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Trinity to Return?

A bitter feud between remote, sparsely populated Trinity County and the nation’s largest irrigation district intensified this winter when the U.S. Interior Department released its long-overdue plan to restore fisheries to the mainstem of the Trinity River. For nearly forty years, more than three-quarters of the Klamath River tributary’s flow has been diverted to the Central Valley Project, decimating its fish populations and violating the federally protected fisheries rights of the Hoopa and Yurok Indian Tribes.

Trinity County launched the first volley back in 1998 when it moved to restore some of the diverted flows by asking the State Board to declare that CVP deliveries to Westlands Water District constituted a "wasteful and unreasonable use" of water, in violation of the state constitution. The county argued that irrigating Westland’s selenium-laden soils created toxic runoff and damaged the Bay-Delta ecosystem.

In 1999 the board rejected the county’s argument, but Interior’s new plan would achieve many of the same ends. The plan — which is mandated by several federal laws, including the Central Valley Project Improvement Act — establishes a new instream flow regime that provides for flow volume releases according to hydrologic year type. It would nearly double the river’s minimum flow and cut flow to the CVP by approximately one-third, to an average of 52 percent of the rivers flow.

In addition to restoring flows, the plan would also provide for channel rehabilitation of 47 sites, sediment management and gravel placement, bridge replacement and infrastructure modification to accommodate higher flows, watershed restoration and adaptive management.

The new flow regime will begin in April, unless legal challenges delay it. Westlands, Sacramento Municipal Utilities District and the Northern California Power Agency have all filed suit, claiming that required environmental reviews were flawed and that the plan would damage water quality and harm listed species in the Delta, and cut the CVP’s power generating capacity. While acknowledging that "no document is perfect," Trinity County’s Tom Stokely says he believes the environmental reviews are sound. "The real issue is whether the judge views this as simply a NEPA case or takes into account protection of tribal fishing rights."

Contact: Tom Stokely (530) 628-5949.

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