Cheney probed over salmon die off

Sacramento Bee Washington Bureau ^ | 11:46 am PDT Thursday, June 28, 2007 | David Whitney

[ElkGroveDan]

WASHINGTON - The House Natural Resources Committee announced Thursday that it will hold hearings into Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement in Klamath River water management that many think led to the die-off of more than 70,000 salmon four years ago.

[clip]...

Three dozen House Democrats from Oregon and California asked for the hearing in a letter to Rahall after the Washington Post reported on details of Cheney's intervention.

[Iconoclast2]

Yep, I should have said “lazy, ignorant, cowardly or even evil” in describing the Congresscritters.

Life goes on. I have just file a lawsuit to pry loose the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “status review” of the Klamath suckers, which is two years or more overdue.

[Iconoclast2]

FYI, cool water is not diverted in large quantities by anyone in the Klamath Basin, and even if it were, it would (if I remember correctly) have warmed up by the time it got down to where the fish kills were.

[steelie]

Your so right. No one has explained the sudden burp of 10% flow increase two days before that initiated the salmon movement. Right after the indians pulled thier nets because salmon was down to less than $0.17/pound out of the back of thier trucks due to a record run. . Yes they sell salmon on the side!

[Grampa Dave]

When you finally get that delayed report, please post the link here on Free Republic and ping us/me, thanks.

Re republicans being cowards. My wife and I have noticed a lot of repubies after retirement talking and acting like liberals.

My SIL in the midwest noted the same thing back there. She confronted a few of these flippers this past year.

According to her, they just get tired to defending conservatism in retirement communities and neighborhoods full of retired and know it all liberals, and constant challenging by the greens and other lefty bsers.

[marsh2]

There is no cool water in the Upper Klamath Basin. It is a series of shallow lakes with no cover and very hot temperatures. The smaller tribs like the Scott and Shasta have run out of snowmelt and are not contributing a lot to flows. The Shasta River does pick up some in the summer with cold flows from glacial melt of Mt. Shasta, but the contribution is relatively small. The Trinity is the only large source of cold water and they hold that back or send it south.

Here is data on Upper Basin storage and flows: http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/lakelevels%20riverflows/bor/HNwk061907.doc
Here is Scott River info. (down to 50 cfs.)
Here is Shasta/ Iron Gate http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/nearbymap?staid=SRY
Here is Salmon River
http://cdec2.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryFx?SMS
Here is the Trinity River
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/staMeta?station_id=HPA
Here is snow pack.
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/snow/current/snow/

Here is another source of information on the 2002 die off: http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/

[marsh2]

If I recall, the slug of water that went down before the kill was a rainfall event, but the memory may be in error.

[Iconoclast2]

Solzhenitsyn: Decline of the West
Monday, Jun. 19, 1978

[excerpt] A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and of course in the United Nations. Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

[rfp1234]

—Since there is no federal protection for Kings as an endangered species Coho were part of the bs.—

Ed McMahon used to be Coho of “The Tonight Show”.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks, I will send that to my SIL and keep it in mind for our flippers.

[Grampa Dave]

So that was how he stayed on for decades.

He was an endangered CoHo.

[ConservativeMind]

What a funny sounding title!

When will Republicans learn you can’t “make nice” to Democrats? Such Republicans are total idiots, including our President.

As such, they rather deserve the fruits of their behavior. You can’t make deals with the devil and not wind up in Hell.

[an amused spectator]

I want my own tv camera with sound rolling at the same time and I want an exact copy of their video for use in court if they modify what I said.

It won't do you any good, Grampa Dave. Cheney's secret police have the capability to break into your tv camera and replace the video with an exact copy, without anyone being the wiser...

(tip of the hat to Freeper Dumpster Baby)

And not only that!!!

If you try to stop them, Cheney will create a specially tailored retrovirus to shrink your genitals.

(tip of the hat to Freeper coconutt2000)

Man, what a fun thread! The Left has pinwheels for eyes when it comes to Cheney. :-)

[an amused spectator]

Oh, right - how do you explain the wide range of dates from your examples?

There can be only one...

;-)

[tubebender]

My recollection is the cool Trinity water release was just prior to the die off. The fish were schooled off the mouth of the Klamath and that cool water stimulated the Salmon to move into the lower river and hold there because the water was too warm above Weitchpec.

Then the BOR shut off the extra Trinity lake water and the lower Klamath warmed up trapping the fish. 40,000 salmon died and it is unknown how many had schooled up.

What do you remember about this Fish Hawk?

