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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Elite
Science Panel Wades Into Calif. Water War <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>By COLIN SULLIVAN of <a href="http://www.greenwire.com"
target="_blank">Greenwire</a> NY Times<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Published: August 2, 2010 <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>TRACY,
Calif. -- Scientists tasked with unraveling one of the nation's most vexing
environmental puzzles started their first field trip to the Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta at a fish processing facility here near one of the
estuary's major water-pumping stations.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><a name=secondParagraph></a><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Assembled
by the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists -- 15 experts in estuarine
ecology, hydrology, fisheries science and water resources engineering -- were
gathering information for a series of reports that could influence management
of the West Coast's largest estuary for decades to come.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
stakes for the two-year study are high. All around the delta, demand for water
is growing -- water for endangered fish, for farms and for 25 million people.
Political pressure from California's senior U.S. senator, Democrat Dianne
Feinstein, and others finally forced the White House to order the review this
spring.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>So
the National Research Council panel has parachuted into a decades-long
environmental battle being fought over a 700-mile-long maze of shipping canals,
rivers, levees and aqueducts. The scientists are moving at a rapid clip to
satisfy political pressure on all sides as they try to get a clear picture of
the science behind two federal recovery plans for endangered chinook salmon and
delta smelt and a number of proposals aimed at solving regional water problems.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>All
this while a major restoration program five years in the making -- the Bay
Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) -- chugs forward.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
panel's starting point for its face-to-face confrontation with the delta is
about an hour's drive from San Francisco, a federal fish processing plant that
experts call "mile marker zero" for endangered fish diverted to the
Delta-Mendota Canal, which flows 2 miles south to the federal government's sole
water-pumping facility in the region. The state's sole pumping facility is also
nearby, at mile marker zero for the California Aqueduct.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
pumps are the focus of a court clash between the federal government and water
districts that has temporarily left Endangered Species Act recovery plans for
fish and the related biological opinions in disarray. The fish processing
plant, a series of warehouses surrounded by holding tanks and screening
machinery, is the final way station before those pumps.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Here,
the federal Bureau of Reclamation screens for fish, often by hand, to both
protect them from the deadly pumps and to trigger water-pumping limits when
smelt or salmon numbers start to swell. The operation is one of many ordered by
federal fiat in a bid to balance pressures on all sides.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"The
controversy has been going on for years and years," said Joe Pennino, a
Reclamation engineer who led the scientists on a tour of the facility.
"It's going to continue for years and years."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>'To
see it and feel it'<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Pennino
walked the scientists through the facility on a mid-July morning, explaining
that fish caught here are held for 8 to 12 hours and then trucked to the delta
for release just beyond the canal's entrance. Before dropping fish into holding
tanks, technicians sorted through screened debris, finding one largemouth bass
and dozens of threadfin shad but no smelt or salmon, neither of which were
expected in mid summer.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Then
the group boarded a Reclamation research vessel, the <i>Endeavour</i>, which
launched from Rio Vista, about an hour north of Tracy on the Sacramento River,
for a tour of the delta itself.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
panel chairman, Robert Huggett, a professor emeritus at the Virginia Institute
of Marine Science and former U.S. EPA assistant administrator for research and
development, said a first-hand look was needed following the release of a study
by his team that found federal science behind the smelt and salmon biological
opinions lacking.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"I've
never been on the Sacramento," Huggett said. "We're here to see it
and feel it."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Seeing
it and feeling it meant sitting at the stern of the <i>Endeavor</i> listening
to federal experts explain the delta in dry 100-degree heat. Officials from
Reclamation, the U.S. Geological <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Survey
and the Fish and Wildlife Service had the vessel steered first toward Decker
Island, a restored tidal marsh.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Jon
Burau, a USGS civil engineer, used the marsh as a backdrop for his argument for
rebuilding habitat along canals, rivers and levees to serve as natural
protection zones for young salmonids and smelt. The smelt, which is nearing
extinction, is considered a key indicator of the ecosystem's health.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>After
leaving Decker Island, the <i>Endeavor</i> moved north into the web-like delta,
which draws most of its water from the Sierra Mountains to the east but also
draws from as far north as the Cascades. The delta mostly resembles a series of
man-made canals (or sloughs) running between rock levees, but it often gives
way to marshes and tall grasses. It fluctuates, in other words, between
concrete and grassy wildlife habitat -- what Reclamation calls an
"exchange between terrestrial and aquatic environments" -- and a case
study in the rush to divert water.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>But
water exports are not the only stressors on the watershed. There is also
encroaching development, selenium and ammonia pollution, invasive weeds,
nonnative wildlife and tides so strong they reach from the Golden Gate to
Sacramento. The tides create a kind of fluid mixing bowl stretching north from
San Francisco Bay to the delta, a point stressed by Burau.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"This
is fundamentally a tidal system, a tidal system with a little bit of a river mixed
in," Burau told the scientists. "The tidal excursion is
everything."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>And
while more high-profile solutions have been floated to "fix" the
delta, including a multibillion-dollar canal or tunnel, Burau emphasized the
importance of harnessing and understanding how the tides convey or carry
pollution, which is so complete that prescription drugs like Prozac are
consistently found in delta fish.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"We
can't just look at conveyance options in isolation," said Burau,
