;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Symbol;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Symbol;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;} _filtered #yiv2334222327 {font-family:Wingdings;}#yiv2334222327 ol {margin-bottom:0in;}#yiv2334222327 ul {margin-bottom:0in;}#yiv2334222327 Tom ?Who knows what the Trinity Supes had to say about the county?s water being shipped out of the county/the need for the County to collect a tax on it ? ? even the Trinity Journal now has a pay-wall/ one must create an account to read its articles in full. ?But the headline, alone, takes me back 40+ years to when I was the CA State Senate?s principal natural resources staffer and a Siskiyou County delegation, the particulars of which I can?t now recall other than it appeared their ringleader was the rascally publisher of a Ft Jones-based weekly (did I get that right?), wanted me to advise them on how to construct legislation which would put Siskiyou County in the water marketing business. The publisher, in particular, kept emphasizing in our meeting that ?southern California?s desperate for water, and we?ve got more water than we need ?? ?I asked the Siskiyou-ians how that was going to work ? how were they going to get out of the water delivery business when they finally needed the water in Siskiyou County? They didn?t think that would be a problem at all. But it got me thinking hard for the first time about the issues surrounding water marketing ? issues with which I?m still concerned/ concerns which I expressed in a recent posting to ?On the Public Record? https://onthepublicrecord.org ??Sorry to be a wuss about the Trinity Journal thing but I?m suffering from password overload. ?Bill KierFrom: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Tom Stokely Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2016 7:29 AM To: Env-trinity Subject: [env-trinity] County seeks ?fair impact fees? for diverted Trinity water ?http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_57e73f68-9014-11e6-85c4-37acbc2291a1.html County seeks ?fair impact fees? for diverted Trinity water ???????? By Sally Morris The Trinity Journal????????? 44 min ago????????? ?0 - ? - ? - ? - ? - ? - ? - ? - ? In a resolution adopted by unanimous support last week, the Trinity County Board of Supervisors is seeking to collect ?fair impact fees? for out-of-basin transfers of water from Trinity Lake, diverted through the Judge Francis Carr Tunnel beyond the lake and dam.Citing numerous drought impacts including declining tourism, increased infrastructure demands, loss of property values, loss of economic activity, loss of fisheries and severe environmental damage, the board resolution is seeking accelerated payment of impact fees as the lake levels drop lower and lower. No such fees have ever been paid to the county since Trinity Dam was built.The resolution was drafted by the Board of Supervisors? ad hoc water committee of Sups. Bill Burton and Keith Groves, and was tabled from the board?s Sept. 20 meeting after additional input was received from other board members to be included in the final wording.The proposal favors full, or nearly full, operation of Trinity Lake, noting greater water storage benefits communities - ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Thu Oct 13 08:07:17 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 08:07:17 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for October 7, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update October 7, 2016. This week our crews mapped 332 redds (664 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Pigeon Point and Hawkins Bar to the Klamath River confluence. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9379 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Thu Oct 13 11:16:48 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016 18:16:48 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW - TRP trapping summary through Julian week 41 Message-ID: <94EA1F44E98DAB4B8C57F7EF9DA89307010FADEA@057-SN2MPN2-111.057d.mgd.msft.net> Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 41 (October 14). Julian week 41, what can I say? The hatchery is in a spawning break so there was no trapping this week, nor will there be any next week as well (next spawn day is 24 October). At WCW we trapped three nights this week before starting to prep the weir for high flows. Maybe the flows will go to what NOAA is currently forecasting (~7,600 cfs), maybe not. We've pulled the conduit and should be able to ride out the flows IF they don't go much higher. Either way the descending limb of flows is almost always considerably slower than the ascending, so I've no idea if we'll be fishing at all next week. MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW41.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 114401 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW41.pdf URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Oct 14 09:45:24 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2016 16:45:24 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Klamath Irrigators Should Not Have Gotten $32M From Federal Agency: Report References: <772767466.376027.1476463524255.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <772767466.376027.1476463524255@mail.yahoo.com> http://kuow.org/post/klamath-irrigators-should-not-have-gotten-32m-federal-agency-report - Klamath Irrigators Should Not Have Gotten $32M From Federal Agency: Report? By?JES BURNS???16 HOURS AGO A?new audit?finds that Klamath irrigators should not have received millions of dollars in taxpayer money. The money was used to pay farmers not to use scarce water supplies from streams and rivers in the Klamath Basin straddling Oregon and California.?The Inspector General audit comes after two whistleblowers accused the Bureau of Reclamation and the now-defunct Klamath Water and Power Agency, or KWAPA, of misusing public funds.?Over the course of seven years Reclamation paid KWAPA $32.2 million in part to run a water mitigation program that compensated farmers for switching to groundwater or idling their land in low-water years.??In order for the federal government to give money to an outside agency such as KWAPA, there has to be a specific law authorizing them to give that money,? said attorney Paula Dinerstein of the whistleblower group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.?One of the laws that the Bureau of Reclamation relied on was the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, which requires the money be used ?in the development, protection, rearing, and stocking of all species of wildlife, resources thereof, and their habitat.??The Bureau of Reclamation and KWAPA argued that the water saved as a result of the irrigator pay-outs would be used to benefit fish and wildlife at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge just south of the Oregon-California border. But the audit found the refuge got far less water than promised and that the water it did get didn?t arrive at a time of year when it would actually make a difference for the animals and fish in the refuge.??And as we said to begin with, and the Inspector General is now saying, it was not used to benefit fish and wildlife, it was used to benefit irrigators,? Dinerstein said.?The Inspector General?s report does not point to misdeeds by any irrigator, rather focuses on agency money-allocation and program implementation concerns.?The Bureau of Reclamation has responded to the report and denied wrong-doing.?The audit makes three recommendations for the Bureau going forward, one of which is cutting funding for water supplementation and demand reduction unless they have proper legal authority. The Bureau says it does ?not concur? with this change.??If we?re not able to use water banking as a tool, that removes probably one of the most viable tools in our tool box to work with the various water uses and demands within the basin,? says Jeff Nettleton, Klamath area manager for the Bureau of Reclamation.?Now the Inspector General?s audit and the Bureau of Reclamation?s responses will be sent up the ladder within the Department of Interior for a separate assessment. The Office of Special Counsel will also make a determination on the broader issues originally raised by the two whistleblowers. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Oct 14 12:29:42 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2016 19:29:42 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Reclamation Releases Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Long-Term Plan to Protect Adult Sa In-Reply-To: <8e625a55d4a24688be2fbf4997bac417@usbr.gov> References: <8e625a55d4a24688be2fbf4997bac417@usbr.gov> Message-ID: <2140477607.526195.1476473382562@mail.yahoo.com> This is?significant!TS On Friday, October 14, 2016 12:27 PM, Loredana Potter wrote: Reclamation Releases Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Long-Term Plan to Protect Adult SaMid-Pacific Region Sacramento, Calif.MP-16-198Media Contact: Louis Moore, 916-978-5100, wmoore at usbr.govFor Release: Oct. 14, 2016Reclamation Releases Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Long-Term Plan to Protect Adult Salmon in the Lower Klamath River; Open House/Public Hearing ScheduledSHASTA LAKE, Calif. ? The Bureau of Reclamation has made available for public review and comment the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Long-Term Plan to Protect Adult Salmon in the Lower Klamath River (LTP). The Draft EIS describes the environmental effects of the No-Action and Action Alternatives to augment flows in the Lower Klamath River to reduce the likelihood and the severity of any Ich epizootic event that could lead to an associated fish die-off in future years (2017 ? 2030).An open house and public hearing to solicit comments will be held on:Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016 Open House from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. (Doors open at 5 p.m.) Public Hearing from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Holiday Inn, 1900 Hilltop Drive, Palomino Room Redding, CACrowded holding conditions for pre-spawn adults, warm water temperatures, and the presence of disease pathogens are the likely major factors contributing to the adult salmon mortalities. The proposed increased flows would be provided primarily from releases of water stored in Trinity Reservoir on the main stem of the Trinity River.The Draft EIS was prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act and is available at http://www.usbr.gov/mp/nepa/nepa_projdetails.cfm?Project_ID=22021. If you encounter problems accessing the document, please call 916-978-5100 (TTY 800-877-8339) or email mppublicaffairs at usbr.gov.Please email comments by close of business Monday, Dec. 5, 2016, to BOR-SLO-sha-ltpeis-public-comments at usbr.gov or mail comments to Julia Long, Bureau of Reclamation, Northern California Area Office, 16349 Shasta Dam Blvd., Shasta Lake, CA 96019.For additional information or to request a copy of the Draft EIS, please contact Long at 530-276-2044 or jlong at usbr.gov. The document may also be viewed at Reclamation?s Northern California Area Office at the above address and at the Bureau of Reclamation, Mid-Pacific Region, Regional Library, 2800 Cottage Way, Sacramento, CA 95825.# # #Reclamation is the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in the 17 Western states. Its facilities also provide substantial flood control, recreation, and fish and wildlife benefits. Visit our website at http://www.usbr.gov. Follow us on Twitter @USBR and @ReclamationCVP. If you would rather not receive future communications from Bureau of Reclamation, let us know by clicking here. Bureau of Reclamation, Denver Federal Center, Alameda & Kipling Street PO Box 25007, Denver, CO 80225 United States -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Oct 14 16:24:12 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2016 23:24:12 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Farmers were paid $32M to pump and not farm. Was it a waste of money? References: <384588792.642192.1476487452657.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <384588792.642192.1476487452657@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article107896837.html Farmers were paid $32M to pump and not farm. Was it a waste of money? In a move that could have ramifications across the arid West, a government watchdog agency accused federal water regulators of wasting taxpayer funds when they gave Klamath Basin farmers more than $32 million to stop growing crops and to pump groundwater instead of drawing from lakes and rivers.?The funds were spent in a failed bid to protect endangered fish and wildlife near the California-Oregon border, the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior said in a report this week.?The inspector general slammed the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for not having legal authority to enter into a seven-year agreement that reimbursed farmers and said bureau officials were wrong to take funds that Congress had set aside to help struggling species and give them to the now-defunct Klamath Water and Power Agency.The watchdog agency said there was little evidence the program helped threatened coho salmon and two kinds of endangered sucker fish. In fact, the report says, it might have further strained the watershed because the pumping lowered groundwater already depleted by years of drought.?Moreover, it said, the program didn?t provide much water to the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, a critical habitat for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds.?We determined that the benefits ... flowed primarily to irrigation contractors rather than fish and wildlife,? the inspector general?s report said.More than $4 million of the funds went to salaries, rent, travel and other expenses that the watchdog agency determined to be ?questionable? or ?unallowable? under the law.?It was almost like (they were) using these funds as their own cookie jar,? said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.?Klamath Water and Power Agency, which managed the funds, closed earlier this year after the Bureau of Reclamation stopped making payments.The bureau and farmers defended the program as legal and successful. The inspector general had unfairly bashed an innovative water-sharing program for what amounted to minor bureaucratic mix-ups, they said.?Reclamation maintains that (the reimbursement program) has been an important tool in dealing with water issues in an over-allocated basin,? the bureau said in a written statement.Supporters say the program kept more surface water in the lakes and rivers where fish and birds most needed it, while also helping farmers avoid devastating financial losses during a prolonged drought.?It avoided costly legal challenges to water cutbacks, and more water flowed to the refuge than it otherwise would have in drought years, they said. The refuge typically receives its water only after the farmers, who have senior water rights, get theirs.?The Klamath Water Users Association blamed the report on groups ?hostile to the farm and ranch families that rely on the Klamath Reclamation Project for their irrigation water supply.?The report outraged environmentalists and others who have been trying for years to secure more water for wildlife.?Here is money that is supposed to be spent specifically to benefit the refuges, and even that is taken away,? said Michael Lynes, director of public policy at Audubon California. ?That?s what makes this sting so much.?Jennifer Harder, a law professor at University of the Pacific?s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, said that most of the red flags raised in the report might have been avoided had the Bureau of Reclamation better documented the benefits to fish and wildlife and explained its rationale.?Harder said that?s a shame, because it?s important for government agencies to find creative ways to better balance the needs of wildlife and farming.?(Reclamation) was trying to do something that was, in a sense, very smart,? she said. ?They were trying a physical solution to balancing and accommodating both agriculture and environmental flows. That?s very tricky business.?Ryan Sabalow:?916-321-1264,?@ryansabalow Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article107896837.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Oct 14 16:43:56 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2016 16:43:56 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Water contractors lobby for salmon-killing drought legislation in Congress In-Reply-To: <384588792.642192.1476487452657@mail.yahoo.com> References: <384588792.642192.1476487452657.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <384588792.642192.1476487452657@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <10519155-12F0-4D63-9788-2E8720C1CD67@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/14/1582594/-Water-contractors-lobby-for-salmon-killing-drought-legislation-in-Congress Tim Quinn, Executive Director of the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA). Photo courtesy of ACWA. Water contractors lobby for salmon-killing drought legislation in Congress by Dan Bacher Just days after Governor Jerry Brown?s administration applied for a ?take? permit to kill Delta smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon and other endangered species in order to build and operate the Delta Tunnels, agribusiness interests accelerated their lobbying campaign to pass drought legislation in Congress that will further endanger San Francisco Bay-Delta fisheries. Tim Quinn and the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) have stepped up their lobbying in advance of the lame duck Congressional session urging Congress to pass controversial drought legislation, according to Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD), in an action alert. Quinn, the Executive Director of ACWA, sent a new letter on October 12 to the entire California Congressional delegation blaming the state?s water supply predicament almost entirely on protections for Bay-Delta fisheries and wildlife, and actions by federal officials to avoid species extinction. (www.restorethedelta.org/...) ?We would expect that federal policies should provide assistance in meeting water supply needs during drought conditions, but instead at almost every turn federal decisions restricted project operations, preventing water during storm events from being put into storage south of the Delta for later delivery to our farms and cities,? Quinn claimed in his letter. ?During 2016, these restrictive federal policies had a far greater negative impact on water supply than did the drought.? ?California needs a partnership with the federal government in accomplishing this policy objective. Instead, all too often we experience unbalanced federal decisions that unreasonably favor species protection over water supply, with little scientific justification and little prospect of any actual environmental benefit, but with very large and real negative impacts on water supply,? he said. Quinn urged Congress to pass ?meaningful drought legislation,? apparently meaning legislation that would fail to observe even the very minimal protections provided now under the Endangered Species Act to protect Delta and longfin smelt, Central Valley steelhead, winter- run Chinook salmon, spring-run Chinook salmon and green sturgeon. In response, Barrigan-Parrilla urged people to call their Congressional Representatives and tell them to protect Delta fisheries by ?standing strong? against the increased Delta pumping bills by Senator Feinstein and Congressman Valadao. ?Tell them that you are aware of ACWA (pronounced Aqua) attempting to push through Federal legislation designed to take more water from the SF Bay-Delta estuary,? she said. ?Tell them how ACWA?s members just told the State Water Resources Control Board that mandatory conservation rules are no longer necessary, even though we are entering our sixth year of drought.? ?ACWA wants it both ways, no restrictions on taking water, and no restrictions on much water people use ? all at the expense of the people and fisheries of the Bay-Delta estuary,? she concluded. ?Thank you. And let us know how it goes when you make the call.? To find your Congressional Rep?s number, check this list of all California Congressional Representatives here, or go to this website to type in your zipcode. The same water agencies calling for salmon-killing drought legislation are the ones behind Governor Jerry Brown?s plan to build two giant tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Brown and other state officials have constantly claimed the Delta Tunnels/California WaterFix project will ?restore? the Delta ecosystem, but they revealed their real plans on October 7 when the administration applied for a permit to kill winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other endangered species with the project. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) submitted an ?incidental intake? application for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) in alleged ?compliance? with the California Endangered Species Act (CESA) in order to build the Delta Tunnels, also known as the California WaterFix. In other words, they are applying for a permit to kill endangered species in the construction and operation of the three new water intakes on the Sacramento River and other facilities planned as part of the multi-billion dollar project. For more information, go to: www.dailykos.com/? The latest attacks on the Bay-Delta Ecosystem come shortly after the Winnemem Wintu Tribe's 300-mile prayer journey from Sogorea Te (Glen Cove, Vallejo) to the historical spawning grounds of the winter-run Chinook salmon on the McCloud River from September 17 through October 1. (www.dailykos.com/...) ?This journey is a walk/run/boat/bike and horseback ride to bring attention to the plight of all the runs of salmon in California, and the water management practices that have brought some of those runs to the edge of extinction,? according to the Tribe. ?It is a prayer to let Californians know that the water they enjoy has come to them at the cost of others and the threat of death and extinction to species necessary for a healthy California.? ?We consider Shasta Dam a weapon of mass destruction,? said Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. ?It has already taken our homes, sacred sites, burial sites, and stopped the salmon from returning to their historical spawning grounds. If these tunnels are built, Governor Brown?s so called ?California WaterFix?, they will not only cause more death and destruction to the already endangered salmon, but they will encourage and motivate plans to enlarge Shasta Dam. An enlarged Shasta Dam will flood what remaining sacred sites, and cultural sites that we still use today.? ?The Shasta Dam raise, Sites Reservoir and the Delta Tunnels need to be considered as one project,? emphasized Chief Sisk. ?Without one, you can?t have the two others. If the tunnels are built, there will be no water to put in them. You need Sites Reservoir to provide the water for the tunnels and the Shasta Dam raise to provide water for Sites.? ?Although the state and federal governments are saying they are separate projects, they are all really one project. Why do you think Westlands Water District, the Resnicks, Metropolitan Water District and other water districts are all pushing for the Shasta Dam Raise, Sites Dam and the Delta Tunnels?? she concluded. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: TimQuinn_smaller.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 39655 bytes Desc: not available URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Mon Oct 17 11:31:19 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2016 11:31:19 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for October 14, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update October 14, 2016. This week our crews mapped 300 redds (957 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Pigeon Point. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ?The seasonal rains have returned to the Trinity watershed. This precipitation brings welcomed relief to our parched tributaries. These rains also bring high flows and increased turbidity. Our crews do their best to complete their surveys, but it is common for downriver reaches to become unsurveyable for short periods following storms. ? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9434 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Mon Oct 17 13:40:43 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2016 13:40:43 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] GAO: Federal Agencies' Efforts Related to Harmful Algae Message-ID: <013601d228b6$bbc0f670$3342e350$@sisqtel.net> http://gao.gov/products/GAO-17-119 Information on Federal Agencies' Expenditures and Coordination Related to Harmful Algae Why GAO Did This Study Harmful algal blooms are an environmental problem in all 50 states, according to EPA. While algae are essential to the ecosystem, providing food for all types of animals, these blooms can produce toxins that hurt the environment and local economies. Specifically, they can cause human illness or death from the consumption of seafood or water contaminated by toxic algae; harm aquatic and other animal species through neurological or liver damage or severe oxygen depletion; and hurt the seafood industry, recreation, and tourism. Harmful algal blooms occur naturally, but their prevalence, frequency, and severity are increasing-and this increase is influenced by climate, pollution, and human activities such as agriculture and wastewater, according to an interagency working group report. The Drinking Water Protection Act included a provision for GAO to review federally funded activities related to harmful algal blooms. This report examines (1) how much federal agencies expended on these activities from fiscal years 2013 through 2015 and (2) how federal agencies coordinate their activities with each other and with nonfederal stakeholders. GAO collected information from federal agencies by using a questionnaire and interviewing agency officials. GAO provided a draft of this report to the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Health and Human Services, and the Interior; EPA; NASA; and the Executive Office of the President for comment. Most of the agencies provided technical comments, which were incorporated as appropriate. What GAO Found Twelve federal agencies reported expending an estimated total of roughly $101 million from fiscal years 2013 through 2015 to fund various research, monitoring, and other activities related to harmful algae-overgrowths of algae that can create toxic "blooms" in marine or freshwater environments. The agencies provided a mix of actual and estimated expenditure data and used different methods for collecting the data, making comparisons among agencies, and a federal total, inexact. Based on the data, the 5 agencies with the largest expenditures related to harmful algal blooms for this period-totaling roughly $86 million-were the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, $39.4 million; National Science Foundation (NSF), $15.4 million; Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), $14.5 million; U.S. Geological Survey, $9 million; and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), $8 million. According to agency officials, these 5 agencies funded efforts to research and analyze harmful algal blooms; forecast, monitor, and respond to their occurrence; and investigate human and ecological health effects. In addition, other agencies expended millions of dollars funding activities to address harmful algae. For example, from fiscal years 2013 through 2015, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported expending nearly $2 million on research to improve the detection of algal blooms using satellite imagery. Federal officials reported that their agencies coordinate in a variety of ways with each other and with nonfederal stakeholders to share information, expertise, and opportunities for collaboration on activities to address harmful algae. For example, since 2014, an interagency working group has been the primary, government-wide mechanism through which federal agencies coordinate such activities, develop plans for future work, and identify any gaps in federal activities and capabilities. In addition, federal officials reported that agencies participate in numerous groups, task forces, and other coordination efforts led by federal agencies, states, international organizations, or academics. Furthermore, federal officials reported a number of interagency partnerships directly related to their harmful algae work, such as NIEHS' and NSF's collaboration since 2005 to jointly fund research projects. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu Oct 20 12:14:32 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 12:14:32 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Sacramento Bee LTE on tunnels "take" permit/Fitch Ratings Downgrades Westlands' Next Bond Sale/Reclamation charged with wasting $32 million on Klamath irrigators In-Reply-To: <55f9b4ae-687a-ebcb-44d1-9874589c5c61@gmail.com> References: <55f9b4ae-687a-ebcb-44d1-9874589c5c61@gmail.com> Message-ID: <01BBD1D7-7E26-4F71-B0BA-98414101B6FB@fishsniffer.com> Good Morning Here are my latest three pieces. The first is today's LTE in the Sacramento Bee about the Department of Water Resources applying for an "incidental take" permit to kill endangered species. The second is a fishsniffer.com article about the Westands Water District bond ratings being downgraded by Fitch Ratings. The third is a daily kos piece on the Inspector General's report about Reclamation wasting $32 million on Klamath irrigator subsidies. Thanks Dan http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article109232707.html State applies for tunnels permit Re ?Brown?s projects doomed?? (Capitol & California, Dan Walters, Oct. 16): Gov. Jerry Brown?s legacy project, the controversial California WaterFix, is becoming increasingly unpopular among Californians, since it could be one of the most environmentally destructive public works projects in state history. Brown and other state officials have constantly claimed the Delta tunnels project will ?restore? the Delta ecosystem, but they revealed their real plans Oct. 7 when the administration applied for a permit to kill Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt and other endangered and threatened species with the project. The Department of Water Resources submitted an ?incidental intake? application for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in alleged ?compliance? with the California Endangered Species Act in order to build and operate the tunnels. The tunnels project won?t restore the Delta, but will only drive these struggling fish populations into extinction while costing the ratepayers and taxpayers nearly $16 billion. DAN BACHER, SACRAMENTO 2. http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/10/19/fitch-ratings-downgrades-westland-water-districts-next-bond-sale/ Photo of Hoopa Valley Tribe protest against Westlands Water District's attacks on the Trinity River by Dan Bacher. Fitch Ratings Downgrades Westland Water District's Next Bond Sale by Dan Bacher It looks like the politically powerful Westlands Water District, one of the main backers of Governor Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels and Congressional legislation to eviscerate protections for Sacramento River Chinook salmon and Delta smelt, is in more financial trouble. Fitch Ratings downgraded the scheduled October 26 bond sale by Westlands from 'AA-' to 'A+'. Among the issues facing Westlands Water District, Fitch cites shrinking irrigated acreage, previous financial obligations, and the potential for increased ?leveraging? to pay for the Delta Tunnels," according to Restore the Delta (RTD). The downgrade reflects Fitch's view that district operations face increased pressure over time," reported Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway Company, on October 17. "Despite improvements to the district's debt profile following this transaction and potentially lower leveraging related to a drainage settlement with the U.S. than previous estimates, the prospect of ongoing escalation in district charges coupled with probable declines in irrigated acreage heightens concentration risk and affordability concern." The statement includes a warning that overcommitting to the California WaterFix could push the rating even lower. ?Public reports now estimate the district's share of future costs of the California Fix at $2.5 billion? Significant further leverage by the district in support of the California Fix could apply downward pressure to the ratings," the Business Wire reported. Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Restore the Delta executive director, quipped, ?Bond ratings agencies are like Mom and Dad. Westlands is asking to raise the limit on their credit card again, despite questionable earnings potential. At some point Mom and Dad get out the scissors." ?Tunnel proponents cannot demonstrate how $17 billion, before cost overruns, will be raised to build the Delta Tunnels. The public does not have a completed and vetted finance plan for the project to examine. When asked who commits to paying the bill, all the water districts point to someone else," she said. "What is clear is that ?someone else? includes federal taxpayers, California taxpayers, Southern California and Silicon Valley property taxpayers, and urban water ratepayers. These folks will end up subsidizing large agricultural interests like Westlands growers," Barrigan-Parrilla concluded. The downgrading follows a huge financial scandal that Westlands has been enmeshed in. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on March 10, 2016 charged Westlands, California?s largest agricultural water district, with ?misleading investors about its financial condition as it issued a $77 million bond offering." In addition to charging the district, the SEC also charged its general manager Thomas Birmingham and former assistant general manager Louie David Ciapponi with misleading investors about its financial condition. ?Birmingham jokingly referred to these transactions as ?a little Enron accounting? when describing them to the board of directors, which is comprised of Westlands customers,? the SEC reported. The SEC said Westlands agreed to pay $125,000 to settle the charges, making it only the second municipal issuer to pay a financial penalty in an SEC enforcement action. Birmingham agreed to pay a penalty of $50,000 and Ciapponi agreed to pay a penalty of $20,000 to settle the charges against them. ?The undisclosed accounting transactions, which a manager referred to as ?a little Enron accounting,? benefited customers but left investors in the dark about Westlands Water District?s true financial condition,? said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC Enforcement Division. ?Issuers must be truthful with investors and we will seek to deter such misconduct through sanctions, including penalties against municipal issuers in appropriate circumstances.? For more information, go to: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/10/1499271/-Federal-SEC-Charges-Westlands-Water-District-for-Enron-Accounting 3. http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/16/1583352/-Klamath-Irrigators-Illegal-Piggy-Bank-Broken-Up Photo of Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River by Dan Bacher. Inspector General charges Reclamation with "wasting" $32 million on Klamath irrigators by Dan Bacher Federal auditors have found that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) wasted $32 million intended for fish and wildlife and drought relief in the Klamath Basin on subsidies for irrigators. This scandal takes place as the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley Tribes, recreational anglers, commercial fishing families and river and coastal communities are suffering from the big cultural and economic loss caused by low numbers of returning salmon on the Klamath River this year, the result of decades of mismanagement by the state and federal governments. The misspending is a revealed in a new audit report that confirms charges leveled last year by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). ?We found that USBR did not have the legal authority to enter into the cooperative agreement, resulting in $32.2 million in wasted funds spent by KWAPA (Klamath Water and Power Agency )under the agreement,? wrote Mary L. Kendall, Deputy Inspector General for the Office of Inspector General, in the audit report dated October 11, 2016. The report found that the program had done little to restore endangered coho salmon, Lost River suckers and shortnose suckers, as it was intended to do. Reclamation disputes the Inspector General?s findings. ?Reclamation maintains that the reimbursement program has been an important tool in dealing with water issues in an over-allocated basin,? Reclamation claimed in a written statement. In a news release, PEER described the arrangement between Reclamation and KWAPA as the ?Klamath Irrigators? Illegal Piggy Bank.? ?While the payments have ended, Reclamation refuses to change its practices to prevent future abuse or to recoup moneys illegally spent,? according to PEER, (www.peer.org/...) The Klamath Water and Power Agency was a water and power authority in Klamath Falls, Oregon that received water from federal water projects in northern California and southern Oregon. KWAPA was forced to close its doors on March 31, 2006 due to ?disorganization? and complaints filed by PEER. (ktvl.com/...) The Klamath River watershed ? and its precious salmon and steelhead populations ? have been devastated by a series of droughts in recent years. Over the past several years, Reclamation, under pressure from Tribes, fishermen and environmentalists, has released supplemental cold water flows from Trinity Reservoir into the Trinity River to stop a massive fish kill on the lower Klamath like the one that ravaged the river in September 2002. During that fish kill, the largest of its kind in U.S. history, an estimated 35,000 to 68,000 salmon perished. PEER said the IG report details how Reclamation diverted $32 million in federal funds intended for drought contingency planning and helping struggling fish populations: In a ?waste of funds? wholly lacking in any legal authority; Paying for KWAPA salaries, fringe benefits, rent, travel and other expenses whose benefits flowed ?primarily to irrigator contractors rather than fish and wildlife,? including $4.2 million for uses that could not be supported with documentation or were outright ?unallowable?; and By modifying the KWAPA contract ?19 times to expand the scope of activities? and extend the original payment program from 2008 through September 30, 2015. The Bureau rejects these findings ? so the IG is ?kicking this intra- agency dispute upstairs? in Interior to the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget for resolution, according to PEER. ?Basically, the Bureau of Reclamation became an illicit ATM for favored special interests,? stated PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein. ?To add injury to insult, these improper subsidies were used to aggravate environmental damage by draining shrinking groundwater supplies to benefit irrigators.? Dinerstein emphasized that these illegal payments would be continuing if Reclamation employees had not blown the whistle. The whistleblower complaint from two Reclamation biologists filed through PEER prodded the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to order Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell to address the illegal diversion of funds and how her agency would remedy identified violations. ?That answer to the Special Counsel was due back in August of 2015 but Reclamation, on the Secretary?s behalf, has obtained extensions totaling 15 months,? said Dinerstein. ?Reclamation is circling its wagons to defend the potentially criminal conduct by its own managers,?said Dinerstein, pointing to the Anti- Deficiency Act that forbids expenditures not authorized by any appropriation and is enforced by criminal fines and/or imprisonment for up to two years. ?We will keep pressing for some accountability to taxpayers from Reclamation?s multi-year, multi-million dollar illegal money-laundering operation.? Jim McCarthy, Communications Director & Southern Oregon Program Manager for WaterWatch, pointed out that not only was this program apparently illegal and wasted millions,but the resulting lack of water on the Klamath?s wildlife refuges, which the program in question was created to provide, ?actually killed huge numbers of wildlife in recent years.? In fact, seventeen conservation groups sent a letter to Interior Secretary Jewell on October 13 asking for emergency water deliveries for the Klamath refuges to reduce the risk of yet another waterfowl die-off, said McCarthy. The letter states, ?As you are aware, since 2012, tens of thousands of birds on these refuges have died for lack of water resulting from allocation decisions made within the Department of the Interior. When few wetland acres are available on these refuges due to lack of water, large numbers of waterfowl pack together during migration periods, leading to lethal disease outbreaks. Refuge staff estimated that some 20,000 birds perished this way in 2014. Similar conditions on these refuges sparked massive waterfowl die-offs in 2012 and 2013." Mike Orcutt, Fisheries Director of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, said the water bank created under the agreement between Reclamation and KWAPA was supposed to improve water quality and the fishery in the Klamath Basin, but that didn?t happen, according to the IG report. ?Looking to the future, the Tribe receives their money for fish restoration from the same budget and the budget has been flatlined. We get the aftermath of that flatlined budget,? he said. Another potential impact is that this scandal could impact the trust in the Bureau by Congress and make it harder for similar future agreements to be funded. ?You?re going to be hard-pressed to get the money if you don?t use the funds for what you were supposed to,? Orcutt told the Eureka Times- Standard. (www.times-standard.com/...) On July 29, the Hoopa Valley Tribe filed a lawsuit against the federal government for violations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) over management actions that have imperiled Coho salmon on the Klamath River. The Tribe filed the litigation against the Bureau of Reclamation, the same agency involved in the wasting of $32 million, and the National Marine Fisheries Service in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland Division, to protect the Coho salmon, listed as an endangered species under the ESA. The Trinity River, the largest tributary of the Klamath, runs through the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation. The Hoopa lawsuit is expected to be followed by several other lawsuits, including litigation by the Yurok Tribe, Karuk Tribe and Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations (PCFFA), Institute for Fisheries Resources, Klamath Riverkeeper and Earthjustice. (www.dailykos.com/...) Hopefully, this illegal spending of $32 million in federal funds to further subsidize already heavily-subsidized agribusiness interests will result in criminal convictions if the allegations by PEER are proven true. This is not the first time that state and government officials have diverted millions of dollars designed to restore fish and wildlife for other purposes. For example, the Department of Interior?s Inspector General earlier this year opened an investigation into the possible illegal use of millions of dollars by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) in preparing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Governor Jerry Brown?s controversial Delta Tunnels Plan. (www.counterpunch.org/...) The investigation resulted from a complaint PEER filed on the behalf of a Bureau of Reclamation employee on February 19, 2016. The complaint, made public in a statement from PEER on April 11, details how a funding agreement with DWR is ?illegally siphoning off funds that are supposed to benefit fish and wildlife to a project that will principally benefit irrigators? under the California Water Fix, the newest name for the Delta Tunnels plan. The Delta Tunnels project is deeply connected to the Klamath River watershed. The two 35-mile long tunnels under the Delta would hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter- run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species. The project would also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers, a fishery that for thousands of years has played an integral part in the culture, religion and food supply of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley Tribes. Read the IG audit report Look at still pending probe from the Office of Special Counsel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: img_3379_1-1.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 46616 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: klamath.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 126306 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Oct 21 13:07:59 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2016 20:07:59 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Water Deeply: Salmon Still Under Threat Due to Mechanical Issues at Shasta Dam References: <1162619653.525808.1477080479276.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1162619653.525808.1477080479276@mail.yahoo.com> https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2016/10/21/salmon-still-under-threat-due-to-mechanical-issues-at-shasta-dam Salmon Still Under Threat Due to Mechanical Issues at Shasta Dam A temperature control device at Shasta Dam is designed to ensure cold water is released downstream for fish, but the device doesn?t appear to work properly when lake levels are?low. | WRITTEN BYAlastair Bland | PUBLISHED ON???Oct. 21, 2016 | READ TIMEApprox. 6 minutes | Warm water released from Shasta Dam has been blamed for high rates of mortality in the Sacramento River?s winter-run Chinook salmon in 2014 and 2015.Rich Pedroncelli, APFOR WELL OVER?a decade, federal officials have failed to fix a mechanical flaw in the water outflow system of Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River that fishery and river advocates say has caused millions of fertilized salmon eggs and juvenile fish to die in lethally warm river?water.This year, things are looking?OK, if not good, for the Sacramento River?s winter-run Chinook salmon. The winter rains that fell over Northern California filled reservoirs, including Lake Shasta ? the source of much of the cold water that spawning salmon in the river downstream depend on during and after?spawning.But in 2014 and 2015, nearly all the eggs laid and fertilized by the endangered fish were lost ? partly, critics say, because a contraption known by dam operators as the ?temperature control device? was leaking. This caused relatively warm water to flow out the dam during the winter-run?s spawning period, a critical time of the year when the river should be no warmer than?56F?58F?(13C?14C). Instead, the water leaving the dam was several degrees warmer ? a death sentence for developing Chinook?eggs.The?TCD, as it?s often called, is a huge metal box that was bolted over the intake pipes of Shasta Dam about 20 years ago. Its front side, 300ft (90m) in height, consists of numerous shutters at different depths that can be opened and closed as needed to allow water of varying temperatures to exit the dam. The system, which cost $80 million to build and install between 1995 and 1997, came as?part of an initiative?to make the state?s main water supply system, the Central Valley Project, more ecologically friendly. The?TCD?is designed so dam operators with the?U.S.?Bureau of Reclamation can control the temperature of the water in the Sacramento River and, when salmon are spawning, ensure the river is cold?enough.The problem is, the device leaks around the edges. This makes it, at times, impossible for dam operators to keep water temperatures downstream of the reservoir below the lethal threshold for salmon eggs and larvae. In the extreme drought years of 2014 and 2015, for instance, the reservoir was severely depleted. There was icy-cold water deep in the lake, but the leaky?TCD?was unable to isolate that water into the outflow, through the dam and into the river downstream. Instead, warm water bled through the corners of the device, diluting the cold water and making it too warm. At least 95 percent, and possibly more than 98 percent, of the eggs laid and fertilized by the winter-run Chinook were cooked. The winter run, which historically saw spawning returns of several hundred thousand fish, is now at the edge of?extinction.A young Chinook salmon, called a smolt, is displayed. Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon numbers are critical after nearly all the fertilized eggs were wiped out by warm waters in 2014 and 2015. (Rich Pedroncelli,?AP)Federal officials and environmentalists have known about this problematic leakage since at least 2004. It was that year that Rodney McInnis, then the regional administrator for the United States? federal fisheries agency, told longtime water policy activist Tom Stokely in a July 23 letter, ?NOAAFisheries has become aware that the Temperature Control Device at Shasta Dam is currently not operating at optimum efficiency and needs?repair.?But in an interview with Water Deeply, Ron Milligan, the operations manager for the Central Valley Project, says the?TCD?is not actually supposed to be airtight to begin with. He says the whole contraption might implode against the face of the dam if water wasn?t able to leak in around the edges, which effectively relieves pressure from the?outside.?The question is, is it leaking excessively such that it?s actually defeating the purpose of having gates at different elevations?? Milligan?asks.He explains that it isn?t clear that warm water is leaking in where it shouldn?t be or that cold water is leaking through during months of the year when there is no need to release it into the river. Such circumstances would result in not enough cold water left when it is needed most by spawning?fish.Though Milligan says the device is working pretty much as designed, he also says that the device doesn?t work optimally if the lake?s level drops too?low.?This year, the device has worked wonderfully,? he says. That?s mainly because heavy rains in the winter filled the lake to higher than it?s been in years, Milligan explains. He says the device failed to work in 2014 and 2015 because it didn?t rain enough. This caused the boundary between the warm and cold water to descend lower than usual ? to below the level of the big steel box?s middle?gates.?The lake was so low that we couldn?t even use the higher gates [on the?TCD],? Milligan?says.All of which essentially seems to mean that the device does not work properly in all conditions ? if there is a drought and Lake Shasta fails to fill up, the device cannot be relied upon to maintain suitable salmon spawning?conditions.?The?TCD?is obviously not working as intended because they?ve had to jerry-rig it with a tarp,? says Stokely, who serves as the salmon and water policy analyst for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s?Associations.He?s referring to what happened after the disastrous loss of winter-run salmon in 2014. A year later, the Bureau of Reclamation, hoping to prevent a repeat of the event, draped an enormous tarpaulin over the middle portion of the device to keep warm water from leaking in. The idea was to stop or slow the leakage. But the effort came short of saving that year?s winter-run salmon. Just like the year before, nearly every winter-run Chinook egg laid and fertilized in the gravel beds between Redding and Red Bluff was destroyed in?2015.So is there a solution that would keep water sufficiently cold for spawning salmon in the Sacramento River even during hot drought years ? which are going to become more and more of a norm in the future? Possibly. Shasta Dam actually has another water intake system that leads to the river. It is located much deeper in the lake than the intake system currently being used. At this depth, it is almost always immersed in icy cold?water.However, this lower intake system bypasses the power turbines that the other intake system is connected to. Thus, using this intake ? even though it can mean pure, cold water flowing over the salmon habitat below ? comes with the cost of generating no electricity, which the Bureau of Reclamation sells to power providers in Redding, Roseville, Sacramento and other parts of northern California. So, the dam operators rarely use?it.But they do sometimes. Milligan says in the spring of 2015 the lower intake was briefly used as part of a strategy to conserve cold water in the lake for the fish. However, the approach?failed.Environmentalists have argued that, even in 2014 and 2015, the federal agency could have avoided the huge mortality events experienced by the winter-run Chinook ? even in spite of the leaking?TCD.?We know when these fish come back, we know where they spawn, we know how much cold water they will need to spawn, and we know it gets hot in the Central Valley,? says Jon Rosenfield, a senior scientist with the Bay Institute. ?The bureau has a big reservoir to store this water,? he said, but instead the agency released too much water to its customers early in the year and failed to retain enough cold water in?storage.He believes there simply isn?t a will within the agency to protect fish. Rosenfield and other environmental advocates say the agency?s top priority is delivering water to farmers even though the Central Valley Project Improvement Act and other laws make very clear that fish and ecosystem protection must be at least as high on the Bureau?s priority?list. About the Author Alastair Bland Alastair Bland is a freelance journalist in San Francisco, CA. He can be reached at?allybland79 at gmail.com?or via?Twitter. Never miss an update. Sign up for our newsletter to receive weekly updates, special reports and featured insights as we cover one of the most critical issues of our time.??SUBSCRIBERelated ArticlesExperts Weigh In: California?s Biggest?Water?Policy PrioritiesAugust 29th, 2016Winnemem Wintu Journey Highlights Struggling California FisheriesOctober 7th, 2016Wallace Weir:?A?New Beginning in California's River ManagementOctober 18th, 2016Happy 10th Birthday?to?California's Most?Ambitious?Water?ProjectOctober 6th, 2016Meet the Minds: Deborah Bloome on Utilizing Local?Water?ResourcesOctober 19th, 2016How One California Tribe Is Coping With DroughtOctober 17th, 2016Ten Experts?to?Watch on Urban?Water?Policy?and?InfrastructureOctober 12th, 2016Why the?Arctic?Is Central?to?the Earth's Climate SystemOctober 19th, 2016 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Oct 21 13:17:14 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2016 20:17:14 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Conference: AquAlliance Water for Seven Generations Will California Squander or Protect It? References: <222675719.546026.1477081034969.