[env-trinity] Fishing groups sue federal agencies over latest water plan for California

[Tom Stokely]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Fishing-groups-sue-federal-agencies-over-latest-14879831.php?t=5a7b52191d

Fishing groups sue federal agencies over latest water plan for California
Peter Fimrite Dec. 3, 2019 Updated: Dec. 3, 2019 8:09 p.m.A coho salmon swims in a creek running through Devil's Gulch at Samuel P. Taylor State Park where Eric Ettlinger, an aquatic biologist with the Marin Municipal Water District, monitors spawning activity on Friday, Jan. 11, 2019.Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle
The fracas over California’s scarce water supplies will tumble into a San Francisco courtroom after a lawsuit was filed this week claiming the federal government’s plan to loosen previous restrictions on water deliveries to farmers is a blueprint for wiping out fish.

Environmental and fishing groups sued the the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Monday for allegedly failing to protect chinook salmon, steelhead trout and delta smelt.

They believe the voluminous government proposal, known as a biological opinion, sacrifices protections for the imperiled fish without adequate justification so that Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities can have more water.
   
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The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charges that the government’s plan to boost agricultural deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is an arbitrary and capricious failure to uphold the Endangered Species Act.

“This legal action seeks to restore some commonsense balance and compromise to how we share water here in California,” said John McManus, president of the Golden State Salmon Association, a fishing industry advocacy group. “There’s plenty enough to keep our salmon and other wildlife healthy and provide for the people who live in Southern California. There isn’t enough to dump it on desert ground in the western San Joaquin Valley.”

The huge pumps near Tracy used by the State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project to bring delta water to 25 million Californians and irrigate 750,000 acres of cropland have been the subject of years of legal wrangling among fishing interests, environmentalists, farmers and water agencies across the state.

Environmentalists say the pumps suck up and kill endangered delta smelt, a silver-colored fish 2 to 3 inches long that is uniquely adapted to the delta’s shifting currents and brackish water.

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Biologists say the nearly complete absence of smelt in recent years is a sign of the overall lack of health of the ecosystem, including chinook salmon. As it is, conservationists say, not enough cold water is released from the dams to sustain endangered winter-run chinook or threatened spring-run chinook and steelhead, which spawn in tributaries of the Sacramento River.

Farmers, meanwhile, claim they are losing crops and money during dry years because regulations over the years have favored fish over food.

Federal officials said when they released the biological opinion in October that they worked diligently to protect fisheries, striking a balance between irrigation and Sacramento River flows.

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Ernest Conant, regional director of the U.S Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the Central Valley Project, said the plan calls for spending $1.5 billion over the next 10 years to protect endangered fish, including $14 million to help winter-run chinook salmon. Part of the plan, he said, is to retain more water behind Shasta Dam in Shasta County, the Central Valley Project’s largest reservoir, so that salmon would have enough cold water in the Sacramento River to survive during dry years.

He said another $50 million would be spent on helping delta smelt.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit — including the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Natural Resources Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife, Bay Institute and Bay.Org — were particularly angry about a decision to redo a biological opinion submitted in July and loosen the proposed restrictions. That document determined that pumping increases would, in fact, jeopardize not only the fish in the delta but also endangered killer whales, which eat salmon.

McManus claimed the document was revised because Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former water lobbyist who has previously challenged fish protections, ordered government officials to maximize water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley farmers.

“We’re saying, in part, ‘Hey, federal government, how is it that in July you find out the water diversions are going to annihilate salmon and then in October you find out they won’t harm them at all?’” McManus said. “Somebody’s not being honest here, and we think the court will agree that that somebody is Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.”
Fisheries Service officials have denied that Bernhardt had anything to do with the decision to redo the opinion.
Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite at sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @pfimrite
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