[env-trinity] Bureau Finally Agrees To Flow Regime On American River

Daniel Bacher danielbacher at hotmail.com
Fri Sep 16 09:38:19 PDT 2005


Bureau Finally Agrees To Flow Regime On American River

by Dan Bacher

After years of negotiations, Department of Interior officials on September 8 
agreed to support a new flow regime for the lower American River developed 
by the Sacramento Valley Water Forum. The agreement between the Water Forum, 
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will raise 
minimum flows on the river for the benefit of salmon, steelhead and other 
fish.

This is a huge victory for fishery conservation and environmental groups 
that have pressured the Bureau for decades to develop long-overdue 
temperature and flow standards on the popular urban river stretching from 
Nimbus Dam to Discovery Park. The Save the American River Association, 
California Sportfishing Projection Alliance, Friends of the River, United 
Anglers and Granite Bay Flycasters were among the key groups participating 
in the successful campaign to finally get the federal government adopt a new 
flow regime.

“The adoption of these flow standards represents a significant milestone in 
restoring the American River,” said Ron Stork, conservation director of 
Friends of the River. “We chose to kept our noses to the grindstone and kept 
talking with the Bureau of Reclamation even after internal deadlines 
requiring an agreement had already passed.”

“We have been working on this agreement for some time,” said Kirk Rodgers, 
Reclamation’s Mid-Pacific regional director.  “I am gratified that we were 
able to reach agreement for a new flow regime on the Lower American River 
that will benefit fish, while allowing us to provide water so essential for 
people and industry.”

These flows focus on fall salmon spawning flows and summer base flows viable 
for both fish and recreation. Minimum flows will range from 800 to 2000 cfs. 
during the winter and 800 to 1750 cfs during the summer, based on the water 
year types (critical, dry, below normal, above normal, and wet).

This is a big improvement over the meager minimum flows – 250 to 500 cfs – 
adopted by the State Water Resources Control Boat in Decision 895 in 1958. 
As somebody who has fished the American River hundreds of times, I saw the 
flows go down to 250 cfs in the drought of 1975-78 and down to 500 cfs in 
the drought of 1988-92.

“The Water Forum is very happy and encouraged that we’ve arrived at a flow 
regime for the Lower American River,” said Leo Winterwitz, the Water Forum’s 
Executive Director, “and we look forward with optimism to completing the 
entire flow standard and taking it to the State Board.”

This is a huge step in restoring the American River, but there is still a 
lot of work ahead of river advocates. The agreement on the new flow regime 
is part of a new overall Flow Management Standard that will also include (1) 
the development of a river management group, (2) a monitoring program and 
(3) agreements with upstream diverters to make addition additional water 
available to the system in dry and critically dry years.

Negotiations with purveyors on dry year agreements are “in progress,” 
according to a press release by the Bureau of Reclamation. Other elements of 
the flow standard will be developed in cooperation with the California 
Department of Fish and Game and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS, 
also called NOAA Fisheries). The parties plan to complete the overall flow 
standard and present it to the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) 
for approval in 2006.

The announcement by Interior came on the heels of several letters that Felix 
Smith, Board Member of the Save the American River Association and member of 
the Water Forum, sent to federal officials, strongly urging them to adopt 
the flow regime.

In an August 23 letter to Rod McGuiness, Acting Regional Administrator of 
the National Marine Fisheries Service, Smith wrote:

“ The failure to prepare and implement an adequate Water Temperature Control 
Plan with a flow component associated with the operations of Folsom/Nimbus 
Dams and Reservoir is unacceptable. Without such careful planning, the 
operations of these CVP components could adversely impact the steelhead and 
chinook salmon resources of the Lower American River Parkway – Preserve, 
with little recourse by the public to get aggressive action to protect such 
values except for a lawsuit.”

The reason why minimum flows are needed was demonstrated last year when The 
American River fall chinook run narrowly escaped ecological catastrophe when 
cool rains arrived early in October and cooled the water temperature down.

In the previous three years, pre-spawning mortality among king salmon was 
from 30 percent to 67 percent. In the worst year, 2001, 87,626 fish (67 
percent) perished before spawning. DFG biologists attributed the high 
mortality rates to the high water temperature conditions that prevailed in 
the lower American River during low flows in the late summer and early fall, 
the result of heavy water exports to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley 
and Southern California during the summer.

“Progress is being made towards a revised lower American River flow 
standard,” said Smith, after hearing the Bureau had agreed to accept the 
Water Forum flow and temperature standard.

However, Smith chided the agencies for not meeting any of the deadlines set 
by the parties in a Memorandum of Understanding that they signed on October 
4, 2004.  Under the original schedule, Reclamation was slated to file a 
petition with the Water Board  incorporating the new Flow Management 
Standard by September 15.

The decision by the Bureau to finally adopt a flow regime on the American 
River is a big victory for fish advocates – and would not have happened 
except for the intense political pressure that fishery conservation groups 
put on the Bureau of Reclamation. However, we need to keep the pressure on 
federal officials to make sure that the uncompleted sections of the flow 
standards – river management, upstream diversions and monitoring agreements 
- are reached.

Also, the battle for fish restoration on the American needs to be seen in 
the larger context of the need to stop the state and federal governments 
from increasing water exports from the Delta and Central Valley at a time 
when the Delta food chain is collapsing. We can’t restore the fish of the 
lower American without solving the problems of the entire Bay-Delta 
ecosystem that it is an integral part of!





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