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <222675719.546026.1477081034969@mail.yahoo.com> This is a great conference. ?It's not your typical water conference. ?I recommend that you attend. ?You can also drink beer because it's at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico!? Tom Stokely ? AquAlliance Water for Seven Generations Will California Squander or Protect It? I hope you will attend AquAlliance's prestigious conference that will be held on?Thursday, November 17th?and Friday, November 18th, 2016 at Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico.??The conference is tailored to reach policy makers, activists, academics, and agencies by providing valuable historical, scientific, legal, political, and visionary information regarding current and planned threats to the Sacramento River?s watershed and the Delta's ecosystems, aquatic and terrestrial species, economies, and communities. It will also provide specific scenarios in which these vital waters can be sustained into the future. In California?s short, 160-year history, it developed massive water supplies that propelled its economy into the global top ten, but with devastating environmental consequences.?Water for Seven Generations?will provide professionals and novices with a valuable opportunity to consider what brought the state to such a precarious and unsustainable position and what credible and economically viable possibilities exist that could move our collective thinking and behavior toward a?Seven Generations?reality.?November 17th?will cover surface water and includes panels or sections that will cover Science, Flow & Fish, Climate, Drought, and Storage, Exports & Tunnels. A no host bar/reception and poster session will take place after the speakers conclude. November 18th?will cover groundwater and includes panels or sections that will cover Science, Owens Valley, Water Transfers, Law, and the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The almost complete program is found at:?http://www.aqualliance.net/water-conference-2016/program-2016/ Registration/check-in starts at 8 a.m. each day with the conference beginning at 9 a.m. More information is found in the attached flier and at:?http://www.aqualliance.net/water-conference-2016/. -- Barbara Vlamis Executive Director AquAlliance P.O. Box 4024 Chico, CA 95927 (530) 895-9420 www.aqualliance.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sat Oct 22 13:01:30 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016 13:01:30 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] ICYMI: Corruption, Dead Birds & Endangered Coho in Klamath Basin - Inspector General says Reclamation wasted $32.2 million on Klamath irrigators In-Reply-To: <01BBD1D7-7E26-4F71-B0BA-98414101B6FB@fishsniffer.com> References: <55f9b4ae-687a-ebcb-44d1-9874589c5c61@gmail.com> <01BBD1D7-7E26-4F71-B0BA-98414101B6FB@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: Good Morning I know the election is on everybody's minds, but this is a must-read story about corruption, dead birds and endangered coho salmon in the Klamath Basin. Thanks Dan http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/16/1583352/-Klamath-Irrigators-Illegal-Piggy-Bank-Broken-Up http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/10/20/18792496.php Photo of Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River by Dan Bacher. Inspector General says Reclamation wasted $32.2 million on Klamath irrigators by Dan Bacher Federal auditors have found that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) wasted $32.2 million intended for fish and wildlife and drought relief in the Klamath Basin on subsidies for irrigators. This scandal takes place as the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley Tribes, recreational anglers, commercial fishing families and river and coastal communities are suffering from the big cultural and economic loss caused by low numbers of returning salmon on the Klamath River this year, the result of decades of mismanagement by the state and federal governments. The misspending is a revealed in a new audit report that confirms charges leveled last year by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). In a news release, PEER described the arrangement between Reclamation and KWAPA as the ?Klamath Irrigators? Illegal Piggy Bank.? (http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/klamath-irrigators-illegal-piggy-bank-broken-up.html ) ?We found that USBR did not have the legal authority to enter into the cooperative agreement, resulting in $32.2 million in wasted funds spent by KWAPA (Klamath Water and Power Agency )under the agreement,? wrote Mary L. Kendall, Deputy Inspector General for the Office of Inspector General, in the audit report dated October 11, 2016. The report found that the program had done little to help endangered coho salmon, Lost River suckers and shortnose suckers, as it was intended to do. The IG report details how Reclamation diverted $32.2 million in federal funds intended for drought contingency planning and helping struggling fish populations: ? In a ?waste of funds? wholly lacking in any legal authority; ? Paying for KWAPA salaries, fringe benefits, rent, travel and other expenses whose benefits flowed ?primarily to irrigator contractors rather than fish and wildlife,? including $4.2 million for uses that could not be supported with documentation or were outright ?unallowable?; and ? By modifying the KWAPA contract ?19 times to expand the scope of activities? and extend the original payment program from 2008 through September 30, 2015. Reclamation disputes the Inspector General?s findings. ?Reclamation maintains that the reimbursement program has been an important tool in dealing with water issues in an over-allocated basin,? Reclamation claimed in a written statement. The Klamath Water and Power Agency was a water and power authority in Klamath Falls, Oregon that received water from federal water projects in northern California and southern Oregon. KWAPA was forced to close its doors on March 31, 2006 due to ?disorganization? and complaints filed by PEER. (http://ktvl.com/news/local/kwapa-forced-to-close-due-to-disorganization-in-klamath-county ) The Klamath River watershed ? and its precious salmon and steelhead populations ? have been devastated by a series of droughts in recent years. Over the past several years, Reclamation, under pressure from Tribes, fishermen and environmentalists, has released supplemental cold water flows from Trinity Reservoir into the Trinity River to stop a massive fish kill on the lower Klamath like the one that ravaged the river in September 2002. During that fish kill, the largest of its kind in U.S. history, an estimated 35,000 to 68,000 salmon perished. Since the Bureau rejected the audit report's findings, the IG is kicking this intra-agency dispute upstairs in Interior to the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget for resolution. ?While the payments have ended, Reclamation refuses to change its practices to prevent future abuse or to recoup moneys illegally spent,? according to PEER. ?Basically, the Bureau of Reclamation became an illicit ATM for favored special interests,? stated PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein. ?To add injury to insult, these improper subsidies were used to aggravate environmental damage by draining shrinking groundwater supplies to benefit irrigators.? Dinerstein emphasized that these illegal payments would be continuing if Reclamation employees had not blown the whistle. The whistleblower complaint from two Reclamation biologists filed through PEER prodded the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to order Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell to address the illegal diversion of funds and how her agency would remedy identified these violations. ?That answer to the Special Counsel was due back in August of 2015 but Reclamation, on the Secretary?s behalf, has obtained extensions totaling 15 months,? added Dinerstein. ?Reclamation is circling its wagons to defend the potentially criminal conduct by its own managers,?said Dinerstein, pointing to the Anti- Deficiency Act that forbids expenditures not authorized by any appropriation and is enforced by criminal fines and/or imprisonment for up to two years. ?We will keep pressing for some accountability to taxpayers from Reclamation?s multi-year, multi-million dollar illegal money-laundering operation.? Jim McCarthy, Communications Director & Southern Oregon Program Manager for WaterWatch, pointed out that not only was this program apparently illegal and wasted millions, but the resulting lack of water on the Klamath?s wildlife refuges, which the program in question was created to provide, ?actually killed huge numbers of wildlife in recent years.? In fact, seventeen conservation groups sent a letter to Interior Secretary Jewell on October 13 asking for emergency water deliveries for the Klamath refuges to reduce the risk of yet another waterfowl die-off, said McCarthy. The letter states, ?As you are aware, since 2012, tens of thousands of birds on these refuges have died for lack of water resulting from allocation decisions made within the Department of the Interior. When few wetland acres are available on these refuges due to lack of water, large numbers of waterfowl pack together during migration periods, leading to lethal disease outbreaks. Refuge staff estimated that some 20,000 birds perished this way in 2014. Similar conditions on these refuges sparked massive waterfowl die-offs in 2012 and 2013." Mike Orcutt, Fisheries Director of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, said the water bank created under the agreement between Reclamation and KWAPA was supposed to improve water quality and the fishery in the Klamath Basin, but that didn?t happen, according to the IG report. ?Looking to the future, the Tribe receives their money for fish restoration from the same budget and the budget has been flatlined. We get the aftermath of that flatlined budget,? he said. Another potential impact is that this scandal could impact the trust in the Bureau by Congress and make it harder for similar future agreements to be funded. ?You?re going to be hard-pressed to get the money if you don?t use the funds for what you were supposed to,? Orcutt told the Eureka Times- Standard. (http://www.times-standard.com/article/NJ/20161017/NEWS/161019812 ) On July 29, the Hoopa Valley Tribe filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Reclamation and the National Marine Fisheries Service in the U.S. District Court in Oakland for violations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) over management actions that have imperiled Coho salmon on the Klamath River. The Trinity River, the largest tributary of the Klamath, runs through the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation. The Hoopa lawsuit is expected to be followed by several other lawsuits, including litigation by the Yurok Tribe, Karuk Tribe and a coalition of groups, including the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations (PCFFA), Institute for Fisheries Resources, Klamath Riverkeeper and Earthjustice. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/29/1554325/-Hoopa-Valley-Tribe-Files-ESA-Lawsuit-to-Protect-Salmon ) Hopefully, this illegal spending of $32.2 million in federal funds to further subsidize already heavily-subsidized agribusiness interests will result in criminal convictions if the allegations by PEER are proven true. This is not the first time that state and government officials have diverted millions of dollars designed to restore fish and wildlife for other purposes. For example, the Department of Interior?s Inspector General earlier this year opened an investigation into the possible illegal use of millions of dollars by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) in preparing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Governor Jerry Brown?s controversial Delta Tunnels Plan. (http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/12/feds-to-probe-misuse-of-state-funds-for-jerry-browns-delta-tunnels/ The investigation resulted from a complaint PEER filed on the behalf of a Bureau of Reclamation employee on February 19, 2016. The complaint, made public in a statement from PEER on April 11, details how a funding agreement with DWR is ?illegally siphoning off funds that are supposed to benefit fish and wildlife to a project that will principally benefit irrigators? under the California Water Fix, the newest name for the Delta Tunnels plan. The Delta Tunnels project is deeply connected to the Klamath River watershed. The two 35-mile long tunnels under the Delta would hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter- run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species. The project would also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers, a fishery that for thousands of years has played an integral part in the culture, religion and food supply of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley Tribes. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: klamath.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 126306 bytes Desc: not available URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Tue Oct 25 10:35:15 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2016 10:35:15 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for October 21, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update October 21, 2016. This week our crews mapped 372 redds (1,328 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ? Check out this video on YouTube. Salmon Fighting You can see a large male Chinook Salmon fighting several smaller males for the rights to spawn with a female. This video was taken by C. Laskodi near Big Bar, CA. ? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9471 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Oct 25 15:53:50 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2016 22:53:50 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Save the Date: Sat 03 Dec, River Restoration Symposium In-Reply-To: <01b501d22f0e$39aa85d0$acff9170$@sisqtel.net> References: <01b501d22f0e$39aa85d0$acff9170$@sisqtel.net> Message-ID: <1843374797.869942.1477436030628@mail.yahoo.com> From: river_restoration-bounces at lists.berkeley.edu [mailto:river_restoration-bounces at lists.berkeley.edu] On Behalf Of Riverlab UC Berkeley Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 2:16 PM To: River-lab Departmental Subject: Save the Date: Sat 03 Dec, River Restoration Symposium ?You are invited to the 12th Annual Berkeley River Restoration Symposium Saturday 03 December 9a-1p, Rm 112 Wurster Hall. This year?s symposium features a keynote talk by Scott McBain on ?Restoring fluvial process and ecology below dams: lessons over two decades?, along with presentations of original graduate student research on a variety of topics, and a panel discussion on issues raised by the presentations and new developments in the field.? The symposium is free and open to the public, but registration is required. We will publish and announce the registration link at a later date. Keynote talk: Restoring fluvial process and ecology below dams: lessons over two decades Most of our major rivers are dammed, and ecosystem restoration must be undertaken in this context.? How can we manage flow, sediment, and channel morphology on such highly regulated rivers to restore downstream fluvial processes, form, and biota?? Based on over two decades of experience, Scott McBain describes the application and progress on this approach, drawing from examples on the Trinity River, San Joaquin River, Tuolumne River and others. He concludes with a discussion on upcoming scientific and management challenges to future application of this approach. Speaker: Scott McBain is a fluvial geomorphologist with 25 years? experience working on rivers in the western US. His specialty is developing flow and sediment management regimes downstream of dams that improve the physical processes and form necessary to rehabilitate and improve river ecosystems. Scott has participated in numerous large-scale river rehabilitation efforts, including the Trinity River in northern California, and the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers in the Central Valley of California, and the central Platte River in Nebraska. Scott serves as President of McBain Associates, a consulting firm in Arcata CA that specializes in regulated river rehabilitation. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From GHughes at foe.org Mon Oct 24 15:47:59 2016 From: GHughes at foe.org (Hughes, Gary) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2016 22:47:59 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Nov 4 Klamath Climate Meeting in Orleans Message-ID: <77A81C2AB01EE748A51B40A059517A119467A886@maildag2c.NETWORKALLIANCE.NET> A community meeting on California climate policy will be held in Orleans, on the Klamath River in Humboldt County, on Friday, November 4. This meeting will be of great interest to rural residents of Northern California. Issues regarding environmental justice, climate equity, scientific integrity, and community participation in California climate policy will be front and center in this workshop. This community meeting is part of a series of meetings being convened state-wide by the California Air Resources Board Environmental Justice Advisory Committee. This will be an excellent opportunity for those interested in contributing to the 2016 Scoping Plan Update to help shape the future of California climate policy. This meeting will include presentations and discussion groups featuring the major topics of the State?s climate plan. LEARN about the state?s goals and approach to addressing climate change SHARE your thoughts about what matters most to you and your community CONNECT with programs that are already benefitting communities that need it most Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1785970748328845/ Details: Community meeting to learn about & help shape new CA climate plan which impacts water resources, prescribed fire, fisheries, food security and cultural resources. Lunch provided. WHERE / WHEN: Karuk community room in Orleans from noon until 3 PM WHO: Karuk Tribe's DNR, CA Air Resources Board, Klamath Riverkeeper, MKWC & Kari Norgaard w/ University of Oregon. WHAT / WHY NOW: The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) will be guided by a new Scoping Plan. California Air Resources Board's staff and Environmental Justice Advisory Committee will be in Orleans to share information and seek public input to develop the plan. Please join us for presentations and to provide input. Lunch provided. For more info, visit: https://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/ejac/ejac.htm [cid:2D14CEC1-6DD6-4B3E-8171-90A6E40247C1] PLEASE SHARE AND DISTRIBUTE ? Thank you! --- Gary Graham Hughes Senior California Advocacy Campaigner Friends of the Earth - US Email: ghughes at foe.org Phone: +1-510-900-8807 --- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 24305 bytes Desc: image001.png URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ClimateChange_Flyer_WithBleed.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 1651249 bytes Desc: ClimateChange_Flyer_WithBleed.pdf URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Oct 27 11:53:35 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2016 18:53:35 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] More on Water for Seven Generations: Will California Squander or Protect It? References: <236439601.2796272.1477594415777.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <236439601.2796272.1477594415777@mail.yahoo.com> This is a great conference. ?Advance registration ends November 4. ?Save yourself $20 and register early!?Tom Stokely?Salmon and Water Policy AnalystPacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and?Institute for Fisheries Resources530-524-0315?tstokely at att.net? Water Colleagues, AquAlliance's second quadrennial water conference is fast approaching. The Program is almost done, so check it out athttp://www.aqualliance.net/water-conference-2016/program-2016/ There are so many valuable topics and quality speakers that have never been in one event in the NorthState before. All of the speakers relate to what we are doing to protect the Sacramento River, its tributaries, and the surrounding communities and orchards from massive water transfers and groundwater extraction. I really hope you are able to attend and encourage others to also join us. A flier and registration form are attached. Some highlights include: Day 1, November 17th * The Sites Reservoir panel will provide the public with multiple voices and views instead of it all being slanted in one direction or the other.? * There are a number of great fish and wildlife presentations in the morning such as: ??? ?How (not) to prevent extinction of winter run Chinook salmon? ??? ?The Giant Garter snake: A Tale of Persistence in an Uncertain Waterscape? ??? ?Status and Ecology of the southern Distinct Population Segment of the North American Green Sturgeon.* ?San Francisco Bay: The freshwater-starved estuary? This will help clarify the reason water must flow down the river and through the estuary as reported in the Bay Institute's new report - that it isn't "wasting to the sea." Day 2, November 18th * Attorney Roger Moore covering climate change in the Feather River Watershed and how it plays into the FERC re-licensing lawsuit that he is involved with with Butte County. This also is a cautionary tale for any county that seeks to host a reservoir. * Geologist Kit Custis is another new face who will discuss the interaction of streams and groundwater, groundwater conditions like you have never heard it before, and how it all relates to implementing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. * Attorney Adam Keats will discuss??Lessons from Paso Robles: Why all groundwater sustainability agencies will not be equal, and how to keep the public in control of these public agencies? * The Owens Valley will be covered again with four diverse speakers: Harry Williams,?Big Pine Paiute Tribe; Mark Lacey, cattleman; Sally Manning, botanist; Daniel Prichett, botanist. The main conference page is?http://www.aqualliance.net/water-conference-2016/ -- Barbara Vlamis Executive Director AquAlliance P.O. Box 4024 Chico, CA 95927 (530) 895-9420 www.aqualliance.net PRIVILEGE AND CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law as confidential communications. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication or other use of a transmission received in error is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, immediately notify us at (530) 895-9420. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Oct 26 14:55:10 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2016 14:55:10 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] Another Inspector General Report Slams Illegal Irrigator Subsidies - Fish & Wildlife funds mismanaged on the Klamath and Delta In-Reply-To: References: <55f9b4ae-687a-ebcb-44d1-9874589c5c61@gmail.com> <01BBD1D7-7E26-4F71-B0BA-98414101B6FB@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <0DBBD6F9-D548-4ED6-B7E5-005AA571DB6A@fishsniffer.com> Good Afternoon Here's my latest piece covering the latest Inspector General's report about the use of taxpayers money designated for fish and wildlife to instead benefit already heavily subsidized irrigators. Thanks Dan http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/25/1586696/-Another-Inspector-General-Report-Slams-Illegal-Irrigator-Subsidies The Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River is one of four dams slated for removal on the river system. Photo by Dan Bacher. Another Inspector General Report Slams Illegal Irrigator Subsidies - Fish & Wildlife funds mismanaged on the Klamath and Delta by Dan Bacher Has the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation become a rogue agency within the Department of Interior? It?s beginning to look like that, based on recent Inspector General reports documenting the loss of millions of taxpayer dollars through Reclamation mismanagement in the Klamath Basin and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. On the heels of an Inspector General (IG) audit finding that Reclamation has ?wasted? $32.2 million in illegal payments to Klamath Basin irrigators, a new federal report reveals that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has cost taxpayers millions of dollars by failing to collect moneys owed by Klamath Basin irrigators for nearly a decade in a $20 million-plus project to reduce harm to federally listed fish caused by the Klamath Project?s main diversion canal, the ? A Canal.? The audits have spurred calls by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and other groups to hold individual Reclamation officials accountable and to reform the embattled agency. The latest audit by the Office of Inspector General (IG) for the Department of Interior, dated September 27, 2016 but released this month, concludes that Reclamation never collected ?repayment of millions of dollars of costs incurred to design, construct, and operate and maintain new head gates and fish screens? within the vast Klamath Project. These gates and screens are intended to keep federally protected fish ?in the river and out of the Klamath project irrigation canals,? according to the IG report. The report from Michael P. Colombo, Western Regional Manager for Audits, Inspections and Evaluations, made the following recommendations to David Murillo, MId-Pacific Regional Director, Bureau of Reclamation: We recommend that USBR: 1. Identify USBR?s total costs to design and construct the A-Canal head gates and fish screens; 2. Identify USBR?s total cost to operate and maintain the A-Canal head gates and fish screens from 2003 to 2011; 3. Promptly notify the Klamath Irrigation District of its obligation to repay the cost to design, construct, and operate and maintain the A- Canal head gates and fish screens and the total amount that must be repaid, as determined by USBR in Recommendations 1 and 2; and 4. Negotiate and establish a repayment contract with the Klamath Irrigation District to secure timely repayment of USBR?s cost to design, construct, and operate and maintain the A-Canal head gates and fish screens, as determined by USBR in Recommendations 1 and 2. Colombo asked Murillo to provide a written response to this report within 30 days. Jim McCarthy, Communications Director & Southern Oregon Program Manager for WaterWatch, commented on the significance of the IG?s report. ?Under the terms of a 1954 contract for these facilities between the feds and the locals, those costs should have been absorbed by irrigators. Indeed, according to the letter, Reclamation was advised by the Office of the Solicitor in 2009 that recovering these costs would be the appropriate action,? said McCarthy. ?Instead, Reclamation apparently did nothing to recover this considerable expenditure as advised. According to the IG?s letter, Reclamation hoped this debt could be swept under the rug in the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA), which finally expired in 2015,? said McCarthy. In another audit report dated October 11, 2016, the IG found that Reclamation improperly diverted $32 million in federal funds intended for drought contingency planning and helping endangered coho salmon and sucker populations to a Klamath irrigator?s group over several years. ?We found that USBR did not have the legal authority to enter into the cooperative agreement, resulting in $32.2 million in wasted funds spent by KWAPA (Klamath Water and Power Agency )under the agreement,? wrote Mary L. Kendall, Deputy Inspector General for the Office of Inspector General, in the audit report. The report found that the program had done little to help endangered coho salmon, Lost River suckers and shortnose suckers, as it was intended to do. The Klamath Water and Power Agency was a water and power authority in Klamath Falls, Oregon that received water from federal water projects in northern California and southern Oregon. KWAPA was forced to close its doors on March 31, 2006 due to ?disorganization? and complaints filed by PEER. You can read my piece on that report here: www.counterpunch.org/? Reclamation has not yet responded to the IG audit regarding head gates and fish screens, but it disputes the IG report on the $32 million wasted on irrigator subsidies and ?refuses to change its practices or recoup moneys illegally spent,? PEER said. ?Reclamation maintains that the reimbursement program has been an important tool in dealing with water issues in an over-allocated basin,? the Bureau claimed in a written statement. Interior appears to to be disarray as these scandals unfold. This intra-agency dispute regarding the misspent $32 million has been referred to Interior?s Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget for resolution. ?But that post has been vacant since 2014,? PEER points out. Meanwhile, Kristen Sarri, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, departed Interior on October 24 for her new position as President and CEO with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. ?Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has delegated her authority to respond to a related probe by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to the Commissioner of Reclamation,? according to PEER. ?It looks like the Interior Secretary is letting the inmates run the asylum,? stated PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein. ?If the current Secretary will not impose adult supervision, we will urge that her successor commit to implementing obviously overdue reforms of the Bureau of Reclamation as a condition of confirmation.? Dinerstein?s organization is representing Reclamation employees who are blowing the whistle on what she says are ?illegal and environmentally tone-deaf actions by the agency.? Dinerstein said ?other shoes are also expected to drop? on Reclamation. These include a pending IG audit of how Reclamation is allowing the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to illegally siphon off over $60 million in funds that are supposed to benefit fish and wildlife to instead prepare the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Governor Jerry Brown's controversial Delta Tunnels plan, a project that will principally benefit corporate agribusiness interests and Southern California water agencies. Whistleblower complaints funneled through PEER also prompted this pending investigation. That PEER complaint charges that: ? Those funds, over $60 million, are earmarked for fish habitat improvements under the authority of the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. However, they are instead being expended on work that ?will harm critical habitat for at least five endangered and threatened fish species. Out of millions spent not a dime went to habitat improvements;? ? The state double-billed for work it supposedly already did with an earlier $50 million grant; ? And the state collected all of the federal funds when the agreement was executed, in violation of a 50/50 matching requirement. The Delta Tunnels project, now called the California WaterFix by state and federal officials, is deeply connected to the Klamath River watershed. The two 35-mile long tunnels under the Delta would hasten the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter- run Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species. The project would also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers, a fishery that for thousands of years has played an integral part in the culture, religion and food supply of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley Tribes. You can read my piece on the ?Tunnelsgate? scandal here: www.counterpunch.org/ ... ?The unmistakable pattern in all these investigations is that Reclamation is ripping off fish and wildlife assistance to further reward already heavily subsidized irrigators, often for activities to the detriment of fish and wildlife,? concluded Dinerstein. ?Both taxpayers and the environment are utterly ill-served by current Reclamation policies and leaders. Fundamental change in Reclamation is imperative.? To fully understand the Delta Tunnels plan, you also need to recognize the deep connection between the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create so-called ?marine protected areas? in California and the California WaterFix, formerly called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP). In spite of some superficial differences, the two processes are united by their leadership, funding, greenwashing goals, racism and denial of tribal rights, junk science and numerous conflicts of interest. To read my report, Deep Regulatory Capture Exposed: The Links Between Delta Tunnels Plan & MLPA Initiative, go to: www.dailykos.com/...; Read the latest audit report Look at audit report on Reclamation illegal irrigator subsidies See related Special Counsel probe Note ongoing audit on Reclamation?s improper Delta Tunnel payments View departure of last remaining senior Interior Policy, Management and Budget official -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: klamath.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 134135 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Oct 28 07:24:59 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2016 14:24:59 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Governor's ads pan measure requiring vote on big projects References: <48412114.604950.1477664699900.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <48412114.604950.1477664699900@mail.yahoo.com> https://apnews.com/2a03539ddf684c55a10f0ddf03506f5d/Governor%27s-ads-pan-measure-requiring-vote-on-big-projects California Governor's ads pan measure requiring vote on big projects SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Gov. Jerry Brown launched television commercials Thursday urging Californians to reject a ballot measure that threatens two of his so-called legacy projects, deploying his considerable political capital against a spending-control question likely to appeal to voters. The 30-second spots feature the popular Democratic governor speaking against Proposition 53 amid the chandeliers and glossy marble of the governor's mansion. The initiative would force statewide votes on big state building projects requiring $2 billion or more in revenue bonds."It may sound OK, but it's bad for California," says Brown, who also lent his voice to recorded calls fighting the measure. His increased public involvement could signal the measure's opponents are worried it will pass.A nonpartisan state analysis has said Brown's proposals to spend $15.7 billion to build two giant tunnels to help haul water across the state and $64 billion on a high-speed rail system are the two projects that would most likely be affected.Brown has made defeating the proposition one of his priorities for Nov. 8. That includes giving more than $4 million from his leftover campaign funds.No major public polls have been released on where the ballot question stands. Its stated goal of public input on giant projects probably would resonate with voters, especially in a state known for a landmark 1970s curb on property taxes, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist at the University of Southern California.Over his years in office, Brown has been measured in meting out personal support and unused campaign funds. This election season, he also has spoken in radio ads for another state priority of his, a measure on parole.Given Brown's favorable approval rating from more than half of Californians and his available campaign funds, it makes sense he would take the lead role on defeating the initiative, Jeffe said."These projects are so important to him," she said.Steven Maviglio, spokesman for the campaign fighting the proposition, said the TV ads with Brown will run until Election Day, less than two weeks away.It's not clear if the late start of Brown's commercials will limit the impact. Californians have already returned more than 1.8 million mail-in ballots, according to Political Data Inc., which compiles the information from county offices.Both sides deny their stand is singling out the two pending megaprojects.The TV ads feature Brown arguing that the initiative would reduce local control of building projects and increase costs of projects overall.It appears comparatively few projects other than the tunnels and high-speed rail would be big enough to trigger a statewide vote, according to the nonpartisan review by the state's legislative analysis office.Dean "Dino" Cortopassi, a prosperous Stockton farmer and food processor who brought the measure to the ballot, said Proposition 53 is meant to reveal the cost of big state projects and allow voters to weigh in before paying for them."The governor, who campaigned on giving voters a voice in big state decisions, is doing everything he can to silence voters," Cortopassi said by email Thursday.So far, Cortopassi and his family have reported spending about $5 million to support the measure. Brown, the state Democratic Party, construction-industry interests and other donors have reported giving more than $15 million to defeat it.Brown's administration is pushing to launch the tunnels project and high-speed rail before he leaves office in 2018. The governor denies that he wants those projects to be a legacy of his leadership.Supporters and opponents disagree about the environmental impact of the tunnels project, which would build two giant, 35-mile conduits to more easily pipe Northern California river water south for central and Southern California cities and farms.The rail project would link Los Angeles and San Francisco with ultra-fast trains. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sat Oct 29 08:15:46 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2016 15:15:46 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Chronicle=3A_Seafood=27s_new_normal__Cali?= =?utf-8?q?fornia=27s_coastal_ecosystem_=E2=80=94_and_the_fisheries_that_d?= =?utf-8?q?epend_on_it_=E2=80=94_are_in_the_grip_of_a_huge_disruption?= References: <419946175.287114.1477754146990.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <419946175.287114.1477754146990@mail.yahoo.com> Not good... http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/california-seafood-collapse/ Seafood's new normal California's coastal ecosystem ? and the fisheries that depend on it ? are in the grip of a huge disruptionBy?Tara DugganOctober 2016Hog Island Oyster Co. employee Wilber Mejia pushes a bag of farmed oysters onto a boat during harvesting on Oct. 12. The bags are taken back to the company's Marshall headquarters, where the bivalves are prepared for sale.?Gabrielle Lurie, The ChronicleIn the shallow waters off Elk, in Mendocino County, a crew from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife dived recently to survey the area?s urchin and abalone populations. Instead of slipping beneath a canopy of leafy bull kelp, which normally darkens the ocean floor like a forest, they found a barren landscape like something out of ?The Lorax.?A single large abalone scaled a bare kelp stalk, hunting a scrap to eat, while urchins clustered atop stark gray stone that is normally striped in colorful seaweed.?When the urchins are starving and are desperate, they will the leave the reef as bare rock,? said Cynthia Catton, an environmental scientist with Fish and Wildlife. Warm seawater has prevented the growth of kelp, the invertebrates? main food source, so the urchins aren?t developing normally; the spiky shells of many are nearly empty. As a result, North Coast sea urchin divers have brought in only one-tenth of their normal haul this year.Fisher John Eiserich caught these chinook salmon on Oct. 7.?Santiago Mejia, Special to The ChronicleThe plight of urchins, abalones and the kelp forest is just one example of an extensive ongoing disruption of California?s coastal ecosystem ? and the fisheries that depend on it ? after several years of unusually warm ocean conditions and drought. Earlier this month, The Chronicle?reported?that scientists have discovered evidence in San Francisco Bay and its estuary of what is being called the planet?s sixth mass extinction, affecting species including chinook salmon and delta smelt.Baby salmon are dying by the millions in drought-warmed rivers while en route to the ocean. Young oysters are being deformed or killed by ocean acidification. The Pacific sardine population has crashed, and both sardines and squid are migrating to unusual new places. And Dungeness crab was devastated last year by an unprecedented toxic algal bloom that delayed the opening of its season for four months.The collapses are taking a financial toll on the state?s seafood industry. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released Wednesday showed the California fishing harvest decreased in value by $109 million between 2014 and 2015, or by 43 percent.The impact has already been felt in Bay Area homes. This summer, chinook salmon sold for more than $35 per pound in some markets, about 50 percent higher than in previous years. The absence of Dungeness crab during the 2015 holidays jarred many locals, though the Bay Area?s favorite crustacean is still slated to return to tables on Nov. 15, when the 2016 commercial season is scheduled to begin.More disturbing are signs that the recent changes to the Pacific Ocean could represent the new normal.Six distressed seafood species in Northern CaliforniaHere is a look at how six Pacific fisheries have been affected by recent unusual weather patterns and what we can expect in the future.Click on the images below to discover more about each.Chinook SalmonThe issues:Drought and warm river conditions impede reproduction and salmon?s ability to make the journey from river to ocean and back again. Some runs of salmon face extinction.Commercial season:May through September and part of OctoberThe five-year drought has had a dramatic impact on this already challenged population of native fish. Salmon caught by local fishers outside of the Golden Gate are part of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta system, which has four different seasonal spawning runs. The salmon that reach our markets are the fall and late-fall run, migrating from July to December and mid-October to December.Most native salmon?s original spawning grounds have been disrupted by dams in the river system, so they are dependent on two factors: how much it rains and/or the amount of water that state officials decide to release into the river during drought. When the river water was too warm in 2014 and 2015, 95 percent of winter-run baby and juvenile salmon died.Salmon take several years to mature, which means that during the last few salmon seasons the fish were born under traumatic conditions. The 2016 season, which just ended, was also hampered by the late crab season, which kept gear and crabbers out in the water later.The Bay Institute, along with Natural Resources Defense Council and other organizations, has been working since 1998 to reconnect part of the San Joaquin River to San Francisco Bay that had been disconnected since the 1950s. When the restoration is complete, it could restore the runs of 30,000 spring and fall-run salmon every year.Loss of salmon habitat in the Central ValleyHistoric salmon spawning grounds in the Central Valley have been cut off by dams and other impassable barriers, making it difficult for adult salmon to lay eggs and for the babies to make their way to the ocean.John Blanchard ??jblanchard at sfchronicle.comSource: The Bay InstituteDeveloper: Emma O'Neill ??eoneill at sfchronicle.com???@emmaruthoneillGraphic artist: John Blanchard ??jblanchard at sfchronicle.com?Weather and climate are two very closely related things that are difficult to tease apart. What is short-term variable weather versus long-term climate change?? said Toby Garfield, director of the Environmental Research Division at San Diego?s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Southwest Fisheries Science Lab. ?Almost any scientist you talk to would say, ?Yes, the climate is changing, and we?re seeing a lot of variability.??But, Garfield added, ?Most agencies are working very hard to understand what these changes are.?Not hard to understand is the financial hit the state?s fisheries have taken. Last year?s Dungeness crab season, normally one of the most lucrative fisheries in the state, brought in $37 million, far less than the average $68 million over the previous five years. The chinook salmon harvest dropped by two-thirds between 2013 and 2015, cutting fishers? earnings to $8 million from $22.7 million. Many in the industry think this year?s numbers will be worse.John Eiserich closes up the boat he has docked at Pier 45 in San Francisco after his last chinook salmon trip of the season on Oct. 7.?Santiago Mejia, Special to The ChronicleThe causes of these dramatic changes are complex and loosely interrelated. The combination of a strong El Ni?o weather pattern, which warmed ocean waters last year, and a persistent patch of warm water near Alaska, colloquially known as the Warm Blob, caused toxic algal blooms to spike and fish to migrate erratically.The Blob ? Garfield prefers ?North Pacific Marine Heat Wave? ? is in a zone of atmospheric high pressure that diverts the winter storms that normally help cool down the ocean. While it first appeared in 2014 and is not influencing California coastal water temperatures the way it did last year, it?s still an unusual phenomenon that can be self-perpetuating. The Blob?s staying power and the gradual rise of global ocean temperatures fuel concerns that there could be an eventual repeat of last year?s crab disaster.?Temperature really impacts the growth of many of these species. They?ve evolved in a very specific temperature range and suddenly that?s getting out of whack,? said Garfield. ?It?s really impacting their growth and development in ways that we?re just beginning to understand.?Sardines and squid, two hallmarks of local seafood, usually spawn off of California, but as warm water pushed them north last year, both sardines and squid laid eggs near Oregon and even Alaska. In 2015, almost 3 million pounds of squid were harvested off Oregon, which hadn?t seen a big catch since the 1980s. Meanwhile, California?s squid harvest, normally the largest in the country and worth $73 million, dropped by 64 percent between 2014 and 2015.John Blanchard ??jblanchard at sfchronicle.comPacific sardines are in even greater decline. The population, which naturally fluctuates a great deal, is estimated at one-tenth of what it was in 2007, when the fishery was worth $8.2 million. Because of the decline, that fishery has been closed for the past two years, though the recent warm ocean temperatures have had an impact, too.The overall situation is dire, so many scientists and fishers are taking aggressive steps to deal with the changes.Hog Island Oyster Co. in Tomales Bay has been plagued by ocean acidification, caused as carbon is absorbed by the ocean ? a result of climate change. This has limited the supply of seed stock the company needs to grow oysters.Hog Island Oyster Co. employee Hector Molinero (foreground) watches as Wilber Mejia heads into the water to collect bags of oysters during harvesting in Marshall on Oct. 12.??Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle?To us what?s scary is not just the change in ocean chemistry, it?s the rate of change,? said co-owner John Finger.Because the problem will only worsen as more carbon is absorbed, Hog Island is building a hatchery to produce its own seed and breed oysters that Finger hopes can better withstand acidification.?Unless you have your head in the sand, you realize this is going to get drastically worse,? said Finger. ?We need to have more seed production in various places because we don?t know what the patterns are for this.?The Golden Gate Salmon Association has been trucking baby salmon to the ocean rather than risk the fish dying on the perilous trip from their birthplace in the Sacramento River down to San Francisco Bay. A new study from the Bay Institute concluded that so little water is flowing through the bay and its estuary ? because of diversions for urban and Central Valley farm use ? that some salmon and other native species are facing extinction. By some estimates, 80 percent of California?s native freshwater fish species could be gone by 2100.Salmon fishers and crabbers, meanwhile, are trying to adjust to the new seascape. Some are chartering their boats for recreational fishing while they wait for things to improve.Somewhat ironically, with more squid moving north from its normal Southern California environs lately, Northern California has had some banner squid years. Earlier this month, Larry Collins of the San Francisco Community Fishing Association at Pier 45 had to show up at midnight several times to receive ton after ton of squid caught near the Farallon Islands or off Ocean Beach.?There?s just miles of squid out there,? he said at the time.Kelp loss in Northern CaliforniaBased on aerial photos taken at different sites on the North Coast, these images show a dramatic decrease in kelp forests, which sustain red urchin, abalone and thousands of other species. While 2008 was a good kelp year, the images from 2014 show effects of the Warm Blob, warm water conditions that caused a severe reduction in kelp.Graphic artist: John Blanchard ??jblanchard at sfchronicle.comDeveloper: Emma O'Neill ??eoneill at sfchronicle.com???@emmaruthoneillSource:?California Department of Fish and WildlifeThe California coast is part of what is normally one of the most productive fisheries in the world. Winds that run southward down the West Coast push surface water offshore, allowing deeper, nutrient-rich water to come up and feed seaweed and phytoplankton. That sets the food chain in motion for zooplankton, including krill, which in turn nourish an incredibly diverse ecosystem of marine mammals and larger fish like the chinook.?Our salmon have some of the highest omega-3 content and best flavor of any salmon in the world,? said John McManus of the Golden Gate Salmon Association. ?There?s a section of the population that recognizes that and is willing to pay for real, honest-to-god king salmon.?In an opinion page article in The Chronicle in August, Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Patricia Unterman of Hayes Street Grill argued for better protection of chinook salmon and rebuilding of its runs, citing its importance in the region?s culture.?Every year, the return of salmon is eagerly anticipated by California fishermen, restaurants and the public,? they wrote.Catton, the Fish and Wildlife scientist, is concerned both about the sustainability of local marine species like salmon and urchin, and the entire state fishery. Urchin divers usually augment their income with crabbing and salmon fishing, but as those are no longer lucrative, many divers are working construction instead, she said.?Many of them have weathered a lot of these good times and bad times,? she said. ?They say it?s a cycle. Kelp comes and kelp goes.?What?s different this time, she said, is the kelp forests have never been quite this bare.Reporter:?? Tara Duggan ??tduggan at sfchronicle.com???@taradugganInteractive producer:?? Emma O'Neill ??eoneill at sfchronicle.com???@emmaruthoneillGraphic artist:?? John Blanchard ??jblanchard at sfchronicle.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sun Oct 30 17:43:43 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2016 17:43:43 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] 77, 000 acres of thirsty new California almond orchards planted over past year In-Reply-To: References: <55f9b4ae-687a-ebcb-44d1-9874589c5c61@gmail.com> <01BBD1D7-7E26-4F71-B0BA-98414101B6FB@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <20C26CFD-FECB-4163-BF28-25DEC9DCB724@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/29/1587954/-77-000-acres-of-thirsty-new-California-almond-orchards-planted-over-past-year While serving on the board of Conservation International, Stewart Resnick become notorious for buying subsidized Delta water and then selling it back to the public for a big profit as Delta fish and Central Valley salmon populations crashed. 77,000 acres of thirsty new California almond orchards planted over past year by Dan Bacher California growers expanded water-intensive almond orchards by 77,000 acres over the past year, continuing the increase in new acreage during one of the worst droughts in the state?s history. The expansion in acreage for almonds, as well as for walnuts, pistachios and other nut crops, took place as Governor Jerry Brown mandated that urban users statewide conserve water by 25 percent. The increase also occurred as massive state and federal water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta continued to drive Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other fish species closer and closer to extinction. (www.dailykos.com/...) In addition, the groundwater pumping during the drought to sustain increased nut tree acreage caused sections of the San Joaquin Valley to subside even further. California nurseries have sold at least 14.51 million almond trees since June 1, 2015, according to the 2016 California Almond Nursery Sales Report. Plantings from 2012 to 2016 were used to calculate an average trees per acre of 135, based on the Almond Acreage Survey, ?Almost 108,000 acres of almonds have been planted since June 2015,? according to the USDA report. ?A little over 71 percent of the total trees sold, 77,000 acres, are new almond orchard acres and 25 percent (27,000 acres) replaced existing almond orchards. The remaining trees sold replaced trees within existing almond orchards.? California bearing almond acreage has increased from 442,000 to 900,000 from 1997 through June 2016, according to report figures. When you add the non-bearing almond acreage of 220,000, the total acreage comes to 1,120,000. Almonds use about 3.29 million acre-feet of water in a year, or about 9.5% of California?s agricultural water, based on findings from the California Almond Sustainability Program. (www.almonds.com/...) During the latest drought from 2012 to 2015, the bearing acreage increased from 820,000 in 2012 to 890,000 in 2015, a total of 70,000 acres. The non-bearing acreage went from 110,000 in 2012 to 220,000, a total of 110,000 acres. That?s a total of 180,000 acres in new almond tree acreage. When you add the 77,000 acres added over the past year, that amounts to a total of 257,000 acres. Ironically, Rabobank N.A., an agricultural lending group, on October 25 released a report revealing that agricultural land prices in the Central Valley will decline by as much as 30 percent between now and the end of 2017, following several years of big increases. (www.rabobankamerica.com/...) ?Agricultural land prices are giving back some of their increases, particularly in regions where tree-nut prices have had an impact on previously rising valuations,? said Roland Fumasi, a senior analyst with Rabobank?s FAR unit. ?Nut prices have since plummeted from their highs in the past year to 18 months.? Almond prices have declined by approximately 50 percent over the past year, spurring a drop in rural land values. For example, values for almond orchards in Tulare County are expected to drop from $34,500 in 2015 to $26,000 by the end of next year. That?s a decline of almost 25 percent. The report, ?California Land Values: Outlook 2016,? analyzed USDA cropland values and rural land sales data from the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers (ASFMRA). Rabobank also interviewed rural real estate appraisers, and used a set of econometric equations based on crop prices and macroeconomic variables to estimate likely changes in the average economic value of rural land in each California region. The report looked at agricultural land land values in the Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, North Coast, Central Coast and Southern California. ?Agricultural land values in the Sacramento Valley have soared in recent years compared to all other regions in the state,? according to Rabobank. ?From 2010 to 2015, the region?s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) based on ASFMRA data was 18.2 percent, vastly higher than the CAGR of 5.0 percent between 1999 and 2010. The biggest increases were fueled in part by specialty crops including tree nuts, some of which are now experiencing significant price declines. Accordingly, falling walnut prices could drive some land values down 31 percent in 2016 and 15 percent in 2017.? ?Like its Sacramento Valley neighbor to the North, recent declines in tree nut prices are creating a general downward expectation. The severity of the drop will depend on the specific area of the valley, crop type and water access. Between 1999 and 2010, the valley?s agricultural land values rose at an average CAGR of 6.5 percent, and 15.5 percent between 2010 and 2015," Rabobank stated. For more information, go to: www.rabobankamerica.com/... During the peak of the drought In March 2015, Stewart Resnick, Beverly Hills billionaire and the largest tree fruit grower in the world, revealed his efforts to expand pistachio, almond, and walnut acreage at the annual pistachio conference hosted by Paramount Farms (now renamed The Wonderful Company). At the event covered by the Western Farm Press, Resnick boasted about the increase in his nut acreage over the previous ten years, including a 118-percent increase for pistachios, a 47-percent increase for almonds, and a 30-percent increase for walnuts. (westernfarmpress.com/...) Resnick and his wife, Lynda, have a huge impact on water supplies in California. The Resnicks use more water than every home in Los Angeles combined, according to Mother Jones magazine. (www.motherjones.com/...) The Resnicks are among the most avid proponents of the governor?s California WaterFix, the new name for Brown?s controversial plan to build two giant water tunnels underneath the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ? a project that conservationists, Tribal leaders, Delta farmers, fishermen and environmental justice advocates say will potentially be the most destructive public works project in California history. The tunnels would divert water from the Sacramento River for export to agribusinesses on the arid west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies that engage in fracking and other environmentally damaging oil extraction methods in Kern County. So let?s get this right ? the Brown administration demanded that urban users slash their water use by 25 percent and sacrificed economically and ecologically valuable San Francisco Bay-Delta and ocean fisheries so that politically powerful billionaires like Stewart and Lynda Resnick could expand their acreage in almond and other nut crops to make themselves even wealthier? Now the apparent saturation of the almond market fueled by agribusiness greed has spurred the drop in almond prices and the devaluation of Central Valley farm land. Meanwhile, Governor Brown is relentlessly promoting the construction of his environmentally devastating ?legacy? project, the Delta Tunnels plan, to export massive quantities of water to these growers and Southern California water agencies. You just can?t make this stuff up! