[env-trinity] Chronicle Editorial: Don’t trade away our salmon

[Tom Stokely]

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.
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