explaining how tidal forces move organisms throughout the system like a
high-speed conveyor belt. "Things move a long way here. That's something
that doesn't happen in rivers."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>'Building
an airplane in mid-flight'<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In
the same breath, Burau admitted to knowing little about the behavior of the
endangered smelt. Such was the argument of attorneys who convinced a federal
judge to suspend pumping limits earlier this year, driving a big question mark
into the biological opinions, or bi-ops.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
science, Burau seemed to say, is an ever-changing reality in an ever-changing
system, and researchers appear to lack the funding to keep up with a system
that many say is vulnerable to collapse.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"We
really know almost nothing about delta smelt behavior," Burau admitted in
a response to a question from the panel.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Burau's
briefing on the water came two days after the NAS panel heard from state and
federal bureaucrats in Sacramento who asked the scientists to act faster than
their charter stipulates to add their analysis of the Bay Delta Conservation
Plan, or BDCP. That would add to a report due in November 2011 by the panel on
the science behind building a "peripheral" canal around the delta or
tunneling underneath it, both of which would cost billions of dollars.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Jerry
Johns, a senior official at the California Department of Water Resources, had
much the same message as Burau, telling the panel during a question-and-answer
session at a hotel in Sacramento that long-running efforts to manage the delta
-- including the defunct Cal-Fed federal/state program -- often failed to
account for the delta's complexity and wasted millions of dollars as a result.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"It's
kind of like building an airplane in mid-flight," said Johns of delta
management. "The complexity is mind-boggling."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Still,
Johns, a veteran of the delta struggle, said he believes the conservation plan
can make progress where Cal-Fed and other efforts have failed. Johns said that
while tidal-marsh restoration is "complicated and hard," he believes
between 100,000 and 125,000 acres in the estuary could be restored ultimately.
He favors a 14,000-acre pilot project at first to weigh the effect on the
smelt, "to see if it would do what we thought it would do" before
moving forward.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"Cal-Fed
assumed the delta would stay in the same state in the future," he told the
panel. "We don't think that's an adequate assumption anymore."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Johns
is also a big believer in new conveyance to move water more efficiently across
the delta throughout the year rather than just during the summer. Under the
current system, managers have three months to move water, "so we pour a
bunch of water through in the summertime, while we're constrained the rest of
the year," Johns said. "This unnatural movement of water that we designed
back in the 1920s doesn't seem like the best way to move water."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Michael
Tucker of the National Marine Fisheries Service made much the same point.
"Right now, we're holding all the water in our reservoirs and dumping it
like crazy in the summer when there's not a lot of fish," he told the
scientists. "The system is backward."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>As
for the science behind the bi-ops, Tucker and Dan Castleberry of the Fish and
Wildlife Service said their agencies are trying to merge separate bi-ops on the
salmon and smelt into a single document under the conservation plan, which they
hope would solve some of the uncertainty and convince the federal judge that
the agencies have done their homework.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Drafting
a single bi-op of the BDCP, which is scheduled to be released as a draft in
November for final completion early next year, might withstand the glare of
public scrutiny and help take politics out of the delta equation.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"It's
a very ambitious effort," Castleberry said. "A lot of what we're
talking about is being developed right now."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Scientists
asked to lean into the BDCP<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Over
its five-year drafting process, the federal/state BDCP has already been subject
to three workshops with independent scientists. Those behind the effort view
the plan as a landmark shift for the watershed, a document that will spell out
new obligations for the agencies, determine how much water can be exported, set
new points of diversion, lay out a blueprint for toxic pollution and prepare
the way for new conveyance.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
plan will also propose to restore 80,000 acres of habitat, 65,000 of which
would be the kind of tidal marsh in evidence at Decker Island. Its architects
see it as a break with the past, when, as Johns said, managers approached the
delta one day at a time, without much regard to adaptive management.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>So
why involve the National Research Council panel at this late date? The idea for
doing so comes from officials in the Interior Department who want more
feedback. State officials have taken the federal study in stride, saying it
will add more information and likely confirm what they already know.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
scientists themselves were cagey about the request during their <i>Endeavor</i>
trip, responding that their work is voluntary and urgent. Officially, an
National Academy of Sciences spokesman said the scientists were still waiting
to hear formally from the Obama administration.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"When
this formal request occurs, and a draft of the plan are provided in a timely
manner [such as on its current schedule for November release], the National
Research Council will consider honoring that request by undertaking an
additional report focused on the BDCP," the spokeswoman said.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>A
member of the scientific panel, Hans Paerl of the University of North Carolina,
said the last-minute request comes with the territory.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"I
think there is always political pressure," Paerl said of the academy
review. "All we can do is work on translating science into management.
We're trying to set an example of science serving management, and policy."<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><o:p> </o:p></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i>Sullivan is based in San Francisco.</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker, JcT</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends
of Trinity River</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>PO Box 2327</span></i><span
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</span></i></b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>(secondary)</span></i><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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