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: meet_the_resnicks.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 44681 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pcatanese at dhscott.com Mon Oct 31 11:04:18 2016 From: pcatanese at dhscott.com (Paul Catanese) Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2016 18:04:18 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] 77, 000 acres of thirsty new California almond orchards planted over past year In-Reply-To: <20C26CFD-FECB-4163-BF28-25DEC9DCB724@fishsniffer.com> References: <55f9b4ae-687a-ebcb-44d1-9874589c5c61@gmail.com> <01BBD1D7-7E26-4F71-B0BA-98414101B6FB@fishsniffer.com> <20C26CFD-FECB-4163-BF28-25DEC9DCB724@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: Dan thanks for the insights to almonds. I eat a lot of almonds as they are healthy. However, I will rethink my consumption of almonds based on water use. On the other hand the Huffington post in April 15 2015 reported that it takes 872 gallons of water to make one gallon of wine. Further. The " Ganjier" magazine on July 2 2015 reported that it takes 1875 gallons of water to produce one eighth of an ounce of pot. Doing the math would mean it takes 15000 gallons of water to produce a pound of pot. Does anyone know how many hundreds of thousands pounds of pot are produced in water starved environmentally sensitive Trinity, Humboldt and Siskiyou counties alone with no government oversight? That seems to be a real story up here in Salmon and Steelhead country.Does one choose Almonds over wine and pot? Perhaps we need more investigating reporting on water use across the board and allow the consumer to make their own informed decision based on water consumption. Keep up the good work. Paul J. Catanese, Partner [cid:image001.gif at 01D23363.C0BDAA80] D.H. Scott & Company O: 530.243.4300 | F: 530.243.4306 900 Market St, Redding, CA 96001 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This communication (including any attachments) may contain privileged or confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this communication and/or shred the materials and any attachments and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this communication, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. Thank you. Disclaimer: Any accounting, business or tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. If desired, D.H. Scott & Company would be pleased to perform the requisite research and provide you with a detailed written analysis. Such an engagement may be the subject of a separate engagement letter that would define the scope and limits of the desired consultation services. From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Dan Bacher Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2016 5:44 PM Subject: [env-trinity] 77, 000 acres of thirsty new California almond orchards planted over past year http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/29/1587954/-77-000-acres-of-thirsty-new-California-almond-orchards-planted-over-past-year [cid:image002.jpg at 01D23363.C0BDAA80] While serving on the board of Conservation International, Stewart Resnick become notorious for buying subsidized Delta water and then selling it back to the public for a big profit as Delta fish and Central Valley salmon populations crashed. 77,000 acres of thirsty new California almond orchards planted over past year by Dan Bacher California growers expanded water-intensive almond orchards by 77,000 acres over the past year, continuing the increase in new acreage during one of the worst droughts in the state's history. The expansion in acreage for almonds, as well as for walnuts, pistachios and other nut crops, took place as Governor Jerry Brown mandated that urban users statewide conserve water by 25 percent. The increase also occurred as massive state and federal water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta continued to drive Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other fish species closer and closer to extinction. (www.dailykos.com/...) In addition, the groundwater pumping during the drought to sustain increased nut tree acreage caused sections of the San Joaquin Valley to subside even further. California nurseries have sold at least 14.51 million almond trees since June 1, 2015, according to the 2016 California Almond Nursery Sales Report. Plantings from 2012 to 2016 were used to calculate an average trees per acre of 135, based on the Almond Acreage Survey, "Almost 108,000 acres of almonds have been planted since June 2015," according to the USDA report. "A little over 71 percent of the total trees sold, 77,000 acres, are new almond orchard acres and 25 percent (27,000 acres) replaced existing almond orchards. The remaining trees sold replaced trees within existing almond orchards." California bearing almond acreage has increased from 442,000 to 900,000 from 1997 through June 2016, according to report figures. When you add the non-bearing almond acreage of 220,000, the total acreage comes to 1,120,000. Almonds use about 3.29 million acre-feet of water in a year, or about 9.5% of California's agricultural water, based on findings from the California Almond Sustainability Program. (www.almonds.com/...) During the latest drought from 2012 to 2015, the bearing acreage increased from 820,000 in 2012 to 890,000 in 2015, a total of 70,000 acres. The non-bearing acreage went from 110,000 in 2012 to 220,000, a total of 110,000 acres. That's a total of 180,000 acres in new almond tree acreage. When you add the 77,000 acres added over the past year, that amounts to a total of 257,000 acres. Ironically, Rabobank N.A., an agricultural lending group, on October 25 released a report revealing that agricultural land prices in the Central Valley will decline by as much as 30 percent between now and the end of 2017, following several years of big increases. (www.rabobankamerica.com/...) "Agricultural land prices are giving back some of their increases, particularly in regions where tree-nut prices have had an impact on previously rising valuations," said Roland Fumasi, a senior analyst with Rabobank's FAR unit. "Nut prices have since plummeted from their highs in the past year to 18 months." Almond prices have declined by approximately 50 percent over the past year, spurring a drop in rural land values. For example, values for almond orchards in Tulare County are expected to drop from $34,500 in 2015 to $26,000 by the end of next year. That's a decline of almost 25 percent. The report, "California Land Values: Outlook 2016," analyzed USDA cropland values and rural land sales data from the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers (ASFMRA). Rabobank also interviewed rural real estate appraisers, and used a set of econometric equations based on crop prices and macroeconomic variables to estimate likely changes in the average economic value of rural land in each California region. The report looked at agricultural land land values in the Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, North Coast, Central Coast and Southern California. "Agricultural land values in the Sacramento Valley have soared in recent years compared to all other regions in the state," according to Rabobank. "From 2010 to 2015, the region's compound annual growth rate (CAGR) based on ASFMRA data was 18.2 percent, vastly higher than the CAGR of 5.0 percent between 1999 and 2010. The biggest increases were fueled in part by specialty crops including tree nuts, some of which are now experiencing significant price declines. Accordingly, falling walnut prices could drive some land values down 31 percent in 2016 and 15 percent in 2017." "Like its Sacramento Valley neighbor to the North, recent declines in tree nut prices are creating a general downward expectation. The severity of the drop will depend on the specific area of the valley, crop type and water access. Between 1999 and 2010, the valley's agricultural land values rose at an average CAGR of 6.5 percent, and 15.5 percent between 2010 and 2015," Rabobank stated. For more information, go to: www.rabobankamerica.com/... During the peak of the drought In March 2015, Stewart Resnick, Beverly Hills billionaire and the largest tree fruit grower in the world, revealed his efforts to expand pistachio, almond, and walnut acreage at the annual pistachio conference hosted by Paramount Farms (now renamed The Wonderful Company). At the event covered by the Western Farm Press, Resnick boasted about the increase in his nut acreage over the previous ten years, including a 118-percent increase for pistachios, a 47-percent increase for almonds, and a 30-percent increase for walnuts. (westernfarmpress.com/...) Resnick and his wife, Lynda, have a huge impact on water supplies in California. The Resnicks use more water than every home in Los Angeles combined, according to Mother Jones magazine. (www.motherjones.com/...) The Resnicks are among the most avid proponents of the governor's California WaterFix, the new name for Brown's controversial plan to build two giant water tunnels underneath the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta - a project that conservationists, Tribal leaders, Delta farmers, fishermen and environmental justice advocates say will potentially be the most destructive public works project in California history. The tunnels would divert water from the Sacramento River for export to agribusinesses on the arid west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California water agencies, and oil companies that engage in fracking and other environmentally damaging oil extraction methods in Kern County. So let's get this right - the Brown administration demanded that urban users slash their water use by 25 percent and sacrificed economically and ecologically valuable San Francisco Bay-Delta and ocean fisheries so that politically powerful billionaires like Stewart and Lynda Resnick could expand their acreage in almond and other nut crops to make themselves even wealthier? Now the apparent saturation of the almond market fueled by agribusiness greed has spurred the drop in almond prices and the devaluation of Central Valley farm land. Meanwhile, Governor Brown is relentlessly promoting the construction of his environmentally devastating "legacy" project, the Delta Tunnels plan, to export massive quantities of water to these growers and Southern California water agencies. You just can't make this stuff up! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.gif Type: image/gif Size: 3419 bytes Desc: image001.gif URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 44681 bytes Desc: image002.jpg URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Oct 31 15:42:34 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2016 15:42:34 -0700 Subject: [env-trinity] California's Scariest Halloween Horror Show: Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1C587355-1D54-40FA-9E0D-0E63DF607898@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/10/31/californias-scariest-halloween-horror-show-jerry-browns-delta-tunnels/ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/31/1589084/-California-s-Scariest-Halloween-Horror-Show-Jerry-Brown-s-Delta-Tunnel Photo of Jerry Brown by Dan Bacher. California's Scariest Halloween Horror Show: Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels by Dan Bacher While adults and children alike dress up as vampires, ghosts, zombies, extra-terrestrials and other creatures on Halloween, Governor Jerry Brown is busy promoting his own real life horror show that exceeds the terror found in any scary movie that?s ever appeared on the silver screen ? his Delta Tunnels of Death. Like an evil vampire that you just can't seem to kill, the Delta- destroying tunnels plan keeps coming back. Jerry Brown is no stranger to vampires and ?dark energy" himself. In a pre-recorded interview with Chuck Todd this August, Brown ?compared the controversy surrounding Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton?s email server to a vampire plot,? reported Politico on August 21. (www.politico.com/..?. ?It has some kind of dark energy that gets everybody excited,? Governor Brown said. ?It?s almost like a vampire; she?s going to have to find a stake and put it right through the heart of these emails.? The California governor also said the email controversy ?has kind of a mystique to it.? I think I will take the good advice that Brown had for the email controversy and apply it to his Delta Tunnels plan. We must find a stake and put it right through the ?heart? of the California WaterFix project. As you may remember, the voters overwhelmingly defeated the water- sucking and fish-exterminating vampire project, originally known as the Peripheral Canal, in November 1982. However, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger resurrected the undead project from its electoral tomb starting in 2007 under new, less scary- sounding names - the Delta Vision Plan and the Bay Delta Conservation Plan - and did everything he could push the plan through without allowing the voters to vote, including pressuring the Legislation to pass a water policy/water bond package in November 2009 that cleared the path to the construction of the peripheral canal. Jerry Brown embraced the water-guzzling vampire project of Schwarzenegger's as his own "legacy" when he entered his third term as Governor in January 2015 - and in fact fast-tracked the project as the peripheral canal became the twin tunnels. . I?ve published hundreds of articles about the Delta Tunnels, Governor Jerry Brown's plan to divert Sacramento River water 30 miles under the California Delta to facilitate its export to corporate agribusiness and Southern California water agencies, in a wide array of publications. In my reporting, I?ve covered many of the horrors of the deadly, estuary-killing plan. These include: ? How the project won?t create one drop of new water while spending up to $67 billion of taxpayer and ratepayer?s money. ? How the project?s former point man Jerry Meral, in a moment of candor in 2013, claimed the Delta ?cannot be saved,? after years of promoting the peripheral canal and tunnels as the solution to the co- equal goals of water supply reliability. ? How the reports of scientific panels, ranging from the Delta Independence Science Board to federal EPA scientists, that have given the alleged ?science? of the tunnels project a failing grade. ? How the California WaterFix is a massive water grab for corporate agribusiness interests and Southern California water agencies, subsidized by the taxpayers. ? How the project won?t help Californians during the drought, fund innovative water conservation, storm water capture, or water recycling projects that are desperately needed. ? How the plan will push endangered fish species, such as Delta and longfin smelt, winter Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead and green sturgeon, over the abyss of extinction, while failing to address the state's long-term water supply needs. ? How the project will devastate not only San Francisco Bay and Delta fisheries, but recreational, commercial and subsistence fisheries up and down the West Coast; the salmon fishery alone is worth $1.5 billion annually. ? How the tunnels will also imperil the salmon, steelhead and other fish populations on the Klamath and Trinity Rivers that are an integral part of the culture and livelihoods of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley tribes. ? How the tunnels would devastate the Delta?s $5.2 billion agricultural economy and $750 million recreation and tourism economy. ? How the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and other California Indian Tribes have been excluded or marginalized in the Delta Tunnels process. ? How documents for the tunnels projects, in an overt case of environmental injustice, have not been translated into Spanish and other languages, as required under an array of state and federal laws. ? How the current petition before the State Water Resources Control Board and all of the previous plans, EIRs and documents of the plan have failed to address other alternatives, such as the Environmental Water Caucus? Sustainable Water Plan for California, for achieving the dual goals of ecosystem restoration and water supply. I?ve also covered the lack of scoping meetings for the new plan; lack of details regarding financing, addition of 8,000 new pages for public comment on top of the existing 40,000 pages that were previously submitted by the state and federal governments last year; and the lack of a cost-benefits analysis. But in the many hours I?ve spent covering the California WaterFix and its predecessors, there?s one deadly flaw with the project that stands out among all others: the false assumption the project is based upon. The Water Fix is based on the absurd contention that taking up to 9,000 cubic feet per second of water from the Sacramento River at the new points of diversion, as requested in the petition by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to the State Water Resources Control Board, will somehow ?restore? the Delta ecosystem. I am not aware of a single project in US or world history where the construction of a project that takes more water out of a river or estuary has resulted in the restoration of that river or estuary. Based on this untenable premise and all of the flaws that thousands of Californians have uncovered about the project, I am strongly urging the State Water Resources Control Board to reject the petition of DWR and Reclamation requesting permits for new water diversion intakes on the Sacramento River and water quality certification under the Clean Water Act. This vampire project will make the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, San Francisco Bay and our ocean waters into a giant aquatic graveyard. We must drive a stake into the heart of this project of multiple horrors and stop it from pushing Delta and longfin smelt, Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, green sturgeon and other fish and wildlife species into the dark abyss of extinction. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Big_OIl_Brown_Photo.png Type: image/png Size: 129303 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Nov 3 06:48:57 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2016 13:48:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Mercury: Reality check: Prop. 53 ad exaggerates disaster relief risk References: <601412301.472043.1478180937838.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <601412301.472043.1478180937838@mail.yahoo.com> Reality check: Prop. 53 ad exaggerates disaster relief risk Reality check: Prop. 53 ad exaggerates disaster relief risk | | | | | | | | | | | Reality check: Prop. 53 ad exaggerates disaster relief risk ? WHAT?S THE AD ABOUT? It targets Proposition 53, which would require statewide voter approval for?state project... | | | | By PAUL ROGERS?|?progers at bayareanewsgroup.comPUBLISHED:?November 1, 2016 at 5:34 pm?| UPDATED:?November 1, 2016 at 7:56 pmWHAT?S THE AD ABOUT??It targets Proposition 53, which would require statewide voter approval for?state projects?funded by more than $2 billion in revenue bonds. If approved, the measure would likely require Gov. Jerry Brown?s top public works proposals ? high-speed rail and the Delta tunnels ? to go before voters, who could kill the projects.WHO?S FUNDING THE AD??The No on 53 campaign?s largest donor is Gov. Jerry Brown, who in recent weeks has contributed $4.1 million left over from his 2014?re-election campaign. Other large donors to the no campaign, which has so far raised $18.8 million, are the California Democratic Party, numerous Indian tribes and unions representing carpenters, laborers, electrical workers and others who stand to benefit?from the large projects.The Yes on 53 campaign, which has not run TV ads, is entirely funded by Stockton farmer Dean Cortopassi and his wife, Joan, who have given $5 million. Cortopassi is an opponent of the Delta tunnels project and a longtime critic of state government debt levels.WHAT DOES THE AD SAY???The ad features Alameda firefighter Juan Medrano saying ?Prop. 53 takes away local control, allowing voters in the Central Valley or LA to veto local projects we need, like fixing bridges and road safety.? As a computer-generated image of downtown San Francisco in flames is shown, Medrano adds: ?Prop. 53 has no exemptions for emergencies or natural disasters. So when the Big One hits, critical road and hospital repairs could be delayed years.?IS IT TRUE??The ad is misleading. After natural disasters such as earthquakes, federal agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Highway Administration ? not state revenue bonds ? provide most funding for recovery. Opponents concede that point, but they argue that in a future disaster Proposition 53 might limit local officials? flexibility to provide government assistance. Related Articles - Reality Check: Ad against Prop. 56 claiming it ?cheats? schools is deceptive - Reality check: Will Proposition 61 hurt veterans? Under California law, voter approval already is required for one type of government financing: general obligation bonds. Those are IOUs that state government issues to raise money to build schools, roads, parks and other amenities. Investors who buy those bonds are repaid with interest over time, and the money to do that comes from the state general fund. By comparison, fees like bridge tolls and monthly water bills go to pay back revenue bonds.And what of the ad?s claim that Proposition 53 will allow people in other parts of the state to veto local projects? That?s unlikely. The measure?s text says it applies to ?any single project financed, owned, operated or managed by the state.? And the text clearly?states that it does not apply to ?a city, county, city and county, school district, community college district or special district.? ?The measure does affect projects built by partnerships between state and local governments, called ?joint powers agencies.? But few of those partnerships build projects costing more than $2 billion in revenue bonds. The nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst?s Office cited only the high-speed rail project and Delta tunnels project as current proposals that would be affected if Proposition 53 passes. It said, however, that court challenges could occur in the future over what constitutes a project, such as whether a complex of state medical buildings funded by more than $2 billion in revenue bonds, as opposed to one hospital, would require a public vote.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Thu Nov 3 10:49:31 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2016 17:49:31 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW - TRP trapping summary through Julian week 43 Message-ID: Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 43 (October 28). You would think that with Willow Creek weir not fishing I would have gotten this out to you much sooner, but I've been otherwise occupied. When we pulled conduit for that first big storm on the 12th the forecast was for about 7,600 cfs ('only got to ~4,500 which we rode out quite well)...what we were unaware of, and unprepared for, was the series of storms over the last two weeks. The spine of the WCW rolled to the river right bank at about 8:00pm on October 30th. Flows reached 12,900cfs (as measured on the Hoopa USGS gage) shortly thereafter. We are very likely done fishing at WC for the season, although if it would just stop raining for a little while it'd be great to get back in and get a few more tags out. Trinity River Hatchery is out of their spawning break. MC ************************************* Mary Claire Kier CA Department of Fish and Wildlife - Trinity River Project Environmental Scientist - Fisheries 707/822-5876 I maryclaire.kier at wildlife.ca.gov 5341 Ericson Way, Arcata CA 95521 ************************************** Klamath/Trinity Program reports can be found online @ https://nrmsecure.dfg.ca.gov/documents/ContextDocs.aspx?cat=KlamathTrinity [SaveOurWater_Logo] Every Californian should conserve water. Find out how at: SaveOurWater.com * Drought.CA.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3781 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW43.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 115522 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW43.pdf URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jspplotservlet.png Type: image/png Size: 37671 bytes Desc: jspplotservlet.png URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Nov 4 07:02:57 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2016 14:02:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Oakland Magazine: Is the Drought Really Over? References: <1674237376.258155.1478268177884.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1674237376.258155.1478268177884@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/November-2016/Is-the-Drought-Really-Over/ Is the Drought Really Over? State water officials can?t seem to agree on whether the drought is over or just as bad as ever. In April, officials with the state Water Resources Control Board relaxed environmental protections for endangered salmon and steelhead so that farmers in the San Joaquin Valley could receive more of the water that would have otherwise flowed through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and into San Francisco Bay. Their rationale? Because of the ongoing drought, delta fishes nearing extinction would just have to get by with less water.However, only a month later, the same board of officials determined that the drought had eased enough to lift the mandatory water conservation limits imposed in 2015 by Gov. Jerry Brown. Specifically, officials decided to allow water districts themselves to determine how, if at all, their customers should curtail consumption. Under such self-regulation, most water districts announced they are not asking their customers to conserve like they did last year. While a law passed in late August requires water districts to fine customers who use too much water, the overlying implication of the water board?s May decision to suspend mandatory rationing has left environmentalists confused. ?Telling urban users they no longer need to cut back sends the signal that, ?We have water; it?s no longer an emergency,?? said Jon Rosenfield, a staff scientist with the conservation organization The Bay Institute. ?Yet in the same period of weeks, they granted a temporary urgency change to the environmental standards under the excuse that in the San Joaquin Valley, there?s still an extreme drought. That is a very mixed message.?The inconsistency seems to reflect a system of favoring large agricultural interests and powerful water agencies, while shortchanging natural resources. For example, when the state limited the water restrictions to urban users in 2015, it placed no such mandatory cutbacks on agricultural users, even though they suck up 80 percent of the state?s managed water supply each year.?In fact, we saw increased plantings of permanent crops like almonds and pistachios throughout the drought,? noted Tom Stokely, water policy coordinator for the environmental group the California Water Impact Network.? ?You could actually make the case that urban water users were asked to conserve so that almond farmers could make more money.? Almond farmers, as noted in September, are expecting a record crop this year.The state-mandated water cutbacks on cities between spring 2015 and spring 2016 resulted in a savings of about 1 million acre-feet of water for California, Stokely said. That, he said, is probably more water than the state will get each year from the three reservoir projects now under discussion?the Sites reservoir, the Temperance Flat reservoir, and the raising of Shasta Dam. Why, he asked, should we consider spending billions to create new water banks when a simple and painless effort by urban water users achieved the same goal?The answer may lie in a conspicuous flaw in the very system that handles and delivers water to the public: When urban users consume less water, water agencies, such as East Bay MUD and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, lose revenue. They make money by selling water. So for them, there is little incentive to conserve, at least not for a long period. East Bay MUD, for instance, experienced a net loss of about $25 million during the one year of mandatory cutbacks, according to the utility district?s finance director, Sophia Skoda.There has been speculation that state officials ended the mandatory restrictions on urban water use in order to help water agencies get through a time of tight margins by increasing their sales again?not because water supplies had been substantially recharged. In fact, snowpack melted away rapidly this year, groundwater supplies are as stressed as ever, and the state?s six largest reservoirs, combined, were less than half full and dropping at the end of summer. Whatever the explanation for the lifted restrictions, the decision means other sources of water will need to be tapped to meet the demands of farmers south of the delta, where growers are planting millions more trees even though they have almost no water of their own.And the easiest water for officials to get their hands on is usually the water intended for the benefit of fish. In April?even before the drought water rationing ended?the Water Resources Control Board officials decided to reduce the amount of water flowing through the beleaguered delta so they could increase the rate of pumping to contractors in the San Joaquin Valley.According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, that was the 45th time in three years that officials had weakened environmental protections in order to divert more water to urban or agricultural users. NRDC also calculated that in 2014 and 2015, these actions essentially robbed river and delta resources of 1.35 million acre-feet of water.Stokely thinks that lifting the mandatory restrictions on urban users was foolish, because scientists have predicted more dry conditions this winter and because California?s water managers have already promised users far more water than what?s available, even in the best of times.?It was premature,? Stokely said. ?The drought isn?t over. The cutbacks should probably even be permanent because we?re already over-allocating our water by five times what actually exists.?Californians, he added, ?proved they can conserve, so why go back???Published online on Nov. 3, 2016 at?8:00 a.m. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Nov 4 17:48:31 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2016 00:48:31 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Journal: Attorney Wilkins, friend of the outdoors, dead at 88 References: <1578514142.773980.1478306911442.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1578514142.773980.1478306911442@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_53bb6ea4-a0a0-11e6-9705-d74692d1730d.html Attorney Wilkins, friend of the outdoors, dead at 88 - Nov 2, 2016 ?- ?0 - - - - Contributed - - - - - Alfred Wilkins passed away on Oct. 25, 2016, after a long battle with Parkinson?s disease. He is survived by his two daughters, Elizabeth Johnson (Charles) and Emily Mattison (Mark); eight grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren. Marne, his beloved wife of 57 years, preceded him in December 2007, a loss from which he never recovered.Al was a fourth generation California native, born Jan. 11, 1928, in Ventura, and raised in Fowler on a ranch that had been in the family since the mid-1800s. He was surrounded by many family members throughout the community ? on neighboring ranches and farms, in school, businesses and church. The annual Wilkins Family Picnics were large and legendary, and his many Fowler family and friends formed an important backdrop for all of Al?s life.Al was a talented athlete and participated frequently, with his equally talented brothers, in the prestigious West Coast Relays in Fresno, in track and field events. He raced the quarter-mile and mile relay, where he excelled. Later, he earned the Stanford University Varsity Block S for his track performance. Al was also scouted for professional baseball, but his father advised him to first attend college, which he did. He never returned to a pursuit of professional sports.The Wilkins men were all involved in Boy Scouts, and Al joined as well, earning the rank of Eagle Scout in high school. He also worked summers as a lifeguard at the Boy Scout Camp on Shaver Lake, in Fresno County. It was there that he learned to canoe and began to develop his abiding love of the wild outdoors.Al also loved music. He was an accomplished cellist, earning a chair as a young man in the Fresno Philharmonic orchestra. His favorite composer by far was Johann Sebastian Bach. He and Marne were avid supporters of the Oregon Bach Festival, and looked forward every year to attending the summer festival at the University of Oregon in Eugene.During World War II, at the age of 16, Al enrolled at Stanford University before completing his senior year of high school. He graduated in 1949 with a degree in Social Science, emphasizing political science and history. He joined the Sigma Chi fraternity, was elected president of the sophomore class, and loved his undergraduate years at Stanford.He attended his first year of law school at Columbia University in New York, then married and moved back to California, and graduated from Stanford Law in the class of 1952, along with U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O?Connor, with whom he was a personal friend. With them he also served on Stanford Law Review?s editorial board. He always maintained his love of learning and read constantly, especially works about American political history, the life and speeches of Abraham Lincoln, and the writings of Soren Kierkegaard.Al began his law career in 1952, at the San Diego firm of Gray, Cary, Ames & Frye, where he was made a partner. After a number of years, he and three friends left to form their own firm together. While practicing in San Diego, Al tried to a jury several important cases, some resulting in landmark published opinions. However, his heart, along with Marne?s, was for the outdoors and defending the environment, in particular the wild waters. Marne and Al?s vacations of fly fishing, hiking and camping in Trinity County eventually led to moving their family to Weaverville, and to his lifelong work on behalf of the free-flowing North Coast California rivers.Al participated actively in authoring the California Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, and the California Coastal Act. Together with like-minded colleagues from the boards of Cal-Trout and California Tomorrow, he formed the North Coast Rivers Association, the Committee of Two Million (devoted to stopping the proposed dam on the Eel River at Dos Rios), and served for years as a board member of the Planning & Conservation League of California and as a member of the California Department of Forestry?s advisory board. He also co-founded and served on the board of the Institute for Man & Nature, and the Trinity Trust.Al opened his Main Street law office in Weaverville in 1965. He practiced literally every aspect of civil law continuously until his illness prevented him from coming to the office in 2015. Although he enjoyed trial work, Al preferred to use his broad legal experience and ability to help resolve matters without the expense of litigation, and he gained a reputation as a helping lawyer. He resisted raising his fees, and often accepted vegetables, eggs or other such things in lieu of money from his clients. Al loved the land and old-timers of Trinity County, and felt a special bond with them. Many clients tried to give him gifts, which he never accepted. One notable example was the Young brothers, Bob and Allen, who tried to bequeath him their home. He declined the gift, but convinced Allen to convert this into a bequest to the community in trust, and the property is now known as the Young Family Ranch.The family would like to give special thanks to Al?s many home care helpers in the community, and in particular to caregiver Cheryl Thomas for her excellent abilities and her unwavering support of Al over the past five years as she managed his care in his own home with heartfelt grace and ease. The family would also like to thank Josh Horn and the staff of Mirabel Lodge in Forestville, in Sonoma County, who warmly received Al, and graciously and lovingly cared for him in his most difficult final days.The family plans to hold a private celebration of Al?s life during the holidays. In remembrance of his work on the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act and other environmental laws, the family requests any memorial contributions to be given to The Institute for Man & Nature, c/o Elyshia Holliday, 29 Princeton Road, Prosser, WA 99350. - -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Mon Nov 7 14:34:27 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2016 14:34:27 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for October 28, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update October 28, 2016. This week our crews mapped 52 redds (1,380 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ??This weeks surveys were hampered by high flows and turbid water. With a period of drier weather in the forecast, we hope that surveys downstream of Big Flat will be possible next week. ? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9493 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Tue Nov 8 09:56:33 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2016 17:56:33 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW - TRP trapping summary through Julian week 44 Message-ID: Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 44 (November 4). The fish continue to trickle into Trinity River Hatchery and I continue to keep my eye on the weather reports, and watching the decreasing river flow (until the next storm). I hope those of you who are catching fish with tags on them will be sure to send the tags back to me in a timely manner so that I can try to get the best harvest estimate I can from the very limited data this year's run/weather will allow. Let's hope this is the worst year (Trinity River fisheries return-wise) for many years to come! MC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW44.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 115552 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW44.pdf URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Nov 9 15:03:16 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 23:03:16 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Hearing on San Luis Unit Drainage Resolution Act References: <434434173.1031318.1478732596826.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <434434173.1031318.1478732596826@mail.yahoo.com> ?On Tuesday, November 15, 2016, the Committee will convene at 4:00 p.m. in 1324 Longworth House Office Building for opening statements only.? The Committee will reconvene on Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. in the 1324 Longworth House Office Building.???Sent:?Wednesday, November 09, 2016 1:34 PM Subject:?FW: Committee on Natural Resources -- Markup Notice 11.15.16 & 11.16.16????November 9, 2016????????Markup Notice???????MEMORANDUM?To: ????????????????????? Members, Committee on Natural Resources?From: ???????????????? The Honorable Rob Bishop, Chairman?Subject:?? ?????????? Full Committee Markup Notice??????????????? The Committee on Natural Resources has scheduled a markup beginning on?Tuesday, November 15, 2016 at 4:00 p.m.??The Committee will consider the following bills:?? H.R. 1219 (Rep. Tom Cole),?To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to convey certain land and appurtenances of the Arbuckle Project, Oklahoma, to the Arbuckle Master Conservancy District, and for other purposes.??"Arbuckle Project Maintenance Complex and District Office Conveyance Act of 2015";?? H.R. 3711 (Rep. Juan Vargas),?To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resource study of Chicano Park, located in San Diego, California, and for other purposes.??"Chicano Park Preservation Act";?? H.R. 4366 (Rep. David Valadao),?To affirm an agreement between the United States and Westlands Water District dated September 15, 2015, and for other purposes.??"San Luis Unit Drainage Resolution Act";?and?? H.R. 5633 (Rep. Ryan Zinke),?To authorize and implement the water rights compact among the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, the State of Montana, and the United States, and for other purposes.??"Blackfeet Water Rights Settlement Act"????????????????On Tuesday, November 15, 2016, the Committee will convene at 4:00 p.m. in 1324 Longworth House Office Building for opening statements only.? The Committee will reconvene on Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. in the 1324 Longworth House Office Building.????????????????? Any proposed amendments should be emailed to Sophia Varnasidis (Sophia.Varnasidis at mail.house.gov) no later than?3:00p.m.?on Tuesday, November 15, 2016.? Note that all bipartisan amendments, and amendments filed by this time, will be given priority recognition at the markup.? Please deliver 70 hard copies of any amendments submitted after 3:00p.m. on Tuesday, November 15, to 1324 Longworth House Office Building.????????????????????????????? For further information regarding the markup, please contact Sophia Varnasidis, Deputy Director of Operations, Committee on Natural Resources, at x5-2761.?? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Nov 10 09:03:03 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2016 17:03:03 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] What 'President Trump' might mean for Delta References: <1474263738.1697241.1478797383462.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1474263738.1697241.1478797383462@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.recordnet.com/news/20161109/what-president-trump-might-mean-for-delta What 'President Trump' might mean for Delta By?Alex Breitler Record Staff Writer The joke on social media after Donald Trump?s victory early Wednesday was that the tears of liberal Californians would refill the state?s reservoirs and end the drought.Since that doesn?t seem to have worked, it?s now a matter of waiting to see what policies the president-elect might push after Inauguration Day.And on that front, Delta advocates aren?t holding out much hope.Trump hasn?t said much about California water, but he did?tell a Fresno audience?at a rally in May that there is no drought at all, and that the water that farmers should have received was flushed out to sea in an effort to protect ?a certain kind of 3-inch fish,? a reference to the imperiled Delta smelt.?Believe me, we?re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive,? Trump said at the time.?Opening up the water? implies increasing the volume of water exported south from the Delta, exports that are blamed in part for the long-term decline of the fragile river estuary west of Stockton. The Delta ecosystem suffers from a kind of perpetual drought because more than half of its fresh water historically has been diverted for human use.On Wednesday,?Politico reported?that an attorney who represented the Westlands Water District on litigation involving the Delta and the Endangered Species Act will head Trump?s transition team for the new Department of Interior, which oversees federal water and wildlife management in the Delta.Westlands, the nation?s largest water district, faces frequent water shortages south of the Delta and has used its political clout for many years to lobby for a more reliable share of Delta water.With Trump in power and a Republican-controlled Congress, the stars could align for an amendment of the Endangered Species Act that could lead to more pumping.?If you assume that there?s the possibility of changes in the way that the Endangered Species Act is implemented, or changes in the law itself, then that changes the dynamics of the Delta controversies,? said Barton ?Buzz? Thompson, senior fellow with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.The impact on the Delta tunnels is unclear. The tunnels must be permitted by federal agencies before they can be built; a Trump administration could loosen the terms of those permits and may be more inclined to pitch in federal funding, Thompson said.On the other hand, water users might see relaxation of the endangered species rules as a preferable alternative to paying for the giant tunnels, he said.The potential for change doesn't stop with the Delta and the tunnels. The federal government also is funding the restoration of the San Joaquin River, which south Valley interests repeatedly have tried to kill over the past decade.Of course, state officials can pass laws, too.?To the degree that a Trump administration becomes more conservative on environmental issues, the state can certainly step in in most situations and enact its own protections,? Thompson said.Stockton-based Restore the Delta doesn?t get involved in political campaigns for office, executive director Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla said Wednesday.?But we can say where candidates stand on the issues,? she said. ?(Trump?s) stance on the Delta smelt, on the Endangered Species Act, on climate change, on pumping water from the Delta and the?amount of money he?s taken?from Westlands growers and other growers in the San Joaquin Valley is very problematic for the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary.?Westlands spokesman Johnny Amaral said it was too soon to say exactly what policy changes his district might recommend to the incoming administration, but said that after three years without receiving any water from the federal Central Valley Project, growers were hoping for a return to some sort of normalcy under Trump."When you start talking about project operations, people start getting nervous and lobbing bombs and allegations about what your intentions are," Amaral said. "Our intentions are to bring balance and fairness to how the projects are operated. Period. We're not asking for anything beyond that."He downplayed the involvement of attorney David Bernhardt in Trump's transition team, saying "there are a lot of people involved."Tuesday?s presidential vote put some conservative Delta farmers in an interesting position. Third-generation grower Mike Robinson, who opposes the tunnels, is leery that Trump will fast-track the project because the new president will want to ?repay? financial supporters in the south Valley.But Robinson voted for Trump anyway, calling it less a vote for Trump than a vote against Hillary Clinton. He said he hopes Trump will be open to other views on water.?I am unselfish enough to look at the big picture of the national interest,? Robinson said. ?I look at what is best for the country rather than what is best for me or my pocket.?? Contact reporter Alex Breitler at (209) 546-8295 or abreitler at recordnet.com. Follow him at?recordnet.com/breitlerblog?and on Twitter @alexbreitler. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Nov 14 08:36:46 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2016 16:36:46 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Is_Sites_Reservoir_a_savior_for_the_Sacra?= =?utf-8?q?mento_Valley_=E2=80=93_or_a_Delta_tunnels_project_in_disguise?= =?utf-8?q?=3F?= References: <1986738970.4564457.1479141406641.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1986738970.4564457.1479141406641@mail.yahoo.com> Is Sites Reservoir a savior for the Sacramento Valley ? or a Delta tunnels project in disguise? | | | | | | | | | | | Is Sites Reservoir a savior for the Sacramento Valley ? or a Delta tunnels ... Sites Reservoir, with a price tag of $4.4 billion, would be built an hour north of Sacramento. Sacramento Valley... | | | | Is Sites Reservoir a savior for the Sacramento Valley ? or a Delta tunnels project in disguise? Mary Wells raised a family in a mountain valley near Maxwell north of Sacramento. Find out why she supports building a reservoir that would leave her family's land deep under water.?Ryan Sabalow?The Sacramento BeeBY RYAN SABALOW AND DALE KASLERrsabalow at sacbee.com MAXWELL?An hour north of Sacramento, in a ghost town tucked into a remote mountain valley, California is poised to build a massive new reservoir ? a water project of a size that hasn?t been undertaken since Jerry Brown?s first stint as governor in the 1970s.Sites Reservoir, all $4.4 billion of it, represents an about-face in a state where drought has become the norm and water users are told to scrimp and save. Promoters of Sites say the reservoir would significantly enhance water supplies for the rice farms of the Sacramento Valley as well as the cities of Southern California. The fact that it would be built just outside tiny Maxwell, in a poor and often-overlooked area of the state, has become a point of fierce regional pride.?Instead of the water going out to sea, the water will remain here,? said state Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, during a recent media event at the Sites operations office a few miles east of the reservoir location. ?That is a significant policy change.?But Sites is far from a done deal, despite?support from the Brown administration.While the Sacramento Valley?s major farm-irrigation districts have pledged to fund much of the project, they?re also about to ask the state to pay up to half of the reservoir?s cost, via bond money supplied by?voter-approved Proposition 1.?Because the state is unlikely to approve the request in full, Sites? backers are also courting investment dollars from a dozen water agencies outside the Sacramento Valley, including the powerful?Metropolitan Water District?of Southern California. For every dollar they contribute, these agencies would be entitled to a share of the water stored in Sites.That?s where it gets trickier. At least some of those agencies might not be as likely to invest in Sites unless the state builds the Delta tunnels, Brown?s enormously controversial?$15.5 billion project?to smooth the delivery of Northern California water to regions south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.Funding for the tunnels is in some doubt, and without them the water agencies south of the Delta have less reason to support Sites. For instance, Metropolitan says it?s very reluctant to invest in Sites if it can?t be assured it will be able to pull its water out of the reservoir when it wants to and ship it through the Delta.?Without tunnels to move any water ... it probably doesn?t pencil on that alone,? said Jeff Kightlinger, Metropolitan?s general manager.Kightlinger?s stance raises red flags for activists who are vigilant about Northern California?s water. They say Sites is a wolf in sheep?s clothing ? a benign-looking project that?s really a silent partner to the tunnels proposal and would accelerate the delivery of the Sacramento Valley?s precious water to the parched regions of the south state.?Sites Reservoir ... is definitely tied to using and operating the Delta tunnels,? said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, probably the fiercest opponent of Brown?s Delta tunnels project. ?It will become about selling water.?As evidence, activists point to a draft financial analysis commissioned by the state that said the tunnels project, officially called California WaterFix, would boost the economic value of Sites by roughly $1.5 billion. State officials acknowledge that the tunnels would make Sites more attractive.?With California WaterFix in place, that improves the potential to move water from Sites Reservoir to water users south of the Delta, so therefore, the economic potential of the project is improved,? said Mark Cowin, director of the Department of Water Resources, the state agency leading the charge for Brown?s tunnels plan.How could Sites be connected to the Delta tunnels? Water must pass through the Delta to move south, and the estuary has become?the great bottleneck?of California?s vast delivery system. Because of dwindling fish populations and other environmental woes, the giant government pumps in the south Delta often get throttled back when they?re scheduled to deliver water, leaving millions of gallons to wash out to sea.Brown?s office pitches the tunnels as a way to allow the pumps to run more reliably, while moderating the environmental damage caused by the pumps. With the tunnels in place, south-of-Delta water agencies would have more opportunities to tap into water they?ve stored at Sites. Additional reliability also would allow Sites? north state investors more windows in which to sell any extra water stored in Sites they don?t need.Sites? backers say the reservoir stands on its own ? a vital infrastructure project that would deliver considerable benefits for the state?s often strained water network.?It?s immaterial whether the tunnels are built or not,? said Jim Watson, general manager of the Sites Project Authority, the entity established by valley irrigation districts and county governments.In addition, the reservoir?s backers say Sites ? named for the ruins of a town where the project would be located ? would serve Sacramento Valley water interests first and foremost. ?We will have first call on the water,? said Lewis Bair of Reclamation District 108, an agricultural water agency about 20 miles south of Maxwell.With or without the tunnels, a major new reservoir north of the Delta is tempting to water districts all over. Watson said investors, regardless of where they are, can expect to pay $600 an acre-foot per year for a share of the reservoir. