Posted on 06/20/2007 12:45:10 PM PDT by SmithL
Environmentalists sued Tuesday to cut off water deliveries across California after state and federal water managers refused to follow a recommendation from scientific experts to slow down massive Delta pumps.
The legal showdown comes after hopes were dashed that a crisis pitting Californians' need for water against a dying ecosystem would abate during the weekend.
Instead, hundreds of imperiled fish have been killed since an unprecedented 10-day pumping shutdown ended June 9 and water officials began gradually restoring water deliveries.
Water officials, who have been increasing pumping rates for more than a week, plan to continue ramping up water deliveries despite advice from a team of biologists assigned to make recommendations to prevent the pumps from driving Delta smelt to extinction.
The panel has repeatedly advised water managers this year to slow down water deliveries, but its recommendations have been followed only sporadically.
"The agencies have been ignoring what the biologists have been telling them for months, and now they have created a crisis," said Kate Poole, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council who filed the court papers Tuesday. "They are simply ignoring what the biologists are telling them."
Delta smelt, once the most abundant fish in the Delta and an indicator of the estuary's ecological health, collapsed this spring to alarmingly low population levels. Recent surveys have turned up 90 percent fewer fish than in previous record low figures in recent years.
As a result, biologists have issued a series of recommendations that Delta pumps, which can trap and kill the fish, be run very cautiously until the smelt migrate downstream to colder water.
That advice, coupled with evidence that fish were being killed at the pumps and a pair of court rulings that found the pumps were running in violation of state and federal environmental laws, led to the shutdown beginning May 31.
"The impact of that shutdown -- we really dodged the bullet in terms of immediate problems. We were able to supply most of the demand south of the Delta," said Laura King Moon, assistant general manger of the State Water Contractors, an association of water agencies from the East Bay to Southern California that delivers water to 25 million Californians.
But that could change if environmentalists win the next round in court.
"I think people will feel this one, unlike the previous shutoff," Moon added. "People will feel this in urban areas, too."
Last month, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that guidelines written by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect Delta smelt from the effects of Delta water operations were illegally lax. He has not addressed how the problem should be fixed, but he has said he did not want to impose "draconian" measures on water agencies.
Still, Poole said environmentalists hope to ask the court as early as Thursday to force water managers to follow the recommendations of the team of scientists formed by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
That team decided this week to recommend that pumping rates be reduced to the point that two key Delta rivers -- Old River and Middle River -- are not pumped so hard they run uphill, according to notes of a conference call Tuesday among water officials. That recommendation effectively means the pumps would have to be dramatically slowed or stopped.
But Jeff McCracken, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, said his agency plans to increase pumping rates another 20 percent today to 4,200 cubic-feet per second, near the maximum rate of 4,600 cfs.
He said the federal pumps have killed very few fish and that his agency was now coordinating its operations directly with the Fish and Wildlife Service and not the team of biologists convened by that agency.
"We'll explain to the judge how we're managing the resource, then it will be in his hands," McCracken said.
The California Department of Water Resources, meanwhile, completely shut off its pumps from May 31 to June 9.
It then started up its giant pumps at very low rates for a week, then bumped the pumping rate up Sunday. In the process, the pumps have killed hundreds of fish, but it is possible those fish were already trapped in the forebay, or pond, that the pumps draw water from.
So? We let people, possibly die, to save some fish? Great idea. Where do we find these idiots?
Cutting off the water supplies should do a lot to help the overvalued real estate market in California.
How about *you* go without water first.
You should see what happens to the ones that end up on my hook. The frying pan, now that's peril.
Seriously, if Evelyn Waugh were alive, he'd explode trying to parody today's California.
Good. This will torpedo Arnold’s plan to resurrect the Peripheral Canal to ship more water to his pals in LA.
Delta, Alaska? No
The Mississippi Delta? No
The Nile Delta? No
The California Delta. Must be some Enviro issue.
Enviros ruin the USA...
The humanity!
Inspector: My gawd. Look at this. Alright, who delta’d that smelt?
Illegal worker: Sorry. Frijoles for lunch.
The Liberal manifestion of Welfare for Wildlife and Affirmative Action for Fish & Plants!!!
The issue of the fish is more than that. Water diversions are sucking the life out of the San Joaquin Delta. If the smelt goes, the whole food web of the Delta could collapse. The Delta is one of the last big estuaries left on the west coast.
Los Angeles slaked it’s thirst by drying up the Colorado Delta and the Owen’s Valley. Should LA’s thirst (and agricultural interests) be allowed to ruin the ecosystem of the Delta as well?
Why can’t you possibly let the free markets decide these issues? I can tell by your screen name that you’re probably an EnvironMental Activist with a huge www.chickenlittleagenda.com!!!
Well if we kick 20 million illegals out of the US, how many million out of LA?..that should help right?
Save the environment
Illegals out of California Now!!!
Illegal immigration destroys the environment..
End it.... for the children.
W
Free markets for water, now that’s a laugh. The government & taxpayers have been subsidizing huge water projects and continue to do so. Agricultural users purchase their water for fractions of the actual costs of delivering it, and they always have. I think everyone should pay the ACTUAL cost of the amount of water they use; but that will never happen.
I am not necessarily an environmentalist, but I am aware that there are more sides to this issue than initially meets the eye. It just isn’t as simple as turn on the pumps and let the fish die.
You're singin the same exact tunes as Jerry Brown, Gray Davis, The Sierra Flub and all the other GovernMental EnvironMental GANG-GREEN activists that would delight in the collapse of CA's ag industry. I know, you don't like the Hydrolic Brotherhood and the prosperity it's brought to both our state and nation.
You're probably with Jane Fonda and her China Syndrome anti-nuclear power crowd to keep CA and America behind France and Japan as payback for having the gaul to nuke Japan and end the great war, right? What are you even doing here on FreeRepublic, anyways?
Did you just sign up on June 4 to troll for reactionaries? I'd say welcome to FR, but now I've certainly thought better of that idea!!!
But it is dead (good) in the water. Northern Californians have paid attention to what happens to those that allow Southern Cal access to their water.
Twenty years ago if they had built the peripheral canal S. Cal could have sucked up a lot of water. Sense then N. Cal users have established water rights to the water S. Cal wanted to grab. There is very simply put no more unclaimed dry season water left in the Sacramento river system. If S. Cal wants more water they will just have to take it during the wet season and find someplace to store it (perhaps the Owens Valley).
Planting crops like cotton in a semi-arid region using federally subsidized water at the same time the federal government pays farmers in the southeast and deep south not to grow cotton is the best example of perverse economic outcomes that come from government interference in markets.
Let a few CA farmers get out of cotton and sell their water to LA for a premium price. It's not perfect but at least it's a step in the right direction.
Allowing LA to take water under any circumstance is akin to Israel granting land to the Palestinians in the expectation that they won’t come back to ask for more. Or simply all of what is left.
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