EDITORIAL: Pump Up Solutions to Save Fish, the Delta

By The Modesto Bee, Calif.

Mar. 28–A delta smelt is about 4 inches long and swims in the San Joaquin River Delta. A salmon fingerling is about 4 inches long and, for a short time, also swims in the delta. To a striped bass, they probably taste the same.

Both species are listed as “threatened,” which doesn’t mean you can’t kill them, it just means you need permission to do so — and the state’s Department of Water Resources doesn’t have that permission.

That’s why an Alameda County Superior Court judge last week gave the state 75 days to shut down its State Water Project pumps near Tracy. Since the late 1980s, those 11 pumps have been capable of reversing tidal flows. As they send as much as 10,688gallons a second south to LosAngeles and the lower Central Valley, they have killed untold numbers of fish. Even far from the pumps, fish can be disoriented by a river flowing the wrong direction and become easy prey.

The state knows that fish die in the pumps. To get permission to kill them — called a “incidental take permit” — the state agency should be required to examine the pumps’ impacts on threatened fish. Justifying such a permit could have significant ramifications for those trying to save salmon in the Tuolumne River.

There are many factors in the crash of the salmon and smelt populations, but increased pumping is likely a big one. We just don’t know how big.

The pumps don’t affect only fish. Twenty-two million Californians drink water pumped south; businesses use the water to generate $300 billion a year; they irrigate 750,000 acres.

Why should we care? Because those pumps likely are contributing to the deaths of salmon fingerlings that the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts have spent millions to protect and nurture. It could help explain why fewer than 800 fish returned to the Tuolumne River in 2006 instead of the thousands officials had hoped would return to spawn.

The irrigation districts have reconfigured the riverbed in several areas and released a lot of water each fall to help spawning salmon get up the river. In the spring, more water is released to help fingerlings get to the ocean. Many believe that most of those fingerlings never get past the pumps. As salmon numbers fall, some people insist that greater water releases are needed. But if the state admits that its pumps contribute to killing the spring run, additional releases could be meaningless.

“You can release all the water in Don Pedro and raise millions of fish — and it still might not make an appreciable difference,” said Robert Nees, assistant general manager of water resources for the TID. “The (government’s solution) is more flow — an effort to blast the fish past the pressure points. But that doesn’t really solve the problem and it comes at an extreme cost to the economy of letting all that water flow to the sea for very little return.”

The judge’s ruling won’t stand; its impacts are too far-reaching. Still, we hope it will force answers to important questions: What is really killing the fish? How can they be protected? At what cost? Who should pay?

Many of these questions are being studied now, and the Legislature should see some kind of protection package next year. If we’re lucky, this judge will help provide a climate for consensus. But that is beyond our realm. So we’ll concentrate on what we want from this situation:

We want to see a lot more salmon in the Tuolumne. We want to see the TID and the MID continue restoration work and guarantee sufficient flows for salmon survival. We want to see others forced to acknowledge their responsibilities for so few fish and to do their parts to fix the problem.

—–

Copyright (c) 2007, The Modesto Bee, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.