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons.These days, desperate south-of-Delta water managers frequently offer $1,000 or more per acre-foot on?the open market, so Sites is seen as a relative bargain.?Sites becomes very attractive even without the tunnels,? said Ara Azhderian, water policy administrator at the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, an umbrella agency that delivers water to the Silicon and San Joaquin valleys.With a capacity of up to 1.8 million acre-feet, Sites would become California?s seventh-largest reservoir. It would be the largest built since New Melones was completed on the Stanislaus River in 1979.To get state funding, the Sites Project Authority will apply early next year to the California Water Commission, an obscure state agency in charge of allocating Proposition 1 dollars. The decision is likely to come in 2018, and construction wouldn?t begin until several years later.??Watson said it?s highly unlikely Sites will get the full $2.2 billion it?s seeking. Proposition 1 set aside $2.7 billion for water infrastructure projects, and Sites will be competing against proposals such as?the $2.6 billion Temperance Flat?dam on the San Joaquin River.If the state does contribute money to Sites, it would gain control of a good chunk of the reservoir?s water supply. That could be used to improve salmon and Delta smelt populations and serve other environmental needs. The amount of water under state control would depend on the size of the state?s financial commitment.?Sites? backers say the potential for environmental water makes the project a win-win, a rarity in California water.?Having that increment of water during these dry years ... wouldn?t that be a blessing for everything ? for fish, for birds, for people, for farms, right?? asked David Guy, president of the Northern California Water Association. ?Where else do you see that in the state of California? Where else do you see a solution that?s sitting there of this magnitude that can do as much as that??Unlike most of California?s major reservoirs, Sites would be an ?off-river? project. Instead of damming a river, engineers would run an underground pipeline 14 miles from the Sacramento River to the reservoir?s proposed location: a 14-mile-long mountain valley that straddles Glenn and Colusa counties.Sites backers say water would be diverted only when the river is roaring with peak flows, which would ensure fish and wildlife aren?t harmed. Watson said the reservoir would probably have about 500,000 acre-feet available in an average year, less than one-third of its capacity.While environmentalists usually oppose big water projects, some say they would accept Sites if its backers can prove it would be used to help the environment. And some experts say as far as these things go, Sites has a fairly easy case to make.?It?s a relatively straightforward environmental benefit relative to other kinds of storage projects that are out there,? said Ellen Hanak, a water expert at the Public Policy Institute of California.Sacramento Valley farmers are anxious to see the construction of Sites. While many valley farmers enjoy some of the most senior water rights in California, they say the drought has put their supplies at risk. Environmental problems, such as?dwindling salmon populations, frequently interrupt delivery of water they need for rice and other crops, said rice grower Don Bransford, a Sites Authority board member and president of the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District.Plus, there?s fear in this Republican-dominated and sparsely populated region that the urban Democrats who control California?s politics will someday wrest water away from Sacramento Valley farms to serve cities and the environment.?Our water rights are as strong as anybody in the state ... but the problem is people aren?t respecting that as much anymore,? said Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Butte County rice farmer and Republican who represents the area in Congress.Building the reservoir would mean flooding about 60 ranches and homesteads. Landowners would be compensated for their property. Among them is Mary Wells, a fifth-generation Sacramento Valley farmer. She sits on the Sites board of directors and is one of its most outspoken advocates.?Wells, 71, said she?ll be heartbroken to leave the home where she and her recently deceased husband raised a family. But she believes Sites is a necessity if her children and grandchildren are going to be able to keep the family farming tradition going.?This is really not for me. I hope to see it. But it is really for Generation 6 and Generation 7,? she said on a recent weekday, sitting on a weathered wooden fence outside her home. ?It?s for the better good, and it?s for the continuum of the family.?Ryan Sabalow:?916-321-1264,?@ryansabalow Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article114201138.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sun Nov 13 10:12:09 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2016 10:12:09 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Trump appoints worst enemies of salmon, Delta and environment to transition team In-Reply-To: References: <001001d23d29$5acca440$1065ecc0$@TheThallers.com> Message-ID: <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/12/1597679/-Trump-appoints-fish-destroying-anti-environmental-extremists-to-transition-team Trump appoints fish-destroying anti-environmental extremists to transition team by Dan Bacher If anybody had the tiniest illusion that incoming President Donald Trump would appoint somebody who cares about the Delta, Klamath River, fish and wildlife and the environment to his transition team, it was quickly dispelled with the appointment of two anti-environmental extremists to his team after he was elected. On Friday, Representative Devin Nunes (CA-22), one of the most aggressive Congressional proponents of increasing Delta water exports to agribusiness and opponents of fish and wildlife restoration in California and the West, joined the 16-member executive committee of Donald Trump?s transition team. ?Today I was honored to have been named to the executive committee of President-elect Donald Trump's transition team,? said Nunes in a statement. ?In this role, I will advise President-elect Trump on the appointments of his Cabinet members and on appointments to other top positions in the new administration. I look forward to helping to assemble an energetic and forward-looking team that will capably lead our country toward more economic growth, greater opportunity, and a safer homeland for all Americans.? Nunes chairs the House Intelligence Committee and disagrees with Trump on issues including so-called ?free trade" deals. Nunes is a backer of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that Trump claims he will stop. However, Nunes told McClatchy News this week that he believes Trump supports corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in their push to export more Delta water. Nunes has been one of the greatest advocates for the weakening of the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and other landmark environmental laws. ?The good thing is, he is more up to speed on water infrastructure than any other president we?ve had,? Nunes said. ?Out here, everything is water, water, water.? (www.sacbee.com/...) It gets worse. Politico reported Wednesday that David Bernhardt, a lawyer who co-chaired the natural resources department at the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and served as a George W. Bush Interior Department official, is leading the transition's Interior Department team. According to Congressional disclosures, his current lobbying clients include the Westlands Water District, considered the Darth Vader of California politics by Tribes, fishermen and environmentalists, and one of the biggest proponents of exporting more Delta water. Bernhart represented the Westlands Water District on litigation involving the Delta and the Endangered Species Act. (www.politico.com/? Other members of Trump?s transition team include Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a board member of Facebook; Trump's sons and daughter Ivanka; and Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, who has worked as an investment banker with Goldman-Sachs, filmmaker and political consultant. Trump's ?rumored cabinet wishlist? includes Sarah "Drill, baby, Drill" Palin as Secretary of the Interior; anti-EPA Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller as Secretary of Agriculture; and fracking billionaire Harold Hamm as Energy Secretary, according to Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Trump hasn't taken a specific position on the Governor Jerry Brown's "legacy" project, the Delta Tunnels, but his comments to date on California water have shown a strong embrace of the campaign by corporate agribusiness interests to pump more water from the Delta at the expense of Delta smelt and salmon populations. At a rally at the Selland Arena in Fresno, on May 27, 2016, Trump appeared to agree with the claims of some growers that there is no drought in California. ?When I just left, 50 or 60 farmers in the back and they can?t get water. And I say, ?How tough is it; how bad is the drought?? 'There is no drought, they turn the water out into the ocean.? And I said I?ve been hearing it and I spent a half an hour with them it?s hard to believe.? (www.slate.com/...) He also claimed that the subsidized water that growers should have received was washed out to sea in an effort to protect ?a certain kind of 3-inch fish," referring to the Delta smelt, an endangered indicator species that demonstrates the health of the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary. ?Believe me, we?re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive,? said Trump. Alex Breitler, Stockton Record reporter, pointed out, ??Opening up the water? implies increasing the volume of water exported south from the Delta, exports that are blamed in part for the long-term decline of the fragile river estuary west of Stockton. The Delta ecosystem suffers from a kind of perpetual drought because more than half of its fresh water historically has been diverted for human use.? (www.recordnet.com/...) Many of those opposed to the construction of the Delta Tunnels fear that Governor Brown may try to make a deal with the Trump administration to back the construction of the California Water Fix, his "legacy project. On Thursday, Brown issued a statement saying his administration would do its part ?to find common ground whenever possible? while ?protecting the precious rights of our people? and confronting ?devastating climate change. Brown stated, ?Today we saw the beginning of the transfer of power to the President-elect. While the prerogatives of victory are clear, so also are the responsibilities to ensure a strong and unified America. As President Lincoln said, ?A house divided against itself cannot stand.? With the deep divisions in our country, it is incumbent on all of us ? especially the new leadership in Washington ? to take steps that heal those divisions, not deepen them. In California, we will do our part to find common ground whenever possible. But as Californians, we will also stay true to our basic principles. We will protect the precious rights of our people and continue to confront the existential threat of our time ? devastating climate change. E PLURIBUS UNUM.? While I strongly support the Governor's call to protect people?s rights and to confront climate change, I fear that the ?common ground? that the Brown administration will find with the Trump administration will be on tunnels, new dams and fracking. We must stop Brown from working with Trump to weaken landmark laws like the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act in order to fast-track the completion of the California Water Fix before he leaves office. The two 35-mile long tunnels under the Delta would make the Delta, San Francisco Bay and our ocean waters into a giant aquatic graveyard. We must drive a stake into the heart of this project and stop it from pushing Delta and longfin smelt, Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, green sturgeon and other fish and wildlife species into extinction ? and prevent Brown and his administration from making any deals with the Trump that will push forward the tunnels, as well as new dams and fracking. Caleen Sisk, chief and spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, affirmed the Tribe?s plan to resist any plans by the Trump or Brown administrations to sacrifice salmon, the environment and human rights at the altar of corporate greed. ?Now we share the definition of ?Endangered? with all the other species,? said Chief Sisk after the election. ?The Winnemem Wintu have been there since California Statehood....surviving is a challenge when you are losing your waters and food supply. You must never quit the fight to survive with the salmon!? While Brown poses as a ?climate leader? and ?environmentalist? at climate conferences, he is heavily backed by agribusiness billionaires and the oil companies ? the same corporate interests that have funded Brown?s reelection and proposition campaigns, including Proposition 1 in 2014. These are the same corporate interests that Trump and his transition team represent. Trump's transition team just released their ?energy? plan. Their statement is absolutely chilling for anybody who cares about fish and wildlife, people, water, the environment and the public trust: ?Rather than continuing the current path to undermine and block America's fossil fuel producers, the Trump Administration will encourage the production of these resources by opening onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands and waters. We will streamline the permitting process for all energy projects, including the billions of dollars in projects held up by President Obama, and rescind the job- destroying executive actions under his Administration. We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium, the excessive Interior Department stream rule, and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama Administration. We will eliminate the highly invasive "Waters of the US" rule, and scrap the $5 trillion dollar Obama-Clinton Climate Action Plan and the Clean Power Plan and prevent these unilateral plans from increasing monthly electric bills by double-digits without any measurable effect on Earth's climate.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Devin_Nunes.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 28053 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Mon Nov 14 09:50:22 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2016 09:50:22 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Karuk, Yurok and Klamath Tribes Oppose Pacific Connector Pipeline In-Reply-To: <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> References: <001001d23d29$5acca440$1065ecc0$@TheThallers.com> <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/14/1598980/-Karuk-Yurok-and-Klamath-Tribes-Oppose-Pacific-Connector-Pipeline https://intercontinentalcry.org/karuk-yurok-klamath-tribes-oppose-pacific-connector-pipeline/ Karuk, Yurok and Klamath Tribes Oppose Pacific Connector Pipeline by Dan Bacher The Karuk Tribe, located on the Klamath River in Northern California, today announced its opposition to the Jordan Cove LNG terminal and Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline projects, joining the Yurok and Klamath Tribes in officially opposing the controversial project. ?The proposed pipeline would carry fracked natural gas across or under 400 bodies of water in the Klamath, Rogue, Umpqua, Coquille and Coos watersheds,? according to a statement from the Karuk Tribe. ?The 36- inch underground pipeline would travel from Malin, OR to a proposed terminal in Coos Bay and require a permanent 232-mile long and approximately 100-foot wide clear cut through these already impaired watersheds. The terminal, built in the tsunami zone, would export liquefied natural gas abroad.? ?With our fisheries and water quality already compromised, we simply cannot afford the risks associated with running a natural gas pipeline beneath the Klamath River,? said Karuk Chairman Russell ?Buster? Attebery. Area Tribes and conservation groups see this issue as very similar to the Dakota Access Pipe Line (DAPL) struggle in North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies have been faced with police brutality, rubber bullets, dog attacks and other violence as they fight to protect their land, sacred sites and nation?s second longest river, the Missouri. Many in the Karuk Tribal community will join members of the Yurok Tribe, Klamath Tribes, Klamath Riverkeeper and the Klamath Justice Coalition at the capitol building in Salem, OR today, Monday, November 14 at 1 pm to demand that the Oregon Department of State Lands put an end to the project. The Yurok Tribe announced its opposition to the terminal and pipeline in a statement issued on November 9. ?The impacts to salmon, other fish and native wildlife, in combination with the inherent risks to human populations, are unacceptable,? the Tribe stated. You can expect to see campaigns against fracking, the construction of oil and natural gas pipelines and the expansion of offshore drilling to build momentum as incoming President Trump promotes increased fossil fuel extraction across the nation. On Friday, Trump?s transition team released their ?energy? plan that proclaims their plans to expand onshore and offshore oil drilling on federal lands and waters ? and to ?streamline? the permitting process for all energy projects. Their statement is absolutely chilling for anybody who cares about fish and wildlife, people, water, the environment and the public trust: ?Rather than continuing the current path to undermine and block America's fossil fuel producers, the Trump Administration will encourage the production of these resources by opening onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands and waters. We will streamline the permitting process for all energy projects, including the billions of dollars in projects held up by President Obama, and rescind the job- destroying executive actions under his Administration. We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium, the excessive Interior Department stream rule, and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama Administration. We will eliminate the highly invasive "Waters of the US" rule, and scrap the $5 trillion dollar Obama-Clinton Climate Action Plan and the Clean Power Plan and prevent these unilateral plans from increasing monthly electric bills by double-digits without any measurable effect on Earth's climate.? Also on Friday, Representative Devin Nunes (CA-22), one of the most extreme Congressional opponents of fish and wildlife restoration in California, the West and the nation and one of the strongest backers of increasing Delta water exports to corporate agribusiness, joined the 16-member executive committee of Donald Trump?s transition team. ?Today I was honored to have been named to the executive committee of President-elect Donald Trump's transition team,? said Nunes. ?In this role, I will advise President-elect Trump on the appointments of his Cabinet members and on appointments to other top positions in the new administration. I look forward to helping to assemble an energetic and forward-looking team that will capably lead our country toward more economic growth, greater opportunity, and a safer homeland for all Americans.? As if that wasn?t bad enough, Politico reported Wednesday that David Bernhardt, a lawyer who co-chaired the natural resources department at the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and served as a George W. Bush Interior Department official, is leading the transition's Interior Department team. According to Congressional disclosures, his current lobbying clients include the Westlands Water District, considered the Darth Vader of California politics by Tribes, fishermen and environmentalists, and one of the biggest proponents of exporting more Delta water. Bernhart represented the Westlands Water District on litigation involving the Delta and the Endangered Species Act. (www.politico.com) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: 15000725_1356637594406703_5562961642535546653_o.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 153113 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Nov 14 16:12:39 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2016 00:12:39 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] FedBizzOps.gov Solicitation: Trinity River Restoration Program Refinements - Sources Sought References: <1396769557.5036215.1479168759092.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1396769557.5036215.1479168759092@mail.yahoo.com> Opportunities - Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities | | | | | | | | | | | Opportunities - Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities | | | | Trinity River Restoration Program Refinements - Sources Sought Solicitation Number: R17PS00072Agency: Department of the Interior Office: Bureau of Reclamation Location: BOR - All Offices Solicitation Number:R17PS00072Notice Type:Sources SoughtSynopsis:Added:?Nov 14, 2016 5:49 pmThis is a Sources Sought for small businesses capable of performing Adaptive Management services for the Trinity River Restoration Program (TRPP), Weaverville, California. This notice is being issued to help determine the availability of qualified small businesses capable of meeting the Government's requirement and to determine the method of acquisition, including whether a small business set-aside is possible. The services required include; review the goals and mandates of TRRP, identify refinements to management and functions that will better serve those goals and mandates, and assist the DOI in implementing these refinements. A Draft Statement of Need is included with this notice. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this requirement is 541611, Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services and the associated small business size standard is $15 million dollars. This notice is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation or ultimately award a contract. Responses will not be considered as proposals and the Government will not be responsible for any costs incurred by the respondents to this notice. The notice is for research and information purposes only. No award will be made as a result of this notice. All businesses with the capability to perform the requirement under the applicable NAICS code are encouraged to submit a response to this notice. The information requested is: 1. Company name, address, DUNS number, and point of contact name and email address 2. Business size and small business size classification if applicable (e.g. 8(a), HubZone, Veteran Owned, Woman Owned, etc.) 3. Information that would demonstrate that your business has the capability and resources to meet the specifications of the requirement as described in the attached Draft Statement of Need. 4. Your opinion as to whether a NAICS code other than 541611 is appropriate for this requirement, and 5. Your intent to submit a quote if a solicitation is issued. All responses to this Sources Sought notice shall be submitted electronically (via email) to Nanci Pigeon, npigeon at usbr.gov by no later than Thursday, December 1, 2016 at 5:00 p.m. PST. Please include notice number R17PS00072 with your response. Draft Statement of Need Type:??Other (Draft RFPs/RFIs, Responses to Questions, etc..)Posted Date:??November 14, 2016Statement_of_Need_-_Trinity_River_Restoration_Progra...(39.90 Kb)Description:?Draft Statement of Need - Trinity River Restoration Program RefinementsContracting Office Address:Denver Federal Center Building 67, Room 380 Denver, Colorado 80225? United States? Primary Point of Contact.:Nanci Pigeon,Contract Specialistnpigeon at usbr.govPhone: 916-978-4302 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Nov 15 09:01:40 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2016 17:01:40 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Rock slide closes Highway 299 in western Trinity County References: <2136985600.399246.1479229300736.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2136985600.399246.1479229300736@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.redding.com/news/local/Rock-slide-closes-Highway-299-in-western-Trinity-County-401277565.html Rock slide closes Highway 299 in western Trinity County A rock slide Monday night on Highway 299 in western Trinity County broke at least one hole in the roadway and has shut the highway down, according to the California Highway Patrol.CHP dispatchers reported the slide just before 10 p.m. Monday about 35 miles west of Weaverville and 72 miles west of Redding.Drivers are encouraged to use an alternate route.The road will clsoed until at least 8 a.m. today and possibly longer, according to the CHP.?0?Share? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Tue Nov 15 10:33:46 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2016 10:33:46 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for November 11, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update November 11, 2016. This week our crews mapped 124 redds (1,560 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ???The majority of Chinook Salmon have completed their spawning in the mainstem Trinity River. Coho salmon have been seen moving upstream and should begin spawning soon. ? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9513 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Nov 16 07:05:39 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2016 15:05:39 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Election over, Westlands Water District may get win with controversial drainage plan References: <1320186676.1376767.1479308739062.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1320186676.1376767.1479308739062@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/water-and-drought/article115013113.html#storylink=cpy November 15, 2016 4:26 PM Election over, Westlands Water District may get win with controversial drainage plan By Michael Doyle???mdoyle at mcclatchydc.com WASHINGTON The politically resurgent Westlands Water District is set to win House committee approval Wednesday of a big irrigation drainage plan that is opposed by Northern California?s Democrats. Years in the making, the plan forgives a roughly $375 million debt owed by the nation?s largest irrigation district. The Rhode Island-sized district also locks in favorable terms on future water contracts and will retire some land. In return, the deal relieves the federal government of the multibillion-dollar obligation to construct irrigation drainage facilities for the San Joaquin Valley?s west side. ?In order to move forward with the settlement agreed to by both Westlands and the U.S. Department of Justice last year, this bill has to be passed by Congress,? Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, said Tuesday. ?Doing so will be a positive step in resolving a long-standing drainage dispute and will ultimately save taxpayers billions of dollars.? The expected approval of Valadao?s irrigation drainage bill by the House Natural Resources Committee will come on mostly party lines, and could foreshadow other Westlands? victories. It will not, however, be the final step. ?It?s such an enormous giveaway to powerful interests,? Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said Tuesday. ?A settlement is fine, but not a settlement that gives away the store to Westlands.? The incoming Trump administration has appointed a Westlands lobbyist, David Bernhardt, to head the Interior Department transition team that will make recommendations on policies and personnel. One of Bernhardt?s stated priorities has been ?potential legislation regarding settlement of litigation? ? which means the Valadao bill ? according to lobbying registration records filed by Bernhardt?s firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. Westlands paid the firm $245,000 last year, records show. Another Westlands ally, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, has been appointed to the executive committee of Trump?s overall transition team. Nunes and Valadao also are leading a separate effort to secure a sweeping California water bill that steers more irrigation deliveries to farmers, authorizes new reservoirs and ends an ambitious San Joaquin River restoration program. The irrigation drainage bill almost certainly will pass the GOP-controlled House during the lame-duck congressional session expected to run into December. Its ultimate fate will likely be in the Senate?s hands, where both of California?s Democratic senators have remained noncommittal about a deal first unveiled in court in September 2015. Valadao introduced his bill last January. On Tuesday, 10 months after Valadao?s bill became public, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer said in a statement that ?the most important thing is ensuring toxic drainage is properly treated and protecting taxpayer? and that she urged people to keep working toward that goal. ?This process has been going on for more than 20 years and needs to be solved,? Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Tuesday. ?Both Westlands and the Interior Department know this, which is why they reached an agreement. I will watch what bill comes out of the House and review it carefully.? The irrigation drainage deal was negotiated with the Obama administration, under pressure from a federal court ruling that imposed an unpalatable alternative of providing the irrigation drainage. The drainage was promised beginning with the 1960 legislation authorizing the Central Valley Project?s San Luis Unit, but only about 82 of the planned 188 miles were built before the drain terminated prematurely at Kesterson Reservoir in Merced County. Without drainage, otherwise fertile soil becomes poisoned by a build-up of salty water. The accumulation of selenium-tainted groundwater at Kesterson killed and deformed thousands of birds in the mid-1980s. The bill shoulders the 600,000-acre Westlands district with responsibility for its own drainage. Westlands also agreed to retire at least 100,000 acres of farmland, about one-third of which already has been taken out of production. Separate legislation, authored by Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, includes the smaller San Luis, Panoche and Pacheco water districts located north of Westlands in western Merced and Fresno counties in the irrigation drainage settlement. The three northerly districts serve a total of about 102,000 acres in western Merced and Fresno counties. Michael Doyle: 202-383-6153, @MichaelDoyle10 more here:?http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/water-and-drought/article115013113.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Nov 16 12:09:14 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2016 20:09:14 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fwd: Notice of Public Workshops to Solicit Input on Regulation of Suction Dredge Mining In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1721119293.1697418.1479326955118@mail.yahoo.com> From: Date: Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 9:46 AM Subject: Notice of Public Workshops to Solicit Input on Regulation of Suction Dredge Mining To: Suction Dredge Mining This is a message from the State Water Resources Control Board. Hello All: ?State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) staff has posted aPublic Notice for four upcoming workshops to solicit input from stakeholders and California Native American Tribal interests on how to regulate suction dredge mining at:http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/ water_issues/programs/npdes/ suction_dredge_mining.shtml.The workshop Agenda and Frequently Asked Questions are also posted at this link.???Staff of the State Water Board and California Department of Fish and Wildlife will be conducting these workshops in accordance with the requirements of Senate Bill 637which became effective on January 1, 2016.? The four workshops will be held in Fresno on January 17, 2017; San Bernardino on January 18, 2017; Redding on January 25, 2017; and Sacramento on February 6, 2017.? Please refer to the Public Notice for the times and locations of these workshops.?After the public workshops, State Water Board staff will draft recommendations on how to appropriately regulate suction dredge mining for consideration by the State Water Board.? After staff has prepared the draft recommendations, staff will propose an additional workshop and an adoption hearing where stakeholders and California Native American Tribal interests may speak directly to the State Water Board.? Staff will also provide additional opportunities to submit written comments on the proposed recommendations to regulate suction dredge mining.?For future email notifications and other communications from the State Water Board regarding this matter, pleasesubscribe to the ?Suction Dredge Mining? email notification list by following the link below, choosing the Water Quality list, and selecting "Suction Dredge Mining":http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/ resources/email_subscriptions/ swrcb_subscribe.shtml.??Future email notifications on this matter will only be distributed via the ?Suction Dredge Mining? email notification list.??Thank you,?State Water Resources Control BoardNPDES Program Staff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: notice_suction_pub_wshp.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 328240 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Nov 17 16:16:56 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2016 00:16:56 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Notice of Public Workshops to Solicit Input on Regulation of Suction Dredge Mining In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <149179033.2947461.1479428216198@mail.yahoo.com> On Thursday, November 17, 2016 3:54 PM, "lyris at swrcb18.waterboards.ca.gov" wrote: #yiv8463780351 #yiv8463780351 -- filtered {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}#yiv8463780351 p.yiv8463780351MsoNormal, #yiv8463780351 li.yiv8463780351MsoNormal, #yiv8463780351 div.yiv8463780351MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:11.0pt;}#yiv8463780351 a:link, #yiv8463780351 span.yiv8463780351MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv8463780351 a:visited, #yiv8463780351 span.yiv8463780351MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv8463780351 span.yiv8463780351EmailStyle17 {color:windowtext;}#yiv8463780351 .yiv8463780351MsoChpDefault {}#yiv8463780351 filtered {margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}#yiv8463780351 div.yiv8463780351WordSection1 {}#yiv8463780351 Hello All: ? State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) staff has posted aPublic Notice for four upcoming workshops to solicit input from stakeholders and California Native American Tribal interests on how to regulate suction dredge mining at:http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/npdes/suction_dredge_mining.shtml. The workshop Agenda and Frequently Asked Questions are also posted at this link.?? ? Staff of the State Water Board and California Department of Fish and Wildlife will be conducting these workshops in accordance with the requirements of Senate Bill 637which became effective on January 1, 2016.? The four workshops will be held in Fresno on January 17, 2017; San Bernardino on January 18, 2017; Redding on January 25, 2017; and Sacramento on February 6, 2017.? Please refer to the Public Notice for the times and locations of these workshops. ? After the public workshops, State Water Board staff will draft recommendations on how to appropriately regulate suction dredge mining for consideration by the State Water Board.? After staff has prepared the draft recommendations, staff will propose an additional workshop and an adoption hearing where stakeholders and California Native American Tribal interests may speak directly to the State Water Board.? Staff will also provide additional opportunities to submit written comments on the proposed recommendations to regulate suction dredge mining. ? For future email notifications and other communications from the State Water Board regarding this matter, pleasesubscribe to the ?Suction Dredge Mining? email notification list by following the link below, choosing the Water Quality list, and selecting "Suction Dredge Mining":http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/resources/email_subscriptions/swrcb_subscribe.shtml.? ? Future email notifications on this matter will only be distributed via the ?Suction Dredge Mining? email notification list. ? ? Thank you, ? State Water Resources Control Board NPDES Program Staff ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Fri Nov 18 09:55:51 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2016 17:55:51 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Another step in long march toward California water deal in Congress References: <913798872.3529786.1479491751602.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <913798872.3529786.1479491751602@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sunherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article115173188.html Another step in long march toward California water deal in Congress BY MICHAEL DOYLEmdoyle at mcclatchydc.com - - - - - - - - - ?A key House committee on Wednesday approved a big irrigation drainage deal with California?s politically potent Westlands Water District, opening another front in the state?s ongoing conflict over water, money and power.Watched over by a handful of lobbyists and activists, the House Natural Resources Committee approved the controversial Westlands deal by a mostly party line 27-to-12 vote following an occasionally testy markup. Fresno-area Rep. Jim Costa was one of only three Democrats on the committee to support the legislation.?It resolves a long-festering challenge that we?ve had,? Costa said during the hour-long session.The?irrigation drainage deal?will likely next win party-line approval in the Republican-controlled House as well, but its long-term future remains unclear. Neither of California?s two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and the retiring Barbara Boxer, have endorsed the deal that?s embodied in the House legislation introduced by Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford.Feinstein, in particular, has insisted that her first priority is to complete broader California water legislation that?s been bouncing around for the past several years.Valadao?s bill would forgive a roughly $375 million debt owed by Westlands and secure for the Rhode Island-sized district in the San Joaquin Valley favorable new water contracts. In return, the district would retire 100,000 of its 600,000 acres and relieve the federal government of its obligation to build a potentially multibillion-dollar irrigation drainage system.The end-game, in the closing weeks of the 114th Congress, will be complicated. The deal was negotiated by the Obama administration?s Justice Department but remains toxic to a number of California Democrats and environmentalists who?ve long fought Westlands.?This is a bad deal for the environment and other water users in California,? said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, adding that the bill is a ?taxpayer giveaway.?The debate between Huffman and Costa grew heated at times, with Huffman at one point threatening to demand that Costa?s words be ?taken down,? as a parliamentary slap. Following some gavel-banging and calming words by the committee chairman, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, the conversation cooled down considerably.THIS HAS BEEN A POLITICAL FOOTBALL THAT HAS EXISTED FOR DECADES.?Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno.Substantively, Huffman further underscored the enduring conflicts with a series of three failed but signal-sending amendments. Pointedly, one amendment defeated by voice vote would have blocked any federal official who previously worked or lobbied for Westlands in the past 10 years from overseeing implementation of the drainage deal.?Former employees of the Westlands Water District will be marching through that revolving door,? Huffman predicted.One former Montana congressman who now lobbies for Westlands, Denny Rehberg, observed the proceedings Wednesday morning in the half-filled, third-floor committee room in the Longworth House Office Building.?David Bernhardt of the firm?Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, another one of Westlands? deep bench of D.C.-based lobbyists, has been heading the Interior Department transition team for the incoming Trump administration.On Wednesday, without offering specifics, the Trump transition team announced it would tighten restrictions governing the use of lobbyists.The irrigation drainage deal was negotiated over the past several years with the Obama administration, under pressure from a federal court ruling that imposed an unpalatable alternative of providing the irrigation drainage. The drainage was promised beginning with the 1960 legislation authorizing the Central Valley Project?s San Luis Unit, but only about 82 of the planned 188 miles were built before the drain terminated prematurely at Kesterson Reservoir in Merced County.Without drainage, otherwise fertile soil becomes poisoned by a build-up of salty water. The accumulation of selenium-tainted groundwater at Kesterson killed and deformed thousands of birds in the mid-1980s.As part of the deal, Westlands would assume responsibility for managing the irrigation drainage.?You?ve got to take a win when it?s right in front of you,? said Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale.Separate legislation, authored?by Costa includes the smaller San Luis, Panoche and Pacheco water districts located north of Westlands in western Merced and Fresno counties in a similar irrigation drainage settlement. That settlement has not yet been finalized, and Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., noted Wednesday that the ?FBI is involved? with a?previously disclosed Interior?Department Office of Inspector General investigation somehow touching on one or more of the northerly districts.No details of the investigation have been made public.A Costa-authored amendment approved as part of the Westlands bill on Wednesday would direct the administration to reach a settlement with the three northerly districts.Michael Doyle:?202-383-6153,?@MichaelDoyle10 Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article115173188.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Fri Nov 18 14:00:36 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2016 14:00:36 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Photo Essay: Over 500 people in Sacramento stand in solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux In-Reply-To: <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> References: <001001d23d29$5acca440$1065ecc0$@TheThallers.com> <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <8293486A-DD9B-4144-893B-3EEEC6E571B4@fishsniffer.com> For my photo essay, go to this link: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/11/18/18793816.php Over 500 people in Sacramento stand in solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux by Dan Bacher Over 500 Sacramento area residents, including Native Americans, social justice advocates and environmentalists, joined tens of thousands of others throughout the world on November 15 to demand that the Obama administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers halt the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). They lined both sides of the street in front of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office on J Street, proclaiming their solidarity with the struggle of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota and their allies to stop the pipeline that carries fracked crude Bakken oil. Many drivers passing by on the busy street honked their horns in support of the protesters. The protest took place the day after the Corps announced it is delaying an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline project until it conducts further environmental review and discussion with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The Corps said ?construction on or under Corps land bordering Lake Oahe cannot occur because the Army has not made a final decision on whether to grant an easement.? The Standing Rock Sioux and the water protectors opposing the pipeline are worried that the final Corps decision won?t be made until next year after Donald Trump is inaugurated. Trump?s transition team has vowed to expand offshore and offshore oil production throughout the nation. Even more worrisome, Trump has invested between $500,000 and $1 million in Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, according to financial disclosure forms, Wes Enzinna of Mother Jones reported. Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren also donated more than $100,000 to help elect Trump. ?Trump also owns stock worth between $500,000 and $1 million in Phillips 66, which will own a 25 percent share of the finished pipeline. One of Trump's key energy advisers is North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer, who has encouraged him to dismantle key aspects of the Clean Water Act, which gives the Army Corps and the Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate the nation's waterways and wetlands,? Ezinna wrote. Tuesday?s protest was one of the largest regarding an indigenous struggle ever held in the Capital City. ?We had an incredible turnout at our event,? said Chris Brown, an organizer from the Sacramento Climate Coalition. ?A special shout out goes to the Nevada County protectors of water, who came out in droves.? Brown noted that the Corps approved the construction pipeline without proper consultation or adequate environmental studies. ?The Standing Rock Sioux are resisting the DAPL, which threatens their water, ancestral burial sites, and Native sovereignty,? according to Brown. ?They have been met with militarized police using automatic rifles, sound cannons, tear gas and mace, flash-bang grenades, bean bag rounds, and rubber bullets. The courage of the Water Protectors has inspired people all over the world.? Cosponsors of the local action included Sacramento Area Friends and Relatives of the Lakota Nation, Sacramento Climate Coalition, 350 Sacramento, Davis MoveOn, Davis Stands with Standing Rock, Raging Grannies of Sacramento, Sacramento Stands with Standing Rock, Alianza, and Jewish Voice for Peace. "The state of North Dakota has deployed the National Guard, State and Local Police and police from several other states as well as the FBI to protect Energy Transfer Partners, a privately owned pipeline construction corporation,? said Francisco Dominguez (Tarahumara) of Sacramento Area Friends and Relatives of the Lakota Nation. ?The last time I checked we were still a Democracy." Mariana Rivera from the Zapatista Coalition noted the links between the Sioux Tribe?s struggle in North Dakota and struggles of indigenous peoples and their allies to stop the raising of Shasta Dam, the environmentally destructive Delta Tunnels of Governor Jerry Brown and fracking in California. ?Native people are taking the lead on something that concerns us all, protecting our water and land. All of us to need to take a stand with Standing Rock now,? said Rivera. ?Extracting fossils fuels jeopardizes water systems and native rights ? and that?s why we?re here in solidarity with them,? explained Alicia Esquivido, a local Greenpeace activist, who was there with fellow activist Trent Pearson. Rick Guerrero, an SEIU organizer and former president of the Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS) Board said, ?I'm here to stand with our brothers and sisters in North Dakota. Last week?s election crystallized how our resistance needs to be immediate and sustainable. This destruction needs to be be stopped not only for native people, but for the earth and all workers.? Before the end of the protest, Carol Standing Elk, Lakota Sioux, met with a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representative, Tyler Stalker, and several men from the agency inside the office. "She told us, 'We don?t have anything to do with DAPL; you are are wasting your time,'" said Standing Elk. ?They kept assuring us that their Sacramento office couldn?t do anything. However, I pointed out that they do have the same director in charge of the Corps ? and they should know rules and regulations that apply to Tribes,? she said. Energy Transfer Partners is building the 1,200-mile pipeline to carry fracked crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. The pipeline would run under the Missouri, the nation?s longest river, where a spill would endanger the drinking water for 18 million people. In a classic case of environmental racism, early plans proposed routing the pipeline close to the city of Bismark, a largely white community. However, when the people there objected because of the danger to their water supply, the pipeline was rerouted near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. DAPL also imperils the world?s climate, with 2015 and 2016 being the warmest years in recorded history. A recent study from Oil Change International showed that fossil fuel projects already in production will carry us beyond the 2? rise commonly considered the maximum allowable to avoid the most serious effects of climate change. ?This means we must stop all new fossil fuel infrastructure (e.g., DAPL), and transition to a fossil free economy,? said Brown. On Monday, the Army Corps issued a statement calling for more study and discussion with the Tribe before it allows the pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe at the proposed location: "Washington, D.C. ? Today, the Army informed the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Energy Transfer Partners, and Dakota Access, LLC, that it has completed the review that it launched on September 9, 2016. The Army has determined that additional discussion and analysis are warranted in light of the history of the Great Sioux Nation?s dispossessions of lands, the importance of Lake Oahe to the Tribe, our government-to- government relationship, and the statute governing easements through government property. The Army invites the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to engage in discussion regarding potential conditions on an easement for the pipeline crossing that would reduce the risk of a spill or rupture, hasten detection and response to any possible spill, or otherwise enhance the protection of Lake Oahe and the Tribe?s water supplies. The Army invites discussion of the risk of a spill in light of such conditions, and whether to grant an easement for the pipeline to cross Lake Oahe at the proposed location. The Army continues to welcome any input that the Tribe believes is relevant to the proposed pipeline crossing or the granting of an easement. While these discussions are ongoing, construction on or under Corps land bordering Lake Oahe cannot occur because the Army has not made a final decision on whether to grant an easement. The Army will work with the Tribe on a timeline that allows for robust discussion and analysis to be completed expeditiously. We fully support the rights of all Americans to assemble and speak freely, and urge everyone involved in protest or pipeline activities to adhere to the principles of nonviolence." The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe then published the following news release in response to the Corps? statement: CANNON BALL, N.D. ? The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers today announced they are delaying an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline project until it conducts further environmental review with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The Corp noted that ?construction on or under Corps land bordering Lake Oahe cannot occur because the Army has not made a final decision on whether to grant an easement.? Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chair Dave Archambault II said while the decision was not 100 percent what the Tribe had hoped for he said it is clear President Obama is listening. ?We are encouraged and know that the peaceful prayer and demonstration at Standing Rock have powerfully brought to light the unjust narrative suffered by tribal nations and Native Americans across the country,? Archambault said. ?Together we can inspire people across America and the globe to honor each other and the Earth we hold sacred,? Archambault said. ?Millions of people have literally and spiritually stood with us at Standing Rock. And for this, you have our deepest thanks and gratitude. The harmful and dehumanizing tactics by the state of North Dakota and corporate bullies did not go unnoticed because of you. Not all of our prayers were answered, but this time, they were heard.? The 1,100-mile pipeline was rerouted towards tribal nations after citizens of North Dakota rightfully rejected it to protect their communities and water. While the pipeline is nearly complete, it required the final easement to drill under the Missouri River (at Lake Oahe) just a half a mile upstream of the tribe?s reservation boundary. The water supply of the Tribe and 17 million Americans downstream are at risk for contamination by crude oil leaks and spills. A single spill would be culturally and economically catastrophic for the Tribe. The Missouri River is the longest river in North America and crosses several states south of the project. ?We call on all water protectors, as we have from the beginning, to join our voices in prayer and to share our opposition to this pipeline peacefully. The whole world is watching and where they see prayerful, peaceful resistance, they join us,? Archambault said. Learn more about the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe at standwithstandingrock.net. For incremental updates please follow our Facebook page at Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Tina___Faygo.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 174812 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Nov 20 17:02:04 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2016 01:02:04 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] East Bay Times Editorial: Trump win likely means Delta disaster References: <2063039224.959408.1479690124739.