[steelie]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/849273/posts

[marsh2]

The kill ocurred from Sept 18-Oct. 1, 2002. It did rain, but the post-mortem did not attribute a lot to that. There was, however, and increase of flows on the Trinity followed by a decrease prior to the kill. http://www.earthjustice.org/library/references/fishkillfwscauses.pdf :
pg 13
“Precipitation
During the months of August through October 2002, rainfall amounts were low across the Klamath Basin at the stations surveyed (Figure 5). No precipitation was recorded at the mainstem stations of Weitchpec and Hoopa, or the Salmon River weather station. The only significant rainfall occurred at the Klamath weather station on September 18, 2002, when 0.35 inch of rain fell. Lesser amounts of rainfall were recorded infrequently in the upper basin within the Shasta and Scott River drainages. Rainfall amounts measured in the lower basin were lower than longterm
averages (Figure 6). Therefore, we conclude that August and September precipitation did not significantly contribute to discharges in the lower Klamath River, and flows were primarily dependent on upstream and tributary discharges.”

River Discharges
Mainstem Discharges, August through October 2002 Iron Gate Dam represents the upper limit of anadromous fish migration in the Klamath Basin (PacifiCorp 2000). Discharges are measured at a USGS gage located below the Dam at Klamath
River mile 189.8. During the months of August and September, River discharges below Iron Gate Dam were fairly constant (Figure 7). Average daily discharges during August and September were 666 cfs and 813 cfs, respectively. The mean daily average discharge was 760 cfs until September 27, 2002. On September 27, a pulse flow was released from Iron Gate Dam in an effort to increase the volume of flow through the die-off reach to reduce crowding, and to stimulate fish to begin upstream movement (McInnis 2002, McCracken 2002). Ramping from 767 cfs to 1,350 cfs occurred over a 2-day period. This discharge was maintained through October 9, 2002, after which discharges declined to 885 cfs by October 13, 2002. This resulted in an additional 36,000 acre-feet of water provided over a 2-week period. October discharges averaged 882 cfs after the pulse flow subsided.”

“Tributaries, August through October 2002 The three major tributaries that discharge into the Klamath River between Iron Gate Dam and the confluence of the Trinity River are the Shasta (Klamath RM 176.6), Scott (Klamath RM 143),
and Salmon Rivers (Klamath RM 66) (Figure 1). During August the mean discharge from the Shasta River was 23.9 cfs (Figure 7). During September, the average discharge increased to approximately 31.8 cfs with a small increase in
discharge occurring September 7 to 13, 2002. Discharge increased significantly between September 27 and October 9, 2002 from 33 to 149 cfs. This increase coincided with the end of the irrigation season within the Shasta River watershed.

Scott River discharges were measured at the Fort Jones gage. This gage is located upstream of the confluence with the Klamath River (Klamath RM 143) on the Scott River (Scott RM 21) (Figure 1). Consequently, this gage does not capture the entire discharge of the river, particularly lower River accretions. Scott River discharge was even lower than Shasta River discharge during August and September (Figure 7). The Scott River exhibited a mean discharge of 14.9 cfs during
August 2002. September discharge was lower with a mean of 11.5 cfs. Discharge was fairly constant and gradually decreased from August through September.

Salmon River discharge was measured at the USGS gage near the mouth (Figure 1). Salmon River discharge declined from about 271 cfs starting on August 1, 2002 to about 119 cfs on
September 30, 2002 (Figure 7). The mean monthly discharges for August and September were 171 and 124 cfs, respectively. Small increases in discharge were observed on September 8 and 19, 2002.

The Trinity River is the largest tributary of the Klamath River (Figure 1), emptying into the Klamath at river mile 43.5. Discharges are primarily regulated in the lower Trinity River by Lewiston Dam located on the Trinity River at river mile 111. Lewiston Reservoir serves as an
afterbay to the Trinity Powerplant and regulates releases into the Trinity River and diversions to the Sacramento River basin.

During August and September 2002, the mean monthly discharges were 471 and 454 cfs, respectively, below Lewiston Dam (Figure 7). Daily average discharges were fairly constant. From September 5 to 20, 2002, daily average discharge declined from 485 to 440 cfs.

The Hoopa gage is located on the Trinity River at river mile 12.4, and is the primary measure of total discharge of the Trinity River into the Klamath River (Figure 1). Mean monthly discharges measured at the Hoopa gage were 696 and 631 during August and September 2002, respectively.
During this time period daily average discharge gradually decreased from 760 to 609 cfs (Figure 7). However, daily average discharge increased between September 5 and 9, 2002, from 636 to 693 cfs. Discharge slowly declined to 638 cfs by September 12, 2002, and thereafter.

[marsh2]

Here’s Vogel’s report debunking the DFG’s claim that flows from the Upper Basin were a primary factor http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/science/DFG%20report%20handout.pdf

By the way, the National Academy of Sciences also reviewed the event and said that low flows were not a factor

[an amused spectator]

LOL! “Morally ambiguous” - a term fraught with meaning...

[fish hawk]

What you said was true and I was there on the river at that time and it made me sick every time I looked at the river with thousands of dead salmon on both banks of the river. Even crossing the Golden Bears bridge, looking down stream or up stream the banks were covered with silver dead salmon. A terrible and needless waste of nature. My only thought at that time was, “I don’t know who, but somebody should be in jail over this”.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

[WA]Hatchery program ends: Returning chinook killed before they spawn

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1858022/posts