Feds release Calif. plan to protect chinook salmon
SAN FRANCISCO -- Federal regulators on Thursday released a court-ordered plan to help struggling chinook salmon that includes opening California dams and restricting pumping, prompting howls of protest from state officials because it will further reduce the amount of water available to farms and urban areas.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has "provisionally accepted" the findings of the National Marine Fisheries Service and will "implement actions required to meet the needs of the listed species," said Don Glaser, regional director for the bureau, which manages some of the dams involved. Glaser said the bureau will not formally accept the findings until staff reads the entire 800 pages of the opinion.
The fisheries service had to redo its salmon management plan for the upper Sacramento River and Shasta Reservoir after a federal judge in Fresno threw out its previous plan last year. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger found that allowing Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water pumps and dams to continue operating as they have would threaten the imperiled species.
The fisheries service estimates that state and federal water regulators will lose 5 to 7% of the already limited water they have to manage under the new plan. Pumping restrictions this year due to another protected species, the delta smelt, already have meant a 17 to 20% reduction in water supply, said Ted Thomas, a spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California water regulators and Central Valley lawmakers immediately criticized the new plan, saying it would limit the amount of water pumped to farmers and Southern California residents and place an undue share of the burden on the valley's economy.
The plan "puts fish above the needs of millions of Californians and the health and security of the world's eighth-largest economy," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "The piling on of one federal court decision after another in a species-by-species approach is killing our economy and undermining the integrity of the Endangered Species Act."