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2063039224.959408.1479690124739@mail.yahoo.com> Trump win likely means Delta disaster?Donald Trump?s victory spells potential disaster for the future of the Sacramento- San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary west of the Mississippi and a major drinking water source in the East Bay.It?s essential that Trump appoint a secretary of the Interior who will balance the state?s water demands with the need to protect the long-term health of the Delta. If he fails to do so, it will be incumbent on California?s two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and newly elected Kamala Harris, to stand firm on what is arguably Northern California?s most pressing issue.The president-elect has yet to offer an opinion on whether he will support Gov. Jerry Brown?s massive twin tunnels Delta plan. But we do know this. Speaking to a group of Central Valley farmers in September, Trump declared, 1) ?There is no drought? in California, and 2) ?Even the environmentalists don?t know why? a minimum amount of water has to flow into the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta to protect the health of the waterway.Both are stupendously uninformed positions.The Delta?s health continues to deteriorate because of the Central Valley and Southern California?s unquenchable demand for additional water supplies. State biologists have acknowledged that salmon runs are diminishing at an alarming rate, and the Delta smelt, the canary in the coal mine for the Delta, is all but extinct.Scientists universally agree that the best wayto improve the health of the Delta is to pour more ? not less ? through the estuary. The latest report from the State Water Resources Control Board in September proposed leaving 30-50 percent more water in the Merced, Stanislaus and Tuolumne rivers to protect wildlife in the Delta. But two of Trump?s appointees to his transition team offer a strong indication that he?s planning to do the opposite.The most worrisome appointment is that of David Bernhardt, a lawyer who is a lobbyist for the Westlands Water District, which does the bidding of Central Valley?s corporate agriculture interests. More recently Westlands has been negotiating with Congress to mandate higher flows of water fromthe Delta.?Trump has charged Bernhardt with leading the Interior Department transition team. The other troubling Trump transition team appointment is Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, who has spent the better part of the last decade trying to weaken the Clean Water Act.Nunes is a proponent of a major House water bill that would send more irrigationdeliveries to CentralValley farmers. Senate Democrats are the state?s only hope of killing the bill.During the campaign, Trump promised the Central Valley that he would ?start opening up the water so that you farmers can survive.? Senators Harris and Feinstein will need to stay on their toes to preserve the health of California?s waterways. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Tue Nov 22 14:37:05 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2016 14:37:05 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for November 18, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update November 18, 2016. This week our crews mapped 14 redds (1,574 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ??There has been a problem with the KML file linked in the weekly report. I have attempted to remedy this problem. If you are having issues, please let me know. Have a great Thanksgiving! Don't get too fat on pie. ? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9493 bytes Desc: not available URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Tue Nov 22 16:09:32 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2016 16:09:32 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for November 18, 2016 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Updated email graphic. ? On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Rupert, Derek wrote: > Hello All, > > The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California > Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe > have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. > The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries > webpage. > > Trinity River spawn Survey update November 18, 2016. > > > This week our crews mapped 14 redds (1,574 total for the year) in the > Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat. The graph below is clipped from > our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). > > > ??There has been a problem with the KML file linked in the weekly report. > I have attempted to remedy this problem. If you are having issues, please > let me know. > > Have a great Thanksgiving! Don't get too fat on pie. > ? > Cheers, > Derek > > -- > Derek Rupert > Fish Biologist > US Fish and Wildlife Service > Weaverville, CA > Office 530.623.1805 > Cell 570.419.2823 > Derek_Rupert at fws.gov > -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9544 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9493 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Tue Nov 22 15:31:07 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2016 23:31:07 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW - TRP trapping summary through Julian week 46 Message-ID: Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 46 (November 18). Sorry for the tardiness of this on; lotsa' stuff up in the air (including storm after storm and crew off for family) making this a little more difficult to get this out. The WCW is done for the season. Yeah, yeah, most of you had figured that out a long time ago, but my ever-optimistic self is finally willing to admit it. Stick a fork in it, we are not getting back in this season, we are D-U-N, done. We do still have a little hardware in the river, so those of you who might be floating/jetting by the WC weir site please be cautious, especially in flows less than 3,000 cfs (and especially on the river left side of the river). We will get out there just as soon as we can to get the rest of the T-posts (fence posts) and that one last solidly-installed trap out of there. I apologize for any inconvenience (I am hoping for none, considering the time of season) that anything my "bad"call on the 12th of October might have made to any of you. If NOAA-weather can't know what the future holds I certainly can't either. I try, but ah, well, flows happen. Fish continue to enter Trinity River Hatchery at the slowish pace we were anticipating for this season. Let's hope they just keep coming for awhile...apparently these storms are going to! I wish you all a happy and safe long Thanksgiving weekend. Drive safely if you're travelling, stay warm and dry if not. 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Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW46.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 115762 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW46.pdf URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Nov 23 09:20:08 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2016 09:20:08 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Trump appoints Big Oil think tank director to lead Interior transition team In-Reply-To: <8293486A-DD9B-4144-893B-3EEEC6E571B4@fishsniffer.com> References: <001001d23d29$5acca440$1065ecc0$@TheThallers.com> <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> <8293486A-DD9B-4144-893B-3EEEC6E571B4@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <1AABAB4B-DCAD-4B5B-A38A-A3FFD6B66BD0@fishsniffer.com> http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2016/11/23/18794061.php http://www.elkgrovenews.net/2016/11/trump-appoints-big-oil-think-tank.html http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/22/1603011/-Trump-appoints-Big-Oil-think-tank-director-to-lead-Interior-transition-team Trump appoints Big Oil think tank director to lead Interior transition team Doug Domenech replaces David Bernhardt, Westlands lobbyist by Dan Bacher The incoming Trump administration appears to be dedicated to plundering the nation?s fish, wildlife, rivers, lakes, bays, oceans and natural resources more than any other presidential regime in recent history, as evidenced by President-elect Donald Trump's appointment of corporate agribusiness advocates, oil industry shills and other anti-environmental extremists to his transition team. On November 21, Trump again shook up his transition team, naming Doug Domenech, the director of a pro-Big-Oil think tank, to lead his Interior Department advisory group, the Center for Biological Diversity reported. Domenech replaces David Bernhardt, a lawyer and Westlands Water District lobbyist who co-chaired the natural resources department at the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and served as a George W. Bush Interior Department official, as the head of the Interior Department team. Bernhart represented the Westlands Water District on litigation involving the Delta and the Endangered Species Act. (http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-energy-team-mike-mckenna-myron-ebell-228672 ) Domenech is director of the Fueling Freedom Project, a subsidiary of the right wing Texas Public Policy Foundation, an organization heavily funded by the billionaire Koch brothers and ExxonMobil. The project advocates and celebrates the continued burning of fossil fuels ? and its goals include ending ?the regulation of CO2 as a pollutant.? Its prime directive is to defend ?the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels.? According to the group?s website, fuelingfreedomproject.com, "Fueling Freedom Project, an initiative by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, is working to: Explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels ? how civilization has been transformed and the human condition improved through the development of this energy resource; Build a multi-state coalition to push back against the EPA?s unconstitutional efforts to take over the electric power sector by regulating CO2 via the Clean Power Plan; End the regulation of CO2 as a pollutant. We support state and national efforts to oppose the Clean Power Plan, pass legislation/ resolutions, file law suits against EPA, and promote the passage of measures to protect states from EPA over reach.? The Center for Biological Diversity issued the following statement in response to Domenech?s appointment: ?It?s beyond frightening that Trump would appoint a shill for Big Oil to plot the direction of a department that administers millions of acres of public lands that belong to all Americans,? said Randi Spivak, the Center?s public lands director. ?This is a clear signal that in a Trump administration it will be open season for corporations who want to frack, drill or mine our public resources, regardless of climate chaos, water pollution, species extinction and health impacts to communities. Any attempt to open up America?s public lands to increased fracking, drilling and extraction will be met with a wall of public resistance. That?s the real moral imperative.? Trump's transition team released its ?energy? plan on November 11, one that sounds eerily similar to the mission of the Fueling Freedom Project. Their statement is absolutely chilling for anybody who cares about fish and wildlife, people, water, the environment and the public trust. ?Rather than continuing the current path to undermine and block America's fossil fuel producers, the Trump Administration will encourage the production of these resources by opening onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands and waters. We will streamline the permitting process for all energy projects, including the billions of dollars in projects held up by President Obama, and rescind the job- destroying executive actions under his Administration. We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium, the excessive Interior Department stream rule, and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama Administration. We will eliminate the highly invasive "Waters of the US" rule, and scrap the $5 trillion dollar Obama-Clinton Climate Action Plan and the Clean Power Plan and prevent these unilateral plans from increasing monthly electric bills by double-digits without any measurable effect on Earth's climate.? The replacement of Bernhardt with Domenich followed in the wake of Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) floating an amendment to stop former Westlands employees and lobbyists from overseeing a controversial Westlands irrigation drainage settlement if they were to join the Department of Interior leadership. The settlement legislation is strongly opposed by Restore the Delta and environmental groups, fishing organizations and the Hoopa Valley Tribe and other Tribes. Bernhardt?s firm also dropped Westlands as a client. Although no longer in the leadership position, Bermhardt may still be on the transition team. The transition team shake up also followed on the heels of Trump removing some lobbyists from leadership positions on the team. (http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/politics-government/election/article116392988.html#storylink =cpy ) Transition team includes Tom Pyle, energy lobbyist, and Representative Devin Nunes But individuals with huge conflicts of interest continue to dominate the transition team. Tom Pyle, the president of the American Energy Alliance (AEA) heads the Trump Energy Department transition team, E&E News reported. The AEA is the political arm of the Institute for Energy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based ?non-profit? organization that ?conducts research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets.? AEA?s mission is to ?enlist and empower energy consumers to encourage policymakers to support free market policies.? Pyle, who previously lobbied on behalf of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association and Koch Industries, founded AEA in 2008. Pyle ?previously worked for Congressman Tom Delay (R-TX), when Delay served as Whip and before Delay, as House Majority Leader, stepped down from the U.S. House of Representatives under an ethical cloud,? reported SourceWatch. (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Energy_Alliance ) Representative Devin Nunes (CA-22), one of the most aggressive Congressional proponents of increasing Delta water exports to agribusiness and opponents of fish and wildlife restoration in California and the West, remains on the 16-member executive committee of Donald Trump?s transition team. Nunes recently told McClatchy News that he believes Trump supports agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in their push to export more Delta water. Nunes has been one of the greatest advocates for the weakening of the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and other landmark environmental laws. ?The good thing is, he is more up to speed on water infrastructure than any other president we?ve had,? Nunes said. ?Out here, everything is water, water, water.? (http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/election/article114190123.html ) Other members of Trump?s transition team include Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a board member of Facebook; Trump's sons and daughter Ivanka; Myron Ebell (EPA), who directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and is a leading climate change skeptic; and Mike McKenna (DOE/NRC). president of MWR Strategies, a lobbying firm whose clients have included Koch Companies and Dow Chemical. The team also includes Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon, a white nationalist and the former executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, who has worked as an investment banker with Goldman-Sachs, filmmaker and political consultant. On November 13, Trump named Bannon as his chief strategist, drawing fire from people throughout the country because of Bannon?s openly racist views. Rep. Huffman on November 16 joined 169 Democratic members of the U.S. House in sending a letter, led by David Cicilline of Rhode Island, to President-elect Donald Trump to rescind the appointment of Stephen Bannon, ?a man who has helped lead a white nationalist, anti-Semitic, and sexist movement as chairman of Breitbart Media.? (https://huffman.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-huffman-urges-president-elect-trump-to-reverse-bannon-appointment ) The letter stated, ?Since the election there have been a number of incidents across the country in which minorities, including Muslim Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Jewish Americans, have been the targets of violence, harassment and intimidation. Mr. Bannon?s appointment sends the wrong message to people who have engaged in those types of activities, indicating that they will not only be tolerated, but endorsed by your Administration. Millions of Americans have expressed fear and concern about how they will be treated by the Trump Administration and your appointment of Mr. Bannon only exacerbates and validates their concerns.? Trump's ?rumored cabinet wishlist? includes Sarah "Drill, baby, Drill" Palin as Secretary of the Interior; anti-EPA Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller as Secretary of Agriculture; and fracking billionaire Harold Hamm as Energy Secretary, according to Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Will Jerry Brown make deal with Trump to build Delta Tunnels, expand fracking? Trump hasn't taken a specific position on Governor Jerry Brown's "legacy" project, the Delta Tunnels, but his comments to date on California water have shown a strong embrace of the campaign by corporate agribusiness interests to pump more water from the Delta at the expense of Delta smelt and salmon populations. Salmon and public trust advocates fear that Jerry Brown, who like Trump is beholden to Big Ag and BIg Oil interests, will try to make a deal with Trump to eviscerate landmark environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act in order to fast-track the construction of the environmentally devastating project, the California WaterFix. While the mainstream media falsely portrays Brown as a ?climate leader,? he in fact, just like Trump, supports the expansion of fracking and extreme oil extraction methods. In September, the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) opened an investigation into the California Democratic Party in response to a report by a prominent consumer group claiming that the party acted as a ?laundry machine? to funnel donations from oil, energy and utility companies to Brown?s 2014 election campaign. In her letter to the Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, Galena West, Chief of the FPPC?s Enforcement Division, said the division ?will investigate the California Democratic Party for alleged violations of the Political Reform Act?s campaign reporting provisions resulting from information contained in your sworn complaint (Brown?s Dirty Hands Report.)? The report tabulated donations totaling $9.8 million dollars to Jerry Brown?s campaigns, causes, and initiatives, and to the California Democratic Party since he ran for Governor from 26 energy companies with business before the state, according to Court. The companies included the state?s three major investor-owned utilities, as well as Occidental, Chevron, and NRG. The report alleges that energy companies donated $4.4 million to the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party gave $4.7 million to Brown?s re-election between 2011 and 2014. Consumer Watchdog submitted its report to the FPPC as a sworn complaint. (http://redgreenandblue.org/2016/09/29/jerry-browns-campaign-launder-dirty-money-big-oil/ ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Domenech-HiRes.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 112733 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu Nov 24 19:17:36 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2016 19:17:36 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Proposition that threatened Delta Tunnels defeated by a narrow margin In-Reply-To: <1AABAB4B-DCAD-4B5B-A38A-A3FFD6B66BD0@fishsniffer.com> References: <001001d23d29$5acca440$1065ecc0$@TheThallers.com> <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> <8293486A-DD9B-4144-893B-3EEEC6E571B4@fishsniffer.com> <1AABAB4B-DCAD-4B5B-A38A-A3FFD6B66BD0@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <39DD6195-F5D5-432A-B975-39A075A1C777@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/11/24/proposition-that-threatened-delta-tunnels-defeated-by-a-narrow-margin/ Image of Governor Jerry Brown courtesy of DonkeyHotey. Proposition that threatened Delta Tunnels defeated by a narrow margin by Dan Bacher On November 22, the California Secretary of State?s Office announced that the voters narrowly defeated Proposition 53, an initiative requiring voter approval of revenue bonds over $2 billion, by a narrow margin of 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent. Governor Jerry Brown and his staff are celebrating the victory because it would have required a public vote on his two controversial ?legacy? projects, the Delta Tunnels and High Speed Rail. ?The defeat of Prop 53 is good news for CA and our future,? proclaimed Governor Jerry Brown in a tweet. ?It means one less roadblock in solving our water and transportation problems.? However, about 90 percent of the anglers, grassroots environmentalists and Tribal leaders that I discussed Proposition 53 with voted ?Yes? on the measure because it would require a vote on the Delta Tunnels and other huge projects that pose significant threats to the environment. For example, Kevin Wolf of Davis, a long time environmental activist, campaign organizer and advocate for openness and transparency in government, advised voting Yes on 53 in his Recommendations for the November 2016 Election. ?This would force the state to let voters decide if there would be a new Delta Twin Tunnels project or other large project funded by state revenue bonds,? said Wolf. ?This could harm some good things in the future, but if it is a good enough idea, it should get passed as a proposition.? While the votes were still being tallied, Dean Cortopassi, proponent of Proposition 53, who describes himself as a ?libertarian Democrat,? issued a statement regarding the election results for the measure on November 9. Among other things, he said the ?No on 53 campaign seemed analogous to German Panzer Divisions waging ?Blitzkrieg on Poland in 1939? and described the measure's opponents as ?Sacramento Gang Politicians and Porkers? in his statement: "The closeness of the Prop 53 vote (currently 51% - 49%) means the final outcome will be delayed until 100% of all votes cast are reported. In the interim, my personal congratulations to each and every one voting Yes on 53 (currently 4+ million Californians)! Funded by Sacramento Gang Politicians and Porkers, the No on 53 campaign threw everything at you that $20+ million could buy! Opposition included: hundreds of grant-hungry local entities; major funding from Special Interests who feed at the Public Trough; newspaper Editorial negativity; a barrage of blatantly false TV ads; and over the past three weeks, Governor Brown bombarding you with Robo calls and emails; statewide Press Conferences; and increasingly snide attacks on Prop 53 and me personally. Taken as a whole, the No on 53 campaign seemed analogous to German Panzer Divisions waging ?Blitzkrieg? on Poland in 1939. In the meantime, the Yes on 53 campaign relied on me providing personal interviews to journalists willing to consider Prop 53 on its merits; and two newspaper ads in major newspapers. That?s it! Of the total funds my wife and I contributed, 80% was spent on qualifying Prop 53 and less than 20% ($1 million) on promoting its merits. Think about the disparity of $20 million to $1 million campaigns plus the additional political clout of the Governor?s Sacramento Gang?! By normal measurements, Yes on 53 should have been crushed by the No on 53 onslaught ? but it wasn?t! And the reason is every one of you who voted Yes figured out the truth about the Debt Dragon that threatens Californians today and tomorrow! I?m proud of each Yes on 53 voter and I hope we are in the majority when 100% of votes cast are counted. If we are not in the majority, don?t despair because the truth torches we lit together cannot be extinguished, and the Sacramento Gang?s Debt Dragon will be leashed! Whether Prop 53 ends up at 51% or at 49%, We have Won ? Thank You!" Proposition 53 would require statewide voter approval for state revenue bond projects costing more than $2 billion, closing a loophole that allows politicians to issue massive new debt for multi-billion dollar projects without voter approval. For more information, visit: www.YESon53.com . Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, the Executive Director of Restore the Delta, noted that Prop 53 was ?never a Delta Tunnels-only proposition. It was a proposition focused on revenue bond debt for large state projects, including High Speed Rail. That is why Restore the Delta, the largest Delta environmental organization, never took a position on Proposition 53.? With the results now in, she issued the following statement: ?Despite the defeat of Prop. 53, the funding for the proposed Delta Tunnels is still highly questionable. There is no finance plan available for public review because it simply doesn?t exist. Westlands Water District, one of the major beneficiaries of the project, recently had its credit rating downgraded by Fitch credit rating service, and an independent economic analysis shows that even with a Federal and State tax subsidy, the project still does not pencil out for the big agricultural districts. Even if Proposition 53 is not approved, the long-term plan for the project will remain controversial,? according to Fitch Credit Rating services. Meanwhile, Southern California citizens will end up paying for the project four ways: property taxes; higher water rates; Federal and State taxes. Metropolitan Water District?s claim that all it will cost is $5 monthly per household is simply not true. Just look at how the Seattle Tunnel Project, a two-mile tunnel, is coming in at double the price, over $1.5 billion per mile. The twin Delta tunnels are actually a total of 70 tunnel-miles, and the State is only budgeting $500 million per mile. ?This is why presentations were made by Metropolitan Water District and Department of Water Resources employees at the Cutting Edge 2016, International Tunneling Conference, during the last several days of the election news cycle, are significant. Restore the Delta attendees learned that the State wants tunnel construction contractors to assume the risk of owning the tunnel boring machines and needed replacement parts as a strategy to keep costs down. But international tunneling firms will not want to assume this kind of risk. This was part of CA WaterFix?s sales pitch to international contractors to buy into the project ? a project that is still not permitted by the State or Federal government, a project that cannot meet Clean Water Act standards for the Delta, a project that will wipe out fishery economies up and down the west coast, a project that will leave hundreds of thousands of people with polluted drinking water, a project in which those who are supposed to repay the debt for the project can?t ? a project presently being audited by State and Federal officials ? a project that still has only 10% of the geotechnical data needed for tunnel contractors to begin construction. Restore the Delta will continue unmasking the true financial and environmental costs to Californians of the Delta tunnels project and fighting its implementation through administrative processes, education and outreach, and litigation if necessary. We will prevail because the majority of Californians disapprove of the Delta Tunnels and backers have not proven the proposal makes economic or environmental sense.? The results of the Proposition 53 vote are disappointing for those who care about salmon, the Delta and the public trust. However, there is no doubt that if an initiative solely requiring a public vote on the Delta Tunnels had been on the ballot, it would have been decisively approved by the voters. Unfortunately, Governor Jerry Brown and the California legislative "leadership," while falsely portraying themselves as "environmentalists," for several years have failed to support legislation requiring a public vote on the tunnels, the most environmentally devastating public works project in California history. That's because Brown and his legislative allies know that the voters would overwhelmingly reject the Delta Tunnels, just like they defeated the Peripheral Canal in November 1982, if the project went to a public vote. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: donkeyhotey_jerry_brown-2.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 14889 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Nov 28 09:42:58 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2016 17:42:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Desert and farm, water drainage and a new deal in the Central Valley References: <542019880.2213664.1480354978238.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <542019880.2213664.1480354978238@mail.yahoo.com> NOVEMBER 27, 2016 2:10 AMDesert and farm, water drainage and a new deal in the Central Valley? Read more here:?http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article116840913.html#storylink=cpIrrigated fields in the Westlands Water District contrast with the parched Diablo Range.?Damon Winter?New York Times fileBy Mark Arax;??Special to The Bee?LOS BANOSThe helicopter landed in the western hills above the San Joaquin Valley and out of the dust walked President John F. Kennedy.It was Aug. 18, 1962, and the sun would not let go. In the hollow of the mountain, where California was about to build its newest reservoir, the air felt like a blast furnace. Summer had baked the earth to a tan and shrunken form. The hills turned to hide. Though not a drop of rain had fallen from the sky since spring, no one in the assembled crowd, certainly not the cotton kings, thought of this as drought.Going dry for eight months was California?s condition. And here was the president coming west to deliver California?s fix. A son of Massachusetts, he knew this was a place where ?things do not happen but are made to happen.? Looking down on the Valley, he could see nature?s aridity and man?s answer side by side. Desert and farm, salt and fruit. The difference was the reach of an irrigation canal.Two Irish American politicians at the peak of their power, JFK and Gov. Pat Brown, came together that day outside Los Banos, ?the baths,? to build the nation?s largest off-stream earthen reservoir. No partnership between Washington, D.C., and Sacramento had ever tackled a project of such monument. By dint of the new reservoir and an aqueduct that sent water from one end of California to the other, the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project forever joined hands.?But the building of the San Luis Reservoir and canal stands out in the annals of western reclamation for a more inglorious reason. The Westlands Water District, 600,000 acres of irrigated agriculture, controlled nearly all the federal water that moved through the new plumbing.The protectors of the environment, such as they were in the late 1950s, didn?t grumble about the arrangement. The cotton growers on Fresno County?s vast west side, after all, had played an outsized role in getting the federal government to build its share of the San Luis unit. But there was plenty of reason to suspect that Westlands, drawn in the shape of a whale, entitled to more than 1 million acre-feet of water each year, was a risky investment for the feds.?Half the district boasted some of the finest loam in the world. This was the soil the farmers, congressmen and government bureaucrats loved to talk about. But the other half, nearly 300,000 acres, came with a caveat. It was alkali desert plugged up with clay. Irrigation after irrigation, deadly salts backed up into the root zone. An elaborate drainage system had to be built to remove the polluted water from the land.The wastewater was so unremitting ? the salts alone could fill 30 railroad cars a day ? that only a regional drainage system could handle the problem.That drainage system with an outlet to the sea never came to be. And the inevitable ? the story of ancient Mesopotamia ? transpired. A poisonous brew of salts and selenium bubbled up to the surface, stunted crops, killed migratory birds and triggered a decades long fight among environmentalists, farmers and the federal government. None of the scientific studies or half-baked experimental projects or tangled court rulings has ever come up with a sure and safe way to get rid of the polluted water. Young protagonists have turned into old protagonists trying to solve the riddle of the land.Now a compromise to settle one of the most protracted and costly disputes in the history of U.S. irrigated agriculture is finally at hand. After negotiating in secret for two years, the?U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Westlands Water District have agreed to a complex deal?on drainage and farming that pleases neither side. As it moves to a vote in Congress, and likely adoption, the environmentalists in San Francisco and Sacramento are digging in for the next round of their epic fight against the whale.Had ?Moby Dick? played out on the land instead of the sea, it seems, this would be its fable.The president and the governor stood next to each other in the shade of a speaker?s platform festooned with red, white and blue bunting. The 10,000 people before them had awakened early that summer day in anticipation of the event. Husbands and wives, their children in tow, had driven into the dry hills from miles around. They were dressed as if for a fancy Sunday picnic.The idea of California reclamation always had been to dam a river at its source. The $500 million San Luis Reservoir, at least a decade in the cajoling, would take an equally audacious approach and build a dam many miles from the nearest river. More than 1 million acre-feet of federal water from the rivers of the north would be pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta each year and run up the hill into the California Aqueduct. The aqueduct would then take the water through the San Luis unit and deliver it to Westlands and four other federal recipients.The beauty of the aqueduct was that it would serve two masters. Working on behalf of the State Water Project, the great concrete river would take millions of acre-feet more from the Delta and ship it hundreds of miles south ? to the farms of Kings and Kern counties, and to the faucets of Los Angeles and San Diego.Kennedy, wearing an elegant dark suit and a blue tie with diagonal stripes, his hair stuck at perfect, was transfixed by the seeming paradox of the San Joaquin Valley.?We can see the greenest and most richest earth producing the greatest and richest crops in the country,? he told the crowd. ?And then a mile away we can see the same earth and see it brown and dusty and useless, and all because there?s water in one place and there isn?t in another.?The president then counted one, two, three, and he and Brown pushed down on a pair of plungers that set off the dynamite packed into the hillside. Clouds of dust billowed skyward. The crowd gave an earnest cheer. Some of the men ? the cotton growers among them, along with the reclamation engineers ? knew a different truth about the land. Nature had made the soils of the Valley very different from each other. Sections of Westlands, mile after mile, were laden with selenium, salt and boron. The waters of farming would percolate a shallow way down, hit hard clay and then bubble back up in a bog of contamination.The wastewater was so unremitting ? the salts alone could fill 30 railroad cars a day ? that only a regional drainage system could handle the problem. But the reclamation bureau, it turned out, was a lot more skilled at making the desert bloom than cleaning it up once it bloomed.The new deal before Congress transfers the burden of drainage from the federal government to Westlands.The bureau, failing to appreciate the challenge at hand, set the cost of drainage at $20 million. An earthen canal would transport the poisoned runoff 197 miles to an outlet in the Delta. But a canal made out of dirt wasn?t going to work. Salts and selenium would simply leach out. So the bureau and Westlands, in 1965, embraced a new $41 million plan that featured a main canal lined with concrete.Then Westlands woke up one morning wanting to grow bigger. The cotton kings had expanded their farming to higher ground outside the district. They wondered: Why not include this land in the boundaries of Westlands? That way, cheap federal water could flow there, too.The Department of Interior, guided by a philosophy that all good earth should come under the plow, wished mostly to please the farmers. So Interior, without congressional approval, allowed Westlands to grow from 400,000 acres to 600,000 acres. This bigger footprint took away millions of dollars for drainage and spent it on an expanded irrigation system. The high ground, flush with new water, drained onto the low ground. A farmer with a backhoe hit contaminated mire a few feet down. To make matters worse, the state of California was souring on the idea of a planned outlet to the Delta.?No drainage, no water? might have been the mantra of the reclamation bureau. But in 1967, the bureau started delivering water to Westlands even as drainage was delayed. Not until the early 1970s did the bureau proceed to build a concrete canal that snaked 87 miles across the plain. The farmers fabricated a system of tile drains under the root zones that collected the polluted water and sent it into the canal. With no route to the ocean, the wastewater drained northward into Kesterson Reservoir, 600 acres of man-made ponds next to a national wildlife refuge. There, the toxic brew was allowed to evaporate under the Valley sun.A government plane flying overhead might have discerned a disaster in the making. The wastewater from a bird?s eye view looked nothing but beautiful blue. Ducks and geese on their migratory journeys alighted to feed and swim and give birth. Many of the young became grotesquely deformed. Those with stunted gullets were dying a slow death. An alarmed federal scientist, Felix Smith, traced the tragedy to the accumulation of selenium in the environment, a byproduct of irrigated agriculture in the desert.?His superiors tried to silence Smith, but a nearby cattle farmer, Jim Claus, had seen the same suffering in his cows and was talking to a local reporter named Lloyd Carter. Together, the three men documented the scandal right down to the wealthy growers employing various fronts to hide the fact that they were farming vast stretches in violation of federal acreage limits. The reclamation bureau, well aware of the scheme, had chosen to look the other way.?The story landed on ?60 Minutes? and the feds were forced to shut down Kesterson and the master drain in 1986. That?s when the farmers of Westlands began suing the federal government for breaking its promise of drainage. After one court ruling and another, the federal government found itself on the hook to solve the unsolvable. Without drainage, dozens of farmers had no choice but to retire their lands. By 2005, taxpayers had spent $107 million to retire 40,000 acres of the most polluted ground.?The new deal before Congress transfers the burden of drainage from the federal government to Westlands. The district will handle the salts and selenium within its borders in a way that does no further harm to the birds. What the system will look like ? how extensive and costly it will be ? is up to Westlands to decide. In return, the federal government will forgive Westlands from paying the $375 million it still owes for building the dam, reservoir and water delivery systems. The district will have to retire another 60,000 acres, but it can continue to farm 200,000 acres of polluted ground.At 500,000 acres in size, Westlands will remain the largest agricultural water district in the nation. The whale will be entitled, in perpetuity, to 75 percent of the cheap federal water it has drawn in previous years. It will keep on replacing seasonal crops such as melons and garlic with more permanent crops such as almonds and pistachios, thereby hardening demand for water. And the land will go on sinking because farmers can continue pumping vast amounts of groundwater whenever their federal supplies are restricted by drought and Delta smelt.Not all of the big growers inside Westlands are pleased with the deal. Farmers on the good lands will have to take out $185 million in bonds to reimburse the farmers on the problem lands for their drainage troubles. The impacted farmers ? some of whom sit on the Westlands board, some of whom negotiated directly with the federal government for payouts amounting to millions of dollars each ? will still be able to grow nuts or whatever else. The pistachio tree, for one, isn?t bothered much by salt. And drip irrigation has bought them more time. The precise application of water is, for now, keeping the toxic bog from invading the root zone.Today, Kesterson has been filled with earth to cover up the selenium hot spots. The desiccated bones of the master drain still carve a path through Westlands. Inside the district, there?s hope that a President Donald Trump will gut the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, too, and turn the clock back to 1962. But if you walk the soil and talk to the clear-eyed farmers, they will tell you about a new reality.California finally has begun the process of regulating groundwater. Sometime in the next decade, Westlands won?t be able to willy-nilly stick more 1,800-foot wells in the ground to make up for water that drought and fish take. And sometime beyond that, as the ancient Sumerians discovered, salt inexorably will have its way. The whale, these farmers will whisper, cannot be sustained.Mark Arax, author of ?West of the West,? is working on a book about California?s water wars, to be published by Knopf. Contact him at?mark.arax at sbcglobal.net. Read more here:?http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article116840913.html#storylink=cpy? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Thu Dec 1 10:56:21 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2016 18:56:21 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity River Project trapping summary through JWeek 47 Message-ID: Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 47 (November 25). Look for the JWeek 48 update sooner than later. MC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW47.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 115638 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW47.pdf URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Dec 4 19:15:42 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2016 03:15:42 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] December 7 TAMWG Draft Agenda References: <1611372259.7923709.1480907742382.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1611372259.7923709.1480907742382@mail.yahoo.com> https://www.fws.gov/arcata/fisheries/reports/tamwg/2016/2016_12/TAMWG%20Agenda%20DRAFT%20for%20Dec%207%202016%20v2.pdf Trinity River Adaptive Management Working Group DRAFT AGENDA Meeting of December 7, 2016 NOTE: TimesSubject to Change ? Location: Trinity RiverRestoration Program office (1313 South Main St, Weaverville, CA 96093) ? Web Conference: http://www.mymeetings.com/nc/join.php?sigKey=mymeetings&i=442336293&p=&t=c Conference Call: 866-715-1246,pass code: 4251781 ? | Wednesday, December 7, 2016 | | Time | Agenda Item ? | Presenter | | 9:30 AM | Welcome, Introductions, Approve Agenda & Minutes | TAMWG | | 9:45 AM | Public Comment?? Note: In accordance with traditional meeting practices, TAMWG will not act on any public comment item during its current business meeting | ? | | 10:00 AM | Designated Federal Officer Update | Joe Polos | | 10:10 AM | TMC Chair Update | Seth Naman | | 10:30 AM | Executive Director Report ? budget, Implementation, Science Program, etc. | Mike Dixon/TRRP staff | | 11:30 | Wells and water supply along upper Trinity River | TAMWG | | 12:00 PM | Lunch | ? | | 1:00 PM | WY2017 flow management ? | Andreas Krause | | 3:00 PM | Tributary access for fish in upper Trinity River | TRRP Staff | | 3:15 PM | Weir at Tish Tang on the mainstem Trinity River? | TBD | | 3:30 PM | TMC current issues | TAMWG | | 4:00 PM | Adjourn | ? | ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Dec 5 12:25:33 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2016 20:25:33 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?THIS_JUST_IN_=E2=80=A6_Senator_Feinstein_?= =?utf-8?q?supports_drought_language_in_Water_Resources_Development_Act?= References: <1625462075.8699955.1480969533072.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1625462075.8699955.1480969533072@mail.yahoo.com> https://mavensnotebook.com/2016/12/05/this-just-in-senator-feinstein-supports-drought-language-in-water-resources-development-act/ THIS JUST IN ? Senator Feinstein supports drought language in Water Resources Development Act December 5, 2016?Maven??Breaking News Bill includes both long-term, short-term provisions; $558 million for storage, desalination, recycling, fish, wildlife protection programs; and Fully complies with all state, federal law including Endangered Species Act, biological opinions Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today announced her support for drought language in the Water Resources Development Act, a bill that authorizes water projects across the country. Broadly based on Feinstein?s February 2016 legislation, the drought language is the result of three years of work, more than 50 drafts and vigorous consultation with federal agencies and the White House to ensure the bill complies with environmental laws including the Endangered Species Act and biological opinions.Senator Feinstein released the following statement:?The question I ask myself about this bill is will it help California? Will the $558 million in long-term authorizations help California develop a new water infrastructure? Will the short-term operational improvements help us hold more water in a way that does not negatively affect fish or the environment? I believe the answer is yes.This bill isn?t perfect but I do believe it will help California and it has bipartisan support including Republicans and Democrats in the House, and that?s why I?m supporting it.After three years and dozens of versions of legislation, I think this is the best we can do. If we don?t move now, we run the real risk of legislation that opens up the Endangered Species Act in the future, when Congress will again be under Republican control, this time backed by a Trump administration.As a result of our work with experts from federal and state agencies, we have included strong savings clauses and environmental protections to ensure this bill is entirely within the bounds of both the Endangered Species Act and relevant biological opinions. The bill also includes $43 million for important programs to restore salmon and smelt and to benefit refuges. But those environmental protections certainly won?t be included if a new bill is drafted next year by the Republican majority.Action is long overdue. California is entering its sixth year of drought. Experts state it will take four or more years to recover. We are seeing water wells in the thousands running dry. At the same time, smelt populations have plummeted to historic lows and salmon populations are struggling.I know that we absolutely can protect California?s environment and wildlife while improving how we move and store water in California. After all, the state is home to 40 million people, but we have essentially the same water system we had five decades ago when the population was 16 million people.To address the demands of population growth and climate change, we must make sure we can store water from wet years for use in dry years and stretch our existing supplies through conservation, recycling and desalination.And this bill does that with both long-term and short-term provisions as well as strong environmental protections.The long-term provisions are centered around $558 million that will help supplement state and local funding to build the 137 projects identified by the Feinstein drought bill introduced in February (S. 2533). Those projects?desalination, recycling and reuse?could produce upwards of 1.4 million acre feet of water, enough for 2.8 million households. $335 million is included for storage, funds that will go a long way toward preparing for future dry years, and $43 million is included to benefit salmon, smelt and wildlife refuges. (Details on fish and wildlife provisions and long-term infrastructure below.)The short-term, five-year operational provisions will ensure the system is operated using science, not intuition. They will help operate the water system more efficiently, pumping water when fish are not nearby and reducing pumping when they are close.The vast majority of the bill has been public for months or years as part of previous versions and has been the subject of public hearings in May 2016 and October 2015. While there have been some changes to achieve broad agreement by all parties, the bill is largely similar to the bill I introduced in February.We have also worked with a wide range of federal and state agencies to ensure this bill can be implemented in a way that remains within the bounds of the Endangered Species Act and biological opinions.We must continue to press forward as the rainy season begins so we can begin to relieve serious water shortages in significant parts of the state.?Summary of legislationA summary of the bill follows: - Overview: California?s water infrastructure is largely unchanged since the 1960s, when California was home to 16 million people. Our state?with a population of 40 million and the 6th largest economy in the world?relies on water infrastructure that is stretched to the breaking point and desperately needs to be improved and changed. - Environmental protections: We worked with experts from federal and state agencies to draft an environmental protection mandate and a strong, comprehensive savings clause that makes clear the legislation must be implemented consistent with the Endangered Species Act and relevant biological opinions. - Long-term provisions: This bill includes $558 million in long-term funding authorizations. Paired with state and local funding, many of the 137 projects identified by the Feinstein drought bill introduced in February (S. 2533) will be within reach. Those projects could produce upwards of 1.4 million acre feet of water, enough for 2.8 million households. (See additional details below.) - Short-term provisions: The bill also includes short-term provisions to ensure the system is operated using science, not intuition. This will help operate the water system more efficiently, pumping water when fish are not nearby and reducing pumping when they are close. - Duration: The short-term operations will last for five years. Long-term construction projects still underway at the end of five years will continue to receive federal funding. One provision that expires after 10 years provides additional opportunities to environmental groups and water districts to consult on any future biological opinions. - Federal and State input: The bill was reviewed extensively by federal and state agencies to ensure it is consistent with environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act and biological opinions. Environmental protections - Most importantly, the bill includes a strong, comprehensive savings clause. This clause is included at the end of this press release. - Drafted by Department of the Interior and the Commerce Department, the savings clause prohibits any federal agency from taking any action that would violate any environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act and biological opinions. - The savings clause is stronger than the clause included in Feinstein?s February 2016 drought bill, containing additional language to make clear nothing in the bill overrides or amends any obligations to manage coastal fisheries off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington. - Includes an environmental protection mandate drafted by NOAA Fisheries to ensure full consistency with the Endangered Species Act. - Includes language at the request of the administration that protects agencies? abilities to develop successor biological opinions. - The long-term authorizations include $43 million to benefit endangered fish and wildlife, including: - $15 million for the protection and restoration of salmon: These funds will be used to increase spawning habitat on the Sacramento River and purchase water to increase flows to reducing predation at Clifton Court Forebay. These funds can also be used to fix the broken cold water valve at Shasta to prevent 98 percent mortality rates from happening again. These devices must be fixed and functioning so that we can avoid what we saw in 2015, when 98 percent of the salmon year class died, and in 2014 when 95 percent of the salmon year class died. - $15 million for fish passage projects: Reauthorizes at $15 million the Fisheries Restoration and Irrigation Mitigation Act (which expired in 2015), a voluntary, cost-sharing program the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses to pay for installing fish screens and diversions that protect migrating salmon. - $3 million for a Delta Smelt Distribution Study: The better the fish is understood, the better we can operate the system and protect this endangered species. The Fish and Wildlife Service recommended this provision. - A program to reduce predation: The bill directs agencies to address the threat to smelt and salmon by reducing the threat of predators. The regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries (who oversees salmon in California) has stated that predation in the Delta is ?unequivocally? a problem. - A program to purchase additional water: The bill authorizes the federal government to purchase water from willing sellers to augment flows needed for fish. Currently there is limited workable authority to accomplish this. The Department of the Interior requested this authority to enable targeted water purchases to provide more water for fish in conjunction with measures to improve habitat and food supply, which will help restore fish populations. - Programs to reduce invasive species that harm fish: The bill authorizes pilot projects under a?CALFED?program to control invasive species. Invasive species?such as water hyacinth and Asian clams?have contributed to the decline of native listed fish in the Bay-Delta, including the Delta smelt. - $10 million for wildlife refuges: This will allow refuges to connect to additional sources of water supply, for example through channels. - The bill has a comprehensive environmental protection mandate drafted by NOAA Fisheries and the Department of the Interior to ensure that the actions under this bill fully reflect the protections of the Endangered Species Act. - Consistency with state law: All provisions in the bill must be consistent with state law including water quality and salinity control standards. - Coastal salmon fisheries: The bill protects agencies? authority to manage salmon and other fisheries off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington under the Magnuson Stevens Act or the Endangered Species Act. - Environmentalist and water district input into Endangered Species Act consultation: The bill increases transparency and public input during any Endangered Species Act consultations by providing environmental groups and water districts with the opportunity to work with the agencies on any future biological opinions. The provisions also provide for quarterly stakeholder meetings so the public is kept informed of any Endangered Species Act consultations. Nothing in this section affects in any way the substantive requirements of consultation under the Endangered Species Act to protect species. Long-term water infrastructure provisions - Authorization of projects: $515 million, fully offset, goes to storage, recycling, reuse and desalination projects. These funds will help supplement California?s water bond. - Funds: The bill authorizes the following funds: - Desalination: $30 million for design and construction of desalination projects. - Water recycling, reuse and conservation: Increases funding for WaterSMART by $100 million (from $350 million to $450 million), including $50 million for water supply and conservation activities on the Colorado River. Includes another $50 million for water recycling through a new Title XVI grant program that actually works for new water recycling projects, unlike the current program. The revised program will allow new water recycling projects to get federal funding even if Congress has not authorized each specific project. - Storage: $335 million in funding for storage and groundwater projects. - Coordinated implementation with the state water bond: This will allow federal funding to go to qualified, environmentally-mitigated and cost-beneficial projects such as desalination, recycling, groundwater and storage projects on the same timeframe as projects funded under the state water bond. Short-term operational provisions - Duration: The short-term operational provisions expire after five years. Researchers from UCLA have reported that it will take approximately four and a half years for a full recovery from the drought. Eight key provisions will allow more water to be captured and stored:1) Daily monitoring for fish closer to the pumps will allow pumps to be operated at higher levels while better protecting fish. This daily boat monitoring for smelt will occur when water?turbidity?levels are high (cloudy water attracts fish to pumps), which will allow pumping decisions to be made based the actual location of the fish.2) Ending the winter storm ?payback? requirement will allow agencies to capture additional water during winter storms. Agencies may increase pumping during winter storms so long as they do not violate the environmental protection mandate. Once storms end, agencies would no longer be required to ?pay back? water already pumped unless there was an environmental reason to do so.3) Requires agencies to explain why pumping occurs at lower levels than allowed by the biological opinions. The requirement is about transparency: agencies must provide reasons for why pumping was reduced.4) Agencies must maximize water supplies consistent with applicable laws and biological opinions. The bill also makes very clear that agencies can take no action that would violate the Endangered Species Act or biological opinions.5) Pilot Project to open Delta Cross-Channel Gates in a manner that achieves increased water supply without any harm to fish. The agencies would evaluate alternative ways to open the gates and protect fish during their migration. If the pilot project is successful, it would yield extra water with no harm to the fish or water quality.6) Extending the time period for water transfers by five months. The current transfer window of July through September is extended to April through November. This makes water available during the critical spring planting season.7) Allowing a 1:1 ratio for water transfers. The provision provides a strong incentive for water transfers during critical salmon migratory periods in April and May in the lower San Joaquin. Through transfers, the same unit of water can therefore help both fish and farms. This provision helps facilitate voluntary transfers in April and May by allowing a 1:1 inflow to export ratio solely for water transfers. Buyers and sellers have little incentive to transfer water unless they receive the full value of their water?the 1:1 ratio. The bill includes strong environmental protections to ensure this water is in addition to the regular flow of the river, extra water that will benefit fish.8) Allowing expedited reviews of transfers and the construction of barriers. To expedite environmental reviews of proposed water transfers, agencies are directed to finish their reviews within 45 days of receiving complete applications for the transfers. The approval of temporary salinity barriers must be completed within 60 days. If environmental impact statements must be prepared under NEPA, the agencies can take longer than the generally applicable deadlines.Outreach process - Over the course of two years, Senator Feinstein and her staff took hundreds of meetings, phone calls and discussions. Feedback was accepted from Republicans and Democrats and Senator Feinstein made dozens of changes to the bill text in response to comments from environmental groups, water districts, cities, rural communities, fishermen and farmers. - The bill was also reviewed by experts with federal and state agencies to ensure it would remain within the bounds of the Endangered Species Act and relevant biological opinions. - A previous version of the bill introduced in February 2016 (S. 2533) received support from 151 organizations and public officials from across California. Savings clause - Following is the bill?s savings clause that prevents the legislation from violating state or federal environmental laws including the Endangered Species Act and biological opinions. Bracketed text is where each part of the clause originated. Sec. 4012. SAVINGS LANGUAGE.