<html><head></head><body><div class="ydp95032789yahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px;"><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><div>The 60 day notice is attached.</div><div><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">TS<br></div><div>
<p style="background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 24pt; font-family: sans-serif; color: black; letter-spacing: -0.35pt; border-color: windowtext; border-style: none; border-width: 1pt; padding: 0in;">Fishermen threaten to sue Bureau of Reclamation
over Trinity River diversions</span></b><b><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.35pt;"></span></b></p>
<p style="background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;"></span></p><div class="ydp7f9aed55img-preview-wrapper"><img style="width: 460px; max-width: 460px;" id="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354Picture_x0020_2" src="cid:WC1bHujVEVqhpZtKQV64" alt="A haze moves slowly over the mountains as the Trinity River flows fairly high near Hawkins Bar in May 2019. Local fishermen and tribes are demanding the federal government address how water diversions from the river are threatening endangered species like coho salmon. (Shaun Walker/The Times-Standard file)" class="ydp7f9aed55preview" data-inlineimagemanipulating="true" draggable="false" border="0"><span class="ydp7f9aed55img-dl-btn"></span></div><p style="background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;"></span></p>
<p style="background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;">A
haze moves slowly over the mountains as the Trinity River flows fairly
high near Hawkins Bar in May 2019.
Local fishermen and tribes are demanding the federal government address
how water diversions from the river are threatening endangered species
like coho salmon. (Shaun Walker/The Times-Standard file)</span></p>
<p style="background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;">By <a href="https://www.times-standard.com/author/sonia-waraich/" title="Posts by Sonia Waraich" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-family: serif; color: blue; text-transform: uppercase; border-color: windowtext; border-style: none; border-width: 1pt; padding: 0in;">SONIA
WARAICH</span></b></a> | <a href="mailto:swaraich@times-standard.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue; border-color: windowtext; border-style: none; border-width: 1pt; padding: 0in;">swaraich@times-standard.com</span></a> | Eureka Times-Standard</span></p>
<p style="background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;">May 21, 2022 at 1:19 p.m.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">A
Trump era decision has further imperiled endangered fish species in the
Trinity River, and commercial fishermen and local tribes are demanding
the federal government
take action.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">This
week, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and its
sister organization Institute for Fisheries Research sent the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation
a 60-day notice of their intention to sue the federal agency for
violating the Endangered Species Act. The amount of water the bureau is
diverting from the Trinity River to the Central Valley Project has
decimated the river’s salmon populations and the fishermen
are demanding a new biological opinion on the conservation methods and
measures that should be required to protect them.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">“There
hasn’t been an updated biological opinion on the Trinity River since
the year 2000,” Tom Stokely, a consultant to the federation who has been
working on the
Trinity River for decades, told The Times-Standard. “When they did the
last biological opinion, they did not anticipate the take of coho salmon
from warm water.”</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">Under
the Endangered Species Act, it’s illegal to “take” an endangered
species, which ranges from harming and harassing to trapping and killing
them. The law also
requires agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National
Marine Fisheries Service to prepare a biological opinion detailing how a
federal agency’s actions could jeopardize the habitat or existence of
an endangered species, along with conservation
methods to help those species recover.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">In
the case of the fish in the Trinity River, the bureau is required to
maintain a temperature of 56 degrees at specific locations along the
river during the salmon
spawning periods starting in mid-September. Last year, the water
diversions resulted in harm to the species by allowing lethal
temperatures in the Trinity River Hatchery that killed up to 75% of the
coho salmon eggs.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">Conditions
aren’t expected to improve this fall, Stokely said. The water
temperature at Lewiston Dam is projected to be 58.6 degrees in October,
which is 2.5 degrees
warmer than it’s supposed to be 40 miles downstream.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">“So we expect very significant mortality of spring Chinook salmon, fall Chinook salmon as well as coho,” Stokely said.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">The
only thing that might save the fish this year is the bureau’s decision
to bring chillers to the Trinity River Hatchery for the coho salmon
eggs, but Stokely said
they don’t have chillers for the spring or fall Chinook salmon.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">Much
of this is the result of a 2019 biological opinion that assessed the
impact to species across the footprint of the Central Valley Project — a
network of dams,
reservoirs, canals and other infrastructure that provides
hydroelectricity and supplies water to the likes of Central Valley
farmers and municipal customers across 29 counties, among other things —
without factoring in impacts to the Trinity River.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">That opinion had the net effect of taking more water out of the Trinity River and leaving it without any protections.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">“Now
we’re facing this crisis because under the Trump biological opinion,
the cold water will be gone this fall and the salmon will experience
very lethal temperatures
during spawning,” Stokely said.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">A
joint March letter from the Yurok Tribe and Hoopa Valley Tribe to the
bureau and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was
attached to the notice of
intent. It, too, calls for a separate biological opinion focused
specifically on the impacts to the Trinity River, the health of which is
significant in maintaining their ways of life.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">“The
pending re-consultation on operations of the (Trinity River Division)
must remain separate and be completed prior to that of the larger
(Central Valley Project),”
the letter states. “This will ensure that environmental impacts of
reservoir management and water quality and quantity of river releases in
the Trinity River Basin can be considered independent of the impacts in
the Sacramento River.”</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">The
letter also points out that the 1955 Trinity River Act that allowed for
the construction and operation of the Trinity River Division of the
Central Valley Project
requires appropriate measures be taken to preserve fish and wildlife
species in the Trinity before allowing diversions.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">It
lays out emergency measures, like ceasing diversions, the bureau should
take to preserve the fish in the Trinity, which are “vital to meet the
cultural, ceremonial,
subsistence and economic needs of the Hoopa Valley and Yurok Tribes.”</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-size: auto; vertical-align: baseline;" class="ydp7f9aed55yiv6547291354MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size:12.5pt;font-family:sans-serif;color:black;letter-spacing:-.1pt;">The bureau has a policy not to comment on pending litigation.</span></p>
<i><span style="font-size: 12.5pt; font-family: serif; color: black; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; border-color: windowtext; border-style: none; border-width: 1pt; padding: 0in;">Sonia Waraich can be reached at 707-441-0504.</span></i></div><div><br></div></div></div></body></html>