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<TD class=articleTitle><SPAN id=ArticleControl1_lblTitle>Hoopa Valley
Tribe protests water policy on Trinity River</SPAN></TD></TR>
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<TD class=articleByline><SPAN id=ArticleControl1_lblDateAndAuthor>by
Sharon Letts, 5/13/2006</SPAN></TD></TR>
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<TD class=articleBody><SPAN id=ArticleControl1_lblBody>In a letter dated,
April 24, 2006, the Hoopa Valley Tribe requested a meeting with Mark
Limbaugh, assistant Secretary of Water and Science at the U.S. Interior
Department, and James E. Cason, associate deputy secretary and acting
assistant secretary of Indian Affairs at Interior.<BR><BR>The meeting is
in response to the tribe’s request that the Bureau of Reclamation not
renew the long-term contracts with the largest consumers of irrigation
water in the Central Valley until those contracts are revised to protect
the Trinity River.<BR><BR>According to a letter drafted April 19, 2006, by
the Westlands Water District, the district is disputing a Bureau of
Reclamation designation that this year’s water forecast is an “extremely
wet year” rather than a “wet year,” and are threatening litigation if the
Bureau of Reclamation does not change the language, thus allowing more
water to be taken from the river.<BR><BR>In a settlement proposal drafted
by the Westlands Water District, the water forecast is key to providing
water to the farmers of the Central Valley. In this settlement, Westlands
provides a detailed rainfall chart that reflects data collected as far
back as 1912.<BR><BR>According to the Hoopa Valley Tribe Chairman Clifford
Lyle Marshall, the degradation of the Trinity River fishery began in 1955
when Congress authorized diversions of the river’s water to the Central
Valley. The act said enough water would be left in the river to support
the fishery, but spawning runs have diminished since the diversions began.
He said that the Bureau of Reclamation was taking up to 90 percent of the
river’s water in some years.<BR><BR>Congress passed the Central Valley
Project Improvement Act, or CVPIA, in 1992, which included cooperative
restoration studies by the tribe and Interior. The studies culminated in a
record of decision agreeing to a river restoration plan, which was signed
by Department of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in 2000.
<BR><BR>Litigation continued as the fight for water to and from the river
continued over the years and conditions worsened until 2002 when some
68,000 fish died in the combined Trinity and Klamath rivers’ now infamous
“fish kill.”<BR><BR>“The Hoopa Valley Tribe will not stop fighting those
who are trying to destroy this river and the fish,” Marshall said. “We
have no choice. We do not have another river that flows through our
ancestral land and blood. The fish do not have another river to spawn
in.”<BR><BR>The Westlands settlement proposal puts an emphasis on
restoring the Trinity River fishery as well as providing water to the
farmers.</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>