(a) IN GENERAL.?This Act shall not be interpreted or implemented in a manner that? (1) preempts or modifies any obligation of the United States to act in conformance with applicable State law, including applicable State water law; [requested by Governor Brown?s office; also included in February 2016 Feinstein drought bill] (2) affects or modifies any obligation under the?Central Valley Project Improvement Act?(Public Law 102?575; 106 Stat. 4706), except for the savings provisions for the Stanislaus River predator management program expressly established by section 12(b); [included in February 2016 Feinstein drought bill] (3) overrides, modifies, or amends the applicability of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.) or the application of the smelt and salmonid biological opinions to the operation of the Central Valley Project or the State Water Project; [drafted by NOAA Fisheries and the Department of the Interior; also included in February 2016 Feinstein drought bill] (4) would cause additional adverse effects on listed fish species beyond the range of effects anticipated to occur to the listed fish species for the duration of the applicable?biological opinion, using the best scientific and commercial data available; [drafted by NOAA Fisheries and the Department of the Interior] or (5) overrides, modifies, or amends any obligation of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, required by the Magnuson Stevens Act or the Endangered Species Act, to manage fisheries off the coast of California, Oregon, or Washington. [requested by Senator Wyden](b) SUCCESSOR BIOLOGICAL OPINIONS. ? (1) IN GENERAL. ?The Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce shall apply this Act to any successor biological opinions to the smelt or salmonid biological opinions only to the extent that the Secretaries determine is consistent with: (A) the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.), its implementing regulations, and the successor biological opinions; and (B) Subsection (a)(4) above. [requested by administration] (2) LIMITATION. ?Nothing in this Act shall restrict the Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce from completing consultation on successor biological opinions and through those successor biological opinions implementing whatever adjustments in operations or other activities as may be required by the Endangered Species Act and its implementing regulations. [requested by administration] (c) SEVERABILITY.?If any provision of this Act, or any application of such provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be inconsistent with any law or the biological opinions, the remainder of this Act and the application of this Act to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected. [included in February 2016 Feinstein drought bill] ???????????????? Sign up for daily email service and you?ll always be one of the first to know! - Sign up for daily emails and get all the Notebook's aggregated and original water news content delivered to your email box by 9AM.?Breaking news alerts like this one, too.?Daily Emails: Full Service (6 days + Breaking News) | | | | | | | | | | | Daily Emails: Full Service (6 days + Breaking News) Daily Emails: Full Service (6 days + Breaking News) Email Forms | | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Mon Dec 5 15:02:58 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2016 23:02:58 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW - TRP trapping summary through Julian week 48 Message-ID: Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 48 (December 2). Another glum week. Should any of you be boating near the Willow Creek weir site please be aware we still have some hardware submerged in the river (river left) which we will remove just as soon as we can. More rain on the way... MC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW48.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 115751 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW48.pdf URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Dec 5 18:00:32 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2016 02:00:32 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?Fw=3A_THIS_JUST_IN_=E2=80=A6_Rep=2E_Costa?= =?utf-8?q?=2C_Rep=2E_Huffman=2C_Senator_Boxer=2C_and_NRDC_on_the_WRDA_leg?= =?utf-8?q?islation_=28final_update=29?= In-Reply-To: <88af2b23c65f1c863838dd9a5ee51fcf060.20161205224218@mail126.atl51.rsgsv.net> References: <88af2b23c65f1c863838dd9a5ee51fcf060.20161205224218@mail126.atl51.rsgsv.net> Message-ID: <863984517.286491.1480989632126@mail.yahoo.com> On Monday, December 5, 2016 2:42 PM, Maven wrote: THIS JUST IN ? Rep. Costa, Rep. Huffman, Senator Boxer, and NRDC on the WRDA legislation (final update)#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645outlook a{padding:0;}#yiv9239009645 body{width:100% !important;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645ReadMsgBody{width:100%;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645ExternalClass{width:100%;}#yiv9239009645 body{}#yiv9239009645 body{margin:0;padding:0;}#yiv9239009645 img{border:0;height:auto;line-height:100%;outline:none;text-decoration:none;}#yiv9239009645 table td{border-collapse:collapse;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645backgroundTable{height:100% !important;margin:0;padding:0;width:100% !important;}#yiv9239009645 body, #yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645backgroundTable{background-color:#FAFAFA;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645templateContainer{border:1px solid #DDDDDD;}#yiv9239009645 h1, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645h1{color:#202020;display:block;font-family:Arial;font-size:34px;font-weight:bold;line-height:100%;margin-top:0;margin-right:0;margin-bottom:10px;margin-left:0;text-align:left;}#yiv9239009645 h2, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645h2{color:#202020;display:block;font-family:Arial;font-size:30px;font-weight:bold;line-height:100%;margin-top:0;margin-right:0;margin-bottom:10px;margin-left:0;text-align:left;}#yiv9239009645 h3, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645h3{color:#202020;display:block;font-family:Arial;font-size:26px;font-weight:bold;line-height:100%;margin-top:0;margin-right:0;margin-bottom:10px;margin-left:0;text-align:left;}#yiv9239009645 h4, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645h4{color:#202020;display:block;font-family:Arial;font-size:22px;font-weight:bold;line-height:100%;margin-top:0;margin-right:0;margin-bottom:10px;margin-left:0;text-align:left;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645templatePreheader{background-color:#FAFAFA;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645preheaderContent div{color:#505050;font-family:Arial;font-size:10px;line-height:100%;text-align:left;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645preheaderContent div a:link, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645preheaderContent div a:visited, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645preheaderContent div a .yiv9239009645yshortcuts {color:#336699;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645templateHeader{background-color:#FFFFFF;border-bottom:0;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645headerContent{color:#202020;font-family:Arial;font-size:34px;font-weight:bold;line-height:100%;padding:0;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645headerContent a:link, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645headerContent a:visited, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645headerContent a .yiv9239009645yshortcuts {color:#336699;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645headerImage{height:auto;max-width:600px !important;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645templateContainer, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645bodyContent{background-color:#FFFFFF;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645bodyContent div{color:#505050;font-family:Arial;font-size:14px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645bodyContent div a:link, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645bodyContent div a:visited, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645bodyContent div a .yiv9239009645yshortcuts {color:#336699;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645bodyContent img{display:inline;height:auto;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645templateFooter{background-color:#FFFFFF;border-top:0;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645footerContent div{color:#707070;font-family:Arial;font-size:12px;line-height:125%;text-align:left;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645footerContent div a:link, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645footerContent div a:visited, #yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645footerContent div a .yiv9239009645yshortcuts {color:#336699;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv9239009645 .yiv9239009645footerContent img{display:inline;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645social{background-color:#FAFAFA;border:0;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645social div{text-align:center;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645utility{background-color:#FFFFFF;border:0;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645utility div{text-align:center;}#yiv9239009645 #yiv9239009645monkeyRewards img{max-width:190px;} | | | Breaking News from Maven's Notebook | Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. | | | | | | | | | Just posted at Maven's Notebook: THIS JUST IN ? Costa applauds WRDA bill; Huffman slams the effort; Boxer blasts the GOP push; and NRDC says safe drinking water for Flint shouldn?t be at expense of CA jobs or environment This should be the last time you hear from me today, folks ... (well, unless it's really, really good - or something else happens ... ) ? | | | | | | ?follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend? | | Copyright ? 2016 Maven's Notebook, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in at Maven's Notebook. Our mailing address is: Maven's NotebookP. O. Box 2342Canyon Country,, CA 91386 Add us to your address book | | | | | | | | | This email was sent to tstokely at att.net why did I get this?????unsubscribe from this list????update subscription preferences Maven's Notebook ? P. O. Box 2342 ? Canyon Country,, CA 91386 ? 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URL: From tstokely at att.net Mon Dec 5 21:55:37 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2016 05:55:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Draft Trinity Management Council Agenda Dec 14-15 in Weaverville In-Reply-To: <1496591427.480871.1481003576491@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1496591427.480871.1481003576491.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1496591427.480871.1481003576491@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2102134675.478436.1481003737389@mail.yahoo.com> http://odp.trrp.net/Data/Meetings/MeetingDetails.aspx?meeting=1570 Show original message TRINITY MANAGEMENT COUNCILTrinity River Restoration Program OfficeHwy 299, Weaverville, CA Agenda for December 14-15, 2016?WebEx and Call in information are below??Wednesday, September 28, 2016?Time??????????????? Topic, Purpose and/or Decision to be Made?????????????????????????? Discussion Leader?Regular Business:?9:30???????????????? Introductions:???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Seth Naman, Chair | ? | ? ?Welcome? ?Approval of Agenda? ?Approval of September minutes | ? | | ?10:00 | ?Open Forum: ?Comments from the public | ?Seth Naman | | ?10:15 | ?Report from TAMWG | ?Elizabeth Hadley | | ?10:45 | ?Federal/Regional Updates? ?TRRP staffing updates? ?TRRP refinements process update? ?Letter from Reclamation to TMC RE: LewistonReservoir study-next steps | ?Don Bader, Vice Chair | | ?11:10 | ?Break | ?All | | ? | Information / Decision Items: | ? | | ?11:20 | ?Report from Acting Executive Director? ?Work Group Quarterly summary | ?Mike Dixon | | ? | ? New work group coordinators? ?FY18 work planning process? ?2017 project designs and permitting progress? ?Other | ? | | ?11:55 | ?Open Forum: ?Comments from the public | ?Seth Naman | | ?12:00 | ?Lunch | ?All | | ?1:00 | ?Funding Year 2018 work planning process | ?Jennifer Norris | | ?1:45 | ?Resource protection measures and required monitoring | ?James Lee/Mike Dixon | | ?2:30 | ?Flow Planning? ?Solicitor opinion on need for NEPA analysis? ?Progress on winter flow variability? ?Associated monitoring? ?FEMA designation of Trinity Floodway? ?Junction City house next steps | ?Andreas Krause/Mike Dixon | ? | 3:30 | Open | TBD | | ?4:15 | ?Public forum | ?Seth Naman | | ?4:30 | ?Adjourn | ? | | ?6:00 | ?Group Dinner-La Grange | ? | ?Thursday, Septmeber 29, 2016?Regular Business:?9:30???????????????? Open Forum: ?Comments from the public?????????????????????????????? Seth Naman?Information / Decision Items:?10:00?????????????? 2016 Budget Actuals?????????????????????????????????????????????????? Linsey Walker/Caryn Huntt DeCarlo? | ? | ??? | Review of FY17 Budget Decision documentCurrent 2017 budget shortfallDecision items to balance 2017 budget | ? | | ?10:50 | ?Break | ? | ?All | | ?11:00 | ?Bylaws | ? | ?Seth Naman | | ? | ? | Changes to bylaws | ? | | ? | ? | o? Teleconference votingo? Succession planning | ? | | ? | ? ?Approval of bylaws | ? | | ? | ? ?Signature of bylaws | ? | | ?11:55 | ?Open Forum: ?Comments from the public | ?Seth Naman | | ?12:00 | ?Lunch | ?All | | ?1:00 | ?Bylaws continued/open | ?Seth Naman | | ?1:45 | ?Officer Elections | ?All | | ?2:15 | ?2017 TMC meeting schedule | ?Seth Naman | | ?2:45 | ?Public forum | ?Seth Naman | | ?3:00 | ?Action items | ?Seth Naman | | ?3:15 | ?Adjourn | ? | ??Webex and Call in Information:?Day 1:? 1-408-792-6300 / Access code 804 115 757 ?https://trrp.webex.com/mw3100/mywebex/default.do?siteurl=trrp&service=1?Day 2:? 1-408-792-6300 / Access code ?802 648 490 Web: https://trrp.webex.com/mw3100/mywebex/default.do?siteurl=trrp&service=1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Dec 6 08:04:51 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2016 16:04:51 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Boxer slams water bill rider backed by Feinstein References: <1201103859.872614.1481040291931.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1201103859.872614.1481040291931@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Boxer-slams-water-bill-rider-backed-by-Feinstein-10699564.php Also more articles at:?http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-me-drought-bill-20161205-story.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article119062888.html? http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/top-dem-threatens-to-block-mccarthy-drought-deal/article/2608907?custom_click=rss http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/308810-senator-blasts-gop-push-for-california-drought-language-in-water-bill? https://www.bna.com/water-bill-faces-n73014448125/ Boxer slams water bill rider backed by Feinstein By?Carolyn Lochhead? Published 4:27?pm, Monday, December 5, 2016 WASHINGTON ? Sen.?Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader?Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, teamed up Monday to slip a legislative rider into a giant end-of-year water infrastructure bill that would override endangered species protections for native California fish for the purpose of sending water to San Joaquin Valley farmers.Retiring Sen.?Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., angrily denounced the rider as a ?poison pill,? calling a late-afternoon news conference, during which she lashed out against McCarthy, saying he lied by calling the more than 80-page provision a ?little, small agreement.??This is so wrong it is shocking,? Boxer said of the provision, saying it would authorize water pumping from the state?s rivers beyond what is allowed under the biological opinions for fish protection. She said the legislation also would transfer from Congress to the incoming Trump administration the power to approve big dam projects in the West.Boxer vowed to use every tool at her disposal to block the legislation. It was the first time in recent memory that Boxer confronted Feinstein, her colleague of more than two decades, on California water policy, saying the provision clearly overrides the Endangered Species Act, despite Feinstein?s insistence to the contrary.Feinstein?s move was a clear affront to Boxer, trampling over Boxer?s legislative turf as the top Democrat on the?Environmental and Public Works Committee. Boxer is a co-author of the Water Resources and Development Act, a massive bill with broad bipartisan support. Boxer noted that the bill that Feinstein and McCarthy want to add their provision to, includes many projects that Feinstein herself wrote. Among them are restoration of Lake Tahoe and the San Francisco Bay shoreline.The rider was negotiated behind closed doors without legislative hearings or public input, and suddenly attached Monday afternoon in the House to the larger water bill. McCarthy hinted at the legislation to reporters Monday morning, referring to the ?little, small agreement.? Boxer said it was hatched ?in the dead of night? just before the bill is about to be taken up.The rider came out of more than three years of attempts by?Feinstein and House Republicans?to respond to California?s five-year drought with provisions that would loosen environmental protections. Earlier efforts had failed time and again over the opposition of Boxer, the Obama administration and nearly every Democrat in the Bay Area delegation, mainly over provisions that allow more water to be pumped from rivers to farmers during the spring.State water authorities have said that more water needs to remain in rivers to prevent the extinction of several native fish species, including salmon and the delta smelt.Feinstein?s office claimed that the legislation does not violate the Endangered Species Act, because it contains a ?savings clause? that dictates that nothing in the provision shall violate the act. House Democratic aides countered that the courts have ruled that direct instructions from Congress, in this case on how much water can be pumped from rivers, always supersede more general clauses declaring that nothing in the legislation violate bedrock environmental law.McCarthy praised Feinstein?s cooperation. The legislation could not have been achieved without her help, he said, adding that the legislation ?will bring more water to our communities and supports critical storage projects.? He said it was critical to pass the legislation now to allow water authorities to capture more of this season?s rains.He also indicated that more drought legislation will come next year, as well, when Republicans will maintain their control of the House and Senate but no longer face President Obama?s veto. President-elect?Donald Trump?promised during the campaign at a rally in Fresno that he would turn on the pumps for farmers.Feinstein in a statement touted the provision?s more than half billion dollars in authorizations to ?help California develop a new water infrastructure,? and said it calls only for ?short-term operational improvements to help us hold more water in a way that does not negatively affect fish or the environment.?Boxer said the larger water infrastructure bill contains nearly everything for California?s water infrastructure that Feinstein claims will be in the new legislation, including money for desalination, water recycling and groundwater recharge.She vowed that she would not end her Senate career by allowing the Feinstein/McCarthy provision to stand.Boxer promised to play ?hardball? by filibustering every piece of legislation, including her own, that is pending in the Senate in the current lame-duck session, scheduled to end this week. Noting that many of her Republican colleagues have big stakes in all of it, she speculated that they will not be inclined to see their own projects filibustered over a contentious California water bill that she said would inevitably wind up in court.The broader water infrastructure legislation contains authorizations to fix the lead problem in the water supply in Flint, Mich., as well as similar problems in municipal water systems across the country.Feinstein has long supported San Joaquin Valley farmers on water issues and in return received big political support from the valley. She has not yet announced whether she will be running for re-election when her term expires in 2018. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Dec 6 08:15:42 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2016 16:15:42 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Feds sued again for allegedly causing infection of Klamath River salmon References: <871808736.858127.1481040942290.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <871808736.858127.1481040942290@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20161205/feds-sued-again-for-allegedly-causing-infection-of-klamath-river-salmon Feds sued again for allegedly causing infection of Klamath River salmon Federal agencies face injunction for river flows in January court hearing By Will Houston, Eureka Times-StandardMonday, December 5, 2016Two federal agencies are the target of a second lawsuit alleging they violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing up to 90 percent of juvenile Klamath River coho salmon to become infected by an intestinal parasite in 2014 and 2015.?Rather than taking action to improve river conditions to recover endangered coho salmon, NOAA Fisheries attempted to allow higher parasite infection rates,? said Konrad Fisher, director of Klamath Riverkeeper, one of four entities that filed the litigation last week. ?The agency is neglecting its duty to recover endangered salmon runs.?The Yurok Tribe, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations, the Institute for Fisheries Resources and Klamath Riverkeeper filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and National Marine Fisheries Service on Nov. 29. The litigation states the federal agencies? management of Klamath River dam water releases resulted in 90 percent of juvenile salmon to become infected by an intestinal parasite in 2015. Studies conducted by North Coast tribes found 81 percent of juvenile salmon were also infected in 2014.The litigants state this infection rate is higher than what is allowed under the National Marine Fisheries Services? 2013 biological opinion and that the agency is considering raising the allowable infection rate during drought years rather than working to prevent infection. Klamath Basin coho salmon are listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.This is the second lawsuit to be filed against the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and National Marine Fisheries Service this year regarding Klamath River coho salmon.The Hoopa Valley Tribe filed the first lawsuit against the two federal agencies in late July.The Hoopa Valley Tribe?s representing attorney Tom Schlosser said he has been in contact with the Yurok Tribe?s attorney and the other plaintiffs? attorneys and said there are no conflicts. Schlosser called the infection of juvenile coho salmon ?outrageous? and said it is ?tragic? that the federal agencies ?waited so long without doing something about fish disease.??The thing that?s discouraging about this is the agencies have waited until the judge tells them to follow the law instead of just following the law,? he said.The National Marine Fisheries Service and Bureau of Reclamation both declined to comment due to the active litigation.The Karuk Tribe will also consider this week whether to file an Endangered Species Act lawsuit against the two agencies, according to Craig Tucker, the tribe?s natural resources policy advocate.?It?s something we are considering and discussing,? Tucker said.The two lawsuits filed so far are calling for the two federal agencies to develop a plan to increase flows using dam water releases during the spring in order to flush parasites out from the waters. Spring is also when young coho salmon on the Klamath River migrate to the ocean after their freshwater upbringing.The Karuk and Yurok tribes had filed notices of intent to sue the bureau and fisheries service back in June, but held off on filing lawsuits as they discussed a possible settlement with the agencies. The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen?s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources and Klamath Riverkeeper also filed a notice of intent to sue the agencies in July.The Hoopa Valley Tribe?s lawsuit is currently set to go before a federal judge on Jan. 11, who will decide whether to issue an injunction on the National Marine Fisheries Service and Bureau of Reclamation requiring the agencies to develop a new flow plan.Tucker said this upcoming court hearing ?forces the issue for the rest of us,? which he said prompted the second lawsuit to be filed. But he also said the timing of the judge?s decision is important as water management in the winter will determine how much water will be allocated to fish in the spring and summer.?This has to be solved pretty soon in order to affect water deliveries for next year,? Tucker said.These past years of drought have caused low flows on the Klamath River, which in turn allowed parasites and their immediate hosts to remain in pools and reservoirs longer and infect more salmon. The low flows also heated up the water and stressed fish immune systems even further, making them more susceptible to disease.Water releases from dams are used to flush the river and its pools of these parasites and intermediate hosts while also cooling the water.The National Marine Fisheries Services drafted a biological opinion on the intestinal parasite in 2013, which provided guidance to the Bureau of Reclamation on how it should be managing the dams on the Klamath River.Under that opinion, up to 49 percent of juvenile salmon in the Klamath River are allowed be infected by the intestinal parasite as a result of the bureau?s dam operations. If the infection rates climb above 49 percent, the Bureau of Reclamation is obligated to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service to discuss possible changes of operations.After the disease outbreaks in 2014 and early 2015, the Bureau of Reclamation wrote a letter to the National Marine Fisheries Service seeking consultation about the ?unprecedented, multi-year drought conditions? on the river.The National Marine Fisheries Service responded nine months later stating its biological opinion is still valid as it is ?expected that environmental conditions during consecutive dry years would be particularly poor and associated disease risks would be higher.?The service also stated it plans to revise the biological opinion before April 2017, specifically revising how many salmon would be allowed to be harmed or killed by the parasite in these drier, low-flow years.Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Tue Dec 6 09:50:15 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2016 17:50:15 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Fw: Take Action ASAP: Oppose the Rider in Drought Relief Bill! In-Reply-To: References: <43838982.55572.0@wordpress.com> Message-ID: <1591414494.1007645.1481046616071@mail.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, December 6, 2016 9:40 AM, Dan Bacher wrote: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/5/1607737/-Take-Action-ASAP-Oppose-the-Rider-in-Drought-Relief-Bill Take Action ASAP: Oppose the Rider in Drought Relief Bill!? by Dan Bacher In the latest battle in the California water wars,?another controversial?drought bill?authored by the Stewart?Resnick-backed Congressman David?Valadao under the guise of "drought relief" is being moved through Congress in the lame duck session.??There is operational language in the bill that may take away Bay-Delta protections in order to over pump the Delta and?the latest reports state that a "last minute poison pill rider"?is intended to be included that will kill thousands of fishery jobs and rollback the Endangered Species Act," according to an action alert from Restore the Delta (RTD) issued on December 5.???This ?backroom deal??may threaten thousands of fishing jobs on the West Coast and harm water quality.???We need to remain vigilant?about ongoing federal drought bills. Please pick up your phone now to call your Senators and House Representatives. Senator Boxer is considered a key player in this bill,? the group urged.As of yesterday?afternoon, Senator Dianne Feinstein and?Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy. Rep McCarthy had worked out a deal on?language to attach to the?WRDA (Water Resources Development Act) in the lame duck session. Senator Boxer and Congressman Jared Huffman are?opposing the McCarthy/Feinstein deal that threatens salmon and other fisheries.?The question I ask myself about this bill is will it help California?? said Senator Feinstein in a statement. ?Will the $558 million in long-term authorizations help California develop a new water infrastructure? Will the short-term operational improvements help us hold more water in a way that does not negatively affect fish or the environment? I believe the answer is yes.??(mavensnotebook.com/?)Congressman Jared Huffman?and?Senator Barbara Boxer?disagree strongly with Feinstein?s contention that the rider will ?help California.???They?released strong statements opposing this rider, with Huffman calling it a ?slap in the face.??Anyone that participates in this charade should be ashamed,? said Congressman Huffman. ?This is a slap in the face to all of us who want to enact good infrastructure policy, who have been working to deliver for the families of Flint, and whose states care about salmon fishing jobs.??I?was stunned to see comments made by Kevin McCarthy that the outrageous poison pill that he is trying to place on WRDA is ?a little small agreement? on California drought,? said Senator Boxer.??I will use every tool at my disposal to stop this last minute poison pill rider.??(mavensnotebook.com/...)??RTD urged people to??please keep calling about the rider and other potential language in the bill,? ?1) Call your Congressional representatives:? To find your Congressional Rep?s number,?check this list of all California Congressional Representatives, or go to?whoismyrepresentative.com?to type in your zip code.?2) Call your Senators:?Please call Washington DC offices and your state offices to get the message through!Senator Barbara Boxer:?Washington D.C.:?(202) 224-3553 Bay Area: (510) 286-8537 Los Angeles:?(213) 894-5000 Sacramento:?(916) 448-2787 Send a tweet.Senator Dianne Feinstein:??Washington D.C.:?(202) 224-3841 San Francisco: (415) 393-0707 Los Angeles:??(310) 914-7300? Send a tweet.Please state this simple message:?I oppose the last minute?poison rider in the drought relief bill by House Majority Leader?Kevin McCarthy that will roll back the Endangered Species Act and destroy thousands of fishery jobs.?Drought relief must protect the Bay-Delta estuary which has been in an over pumping?drought for thirty years.?We need to send a strong reminder to our legislators that they must continue to protect our Delta water quality and flows in all drought relief packages.View action alert at RTD?website. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Sacramento_River_Boats.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 132697 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Dec 7 05:36:44 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 13:36:44 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] =?utf-8?q?White_House_won=E2=80=99t_support_Califor?= =?utf-8?q?nia_water_bill_that=E2=80=99s_already_divided_its_senators?= References: <1986855596.1876241.1481117804134.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1986855596.1876241.1481117804134@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article119259328.html White House won?t support California water bill that?s already divided its senators BY MICHAEL DOYLEmdoyle at mcclatchydc.com? The White House on Tuesday voiced doubts about controversial California water legislation that has already caused an unusually public split between the state?s two Democratic senators.Meeting with reporters, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the California provisions that span some 91 pages of often-technical text seemed problematic, though he cautioned that analysis continues.?Based on what we know so far, we don?t support the kinds of proposals that have been put forward to address some of the water resources issues in California right now,? Earnest said. ?So, we don?t support that measure that?s being put forward, but we?ll take a look at the bill in its totality.?If it holds firm, the Obama administration?s resistance could greatly complicate efforts by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield to?add the California language?onto a sprawling bill that pays for many other projects nationwide.Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer had helped negotiate the larger bill, called the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, as the senior Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. This larger bill includes California-specific provisions, including continued funding for Lake Tahoe restorations.Boxer vehemently opposes, though, the additional California language negotiated over an extended time among Feinstein, McCarthy and their respective teams. Boxer and environmental groups fear water diversions for the benefit of farmers will harm vulnerable habitat and threatened species, among other potential problems.Based largely on legislation?Feinstein introduced last February, as well as competing measures pushed by House Republicans, the California water provisions authorize $558 million for desalination, recycling and storage projects, among other proposals. The legislation does not identify what specific storage projects will receive funding.The provisions authorize, for five years, what Feinstein described as ?operational provisions? that will ?help operate the water system more efficiently, pumping water when fish are not nearby.? It eases limits on moving water south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, to help San Joaquin Valley farms, and it aims to protect Northern California water deliveries, as well.Nancy Vogel, deputy secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, said in an e-mail Tuesday that ?we?re not commenting on the water infrastructure bill.??Obviously, Boxer is not being of any help, ? Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, a California water bill supporter, said Tuesday. ?She has refused ... to understand the challenges that we face in terms of a broken water system.?Michael Doyle:?202-383-6153,?@MichaelDoyle10More here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article119259328.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Wed Dec 7 14:19:01 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 14:19:01 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for December 2, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update December 2, 2016. This week our crews mapped 26 redds (1,625 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ?Salmon spawning as slowed down to a crawl. The few redds that crews are finding are presumably from Coho Salmon. Two more weeks of surveys and we will call the 2016 season complete. Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9572 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Fri Dec 9 14:27:31 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2016 14:27:31 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon Message-ID: <013b01d2526b$6f8e70f0$4eab52d0$@sisqtel.net> Columbia Basin Bulletin Print this Story Print this Story Email this Story Email this Story Study Treats Migrating Salmon With Anxiety Medication, Says Limits Fear Of The Unknown Downstream Posted on Friday, December 09, 2016 (PST) Current research from Ume? University in Sweden shows that the young salmon's desire to migrate to the sea can partly be limited by anxiety. Researchers have long tried to understand what factors affect the young salmon's decision to migrate out to sea. Previous studies have indicated that environmental factors such as temperature, light conditions and water flow may play an important role. However, large parts of the within species variation in fish migration remains unexplained. A study http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13460 from Ume? University, published in the journal Nature Communications, now shows that the salmon's inclination to migrate is partly limited by its fear of the unknown downstream. "By treating salmon with an anxiolytic drug, anxiety medication that is, we artificially changed the migration intensity of the salmon where treated salmon travelled further and faster than untreated salmon," says Gustav Hellstr?m, one of the researchers behind the study. The research team studied how salmon migration was affected both in a lab, where salmon migrated in a large artificial stream, and in a natural stream outside of Ume? in Northern Sweden. In both environments, researchers found that salmon treated with anxiety medication migrated nearly twice as fast as salmon who had not been subjected to treatment. Several billion animals migrate yearly and the study results show that anxiety limits migration intensity, is not only important for understanding salmon migration but also for understanding migration in general, says the study. The study also has an ecotoxicological dimension as the quantity of medication that the salmon was exposed to was low - in fact so low that it measured lower than that found in wastewater in certain areas. "Even though salmon in Northern Sweden live in river-systems low to moderately affected by contaminated wastewater it is not very likely that exposure to anxiety medication is an environmental issue for these populations right now. However, given the low dose used in the study we cannot rule out that, with increasing human population and medical use, this might become a problem in the near future" says Hellstr?m. Bookmark and Share Bottom of Form -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image004.gif Type: image/gif Size: 596 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kierassociates at att.net Fri Dec 9 19:03:08 2016 From: kierassociates at att.net (Kier Associates) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2016 19:03:08 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon In-Reply-To: <013b01d2526b$6f8e70f0$4eab52d0$@sisqtel.net> References: <013b01d2526b$6f8e70f0$4eab52d0$@sisqtel.net> Message-ID: <000001d25291$f07cc510$d1764f30$@att.net> Baby salmon ain?t the only ones with anxiety disorder these days ? the only news you can trust, The Bad Reporter, just delivers one nail-biter after another http://www.gocomics.com/badreporter Bill From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces+kierassociates=att.net at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.u s] On Behalf Of Sari Sommarstrom Sent: Friday, December 09, 2016 2:28 PM To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon Columbia Basin Bulletin Print this Story Print this Story Email this Story Email this Story Study Treats Migrating Salmon With Anxiety Medication, Says Limits Fear Of The Unknown Downstream Posted on Friday, December 09, 2016 (PST) Current research from Ume? University in Sweden shows that the young salmon's desire to migrate to the sea can partly be limited by anxiety. Researchers have long tried to understand what factors affect the young salmon's decision to migrate out to sea. Previous studies have indicated that environmental factors such as temperature, light conditions and water flow may play an important role. However, large parts of the within species variation in fish migration remains unexplained. A study http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13460 from Ume? University, published in the journal Nature Communications, now shows that the salmon's inclination to migrate is partly limited by its fear of the unknown downstream. "By treating salmon with an anxiolytic drug, anxiety medication that is, we artificially changed the migration intensity of the salmon where treated salmon travelled further and faster than untreated salmon," says Gustav Hellstr?m, one of the researchers behind the study. The research team studied how salmon migration was affected both in a lab, where salmon migrated in a large artificial stream, and in a natural stream outside of Ume? in Northern Sweden. In both environments, researchers found that salmon treated with anxiety medication migrated nearly twice as fast as salmon who had not been subjected to treatment. Several billion animals migrate yearly and the study results show that anxiety limits migration intensity, is not only important for understanding salmon migration but also for understanding migration in general, says the study. The study also has an ecotoxicological dimension as the quantity of medication that the salmon was exposed to was low - in fact so low that it measured lower than that found in wastewater in certain areas. "Even though salmon in Northern Sweden live in river-systems low to moderately affected by contaminated wastewater it is not very likely that exposure to anxiety medication is an environmental issue for these populations right now. However, given the low dose used in the study we cannot rule out that, with increasing human population and medical use, this might become a problem in the near future" says Hellstr?m. Bookmark and Share Bottom of Form -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.gif Type: image/gif Size: 8928 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.gif Type: image/gif Size: 63 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.gif Type: image/gif Size: 64 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image004.gif Type: image/gif Size: 596 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dwebb1 at wildblue.net Sat Dec 10 09:57:30 2016 From: dwebb1 at wildblue.net (David Webb) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 09:57:30 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon In-Reply-To: <000001d25291$f07cc510$d1764f30$@att.net> References: <013b01d2526b$6f8e70f0$4eab52d0$@sisqtel.net> <000001d25291$f07cc510$d1764f30$@att.net> Message-ID: <7cdf619c-f9e5-fa23-ed1c-356c529794fd@wildblue.net> If I knew that my best friend was a fisherman I'd be pretty anxious too. Dave On 12/9/2016 7:03 PM, Kier Associates wrote: > > Baby salmon ain?t the only ones with anxiety disorder these days ? the > only news you can trust, /The Bad Reporter/, just delivers one > nail-biter after another http://www.gocomics.com/badreporter > > Bill > > *From:*env-trinity > [mailto:env-trinity-bounces+kierassociates=att.net at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] > *On Behalf Of *Sari Sommarstrom > *Sent:* Friday, December 09, 2016 2:28 PM > *To:* env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > *Subject:* [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon > > Columbia Basin Bulletin > > Print this Story Print this Story > Email this Story Email this > Story > > *Study Treats Migrating Salmon With Anxiety Medication, Says Limits > Fear Of The Unknown Downstream * > Posted on Friday, December 09, 2016 (PST) > > Current research from Ume? University in Sweden shows that the young > salmon's desire to migrate to the sea can partly be limited by anxiety. > > Researchers have long tried to understand what factors affect the > young salmon's decision to migrate out to sea. Previous studies have > indicated that environmental factors such as temperature, light > conditions and water flow may play an important role. However, large > parts of the within species variation in fish migration remains > unexplained. > > A study http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13460__from Ume? > University, published in the journal Nature Communications, now shows > that the salmon's inclination to migrate is partly limited by its fear > of the unknown downstream. > > "By treating salmon with an anxiolytic drug, anxiety medication that > is, we artificially changed the migration intensity of the salmon > where treated salmon travelled further and faster than untreated > salmon," says Gustav Hellstr?m, one of the researchers behind the study. > > The research team studied how salmon migration was affected both in a > lab, where salmon migrated in a large artificial stream, and in a > natural stream outside of Ume? in Northern Sweden. In both > environments, researchers found that salmon treated with anxiety > medication migrated nearly twice as fast as salmon who had not been > subjected to treatment. > > Several billion animals migrate yearly and the study results show that > anxiety limits migration intensity, is not only important for > understanding salmon migration but also for understanding migration in > general, says the study. > > The study also has an ecotoxicological dimension as the quantity of > medication that the salmon was exposed to was low - in fact so low > that it measured lower than that found in wastewater in certain areas. > > "Even though salmon in Northern Sweden live in river-systems low to > moderately affected by contaminated wastewater it is not very likely > that exposure to anxiety medication is an environmental issue for > these populations right now. However, given the low dose used in the > study we cannot rule out that, with increasing human population and > medical use, this might become a problem in the near future" says > Hellstr?m. > > Bookmark and Share > > > > > Bottom of Form > > > > _______________________________________________ > env-trinity mailing list > env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 8928 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 63 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 64 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 596 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dwebb1 at wildblue.net Sat Dec 10 10:02:03 2016 From: dwebb1 at wildblue.net (David Webb) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 10:02:03 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon In-Reply-To: <000001d25291$f07cc510$d1764f30$@att.net> References: <013b01d2526b$6f8e70f0$4eab52d0$@sisqtel.net> <000001d25291$f07cc510$d1764f30$@att.net> Message-ID: If I was a fish and I knew that my best friend was a fisherman I'd be pretty anxious too. Dave On 12/9/2016 7:03 PM, Kier Associates wrote: > > Baby salmon ain?t the only ones with anxiety disorder these days ? the > only news you can trust, /The Bad Reporter/, just delivers one > nail-biter after another http://www.gocomics.com/badreporter > > Bill > > *From:*env-trinity > [mailto:env-trinity-bounces+kierassociates=att.net at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] > *On Behalf Of *Sari Sommarstrom > *Sent:* Friday, December 09, 2016 2:28 PM > *To:* env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > *Subject:* [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon > > Columbia Basin Bulletin > > Print this Story Print this Story > Email this Story Email this > Story > > *Study Treats Migrating Salmon With Anxiety Medication, Says Limits > Fear Of The Unknown Downstream * > Posted on Friday, December 09, 2016 (PST) > > Current research from Ume? University in Sweden shows that the young > salmon's desire to migrate to the sea can partly be limited by anxiety. > > Researchers have long tried to understand what factors affect the > young salmon's decision to migrate out to sea. Previous studies have > indicated that environmental factors such as temperature, light > conditions and water flow may play an important role. However, large > parts of the within species variation in fish migration remains > unexplained. > > A study http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13460__from Ume? > University, published in the journal Nature Communications, now shows > that the salmon's inclination to migrate is partly limited by its fear > of the unknown downstream. > > "By treating salmon with an anxiolytic drug, anxiety medication that > is, we artificially changed the migration intensity of the salmon > where treated salmon travelled further and faster than untreated > salmon," says Gustav Hellstr?m, one of the researchers behind the study. > > The research team studied how salmon migration was affected both in a > lab, where salmon migrated in a large artificial stream, and in a > natural stream outside of Ume? in Northern Sweden. In both > environments, researchers found that salmon treated with anxiety > medication migrated nearly twice as fast as salmon who had not been > subjected to treatment. > > Several billion animals migrate yearly and the study results show that > anxiety limits migration intensity, is not only important for > understanding salmon migration but also for understanding migration in > general, says the study. > > The study also has an ecotoxicological dimension as the quantity of > medication that the salmon was exposed to was low - in fact so low > that it measured lower than that found in wastewater in certain areas. > > "Even though salmon in Northern Sweden live in river-systems low to > moderately affected by contaminated wastewater it is not very likely > that exposure to anxiety medication is an environmental issue for > these populations right now. However, given the low dose used in the > study we cannot rule out that, with increasing human population and > medical use, this might become a problem in the near future" says > Hellstr?m. > > Bookmark and Share > > > > > Bottom of Form > > > > _______________________________________________ > env-trinity mailing list > env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 8928 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 63 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 64 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 596 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pcatanese at dhscott.com Sat Dec 10 10:57:42 2016 From: pcatanese at dhscott.com (Paul Catanese) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 18:57:42 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon In-Reply-To: References: <013b01d2526b$6f8e70f0$4eab52d0$@sisqtel.net> <000001d25291$f07cc510$d1764f30$@att.net>, Message-ID: Agree. Looks at the dwindling fish population in the trinity and all the nets at the mouth. I'd be really nervous. Paul J. Catanese, Partner D.H. Scott & Company O: 530.243.4300 | F: 530.243.4306 900 Market St, Redding, CA 96001 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This communication (including any attachments) may contain privileged or confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this communication and/or shred the materials and any attachments and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this communication, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. Thank you. Disclaimer: Any accounting, business or tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. If desired, D.H. Scott & Company would be pleased to perform the requisite research and provide you with a detailed written analysis. Such an engagement may be the subject of a separate engagement letter that would define the scope and limits of the desired consultation services. On Dec 10, 2016, at 10:05 AM, David Webb > wrote: If I was a fish and I knew that my best friend was a fisherman I'd be pretty anxious too. Dave On 12/9/2016 7:03 PM, Kier Associates wrote: Baby salmon