[env-trinity] Eureka Times Standard April 12

[Byron]

http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,1413,127~2896~2812024,00.html 

Trinity water shift condemned 

By John Driscoll The Times-Standard 

Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - 

The federal government wants to use water meant for restoring the Trinity
River 
to prevent a fish kill on the Klamath River this fall. 

By its own admission, such a decision would delay the goals of the Trinity
River 
Restoration Program -- which just received full clearance to proceed by a
federal 
appeals court this year. 

In a letter Monday, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region Director
Kirk 
Rodgers told restoration program chief Douglas Schleusner to craft a
schedule for 
using the water meant to flow down the Trinity River in the spring to raise
and 
cool the Klamath during the typically hot fall, when salmon migrate. 

The letter outraged some Trinity River advocates, like Byron Leydecker, who
saw 
it as ordering the theft of Trinity water from its intended purpose to cover

Reclamation for failed policies on the Klamath. 

California Trout's Leydecker said Reclamation has overcommitted water on the

Klamath, and now wants to prostitute a 16-year effort on the Trinity to make
up 
for it. 

"I've seen some gross political action in my time," Leydecker said, "but
this one is 
very near the top of the list." 

He said if Reclamation should buy water from Central Valley contractors like
it 
did two years ago. 

The Klamath River basin has received a tiny portion of its typical snow pack
-- 
around 30 percent -- this year. Reclamation's operations plan calls for
flows only 
slightly higher than those believed in part responsible for a massive salmon
die-off 
in the lower Klamath in 2002. While Reclamation has bought 100,000 acre feet

of water from farmers in its Klamath Irrigation Project, fall flows are
still 
anticipated to be paltry. 

"When combined with one of the lowest projected adult spawning escapements
in 
recent years, impacts to fisheries in both the Trinity and Klamath basins
could be 
severe," Rodgers wrote. 

Schleusner was directed to work with the Trinity Management Council and the 
Trinity Adaptive Management Working Group to develop a flow schedule, 
including options and tradeoffs. Those groups meet this week. 

Reclamation spokesman Jeff McCracken said the goal of the restoration
program is 
to restore the river and the fishery, and this approach fits that bill.
Asked if the 
agency could buy water from the Central Valley for the same purpose,
McCracken 
said competition for tight water supplies has grown tighter, making water
more 
difficult to buy. 

In a letter that predates Rodgers', the Hoopa Valley Tribe asserted that the

management council has no authority to use the water for anything other than

Trinity River restoration. It also addressed a lack of funding for the
effort. The 
council is at risk of dealing a "triple blow to restoration," by postponing
the effort, 
underfunding it, then withholding the water needed to reshape the river, the

tribe wrote. 

"Each of these actions is unlawful and potentially jeopardizes the fishery
that the 
United States holds in trust for our tribe," the March 4 letter reads.

 

Byron Leydecker, 

Chair, Friends of Trinity River

Consultant, California Trout, Inc.

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 383 9562 fx

bwl3 at comcast.net

bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org (secondary)

http://www.fotr.org

http://caltrout.org

 

 

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