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Migrating Fish Rock the Boat
The "window of opportunity" when water can be pumped from the Delta with relatively little harm to migrating fish may become harder than ever to find as a result of several actions this winter by the National Marine Fisheries Service. In February, the Service proposed listing wild fall-run chinook salmon as "threatened" and spring-run as "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act. Less than a month later the service designated Central Valley steelhead trout as a "threatened" species. The state now has a year to head off final listings for the salmon runs by coming up with a plan to restore them, while the Service is working with the state to develop restoration actions for steelhead.
Until now, fish protection strategies have largely focused on already-listed winter-run chinook and striped bass and, says U.S. EPA's Bruce Herbold, have centered on getting young fish past Delta pumps as quickly and safely as possible. These strategies will likely be inadequate to protect steelhead and spring-run and fall-run chinook, each of which has very different habits from the winter-run.
As the name implies, adult winter-run chinook, which historically spawned in the very cold streams of Mount Shasta, move upstream in the winter to Shasta Dam. They spawn below the dam in the summer, and the young move out through the Delta early in the spring. Fall-run chinook begin migrating upstream at the start of the rainy season each autumn. Young emerge from January to March, and two or three months later move through the Delta, where their relatively small size makes them highly susceptible to entrainment and predation.
Spring-run, on the other hand, spend much more time in creeks. Adults move upstream in April and May, now primarily into relatively unspoiled Deer and Mill Creeks, where they remain until they spawn and die the following fall. Young may remain in the creeks for up to a year before moving out.
"Spring-run tend to move out during the time when we are pumping the most. Protecting them means keeping more water in the streams during the peak irrigation season," says the Bay Institute's Elise Holland. What's more, Herbold says that in some years, for unknown reasons, the spring-run fry move into the Delta much earlier than usual and remain there until they are ready to continue out to the ocean. Steelhead are similar to spring-run chinook in that they move far into tributaries to spawn.
Holland notes that fish protection currently depends on a strategy of pumping water from the Delta during periods when it poses the least threat to fish. With the new listings, "there willalways be protected fish at some life stage in the system," she says.
As a result, the listing actions may give advocates of new storage (see cover) and water conveyance facilities some ammunition. "Historically, water suppliers have taken more water in the summer months when there's less to take," says Herbold. "This will intensify the pressure on CALFED to take more water when there's more available," which might well mean developing additional storage capacity. The listing actions will also "draw everyone's attention to conveyance, a critical component of recovery," says the Fisheries Service's Gary Stern. "There's no question that the current location of the export pumps in the south Delta is lousy for the fish."
The Fisheries Service is putting much of its faith in the CALFED and Central Valley Project Improvement Act processes to "carry most of the load for restoring flow regimes and habitat for these species," says the Service's Jim Lecky. He says his agency intends to stand by the commitments made in the Bay-Delta Accord not to require farms and cities to relinquish more water for fish protection. "If it turns out that we need more water we will find other ways to get it," he says. Many CALFED participants, however, are wary.
"It complicates the problem of how you apportion water and money to protect all listed and potentially listed species," says Holland. Jason Peltier of the Central Valley Project Water Association agrees. "We are all struggling to understand the potential consequences of these actions," he says, citing the possibility that groups unhappy with CALFED's outcome might use new ESA listings as the basis for litigation.
"This just creates one more reason why all parties should want CALFED to succeed," says Peltier. "If the dark side of the ESA comes out it could create the kind of conflict that could stalemate us."
Contact: Elise Holland (415)721-7680 or Jim Lecky (562)980-4000
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