ain?t the only ones with anxiety disorder these days ? the only news you can trust, The Bad Reporter, just delivers one nail-biter after another http://www.gocomics.com/badreporter Bill From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces+kierassociates=att.net at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Sari Sommarstrom Sent: Friday, December 09, 2016 2:28 PM To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon Print this Story Email this Story Study Treats Migrating Salmon With Anxiety Medication, Says Limits Fear Of The Unknown Downstream Posted on Friday, December 09, 2016 (PST) Current research from Ume? University in Sweden shows that the young salmon's desire to migrate to the sea can partly be limited by anxiety. Researchers have long tried to understand what factors affect the young salmon's decision to migrate out to sea. Previous studies have indicated that environmental factors such as temperature, light conditions and water flow may play an important role. However, large parts of the within species variation in fish migration remains unexplained. A study http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13460 from Ume? University, published in the journal Nature Communications, now shows that the salmon's inclination to migrate is partly limited by its fear of the unknown downstream. "By treating salmon with an anxiolytic drug, anxiety medication that is, we artificially changed the migration intensity of the salmon where treated salmon travelled further and faster than untreated salmon," says Gustav Hellstr?m, one of the researchers behind the study. The research team studied how salmon migration was affected both in a lab, where salmon migrated in a large artificial stream, and in a natural stream outside of Ume? in Northern Sweden. In both environments, researchers found that salmon treated with anxiety medication migrated nearly twice as fast as salmon who had not been subjected to treatment. Several billion animals migrate yearly and the study results show that anxiety limits migration intensity, is not only important for understanding salmon migration but also for understanding migration in general, says the study. The study also has an ecotoxicological dimension as the quantity of medication that the salmon was exposed to was low - in fact so low that it measured lower than that found in wastewater in certain areas. "Even though salmon in Northern Sweden live in river-systems low to moderately affected by contaminated wastewater it is not very likely that exposure to anxiety medication is an environmental issue for these populations right now. However, given the low dose used in the study we cannot rule out that, with increasing human population and medical use, this might become a problem in the near future" says Hellstr?m. Bottom of Form _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ATT00001.gif Type: image/gif Size: 8928 bytes Desc: ATT00001.gif URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ATT00002.gif Type: image/gif Size: 63 bytes Desc: ATT00002.gif URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ATT00003.gif Type: image/gif Size: 64 bytes Desc: ATT00003.gif URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ATT00004.gif Type: image/gif Size: 596 bytes Desc: ATT00004.gif URL: From johnsang at yahoo.com Sat Dec 10 16:08:25 2016 From: johnsang at yahoo.com (John Sanguinetti) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 16:08:25 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon In-Reply-To: <7cdf619c-f9e5-fa23-ed1c-356c529794fd@wildblue.net> References: <013b01d2526b$6f8e70f0$4eab52d0$@sisqtel.net> <000001d25291$f07cc510$d1764f30$@att.net> <7cdf619c-f9e5-fa23-ed1c-356c529794fd@wildblue.net> Message-ID: <88FDDC22-6C1F-49ED-9B2E-BFCDAC3C652A@yahoo.com> LOL! Sent from my iPhone > On Dec 10, 2016, at 9:57 AM, David Webb wrote: > > If I knew that my best friend was a fisherman I'd be pretty anxious too. > > Dave > >> On 12/9/2016 7:03 PM, Kier Associates wrote: >> Baby salmon ain?t the only ones with anxiety disorder these days ? the only news you can trust, The Bad Reporter, just delivers one nail-biter after another http://www.gocomics.com/badreporter >> >> Bill >> From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces+kierassociates=att.net at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Sari Sommarstrom >> Sent: Friday, December 09, 2016 2:28 PM >> To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us >> Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon >> >> >> >> Print this Story Email this Story >> Study Treats Migrating Salmon With Anxiety Medication, Says Limits Fear Of The Unknown Downstream >> Posted on Friday, December 09, 2016 (PST) >> Current research from Ume? University in Sweden shows that the young salmon's desire to migrate to the sea can partly be limited by anxiety. >> >> Researchers have long tried to understand what factors affect the young salmon's decision to migrate out to sea. Previous studies have indicated that environmental factors such as temperature, light conditions and water flow may play an important role. However, large parts of the within species variation in fish migration remains unexplained. >> >> A study http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13460 from Ume? University, published in the journal Nature Communications, now shows that the salmon's inclination to migrate is partly limited by its fear of the unknown downstream. >> >> "By treating salmon with an anxiolytic drug, anxiety medication that is, we artificially changed the migration intensity of the salmon where treated salmon travelled further and faster than untreated salmon," says Gustav Hellstr?m, one of the researchers behind the study. >> >> The research team studied how salmon migration was affected both in a lab, where salmon migrated in a large artificial stream, and in a natural stream outside of Ume? in Northern Sweden. In both environments, researchers found that salmon treated with anxiety medication migrated nearly twice as fast as salmon who had not been subjected to treatment. >> >> Several billion animals migrate yearly and the study results show that anxiety limits migration intensity, is not only important for understanding salmon migration but also for understanding migration in general, says the study. >> >> The study also has an ecotoxicological dimension as the quantity of medication that the salmon was exposed to was low - in fact so low that it measured lower than that found in wastewater in certain areas. >> >> "Even though salmon in Northern Sweden live in river-systems low to moderately affected by contaminated wastewater it is not very likely that exposure to anxiety medication is an environmental issue for these populations right now. However, given the low dose used in the study we cannot rule out that, with increasing human population and medical use, this might become a problem in the near future" says Hellstr?m. >> >> >> >> >> Bottom of Form >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> env-trinity mailing list >> env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us >> http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity > > _______________________________________________ > env-trinity mailing list > env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us > http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pcatanese at dhscott.com Sat Dec 10 17:04:48 2016 From: pcatanese at dhscott.com (Paul Catanese) Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 01:04:48 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon In-Reply-To: <07968F55C4B6674AAB697ABE5DFD21F8EEFE660745@exchange.yuroktribe.nsn.us> References: <013b01d2526b$6f8e70f0$4eab52d0$@sisqtel.net> <000001d25291$f07cc510$d1764f30$@att.net>, , <07968F55C4B6674AAB697ABE5DFD21F8EEFE660745@exchange.yuroktribe.nsn.us> Message-ID: <89771AC2-7941-4B2F-86A7-4914252E08A4@dhscott.com> The racism card. Heard it all. Fact are facts. The river is on serious peril.keep ignoring the facts on the ground. The coho are virtually extinct and all other species at all time lows. I I'm not intimidated by your insult. Paul J. Catanese, Partner D.H. Scott & Company O: 530.243.4300 | F: 530.243.4306 900 Market St, Redding, CA 96001 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This communication (including any attachments) may contain privileged or confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this communication and/or shred the materials and any attachments and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this communication, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. Thank you. Disclaimer: Any accounting, business or tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. If desired, D.H. Scott & Company would be pleased to perform the requisite research and provide you with a detailed written analysis. Such an engagement may be the subject of a separate engagement letter that would define the scope and limits of the desired consultation services. On Dec 10, 2016, at 2:29 PM, Dave Hillemeier > wrote: Paul: That comment either stems from ignorance or border-line racism. If the former, I?d be happy to educate you regarding how harvest management works in the Klamath Basin, if the latter, please keep such comments to yourself or some other forum - this list-server is typically a good source of information without having to deal with such biases directed at people of the basin. Dave From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Paul Catanese Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2016 10:58 AM To: David Webb > Cc: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: Re: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon Agree. Looks at the dwindling fish population in the trinity and all the nets at the mouth. I'd be really nervous. Paul J. Catanese, Partner D.H. Scott & Company O: 530.243.4300 | F: 530.243.4306 900 Market St, Redding, CA 96001 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This communication (including any attachments) may contain privileged or confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this communication and/or shred the materials and any attachments and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this communication, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. Thank you. Disclaimer: Any accounting, business or tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. If desired, D.H. Scott & Company would be pleased to perform the requisite research and provide you with a detailed written analysis. Such an engagement may be the subject of a separate engagement letter that would define the scope and limits of the desired consultation services. On Dec 10, 2016, at 10:05 AM, David Webb > wrote: If I was a fish and I knew that my best friend was a fisherman I'd be pretty anxious too. Dave On 12/9/2016 7:03 PM, Kier Associates wrote: Baby salmon ain?t the only ones with anxiety disorder these days ? the only news you can trust, The Bad Reporter, just delivers one nail-biter after another http://www.gocomics.com/badreporter Bill From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces+kierassociates=att.net at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Sari Sommarstrom Sent: Friday, December 09, 2016 2:28 PM To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon Print this Story Email this Story Study Treats Migrating Salmon With Anxiety Medication, Says Limits Fear Of The Unknown Downstream Posted on Friday, December 09, 2016 (PST) Current research from Ume? University in Sweden shows that the young salmon's desire to migrate to the sea can partly be limited by anxiety. Researchers have long tried to understand what factors affect the young salmon's decision to migrate out to sea. Previous studies have indicated that environmental factors such as temperature, light conditions and water flow may play an important role. However, large parts of the within species variation in fish migration remains unexplained. A study http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13460 from Ume? University, published in the journal Nature Communications, now shows that the salmon's inclination to migrate is partly limited by its fear of the unknown downstream. "By treating salmon with an anxiolytic drug, anxiety medication that is, we artificially changed the migration intensity of the salmon where treated salmon travelled further and faster than untreated salmon," says Gustav Hellstr?m, one of the researchers behind the study. The research team studied how salmon migration was affected both in a lab, where salmon migrated in a large artificial stream, and in a natural stream outside of Ume? in Northern Sweden. In both environments, researchers found that salmon treated with anxiety medication migrated nearly twice as fast as salmon who had not been subjected to treatment. Several billion animals migrate yearly and the study results show that anxiety limits migration intensity, is not only important for understanding salmon migration but also for understanding migration in general, says the study. The study also has an ecotoxicological dimension as the quantity of medication that the salmon was exposed to was low - in fact so low that it measured lower than that found in wastewater in certain areas. "Even though salmon in Northern Sweden live in river-systems low to moderately affected by contaminated wastewater it is not very likely that exposure to anxiety medication is an environmental issue for these populations right now. However, given the low dose used in the study we cannot rule out that, with increasing human population and medical use, this might become a problem in the near future" says Hellstr?m. Bottom of Form _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Sat Dec 10 11:00:37 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 19:00:37 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW - TRP trapping summary through Julian week 49 Message-ID: Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 49 (December 9). Should any of you be scouring this intensely you may notice an increase by 50% the number of coho trapped at Willow Creek weir for the season. This is due to the final edit of that database having been performed. Cheers, MC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW49.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 115862 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW49.pdf URL: From Dave at yuroktribe.nsn.us Sat Dec 10 17:57:03 2016 From: Dave at yuroktribe.nsn.us (Dave Hillemeier) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 17:57:03 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon In-Reply-To: <89771AC2-7941-4B2F-86A7-4914252E08A4@dhscott.com> References: <013b01d2526b$6f8e70f0$4eab52d0$@sisqtel.net> <000001d25291$f07cc510$d1764f30$@att.net>, , <07968F55C4B6674AAB697ABE5DFD21F8EEFE660745@exchange.yuroktribe.nsn.us> <89771AC2-7941-4B2F-86A7-4914252E08A4@dhscott.com> Message-ID: <07968F55C4B6674AAB697ABE5DFD21F8EEFE660747@exchange.yuroktribe.nsn.us> You made no mention of the 50% of the fish taken in non-tribal fisheries in the ocean/river, but focused on the nets in the estuary. Call it what you want, from my perspective it's based on ignorance (not knowing how fisheries in the Klamath are managed), or border-line racism. Enough from me, I shouldn't have broken my rule of waiting 24 hours to respond to such emails. Dave From: Paul Catanese [mailto:pcatanese at dhscott.com] Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2016 5:05 PM To: Dave Hillemeier Cc: David Webb ; env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: Re: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon The racism card. Heard it all. Fact are facts. The river is on serious peril.keep ignoring the facts on the ground. The coho are virtually extinct and all other species at all time lows. I I'm not intimidated by your insult. Paul J. Catanese, Partner D.H. Scott & Company O: 530.243.4300 | F: 530.243.4306 900 Market St, Redding, CA 96001 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This communication (including any attachments) may contain privileged or confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this communication and/or shred the materials and any attachments and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this communication, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. Thank you. Disclaimer: Any accounting, business or tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. If desired, D.H. Scott & Company would be pleased to perform the requisite research and provide you with a detailed written analysis. Such an engagement may be the subject of a separate engagement letter that would define the scope and limits of the desired consultation services. On Dec 10, 2016, at 2:29 PM, Dave Hillemeier > wrote: Paul: That comment either stems from ignorance or border-line racism. If the former, I'd be happy to educate you regarding how harvest management works in the Klamath Basin, if the latter, please keep such comments to yourself or some other forum - this list-server is typically a good source of information without having to deal with such biases directed at people of the basin. Dave From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Paul Catanese Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2016 10:58 AM To: David Webb > Cc: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: Re: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon Agree. Looks at the dwindling fish population in the trinity and all the nets at the mouth. I'd be really nervous. Paul J. Catanese, Partner D.H. Scott & Company O: 530.243.4300 | F: 530.243.4306 900 Market St, Redding, CA 96001 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This communication (including any attachments) may contain privileged or confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this communication and/or shred the materials and any attachments and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this communication, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. Thank you. Disclaimer: Any accounting, business or tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and enclosures, is not intended as a thorough, in-depth analysis of specific issues, nor a substitute for a formal opinion, nor is it sufficient to avoid tax-related penalties. If desired, D.H. Scott & Company would be pleased to perform the requisite research and provide you with a detailed written analysis. Such an engagement may be the subject of a separate engagement letter that would define the scope and limits of the desired consultation services. On Dec 10, 2016, at 10:05 AM, David Webb > wrote: If I was a fish and I knew that my best friend was a fisherman I'd be pretty anxious too. Dave On 12/9/2016 7:03 PM, Kier Associates wrote: Baby salmon ain't the only ones with anxiety disorder these days - the only news you can trust, The Bad Reporter, just delivers one nail-biter after another http://www.gocomics.com/badreporter Bill From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces+kierassociates=att.net at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Sari Sommarstrom Sent: Friday, December 09, 2016 2:28 PM To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us Subject: [env-trinity] CBB: Treating anxious outmigrating salmon Print this Story Email this Story Study Treats Migrating Salmon With Anxiety Medication, Says Limits Fear Of The Unknown Downstream Posted on Friday, December 09, 2016 (PST) Current research from Ume? University in Sweden shows that the young salmon's desire to migrate to the sea can partly be limited by anxiety. Researchers have long tried to understand what factors affect the young salmon's decision to migrate out to sea. Previous studies have indicated that environmental factors such as temperature, light conditions and water flow may play an important role. However, large parts of the within species variation in fish migration remains unexplained. A study http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13460 from Ume? University, published in the journal Nature Communications, now shows that the salmon's inclination to migrate is partly limited by its fear of the unknown downstream. "By treating salmon with an anxiolytic drug, anxiety medication that is, we artificially changed the migration intensity of the salmon where treated salmon travelled further and faster than untreated salmon," says Gustav Hellstr?m, one of the researchers behind the study. The research team studied how salmon migration was affected both in a lab, where salmon migrated in a large artificial stream, and in a natural stream outside of Ume? in Northern Sweden. In both environments, researchers found that salmon treated with anxiety medication migrated nearly twice as fast as salmon who had not been subjected to treatment. Several billion animals migrate yearly and the study results show that anxiety limits migration intensity, is not only important for understanding salmon migration but also for understanding migration in general, says the study. The study also has an ecotoxicological dimension as the quantity of medication that the salmon was exposed to was low - in fact so low that it measured lower than that found in wastewater in certain areas. "Even though salmon in Northern Sweden live in river-systems low to moderately affected by contaminated wastewater it is not very likely that exposure to anxiety medication is an environmental issue for these populations right now. However, given the low dose used in the study we cannot rule out that, with increasing human population and medical use, this might become a problem in the near future" says Hellstr?m. Bottom of Form _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity _______________________________________________ env-trinity mailing list env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Dec 11 08:53:12 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 10:53:12 -0600 Subject: [env-trinity] After years of struggle farmers win big Message-ID: <7F409147-A77B-425A-928C-04D248F481AE@att.net> http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article120131528.html Sent from my iPhone From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sun Dec 11 19:01:10 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 19:01:10 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Congress Approves Water Bill With Feinstein's Environmentally Destructive Rider In-Reply-To: <4F1A8467-2029-41A6-938E-06D65B1E8EC7@fishsniffer.com> References: <001001d23d29$5acca440$1065ecc0$@TheThallers.com> <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> <8293486A-DD9B-4144-893B-3EEEC6E571B4@fishsniffer.com> <1AABAB4B-DCAD-4B5B-A38A-A3FFD6B66BD0@fishsniffer.com> <34A61BA7-D60F-4194-B607-15A87CD2157C@fishsniffer.com> <59F60094-7EAB-4F8A-8A85-9D457E8D6657@fishsniffer.com> <4F1A8467-2029-41A6-938E-06D65B1E8EC7@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <30FBE1A6-2E44-4632-B301-1B503662BD93@fishsniffer.com> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/10/1609636/-Congress-Approves-Water-Bill-With-Feinstein-s-Environmentally-Destructive-Rider Congress Approves Water Bill With Feinstein's Environmentally Destructive Rider by Dan Bacher The U.S. Senate on December 9 voted 78 to 21 to pass a bill approving water projects across the country, including an alarming rider amounting to a water grab for corporate agribusiness interests in California. The Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2016 will now go to President Obama's desk for his signature. If the bill is signed by Obama, the rider attached to the legislation will weaken Endangered Species Act protections for salmon, Delta smelt and other fish species ? and allow more pumping of Delta water to subsidized corporate farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. The rider would also give greater power over water projects to the Secretary of Interior. For example, it authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to construct Federally owned storage projects that are cost- shared 50-50 with non-Federal parties. ?The rider departs from traditional Federal water law in that Congress is not authorizing projects,? said Ron Stork of Friends of the River. ?Rather, Congress is authorizing the Secretary to participate in any project he or she wishes to, subject to the provisions of this bill and the wishes of the appropriations committees.? The granting of greater power to the Interior Secretary on constructing federal storage projects could have a dramatic impact on struggling Western salmon and steelhead populations, in light of President-Elect Donald Trump?s nomination of Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers as Secretary of Interior. The rider gives the Trump administration the sole authority to approve dams like the Temperance Flat Dam on the San Joaquin River. McMorris Rogers is beholden to the oil and gas, timber industry and other corporate interests - and seeks to open federal land and waters to fracking and other fossil fuel development, according to environmental groups. She received $109,600 from the oil and gas industry and $83,950 from the forestry and forest products industry in 2016, according to Open Secrets. bit.ly/.... ?We are heartbroken at the passage of the Big Ag rider and the betrayal by Senator Dianne Feinstein,? said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. ?She and the San Joaquin Valley Republican Congressional Members took advantage of what is a good bill for the rest of the United States, by slipping in a scheme to over pump the SF Bay-Delta estuary. We are grateful to all the people and friends of the Bay-Delta estuary who took action. Please stay tuned on our next steps Monday. The fight will go on.? The conflict over the rider between retiring Senator Boxer and Senator Dianne Feinstein erupted into a bitter split, with Boxer opposing the bill with a ?poison pill rider,? even though she was a sponsor of the original legislation. Senator Dianne Feinstein and Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy worked out a deal on language to attach to the WRDA (Water Resources Development Act) in the lame duck session. ?The question I ask myself about this bill is will it help California?? said Senator Feinstein in a statement. ?Will the $558 million in long-term authorizations help California develop a new water infrastructure? Will the short-term operational improvements help us hold more water in a way that does not negatively affect fish or the environment? I believe the answer is yes.? (mavensnotebook.com/...) Senator Boxer strongly disagreed with Feinstein. Boxer said the last- minute rider would place the interests of agribusiness interests over the commercial and recreational fishing industries ? and undermine Endangered Species Act protections for salmon, steelhead and other fish species in California, Oregon and Washington. ?I was stunned to see comments made by Kevin McCarthy that the outrageous poison pill that he is trying to place on WRDA is ?a little small agreement? on California drought. I will use every tool at my disposal to stop this last minute poison pill rider,? Boxer vowed before the vote. (mavensnotebook.com? Likewise, Congressman Jared Huffman said, ?Anyone that participates in this charade should be ashamed. This is a slap in the face to all of us who want to enact good infrastructure policy, who have been working to deliver for the families of Flint, and whose states care about salmon fishing jobs.? John McManus, executive director of the Golden Gate Salmon Association (GGSA), emphasized the terrible impact the adoption of the rider would have upon salmon fishing jobs along the West Coast and in the Sacramento Valley. ?It takes one gallon of water to produce a single almond,? said McManus. ?Why are some in Congress insisting on taking even more water from Northern California salmon and giving it to junior water rights holders in the western San Joaquin desert to grow more almonds for export overseas? Seizing more Northern California salmon water to reward political friends in the Western San Joaquin desert will greatly harm thousands of working people up and down the coast and in the Sacramento Valley who depend on salmon to make a living.? California?s salmon industry is valued over $2 billion in economic activity in a normal season including economic activity and jobs in Oregon, according to McManus. The industry employs tens of thousands of people from Santa Barbara to northern Oregon. ?This is a huge economic bloc made up of commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen (fresh and salt water), fish processors, marinas, coastal communities, equipment manufacturers, the hotel and food industry, Tribes, and the salmon fishing industry at large,? he noted. In a big betrayal to the people of the Delta, Tribes, fishermen and all Californians, Representatives John Garamendi, Doris O. Matsui, and Congressman Ami Bera voted for the WRDA with the rider sponsored by Stewart Resnick-backed Congressman David G. Valadao and Senator Dianne Feinstein to over pump and decimate the San Francisco Bay-Delta. And in yet another betrayal to the people of California, Governor Jerry Brown, who constantly poses as a ?green governor? and ?climate leader? amidst fawning coverage by the mainstream media, did nothing to oppose the bill, even though it will have a devastating impact on the fisheries, environment and economy of the state. The silence of the Brown administration appears to be consent. Could that silence result from Brown wanting to make a deal with President Trump to weaken the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act in order to fast-track the construction of his ?legacy project,? the Delta Tunnels? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: feinstein-official7-med.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 20578 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ehadley at ci.redding.ca.us Tue Dec 13 14:02:10 2016 From: ehadley at ci.redding.ca.us (Hadley, Elizabeth) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2016 22:02:10 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] TMC MEETING CANCELED Message-ID: <8AAAA7EAE2249D4B95F2A2C92B61C98ED976FC42@COREXCHG6.ci.redding.ca.us> Folks - Please note that due to the closure of Hwy 299 and expected inclement weather, the TMC meeting has been canceled this week; we will let you know when the meeting has been rescheduled. Thanks! Elizabeth W. Hadley Legislative, Regulatory, & Compliance Program Supervisor REDDING ELECTRIC UTILITY o (530)339-7327 c (530) 722-7518 ehadley at reupower.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Tue Dec 13 16:29:06 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2016 16:29:06 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for December 9, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update December 9, 2016. This week our crews mapped 13 redds (1,638 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ?What did the salmon say when he bumped into a wall? ... "Dam". Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9601 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Dec 14 14:30:31 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2016 16:30:31 -0600 Subject: [env-trinity] Ninth circuit favors Feds in California (Trinity) water fight! Message-ID: <66EE620D-CC86-40FB-955C-F685CC8B9E6D@att.net> http://courthousenews.com/ninth-circuit-favors-feds-in-california-water-fight/ Sent from my iPhone From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Dec 14 20:04:25 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2016 20:04:25 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Reclamation will increase American River releases to 35, 000 cfs In-Reply-To: <30FBE1A6-2E44-4632-B301-1B503662BD93@fishsniffer.com> References: <001001d23d29$5acca440$1065ecc0$@TheThallers.com> <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> <8293486A-DD9B-4144-893B-3EEEC6E571B4@fishsniffer.com> <1AABAB4B-DCAD-4B5B-A38A-A3FFD6B66BD0@fishsniffer.com> <34A61BA7-D60F-4194-B607-15A87CD2157C@fishsniffer.com> <59F60094-7EAB-4F8A-8A85-9D457E8D6657@fishsniffer.com> <4F1A8467-2029-41A6-938E-06D65B1E8EC7@fishsniffer.com> <30FBE1A6-2E44-4632-B301-1B503662BD93@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <6DD4C927-D576-4BED-B7A9-F0A00DD69059@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/12/14/reclamation-will-increase-american-river-releases-to-35000-cfs Reclamation will increase American River releases to 35,000 cfs by Dan Bacher As a big Pacific storm was slated to drench northern California, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced today it will increase water releases to the American River below Nimbus Dam on Dec. 15 at 9 a.m. from 15,000 cubic feet per second to reach 35,000 cfs by 1 p.m. This is the largest increase in releases in one day in the past several years, at least since 2011. Peggy Manza of Reclamation said the purpose of the increased releases was for ?storage management/ flood control.? ?Please route any release in excess of Power Plant capacity through the river outlets,? she said in a memo. ?Should inflows continue at current levels or increase, additional releases may be required,? noted Shane Hunt, Reclamation spokesman, in a news release. Hunt said increased releases are based on ?changing conditions and are necessary to maintain space in Folsom Reservoir for projected Sierra runoff.? Current storage in the reservoir is around 158 percent of its 15-year average for December. He advised, ?People recreating in or along the lower American River downstream of Folsom Dam to the confluence of the American and Sacramento rivers can expect river levels to increase and should take appropriate safety precautions. Some inundation along the American River?s recreational trails and at Discovery Park are expected.? When I called the media contact at the Bureau, everybody had already gone home for the day and nobody was available to answer my questions. I will report any additional information if and when somebody calls back or emails me. The increased releases occur at a critical time for struggling fall- run Chinook salmon and steelhead on the American. The salmon run is near its end as fish spawn in the river or have already spawned. The high flows are expected to wash out many of the freshly laid salmon eggs from the gravel beds. The winter run of steelhead, listed as an endangered species, is starting to move into the river. Due to the high river flows, Discovery, Howe Avenue, Watt Avenue and Gristmill Parks, Campus Commons Golf Course, William Pond Recreation Area and the American River Parkway multi-use trail at mile 20 will be closed Thursday-Sunday. Midnight Reservoir Elevation and Flows for Folsom may be found at Reclamation?s Central Valley Operations Office website at https://www.usbr.gov/mp/cvo/vungvari/wtr_rpt.pdf . Current American River conditions may be found at the Department of Water Resources? California Data Exchange Center website at http://cdec.water.ca.gov/river/americanStages.html . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 800_american.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 116463 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sat Dec 17 18:33:34 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2016 18:33:34 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] President Obama Signs Water Bill With Big Ag 'Poison Pill' Rider In-Reply-To: <0DA072CC-F76A-445D-8ECD-7B18BD1D1541@fishsniffer.com> References: <001001d23d29$5acca440$1065ecc0$@TheThallers.com> <02344560-A642-49EC-ABE2-706CDA0B3FCA@fishsniffer.com> <8293486A-DD9B-4144-893B-3EEEC6E571B4@fishsniffer.com> <1AABAB4B-DCAD-4B5B-A38A-A3FFD6B66BD0@fishsniffer.com> <34A61BA7-D60F-4194-B607-15A87CD2157C@fishsniffer.com> <59F60094-7EAB-4F8A-8A85-9D457E8D6657@fishsniffer.com> <4F1A8467-2029-41A6-938E-06D65B1E8EC7@fishsniffer.com> <30FBE1A6-2E44-4632-B301-1B503662BD93@fishsniffer.com> <6DD4C927-D576-4BED-B7A9-F0A00DD69059@fishsniffer.com> <0DA072CC-F76A-445D-8ECD-7B18BD1D1541@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/16/1611898/-President-Obama-Signs-Water-Bill-With-Big-Ag-Poison-Pill-Rider President Obama Signs Water Bill With Big Ag 'Poison Pill' Rider by Dan Bacher In a slap in the face to fishermen, Tribes, environmental justice advocates, conservationists and family farmers, President Obama on Friday signed the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act into law with its environmentally destructive Big Ag rider sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). The controversial rider in the bill, opposed by retiring Senator Barbara Boxer, taints an otherwise good bill that sponsors water projects across the nation. The last minute rider, requested by corporate agribusiness interests, allows San Joaquin Valley growers and Southern California water agencies to pump more water out of the Delta, driving Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species closer and closer to extinction, according to Delta advocates. The addition of the Big Ag rider to the bill caused a bitter rift between Boxer, one of the bill?s original sponsors, and Feinstein. Also known as the Water Resources Development Act of 2016, the bill authorizes water projects across the country to restore watersheds, improve waterways and flood control, and improve drinking water infrastructure, according to President Obama in his signing statement. The law also authorizes $170 million for communities facing drinking water emergencies, including funding for Flint, Michigan, to recover from the lead contamination in its drinking water system. ?WINN also includes four Indian water rights settlements that resolve long-standing claims to water and the conflicts surrounding those claims, address the needs of Native Communities, fulfill the Federal trust responsibility to American Indians, and provide a sound base for greater economic development for both the affected tribes and their non-Indian neighbors,? said Obama. In addressing the controversial rider in the bill (Title III, Subtitle J) that supposedly addresses drought in California by allowing agribusiness interests to pump more water from the Delta, Obama warned against ?misttating or incorrectly reading? Subtitle J?s provisions. ?Title III, Subtitle J, also includes short term provisions governing operations of the federal and state water projects under the Endangered Species Act for up to five years, regardless of drought condition,? said Obama. ?Building on the work of previous Administrations, my Administration has worked closely with the State of California and other affected parties to address the critical elements of California's complex water challenges by accommodating the needs and concerns of California water users and the important species that depend on that same water. This important partnership has helped us achieve a careful balance based on existing state and federal law. It is essential that it not be undermined by anyone who seeks to override that balance by misstating or incorrectly reading the provisions of Subtitle J.? Obama also claimed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) would continue to be applied and implemented. ?Consistent with the legislative history supporting these provisions, I interpret and understand Subtitle J to require continued application and implementation of the Endangered Species Act, consistent with the close and cooperative work of federal agencies with the State of California to assure that state water quality standards are met. This reading of the short-term operational provisions carries out the letter and spirit of the law and is essential for continuing the cooperation and commitment to accommodating the full range of complex and important interests in matters related to California water,? Obama concluded. Senator Boxer challenged the claim by Obama and bill supporters that the ESA would continue to be applied and implemented when she spoke out strongly against the bill on the Senator Floor last week. Boxer called the rider a ?devastating maneuver? and a ?poison pill? designed to undermine the Endangered Species Act by changing the restrictions on the amount and time that water could be delivered to agricultural districts, including the Westlands Water District, in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Under federal biological opinions, NOAA Fisheries biologists have determined flows to protect endangered and threatened species, including winter-run Chinook salmon and Delta and longfin smelt, that have nonetheless suffered dramatic declines due to the overpumping of water and poor management of Central Valley reservoirs during the recent drought. Boxer also criticized the process in which the last minute rider was introduced, pointing out it illustrates why many Americans hate Congress. ?One of the things they hate about Congress is when we have a special interest rider dropped on a bill,? Senator Boxer said in her speech on the Senate Floor on December 9, 2016. In a letter asking President Obama to veto the bill, Barbara Barrigan- Parrilla, Restore the Delta executive director, blasted the rider for the damage it would cause to fisheries and Delta water quality. ?It will worsen water quality not only for San Francisco Bay-Delta fisheries, but for the hundreds of thousands of people who make up the Delta?s environmental justice communities," she stated. She warned that the rider ?will lead to further water quality degradation in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, and set the course for future raids by Federal agencies on freshwater supplies from the Delta.? ?Our fear is that if we continue to take too much water from the estuary, the end result will be a public health crisis for the millions of people who live in the Delta, and the hundreds of thousands of people who make up the Delta?s environmental justice community,? said Barrigan-Parrilla. ?Over these last few years of drought, the Delta has seen a marked increase of toxic algal blooms, and without more cool water regularly flowing throughout the Delta, these outbreaks are expected to become a permanent feature of the Delta.? Barrigan-Parrilla said the toxic bacteria from the algal blooms are a threat to: 1) groundwater wells that provide drinking and irrigation water to tens of thousands of people; 2) municipal drinking water systems that provide drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people; 3) subsistence fishers who in conservative estimates number between 20,000 and 40,000 residents of the Delta; 4) the ability of Delta farmers to safely irrigate their 500,000 acres of crops worth $5.2 billion annually; 5) and tens of thousands of recreational enthusiasts who regularly sportfish, boat, and swim in the Delta?s 1100 miles of open waterways.? ?WRDA will increase water exports, especially during drought periods, creating increased opportunities for the proliferation of these dangerous toxic algal blooms, and increase public health threats,? noted Barrigan-Parrilla. The rider would also give greater power to the Secretary of Interior. For example, it authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to construct Federally owned storage projects that are cost-shared 50-50 with non- Federal parties. ?The bill?s signing is disappointing, but understandable given the presence of the Flint Michigan lead-poisoning response and the large number of water project authorizations for local Congressional districts in the WRDA,? said Ron Stork of Friends of the River. ?The bill tries to push more water into the south state, and may or may not succeed in that effort,? stated Stork. ?But the bill also breaks traditional notions of federal water project approvals laid down by Ronald Reagan.? ?Instead it gives the incoming Trump Administration Secretary of the Interior a pretty free hand to move forward on any damn dam projects they chose to ?authorize? and push. So hold on to your wallets; there?s almost certainly going to be efforts to raid the federal and state treasuries to subsidize these monsters,? noted Stork. ?Ironically, for an emergency drought bill, most of the provisions are not tied to a drought but to the next five years whether wet or dry. And today it?s raining and snowing in the mountains and valleys of California,? he concluded. Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, was appalled by passage of the bill with its rider. ?This is the tool California water districts need to deny the water for salmon and continue on with the Brown WaterFix for California,? said Chief Sisk in a Facebook post. ?DiFi doesn't care about all the fishermen, Tribes and fish consumers. This is the worst thing that President Obama could have done to the California water wars.? You can expect fishing organizations, Indian Tribes, conservationists and environmental justice advocates to launch lawsuits contesting the rider?s controversial provisions. As Senator Boxer said on the Senate floor: ?My view about water is that everybody comes to the table. We work it out together. I don't like the water war. He (Congressman McCarthy) has launched another water war battle for big agribusiness against the salmon fishery. It is ugly. It is wrong. It is going to wind up at the courthouse door anyway. Why are we doing this?? The salmon industry is expected to be impacted dramatically by the rider, as the increased pumping of northern California water will result in further declines in collapsing salmon populations. California?s salmon industry is valued over $2 billion in economic activity in a normal season including economic activity and jobs in Oregon, according to McManus. The industry employs tens of thousands of people from Santa Barbara to northern Oregon. The U.S. Senate approved the water bill by a vote of 78 to 21 on Friday, December 9. It must be noted that Jerry Brown, who constantly receives fawning coverage from the mainstream media over his allegedly ?green? policies, did absolutely nothing to oppose the rider in the bill. That makes perfect sense, since Brown is trying to fast track the construction of his legacy project, the Delta Tunnels. This rider will only make it easier for the incoming Trump administration to work with Brown on building the tunnels, potentially the most environmentally destructive public works project in California, by weakening the implementation of the Endangered Species Act and other laws. Background: Resources bill opens new front in long-running water wars (Greenwire ? DC) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: POTUS_header2.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 179016 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Sun Dec 18 08:40:55 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2016 08:40:55 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Brown Names Bill Croyle Acting Director of CA Department of Water Resources In-Reply-To: <78AFC0A4-E2ED-47D8-9123-A86936E890E4@att.net> References: <78AFC0A4-E2ED-47D8-9123-A86936E890E4@att.net> Message-ID: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/15/1611383/-Brown-Names-Bill-Croyle-Acting-Director-of-CA-Department-of-Water-Resources Brown Names Bill Croyle Acting Director of CA Department of Water Resources by Dan Bacher Governor Jerry Brown has named Bill Croyle as the acting director of the Department of Water Resources, according to an internal memo from John Laird, the Secretary for Natural Resources of California, sent to DWR employees on December 13. Croyle will replace Mark Cowin, who is retiring after 36 years with the agency, including nearly 7 years as DWR director. Croyle will assume his new position on January 1, 2017. Croyle will take the helm of the agency as Governor Jerry Brown?s ?legacy? project, the Delta Tunnels/California WaterFix, faces increasing opposition from fishermen, Tribal leaders, conservationists, environmental justice advocates, scientists and elected officials because it would destroy West Coast salmon and other fish populations and devastate family farms and communities throughout the Delta. Mr. Croyle joined the Department in August of 2007 and served more than six years as Chief of Flood Operations, according to Laird. He is currently the Deputy Director for Emergency Preparedness and Security. Before joining DWR, he worked for more than 23 years for the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. Mr. Croyle is a registered professional engineer with a B.S. in civil engineering from California State University, Sacramento. ?Please join me in congratulating Bill and giving him full support in his new role,? said Laird to the DWR employees. ?My colleagues and I at the Natural Resources Agency also express gratitude to Mark Cowin, who retires December 31 after nearly seven years as director of DWR,? said Laird. ?He started in the department?s Fresno office 36 years ago as a civil engineering graduate of Stanford University. Mark has served California well as a pragmatic, empathetic statesman in perennial water resources conflicts. His energy and talent have been crucial to the development of water policy - including the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and a $7.5 billion water bond ? that will serve future Californians well.? Laird said Cowin ?will continue to serve the administration in an advisory role.? Mike Jackson, legal counsel for the California Water Impact Network (C- WIN), responded to news of Croyle?s appointment by stating, ?He is a dedicated public servant and will be very loyal to the department that he heads. I don't seen much difference between him and Mark Cowin.? Jackson did note that Croyle understands water quality better than most DWR employees. ?Hopefully, his water quality experience will result in him telling the Governor about the terrible water quality problems that will be compounded by the California WaterFix,? said Jackson. Carl Torgersen, the DWR Chief Deputy Director, will also be retiring from his position at the agency at the end of 2016. Who will replace him has not been made public yet. Read the DWR memo here: DWR Memo from John Laird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: william-croyle-1.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 8125 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Dec 18 17:11:03 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2016 01:11:03 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Stormier times for California's water expected under new law References: <1842508335.7862298.1482109863355.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1842508335.7862298.1482109863355@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/12/17/67306/stormier-times-for-california-s-water-expected-und/ Stormier times for California's water expected under new law The first winter storm of 2017 to drop welcome rain over the rivers, pumps, pipes and canals that move California's water north to south likely will open a new era of tension over how much water goes to fish or farms under a new U.S law.Legislation signed Friday by President Barack Obama dictates that the federal portion of California's heavily engineered water systems gives agricultural districts and other human users the biggest possible share of the most fought-over resource in a state with a six-year drought.Water experts and conservationists expect that new mandate to conflict with state and federal laws and court orders meant to ensure enough water stays in Northern California's Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and delta for endangered native fish.Dueling interpretations over what the new law means for water deliveries could foster tensions between the state and the incoming Trump administration and worsen the water wars among farmers, fishing industries and conservation interests."There's going to be fighting, and it is going to commence almost immediately," said Peter Moyle, a professor emeritus of biology at the University of California, Davis.Moyle has spent much of his career tracing the decline of the minute fish called the Delta smelt and dozens of other native species since operations at California's giant state and federal water projects started more than a half-century ago.Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, is one of many, including farming groups and agricultural water districts with considerable political strength, that welcome the water bill.As heavy winter rains ease the drought, "this bill is going to help us catch some of this water and move it down south," Wenger said.And if the state's fishing groups and conservationists try to stop that, "shame on the environmentalists," he said. "Lawsuits haven't helped the fish."The law includes new directions on how hard to run giant water pumps during the winter storms that bring much of California's rain for the year.Typically, the storms trigger recommendations from wildlife officials to ease up on pumping. That is meant to help keep the nearly extinct Delta smelt and waning native salmon on course as the fish take advantage of the storms to move up or downstream.When Donald Trump visited California's Central Valley during the presidential campaign, he cited complaints from water districts and farmers that easing pumping after heavy rains wastes storm water that could be captured for the heavily agricultural region.Environmental groups say allowing winter rains to flow to the Pacific Ocean is essential to the health of the West Coast's largest estuary, the San Francisco Bay.Among other changes, the new law is expected to require biologists to show more hard data on endangered fish in real time when they ask for a reduction in pumping. Moyle, the Delta smelt expert, believes that's possible because of "smelt cams" and other monitoring systems already in place.Jay Lund, longtime water policy expert at the University of California, Davis, expects the law to provide up to an additional half-million acre-feet of water for human users.That's roughly equal to enough water to supply a half-million homes for a year and would be worth several hundreds of millions of dollars to agricultural interests in drought years. Both fish and farms received less water during the worst of California's drought.Fish advocates were expected to go to court if the law takes away water from native species under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts and related court orders, said Doug Obegi with the Natural Resources Defense Council.Some agricultural interests hope to challenge the U.S. Endangered Species Act itself, loosening or doing away with its restrictions on pumping in California.More pumping for farms and less water in the two rivers would be bad news not just for smelt but for other California fish listed as endangered, from salmon to sturgeon to steelhead, Moyle said.All of that could bring the Trump administration and its supporters in Congress into conflict with California over the state's protections for threatened wildlife."Dueling legislation between Congress and the state Legislature, and parallel legal battles in state and federal courts, and everyone's paying attention to that instead of paying attention to making the system run better ? that's my worry," Lund said. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Sun Dec 18 18:42:14 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2016 02:42:14 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Obama signs water bill; what does it mean for the Delta? References: <447770663.7807821.1482115334976.