[env-trinity] Fwd: hatchery review/trucking to the estuary

[Tom Stokely]

From: "Kier Associates" <kierassociates at suddenlink.net>
Date: August 24, 2012 12:41:27 PM PDT
To: "'Tom Stokely'" <tstokely at att.net>, <env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us>
Subject: hatchery review/truckning to the estuary

Tom
 
Not sure the list has rec’d a copy of the 2012 hatchery review.   See 

http://cahatcheryreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/CA%20Hatchery%20Review%20Report%20Final%207-31-12.pdf
 
The issue highlighted in the Bee’s article on the hatchery review has been around a long time
 
The State Water Contractors ‘case’ in the 1987 Bay-Delta water quality proceedings was 1- biological: the historic relationship between spring migration outflows for juvenile Sacramento River fall-run chinook salmon and the subsequent return of adult fall-run to the Sacramento River had ‘broken’ during the 1977-79 drought-let, never to be repeated again (at least not in the short period between the drought-let and those proceedings -
SWC’s biological consultant was my former DFG boss, Don Kelley  - ‘downright embarrassing); and 2- policy: to provide flows for juvenile Sacramento River fall run chinook salmon outmigration was, therefore, an ‘unreasonable use’ of water barred by the State Constitution
 
The testimony that appeared to have most effectively countered that of the Water Contractors was that presented by the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service (coordinated by Rick Morat, cc-ed here) which included biology – the Marty Kjelson/Patricia Brandes study of the relationship between spring outflow past Rio Vista and the arrival of juvenile salmon at Chipps Island in the western Delta and Sacramento River adult fall run returns, a long-term mark-and-recapture (i.e., by trawling) project and 2- a policy statement : USFWS asserted, persuasively, that Coleman Natl Fish Hatchery, a mitigation hatchery, was bound by federal policy to accomplish its mitigation purpose at-or-near the area of impact. Ergo USFWS was bound by federal policy to release Coleman’s production, given the high incident of straying of fish trucked to/released in the estuary, near the hatchery – and, therefore, streamflow sufficient to enable juvenile fall run chinook all the way down the river and through the Delta was necessary in order for USFWS to fulfill its federal mitigation policy obligations.
 
And, of course, as juvenile migration habitat in the Delta-estuary has steadily worsened in the years since, more and more pressure has been brought on USFWS, successfully, to abandon its ‘mitigation at’/near the pt of impact’ policy and truck higher and higher numbers of hatchery salmon juveniles for release in the estuary
 
I only recall all this because I suspect there’s no one in USFWS/Sacramento today with an inkling of what their office asserted, successfully, against all odds, as solemn federal policy 25 years ago.
 
Dr Kjelson had a heart attack during the most intense days of cross-examination and the FWS regional deputy director was wrenched to D.C (this was the GHW Bush administration) on the eve of his policy testimony/spent a weekend in mtgs there explaining why the FWS and BurRec were on such different Bay-Delta pages
 
It took the USFWS/Sacamento office two full years (1985-87) to secure their own counsel for those proceedings.
 
The custom then, and I suspect today, is that counsel for both FWS/Sacto and Reclamation/Sacto is provided by the Sacramento office of the Interior Solicitor, which gets a lot more business from Reclamation than from USFWS - and strives to reconcile differences between the two agencies
 
‘Doubt there’s much Marty Kjelson-type grit left in the fight to conserve Sacramento River salmon - but we’re going to have to find some pdq.
 
The Kjelson-Brandes work, btw, has legs – it’s been resubmitted into every significant SWRCB Bay-Delta proceeding over the 25 years since its first appearance.
 
Bill Kier
From: env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Tom Stokely
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 10:51 AM
To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us
Subject: [env-trinity] Chico News and Review: Salmon return, but not for good?
 
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/salmon-return-but-not-for/content?oid=7271288 
Salmon return, but not for good?
New study warns of salmon bust to follow this year’s boom

Read 1 reader submitted comment



This article was published on 08.23.12.
 

Related stories: 
Where have all the salmon gone?
Could it have something to do with those big pumps in the Delta? CN&R, 09.15.11.
A decade-long high of 800,000 salmon are expected to run up the Sacramento River this year, compared to a low of 100,000 several years ago.

But a $2 million California Hatchery Review Project study compiled by a panel of 11 fishery experts over a period of two years warned California’s boom-and-bust cycle is likely to repeat itself, according to The Sacramento Bee.

As 90 percent of the returning salmon are hatched in one of eight hatcheries along the Sacramento, Trinity and Klamath rivers, interbreeding has reduced the salmon’s ability to survive environmental disruptions. The authors suggested discontinuing the practice of trucking young fish to San Francisco Bay, which improves their chances of survival by avoiding the predators and pollution in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, but ends up weakening their instincts to return to their birthplace to spawn.

California’s Department of Fish and Game may begin adopting some of the report’s recommendations this fall.

 


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