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <447770663.7807821.1482115334976@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article121428557.html DECEMBER 16, 2016 3:57 PM Obama signs water bill; what does it mean for the Delta? BY MICHAEL DOYLE, DALE KASLER AND RYAN SABALOWmdoyle at mcclatchydc.comPresident Barack Obama on Friday signed a massive infrastructure bill designed to control floods, fund dams and deliver more water to farmers in California?s drought-ravaged Central Valley.?Obama signed the $12 billion bill in a distinctly low-key act. Controversial provisions that critics fear could harm fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta were wrapped inside a package stuffed with politically popular projects, ranging from Sacramento-area levees to clean-water aid for beleaguered Flint, Mich.?It authorizes vital water projects across the country to restore watersheds, improve waterways and flood control, and improve drinking water infrastructure,? Obama stated, adding that ?help for Flint is a priority for this administration.?Dubbed the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, the bill passed?both House and Senate?by veto-proof margins following years of maneuvering and debate. Obama?s signature was never really in doubt, though administration officials had previously resisted some of the specific California provisions.These provisions, which include more pumping of water through the Delta for farmers, will now be implemented by an incoming Trump administration that appears agribusiness-friendly. Trump?s Interior Department transition team has included a lawyer who until Nov. 18 was a registered lobbyist for Westlands Water District, an agricultural district based in Fresno County and a supporter of the bill.The bill becomes effective immediately, but it could take a few weeks before it affects how much water is pumped south through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.Thanks to recent rainfall, the massive pumping stations near Tracy are already operating at full capacity, said spokesman Shane Hunt of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the Central Valley Project. Hunt said there are no environmental restrictions hindering pumping currently.If conditions in the Delta don?t change, the differences in how the pumps operate would start to show up in a few weeks. That?s when government biologists say endangered fish species, such as the Delta smelt, are believed to be swimming near the giant pumps. At that point, environmental curbs have traditionally kicked in, and the Delta pumps were throttled back.The law signed by Obama could change that. It says the pumps should be managed ?to maximize water supplies for the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project,? and it requires agencies essentially to push the limits on how much water can be sent south.?Environmentalists say they fear increased pumping in the Delta will bring further ruin to the dwindling fish populations that are protected by the Endangered Species Act. A recent study by scientists at the Bay Institute, an environmental group, warned that San Francisco Bay and its tributaries already are facing ecosystem collapse because so little fresh water is flowing out to sea from the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems.?I think we will find out very soon what it means,? said Doug Obegi?, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council.Obegi said he was somewhat heartened by Obama?s statement demanding ?continued application and implementation of the Endangered Species Act,? but he?s still worried about the health of the fish?Farm groups said they?re hoping changes materialize quickly, particularly with lots of water sloshing in and around the Delta this winter.?This legislation is intended to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves, to capture these storm events, these rain events ... and move water when you have it,? said Johnny Amaral, deputy general manager at Westlands Water District.In previous winters, he said, farmers were frustrated to see pumping curtailed during winter months, allowing water to flow out to the ocean. Now they believe they?ll get a bigger cut of the water supply.The state and federal water projects serve most of California?s major farm districts as well as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to 19 million people in Los Angeles and San Diego.Ultimately, the agencies remain at the mercy of the weather. If the rains stop, there will be considerably less water flowing south.?A lot of it will still depend on (weather) conditions,? said Jeff Kightlinger, general manager at Metropolitan.Aside from the controversial provisions over Delta pumping, the bill authorizes $880 million for flood-control work along the American and Sacramento rivers, $780 million for improved flood safety in West Sacramento and $415 million for environmental assistance for Lake Tahoe Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article121428557.html#storylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Mon Dec 19 13:55:37 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2016 13:55:37 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Stormier times for California's water expected under new law Message-ID: <00d501d25a42$a2b0e8d0$e812ba70$@sisqtel.net> Drought Monitor for Dec. 13, 2016 U.S. Drought Monitor forCalifornia From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Tom Stokely Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2016 5:11 PM To: Env-trinity Subject: [env-trinity] Stormier times for California's water expected under new law http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/12/17/67306/stormier-times-for-california-s-water-expected-und/ Stormier times for California's water expected under new law The first winter storm of 2017 to drop welcome rain over the rivers, pumps, pipes and canals that move California's water north to south likely will open a new era of tension over how much water goes to fish or farms under a new U.S law. Legislation signed Friday by President Barack Obama dictates that the federal portion of California's heavily engineered water systems gives agricultural districts and other human users the biggest possible share of the most fought-over resource in a state with a six-year drought. Water experts and conservationists expect that new mandate to conflict with state and federal laws and court orders meant to ensure enough water stays in Northern California's Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and delta for endangered native fish. Dueling interpretations over what the new law means for water deliveries could foster tensions between the state and the incoming Trump administration and worsen the water wars among farmers, fishing industries and conservation interests. "There's going to be fighting, and it is going to commence almost immediately," said Peter Moyle, a professor emeritus of biology at the University of California, Davis. Moyle has spent much of his career tracing the decline of the minute fish called the Delta smelt and dozens of other native species since operations at California's giant state and federal water projects started more than a half-century ago. Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, is one of many, including farming groups and agricultural water districts with considerable political strength, that welcome the water bill. As heavy winter rains ease the drought, "this bill is going to help us catch some of this water and move it down south," Wenger said. And if the state's fishing groups and conservationists try to stop that, "shame on the environmentalists," he said. "Lawsuits haven't helped the fish." The law includes new directions on how hard to run giant water pumps during the winter storms that bring much of California's rain for the year. Typically, the storms trigger recommendations from wildlife officials to ease up on pumping. That is meant to help keep the nearly extinct Delta smelt and waning native salmon on course as the fish take advantage of the storms to move up or downstream. When Donald Trump visited California's Central Valley during the presidential campaign, he cited complaints from water districts and farmers that easing pumping after heavy rains wastes storm water that could be captured for the heavily agricultural region. Environmental groups say allowing winter rains to flow to the Pacific Ocean is essential to the health of the West Coast's largest estuary, the San Francisco Bay. Among other changes, the new law is expected to require biologists to show more hard data on endangered fish in real time when they ask for a reduction in pumping. Moyle, the Delta smelt expert, believes that's possible because of "smelt cams" and other monitoring systems already in place. Jay Lund, longtime water policy expert at the University of California, Davis, expects the law to provide up to an additional half-million acre-feet of water for human users. That's roughly equal to enough water to supply a half-million homes for a year and would be worth several hundreds of millions of dollars to agricultural interests in drought years. Both fish and farms received less water during the worst of California's drought. Fish advocates were expected to go to court if the law takes away water from native species under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts and related court orders, said Doug Obegi with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Some agricultural interests hope to challenge the U.S. Endangered Species Act itself, loosening or doing away with its restrictions on pumping in California. More pumping for farms and less water in the two rivers would be bad news not just for smelt but for other California fish listed as endangered, from salmon to sturgeon to steelhead, Moyle said. All of that could bring the Trump administration and its supporters in Congress into conflict with California over the state's protections for threatened wildlife. "Dueling legislation between Congress and the state Legislature, and parallel legal battles in state and federal courts, and everyone's paying attention to that instead of paying attention to making the system run better ? that's my worry," Lund said. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 7869 bytes Desc: not available URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Mon Dec 19 09:10:00 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2016 17:10:00 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW - TRP trapping summary through Julian week 50 Message-ID: Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 50 (December 16). We had some biggish flows in Julian week 50, up to 51,400 cfs according to the USGS gage at Hoopa. Hopefully we'll get some good snow pack this winter and we can get the drought behind us. The Chinook and coho spawning are complete for the season at Trinity River Hatchery; spawning of steelhead will continue into the new year. Stay safe, warm and dry in your holiday travels. Cheers! MC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW50.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 115970 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW50.pdf URL: From derek_rupert at fws.gov Tue Dec 20 17:22:20 2016 From: derek_rupert at fws.gov (Rupert, Derek) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 17:22:20 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Mainstem Trinity River Spawn Survey Update for December 16, 2016 Message-ID: Hello All, The US Fish and Wildlife Service along with the Yurok Tribe, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, US Forest Service, and Hoopa Valley Tribe have another weekly update for our Trinity River mainstem spawn survey. The full update is posted on the Arcata Fish and Wildlife Fisheries webpage. Trinity River spawn Survey update December 16, 2016. This week our crews mapped 13 redds (1,631 total for the year) in the Reaches from Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat. The graph below is clipped from our weekly report (limited to the river upstream of Cedar Flat). ?This is our final update for the 2016 Trinity River salmon spawning surveys. This season?s surveys were defined by wet weather and low salmon abundance. Starting in October, rain events were common throughout the survey period. Frequent rains elevated flows and turbidity in much of the mainstem, which inhibited many of the scheduled surveys. Redds were detected in only 1 of 4 surveys conducted (14 were cancelled) below the confluence with the South Fork Trinity River, due to high water. Above the South Fork confluence (Lewiston Dam to Cedar Flat), where flow peaks were less severe, our crews located 1,631 salmon redds. This was the lowest annual redd count on the Trinity River in the 15-year history of this survey (see figure above). Reach 1 (Lewiston Dam to Old Bridge) redd counts are typically the highest in these surveys (averaging 1,493 redds annually from 2002 to 2015), but this year only 124 redds were located in this section of the river. Carcass counts were also the lowest on record (since 2002), with 268 fresh spawned female salmon carcasses observed. Prespawn mortality was only evident in 2 of the 270 (<1%) female salmon sampled. Our data are consistent with the low numbers of salmon encountered at the Trinity River Hatchery and Willow Creek Weir. Let's all hope Santa brings a bigger salmon run next year. ?? Cheers, Derek -- Derek Rupert Fish Biologist US Fish and Wildlife Service Weaverville, CA Office 530.623.1805 Cell 570.419.2823 Derek_Rupert at fws.gov -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WeeklyGraphicSmall.png Type: image/png Size: 9600 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Dec 21 08:48:02 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2016 16:48:02 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Journal: Obama signs water bill with controversial rider References: <379919789.538494.1482338882982.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <379919789.538494.1482338882982@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.trinityjournal.com/news/local/article_24718382-c728-11e6-bcf1-37f9d9c0a362.html Obama signs water bill with controversial rider - By AMY GITTELSOHN The Trinity Journal ?- 2 hrs ago ?- ?0 - - - - - - - - President Obama on Friday signed a massive water infrastructure bill that includes controversial California provisions intended to maximize water deliveries for agriculture after years of drought.The overall bill, the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, includes federal programs for dealing with the lead contamination problem in Flint, Mich., and other areas with issues stemming from lead pipes. It authorizes water projects across the country to restore watersheds, improve waterways and flood control, and improve drinking water infrastructure.Much of the $10 billion water bill had broad support. However, the ?midnight rider? added in shortly before the House vote in a deal between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has alarmed fisheries advocates.Feinstein touted the long-term aspects of the rider which she said are needed for California to not become a desert state.?We absolutely must hold water from wet years for use in dry years, and this bill will help accomplish that by investing more than $500 million in projects,? Feinstein said in a news release.The bill directs $30 million to desalinization projects, $150 million to water recycling and water conservation projects, $335 million to groundwater and surface storage projects and $43 million to projects that benefit fish and wildlife.Further California provisions that sunset in five years seek to increase water deliveries to farmers.The goal, Feinstein said, ?is to run California?s water system based on good science, not intuition.?But critics, including fellow Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who worked on the broader bill, called the rider an attack on the Endangered Species Act.For example, the California provisions seek to maximize deliveries to farmers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Those deliveries currently are limited by concerns such as effects on fish from the reverse flow caused by pumping.The rider requires pumping from the Old and Middle rivers at the ?most negative reverse flow rate allowed under the applicable biological opinion to maximize water supplies for the Central Valley Project and State Water Project.?There is the qualifier that pumping can?t harm fish listed under the Endangered Species Act or violate state law.The California provisions also call for mandatory CVP water deliveries to farmers based on water-year type.By basing water deliveries on water year but not water storage, there is potential for harm to fish and to other beneficial uses dependent on storage, including recreation, hydropower and even agriculture, said Tom Stokely, water policy coordinator for the California Water Impact Network.?It has a high potential to drain Shasta and Trinity reservoirs, especially during drought or recovery from drought,? he said.If strictly implemented, the California provisions could permanently deplete the cold water supplies for the Trinity and Sacramento rivers, Stokely said, causing massive mortality of fish.He did note that other sections of the bill prohibit conflict with state and federal laws, including the California Water Code, the Endangered Species Act and the Central Valley Project Improvement Act of 1992.?The legal legacy of protection for the Trinity River provides adequate justification for the incoming Interior Secretary to ignore that part of the new law and keep Trinity Lake from being completely drained on a regular basis,? he said.Ronald Stork, senior policy advisor for Friends of the River, commented on the push to get more water through the Delta.?What tends to happen now is that the Delta is the bottleneck to getting water to go to the unfulfilled demand of the state and federal water projects,? Stork said. ?To the extent that you push the rules that create the bottleneck more to one side it tends to leave the reservoirs in the areas of origin a bit lower on average.?Contractors are certainly hoping the bill increases water exports, Stork said, but he added that ?this legislation does not prevent the State Water Resources Control Board from exercising adult supervision over the potentially new and reckless Reclamation.?Stork said the legislation was tempered due to Feinstein?s involvement, but he foresees more of this type of legislation coming down the pike.Because of the rider they referred to as a ?poison pill,? the bill was opposed by Sen. Boxer, who sponsored the original legislation, and by Trinity County?s representative in the House Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, who called the rider, ?a slap in the face to all of us who want to enact good infrastructure policy, who have been working to deliver for the families of Flint, and whose states care about salmon fishing jobs.?But Feinstein called the bill the product of three years of effort and a compromise, saying, ?A state with 40 million people simply can?t rely on a water system put in place when we were 16 million people, and this bill is a big step in the right direction.? - -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Wed Dec 21 11:24:20 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2016 19:24:20 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Governor makes appointments to Klamath River Renewal Corporation Board of Directors References: <364739965.636845.1482348260823.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <364739965.636845.1482348260823@mail.yahoo.com> https://mavensnotebook.com/2016/12/21/news-worth-noting-cdfw-awards-40-million-for-restoration-projects-dwrs-largest-solar-energy-project-connects-to-grid-governor-makes-appointments-to-klamath-river-renewal-corporation-board/ Governor makes appointments to Klamath River Renewal Corporation Board of Directors >From the Office of the Governor:Leon Szeptycki, 52, of Stanford, has been appointed to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation Board of Directors. Szeptycki has been the professor of the practice and executive director of Water in the West at Stanford University?s Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment since 2013. He was a professor and director of the Environmental Law and Conservation Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law from 2006 to 2012, where he was a lecturer from 2002 to 2005. Szeptycki was general counsel and eastern conservation director at Trout Unlimited from 1997 to 2006 and an attorney at McGuire, Woods, Battle and Boothe from 1992 to 1996. He was served as a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Consumer Litigation in the Civil Division from 1990 to 1992 and as a law clerk for the Honorable Stephanie K. Seymour at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit from 1988 to 1989. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Szeptycki is a Democrat.Michael Barr, 68, of Los Angeles, has been appointed to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation Board of Directors. Barr has been a partner at Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman LLP since 1981, where he was an associate from 1973 to 1981. ?He is a member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers Board of Regents. Barr earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Barr is a Republican. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov Wed Dec 21 14:45:37 2016 From: MaryClaire.Kier at wildlife.ca.gov (Kier, Mary Claire@Wildlife) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2016 22:45:37 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] CDFW - TRP trapping summary through Julian week 51 Message-ID: Attached please find CDFW's Trinity River Project 2016 trapping summary through Julian week 51 (December 23). Hatchery personnel went through the trap on Tuesday and found a few straggler salmon, and some steelhead as well. Spawning of steelhead will continue in 2017. Don't expect another summary until January. Stay safe, warm and dry (whether or not you are travelling). Cheers MC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW51.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 116054 bytes Desc: 2016 TRP_ trapping_summary_thru JW51.pdf URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Wed Dec 21 15:14:04 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2016 15:14:04 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Happy Holidays! State and Feds will release EIS for Delta Tunnels plan tomorrow In-Reply-To: <9F3E9106-7E30-4959-94CB-35858186C1AA@fishsniffer.com> References: <1C587355-1D54-40FA-9E0D-0E63DF607898@fishsniffer.com> <3D6C15A6-6D2A-4326-9751-6DB11B78E3FF@fishsniffer.com> <9F3E9106-7E30-4959-94CB-35858186C1AA@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <3CF3D01C-9865-420B-BDF0-35B2D60216F7@fishsniffer.com> http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/12/21/state-and-feds-will-release-eis-for-delta-tunnels-plan-tomorrow/ http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/21/1613445/-State-and-Feds-will-release-EIS-for-Delta-Tunnels-plan-tomorrow Photo: The American River below Nimbus Dam on December 16. The American, a tributary of the Sacramento, is one of many rivers and streams imperiled by Governor Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels proposal. Photo by Dan Bacher. State and Feds will release EIS for Delta Tunnels plan tomorrow by Dan Bacher Just in time for the Holidays, the California Department of Water Resources and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced they will release their 80,000-page Environmental Impact Report/ Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/ EIS) for the Delta Tunnels plan on Thursday, December 22, 2016. The release of the huge document by the two lead agencies for the project comes at a critical time for the future of Governor Jerry Brown's Delta Tunnels project, the California WaterFix. The two top officials at the Department of Water Resources are retiring on December 31, while the new Donald Trump administration, filled with many controversial environmental appointees, will take the helm in Washington D.C. on January 21. The document will be available at www.BayDeltaConservationPlan.com According to a statement from Restore the Delta (RTD), ?This document represents the agencies? final attempt to convince state and federal regulators that their proposal for twin 40-foot, 30-mile long water tunnels to transfer Sacramento River water beneath the San Francisco Bay-Delta can meet environmental and water quality standards under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a feat no previous version of the proposal has achieved." "Despite any claims by project supporters, this document is by no means an approval of the proposal. It is akin to the submission of homework to be graded," the group said. As the Department and the Bureau jointly told the State Water Board at the end of November 2016, the environmental report cannot be finalized until a biological opinion is completed in March or April 2017. They told the Board they would finalize the report ?at approximately the same time? as when the biological opinion is released, according to RTD. ?How thoughtful of Delta Tunnel lead agencies to dump this document on defenders of the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary just before the holidays. For comparison, an 80,000-page document is roughly 66 Bibles long,? said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. ?We will begin digging through the information, evaluating agency replies to public comments included in this document, engage in the process moving forward, and prepare for litigation if required.? The 80,000-page document is being released as the Delta Tunnels plan faces increasing opposition from fishermen, Tribal leaders, conservationists, environmental justice advocates, scientists and elected officials because it would destroy West Coast salmon and other fish populations and devastate family farms and communities throughout the Delta. The Water Fix is based on the absurd contention that taking up to 9,000 cubic feet per second of water from the Sacramento River at the new points of diversion, as requested in the petition by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to the State Water Resources Control Board, will somehow ?restore? the Delta ecosystem. I am not aware of a single project in US or world history where the construction of a project that takes more water out of a river or estuary has resulted in the restoration of that river or estuary. You can read a transcript of my testimony before the State Water Resources Control Board at: http://fishsniffer.com/index.php/2016/07/30/delta-tunnels-restoring-an-estuary-by-diverting-its-water/ Bill Croyle Named Acting Director of CA Department of Water Resources Governor Jerry Brown has named Bill Croyle as the acting director of the Department of Water Resources, according to an internal memo from John Laird, the Secretary for Natural Resources of California, sent to DWR employees on December 13. Croyle will replace Mark Cowin, who is retiring after 36 years with the agency, including nearly 7 years as DWR director. Croyle will assume his new position on January 1, 2017. Mr. Croyle joined the Department in August of 2007 and served more than six years as Chief of Flood Operations, according to Laird. He is currently the Deputy Director for Emergency Preparedness and Security. Before joining DWR, he worked for more than 23 years for the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. Mr. Croyle is a registered professional engineer with a B.S. in civil engineering from California State University, Sacramento. ?Please join me in congratulating Bill and giving him full support in his new role,? said Laird to the DWR employees. ?My colleagues and I at the Natural Resources Agency also express gratitude to Mark Cowin, who retires December 31 after nearly seven years as director of DWR,? said Laird. ?He started in the department?s Fresno office 36 years ago as a civil engineering graduate of Stanford University. Mark has served California well as a pragmatic, empathetic statesman in perennial water resources conflicts. His energy and talent have been crucial to the development of water policy - including the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and a $7.5 billion water bond ? that will serve future Californians well.? Laird said Cowin ?will continue to serve the administration in an advisory role.? Mike Jackson, legal counsel for the California Water Impact Network (C- WIN), responded to news of Croyle?s appointment by stating, ?He is a dedicated public servant and will be very loyal to the department that he heads. I don't seen much difference between him and Mark Cowin.? Jackson did note that Croyle understands water quality better than most DWR employees. ?Hopefully, his water quality experience will result in him telling the Governor about the terrible water quality problems that will be compounded by the California WaterFix,? said Jackson. Carl Torgersen, the DWR Chief Deputy Director, will also be retiring from his position at the agency at the end of 2016. Who will replace him has not been made public yet. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Nimbus_Dam_Close_Up.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 189334 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danielbacher at fishsniffer.com Thu Dec 22 15:00:13 2016 From: danielbacher at fishsniffer.com (Dan Bacher) Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2016 15:00:13 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] Happy Holidays! State and Feds will release EIS for Delta Tunnels plan tomorrow In-Reply-To: <3CF3D01C-9865-420B-BDF0-35B2D60216F7@fishsniffer.com> References: <1C587355-1D54-40FA-9E0D-0E63DF607898@fishsniffer.com> <3D6C15A6-6D2A-4326-9751-6DB11B78E3FF@fishsniffer.com> <9F3E9106-7E30-4959-94CB-35858186C1AA@fishsniffer.com> <3CF3D01C-9865-420B-BDF0-35B2D60216F7@fishsniffer.com> Message-ID: <9F762F2D-05A1-46C4-B825-BCDF4F8B00A5@fishsniffer.com> California Governor Jerry Brown today lauded the release of the ?final? environmental documents for the controversial Delta Tunnels, a plan that fishermen, Tribal leaders, conservationists, family farmers and environmental justice advocates consider to be the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history. Brown touted the California WaterFix, his proposal to build two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, as ?California?s effort to modernize the state?s water infrastructure.? ?This project has been subjected to 10 years of detailed analysis and more environmental review than any other project in the history of the world,? said Brown in a statement. ?It is absolutely essential if California is to maintain a reliable water supply.? Brown also made his case for the tunnels in an article in the Sacramento Bee, ?Jerry Brown plunges ahead on twin tunnels,? written by Dan Morain, the Bee?s Editorial Page Editor. ?We?ve put everything we have into it,? Brown told Morain in an interview. ?The best scientific thinking says California needs the project.? The decision to grant the permits for the Delta Tunnels won?t be made until next year after President-Elect Donald Trump enters office, so you can bet that Brown, in spite of his posing as the alleged "resistance" to Trump's environmental policies, will be doing everything he can to convince Trump to support his ?legacy" project. Referring to Trump, Brown told Morain, ?I don?t think the president wants to destroy the economy of California? It?s not about being conservative or liberal. It?s about having the plumbing that meets the needs of the 21st century.? In a statement, Restore the Delta, a coalition opposed to the Delta Tunnels, contested Governor Brown?s claim that the tunnels plan is backed up by the ?best scientific thinking.? ?Governor Jerry Brown told the Sacramento Bee that Delta Tunnels proposal is based on the best scientific thinking,? said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta (RTD). ?That is simply not true. He left out that fish do worse with the tunnels, and that millions of Delta residents will be left with degraded water that will not meet Clean Water Act standards.? ?The Governor failed to remember the dangers for Delta residents associated with the project, from toxic algal blooms, to increased boron and selenium in drinking water, to greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 600,000 new cars on the road each year from construction," she said. ?This forgetting on Governor Brown's part is reckless and dangerous as he makes his appeal to President-elect Trump to support the project. Governor Brown is supporting a project that will leave Stockton, California, a majority-minority city, and other Delta environmental justice communities with degraded water -- all for the benefit of rich water exporters in the San Joaquin Valley, Southern California, and Silicon Valley,? she stated. ?Shame on Governor Brown. What dishonest pandering,? Barrigan-Parrilla concluded. To read all of the environmental documents in the 90,000 page Environmental Impact Report/ Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/ EIS) for the Delta Tunnels, visit the Final Environmental Impact Report webpage. Yesterday, Restore the Delta also pointed out the 90,000 page document is ?not a green light for the Delta Tunnels but rather should be understood as the submission of homework by sponsoring agencies (California Department of Water Resources and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) to be evaluated by state and federal regulators who will determine if proposal can meet environmental and water quality standards under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). A feat no previous version of the proposal has achieved.? Not ?The Resistance? ? Brown?s real environmental legacy exposed I'm constantly amazed how Jerry Brown constantly receives fawning coverage from the mainstream media when he appears at climate conferences in California and across the globe, even though his actual policies on fish, wildlife, water and the environment are among the most destructive of any governor in recent California history. Many mainstream reporters and editors have done very little research into the actual environmental policies of Jerry Brown, preferring to act as virtual stenographers and press release writers for the Governor. Although I have written about Brown?s environmental policies in many articles published in an array of media outlets, it?s a good idea to review them once again as this year nears its end. The Governor?s ?legacy project,? the Delta Tunnels/California Water Fix, undoubtedly poses a huge threat to the ecosystems of the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Klamath and Trinity river systems, in contrast to the Brown?s claim in Morain?s article that the tunnels, combined with ?Delta restoration,? ?could help native fish rebound from the edge of extinction. The project is based on the untenable premise that taking more water out of a river before it reaches the estuary will somehow ?restore? the San Francisco Bay Delta and its precious fish and wildlife species. Unfortunately, the California WaterFix is not the only environmentally devastating policy promoted by Governor Jerry Brown. Brown is promoting the expansion of fracking and extreme oil extraction methods in California and is overseeing water policies that are driving winter run-Chinook salmon, Delta and longfin smelt and other species closer and closer to extinction. As if those examples of Brown?s tainted environmental legacy weren?t bad enough, Brown has promoted carbon trading and REDD policies that pose an enormous threat to Indigenous Peoples around the globe; has done nothing to stop clearcutting of forests by Sierra-Pacific and other timber companies; presided over record water exports from the Delta in 2011; and oversaw massive fish kills of Sacramento splittail and other species in 2011. Jerry Brown also oversaw the ?completion? of so-called ?marine protected areas? under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, overseen by a Big Oil lobbyist and other corporate interests, in December 2012. These faux ?Yosemites of the Sea? fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling, fracking, pollution, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering. Brown?s ?Dirty Hands? exposed in groundbreaking report Governor Brown?s anti-environmental policies, particularly his fervent support of fracking in spite of his cynical eco-babble about "green energy? and ?defending science,? are the result of the millions of dollars that Brown has received from Big Oil, Big Ag and other corporate interests in recent years. The California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) on September 23 opened an investigation into the California Democratic Party in response to a report by a prominent consumer group claiming that the party acted as a ?laundry machine? to funnel donations from oil, energy and utility companies to Brown?s 2014 election campaign. Consumer Watchdog released the report, Brown?s Dirty Hands, on August 10, 2016, at a time when Brown faces increasing criticism from environmental, consumer and public interest groups regarding administration policies they say favor oil companies, energy companies and utilities over fish, water, people and the environment. The report tabulated donations totaling $9.8 million dollars to Jerry Brown?s campaigns, causes, and initiatives, and to the California Democratic Party since he ran for Governor from 26 energy companies with business before the state, according to Court. The companies included the state?s three major investor-owned utilities, as well as Occidental, Chevron, and NRG. The report alleges that energy companies donated $4.4 million to the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party gave $4.7 million to Brown?s re-election between 2011 and 2014. Consumer Watchdog submitted its report to the FPPC as a sworn complaint. As this FPPC investigation proceeds, the big corporate money behind Governor Jerry Brown's controversial environmental policies is facing increasing scrutiny from public trust advocates. November 4 was the second anniversary of the passage of Proposition 1, Brown?s controversial water bond, a measure that fishing groups, California Indian Tribes, grassroots conservation groups and environmental justice advocates opposed because they considered it to be a water grab for corporate agribusiness and Big Money interests. Proponents of Proposition 1 contributed a total of $21,820,691 and spent a total of $19,538,153 on the successful campaign. The contributors are a who?s who of Big Money interests in California, including corporate agribusiness groups, billionaires, timber barons, Big Oil. the tobacco industry and the California Chamber of Commerce. They provide a quick snapshot of the corporate interests behind the questionable environmental policies of Brown. For more information, go to: www.counterpunch.org/...) Brown spouts ?green? rhetoric when he flies off to climate conferences and issues proclamations about John Muir Day and Earth Day, but his actions and policies regarding fish, water and the environment should be challenged by all of those who care about the future of California and the West Coast. To read Brown?s Dirty Hands, go here: www.consumerwatchdog.org/... For more information about the real environmental record of Governor JerryBrown, go to: www.dailykos.com? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sari at sisqtel.net Fri Dec 23 12:12:58 2016 From: sari at sisqtel.net (Sari Sommarstrom) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2016 12:12:58 -0800 Subject: [env-trinity] McClatchy: Farmers score in battle over diverting Klamath River water for endangered species Message-ID: <010101d25d58$f50ab2f0$df2018d0$@sisqtel.net> http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article122393009.html Farmers score in battle over diverting Klamath River water for endangered species Phil Norton, manager of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges in Tulelake, Calif., on July 17, 2001, walks across the mud flats that were created when water from the Klamath River was cut off. Phil Norton, manager of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges in Tulelake, Calif., on July 17, 2001, walks across the mud flats that were created when water from the Klamath River was cut off. AL SEIB AP By Michael Doyle 12/23/16 mdoyle at mcclatchydc.com WASHINGTON Northern California and Oregon irrigation districts have won a key round in a long-running legal battle as they seek compensation for their loss of water in the Klamath River Basin. In a 53-page opinion, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Marilyn Blank Horn concluded the federal government's 2001 diversion of Klamath River Basin water amounted to a "physical taking" of the irrigation districts' property. Horn's ruling Wednesday rejected the government's argument that the diversion instead amounted to a "regulatory taking." The technical-sounding difference could shape the final dollar-and-cents' outcome. As attorney Josh Patashnik put it in a Santa Clara Law Review article, a judge's determination of a physical rather than regulatory taking "often plays a central role in determining whether property owners are paid compensation." "The distinction is important because physical takings constitute per se takings and impose a 'categorical duty' on the government to compensate the owner, whereas regulatory takings generally require balancing and 'complex factual assessments,' " Horn noted. Horn's decision marks the latest turn in a roller-coaster case first filed Oct. 11, 2001, by the Klamath Irrigation District, individual farmers and other water users in the region straddling Northern California and southern Oregon. The case went back and forth and was originally dismissed but then resurrected in 2011 by an appeals court. The districts and farmers, represented by the D.C.-based Marzulla Law firm, contend the government owes compensation, under the Fifth Amendment, for the temporary cessation of water deliveries in 2001 in order to protect endangered species including the Lost River sucker. The various legal and procedural complications are enumerated in the 474 separate court filings made since the first lawsuit landed in the court located near the White House. Drawing support from past Western water cases, Horn noted that government officials employed "physical means" to cut off the farmers' water. "By refusing to release water from Upper Klamath Lake and Klamath River, the government prevented water that would have, under the status quo ante, flowed into the Klamath Project canals and to the plaintiffs," Horn wrote. Horn added that she was in "no way making any determinations as to the nature or scope of plaintiffs' alleged property rights," which will be figured out in a trial. Michael Doyle: 202-383-6153, @MichaelDoyle10 Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article122393009.html#st orylink=cpy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 21807 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stormy4916 at hotmail.com Mon Dec 26 07:35:38 2016 From: stormy4916 at hotmail.com (Darlene Montgomery) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2016 15:35:38 +0000 Subject: [env-trinity] Trinity Journal: Sewage situation a big mess Message-ID: Good Morning, Is there any recent activity or information regarding the Lewiston Park Mutual Water co. and their current sewage system problems and proposed solutions? Thank you, Darlene Montgomery stormy4916@ hotmail.com ( I recently subscribed to the Trinity Journal) Sent from my iPad From tstokely at att.net Wed Dec 28 09:20:33 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2016 17:20:33 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Water Deeply: The Seven Key Things That Happened in California Water in 2016 References: <427658173.2272660.1482945633701.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <427658173.2272660.1482945633701@mail.yahoo.com> https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/articles/2016/12/28/the-seven-key-things-that-happened-in-california-water-in-2016 The Seven Key Things That Happened in California Water in 2016 The drought continues to impact California economically, politically and ecologically. Here?s a look at the most significant recent developments that will shape the year?ahead. | WRITTEN BYTara Lohan | PUBLISHED ON???Dec. 28, 2016 | READ TIMEApprox. 5 minutes | A buoy lies high and dry above the water line at the now defunct Echo Bay Marina in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, near Las Vegas, May 2016. Lake Mead?s surface was at its lowest level since the reservoir was created.John Locher, APTHIS YEAR HAS?been a big one for water. California is still mired in drought, although less of the state is suffering than in previous years and each winter rainstorm brings a fresh bit of?optimism.A large reserve of?groundwater was found?deep under the drought-stricken Central Valley,?recycled water?continues to gain in popularity,?flooding to help fish and farmers?is panning out and 2016 will likely wrap up as the?hottest year on record.Below are seven other significant milestones that impacted California water and will help shape the year?ahead. 1. Disappointing El?Nino The much-heralded El Nino that many hoped would lift California out of drought didn?t live up to expectations. And what precipitation did come was concentrated much more heavily in the northern parts of the state, leaving Southern California high and?dry.By mid-April, while snowpack was at 100 percent of average in parts of the northern Sierra Nevada, precipitation in?Los Angeles was at only 58 percent. And the snowpack reading for the southern Sierra Nevada on April 1 was?65 percent of?average.To make matters worse, despite normal wet weather in the north, warmer temperatures meant that by May 1 the snowpack statewide dropped to only 55 percent of average ? a marked improvement over the historically low snowpack of 2015, but nothing close to what the state needed to make a big impact on the?drought. 2. Conservation Mandate?Ends After nearly a year of Californians rising to the challenge of a 25 percent statewide conservation mandate, the policy was disbanded in May. The State Water Resources Control Board changed course and instead decided to let water agencies set their own conservation?standards.?The new rules center on a ?self-certification? process in which individual water districts will forecast their demand and supply for the next three years, assuming continued below-average precipitation,? the?Sacramento Bee reported. ?Districts would be required to reduce water use by an amount equal to their projected?shortfall.?Following the decision, most water agencies?set conservation goals?at or near zero, and conservation statewide?fell. 3. Diminishing Lake?Mead In June,?Lake Mead hit its lowest point?ever since the reservoir on the Colorado River was built 80 years ago. Around 19 million Californians, nearly half the state, get some portion of their drinking water from the Colorado?River.The Bureau of Reclamation believes?the lake?s shortage?will be so low by 2018 it will not be able to make its deliveries to lower-basin states Nevada, Arizona and California. The three states have been working for months on a compromise, should the shortage warrant?it.However, in December the?Las Vegas Journal-Review?reported a new hitch ? trouble in California is holding things up. ?Before they agree to store more water in Lake Mead, California?s largest river users want to know how much water they might have to forgo to protect endangered fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta or keep the Salton Sea from drying up, triggering an ecological disaster,? the Journal-Review?reported. 4. Toxic Algae?Outbreaks An algae bloom in the reservoir behind Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River near Hornbrook, California. (Jeff Barnard,?AP)The summer was marked by several outbreaks of toxic algae blooms in waters across the state, fueled by low water flows, warm temperatures and high levels of nutrients. Although toxic algae blooms happened in both Northern and Southern California, of particular concern was the Sacramento-San Joaquin?Delta.?In the Delta, it?s important to us because we have a large population base that uses this water, and protecting the water quality is of huge ecological importance,??Peggy Lehman, a staff environmental scientist at the California Department of Water Resources,?told Water Deeply. ?With the State Water Project drawing from the Delta, we have to take a look at the importance of anything like this because it could be quite detrimental to human health and water?quality.? 5. Tree Mortality on the?Rise One of the most visible signs of California?s drought has been patches of red amid the typically green hillsides of California?s conifer forests in the Sierra Nevada. Recent aerial surveys indicate that the number of dead trees, thanks to drought and beetles, has risen to 102 million, with more than half dying in the last?year.?The scale of die-off in California is unprecedented in our modern history,? Randy Moore, forester for the region of the?U.S.?Forest Service that includes California, told the?Los Angeles Times.While statewide surveys have been conducted in the Sierra Nevada, smaller-scale research in coastal areas has also found that usually resilient oak trees are also dying from drought as tree roots can no longer reach falling?aquifers. 6. Federal Water Infrastructure Bill?Signed In December,?President Obama signed?the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, a $12 billion measure that provides aid for Flint, Michigan, and projects to fund dams and provide flood protection across the country. Stuffed into the legislation were controversial provisions that will affect how much water is pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin?Delta.Michael Doyle,?reporting for McClatchy, called it ?the biggest federal reset of California water use in a generation, setting the stage for easier dam-building, more recycling and potentially happier Central Valley?farmers.?The new law has received cheers from San Joaquin Valley farmers and jeers from the environmental community and Delta-area residents worried about overpumping from the environmentally sensitive Bay Delta. The law calls for pumps ?to maximize water supplies for the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project,? and may run into conflict with provisions in the Endangered Species Act that limit pumping at certain times to protect endangered fish?species. 7. Delta Tunnels Inch?Forward With just over a week to go before the end of 2016, California took another step forward on California WaterFix, the plan to build twin tunnels in the Delta, by releasing more than 90,000 pages of a finalized?environmental impact report.Erin Mellon, a spokeswoman for the state?s Natural Resources Agency, told the?Sacramento Bee?that the state hopes ?to have federal permits approved next year and construction under way as early as 2018.? The report comes after ?hundreds of public meetings and thousands of comments,? according to the Natural Resources?Agency.?After years of scientific study and analysis, we have found the best solution for protecting both the Delta?s ecosystem and a vital water supply for California,? said Mark Cowin, director of the California Department of Water?Resources.But Restore the Delta, one of the most outspoken critics of the plan, released a statement saying that the document ?is?not a green light?for the Delta Tunnels but rather should be understood as the submission of homework by sponsoring agencies ? to be evaluated by state and federal regulators who will determine if proposal can meet environmental and water quality standards ? A feat no previous version of the proposal has?achieved.?The project still faces other hurdles, including hearings before the State Water Resources Control Board on water rights impacts and a crucial agreement by water districts on how to finance the?project. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tstokely at att.net Thu Dec 29 09:43:46 2016 From: tstokely at att.net (Tom Stokely) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2016 17:43:46 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [env-trinity] Keats: California water projects rely on imaginary water References: <1535888725.3090809.1483033426214.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1535888725.3090809.1483033426214@mail.yahoo.com> ?http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/12/27/keats-california-water-projects-are-based-on-imaginary-water/? Keats: California water projects rely on imaginary water A rainbow near the Antioch bridge along the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta in Antioch on Oct. 16. (Susan Tripp Pollard/Bay Area News Group)?By?ADAM KEATSPUBLISHED:?December 27, 2016 at 8:00 am?| UPDATED:?December 27, 2016 at 8:20 am?Sen. Dianne Feinstein and San Joaquin Valley agribusiness would have us believe that bureaucratic red tape and blind adherence to environmental laws are holding back the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project, preventing water from being delivered to thirsty farms and cities.Aside from pushing a false conflict between farms and fish, this thinking is flawed for another reason: It grossly overstates the amount of water capable of being produced by the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project.The fundamental problem for water contractors dependent on Bay-Delta water supplies is not that the fish are getting too much water, but rather that the water isn?t there. Big Ag knows this full well because it baked this fact into the State Water Project contracts.State Water Project contractors hold contracts for about 4.2 million acre-feet per year of project water (often referred to as ?Table A Water?). Yet, as the Department of Water Resources admits, because much of the system was never built out ? including several proposed dams that were taken off the table by Gov. Ronald Reagan when he protected several rivers as Wild and Scenic. So the State Water Project can only reliably produce between 2 and 2.4 million acre-feet?per year. The difference is known as ?paper water,? and the fact that the contracts are based on so much imaginary paper water is one of the main reasons the Bay-Delta ecosystem is collapsing.The contracts are based on artificially inflated numbers because the??entitlements? set expectations high and put pressure on the state to actually deliver that amount of water.These numbers present a false story of extreme hardship by the contractors, who even in the best years seem to only get half of the water they contract for. They put pressure on elected officials and provide false justification for bills like Feinstein?s.Feinstein?s rider to the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act calls for project officials to ?provide the maximum quantity of water supplies? to contractors. More likely than not, that ?maximum quantity? is going to start with the imaginary 4.2 million acre-feet.Some years the State Water Project delivers the full 4.2 MAF. But the extra water comes from the mouths of the fish and the birds in the Bay-Delta ecosystem, from the hundreds of family farms in the Delta, and from California?s sustainable salmon fishing industry. These interests have proven to be a poor match against wealthy San Joaquin Valley agribusiness.We need to rid the contracts of this paper water. As long as the system keeps promising double what it can deliver, there will never be enough water for anybody.The state is currently negotiating with the water contractors for the extension of the contracts, which are set to expire starting in 2035. ?Although the latest drafts contain the paper water numbers, they can still be changed to finally bring the contracts out of fantasy land and into reality.There is no good public policy reason to leave the inflated numbers in the contracts. It is time to break the cycle.All water users ? including birds and the fish that support the $1.4 billion salmon industry in California ? are ?entitled? to fair and sustainable access to what resources we have.Gov. Jerry Brown and other state officials should demand the Table A amounts be reduced to reflect?reliably deliverable water and set the State Water Project on the road to a functioning, sustainable future.Adam Keats is a senior attorney at Center for Food Safety?working on water supply and privatization issues. He wrote this for The Mercury News.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: