Archive for February, 2008

Workshop Feedback on Instream Flows

Published
by
Larry
on February 13, 2008
in Agriculture Impacts, Gravel Mining Impacts, Lakes and Resevoirs, Logging Impacts, Salmonid/Wildlife Impacts, Streams and Wetlands and Watershed Related
. 0 Comments

SWRCB Technical Workshop on Draft Policy for Maintaining Instream Flows for Northern California Coastal Streams
Feb. 6, 2008

The meeting in Santa Rosa was fully packed (exceeding the meeting room safety limitations), primarily with ranchers and grape growers protesting issuance of new policies for setting and maintaining minimum instream flows and other impacts to their ability to get and keep water permits.

More environmentalists, watershed and fisheries advocates must attend these meetings and provide comments, so that the SWRCB Board members and staff can see support for working on what they can in this complex field, and receive suggestions and feedback to make their policies more successful.

The presentation pdf is at http://www.waterrights.ca.gov/docs/instreamflow/techstaff_workshop020608.pdf
Details of the proposals are at: http://www.waterrights.ca.gov/HTML/instreamflow_nccs.html

Thank you.

David Keller

Water troubles in the West may worsen

Published
by
admin
on February 12, 2008
in Streams and Wetlands
. 0 Comments

A study finds that man-made global warming has been steadily reducing snowpack along mountain ranges. States must make plans now to adapt, scientists say.

By Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 1, 2008

Melting Point, image: snow covered mountains

Human-caused global warming has been shrinking the snowpack across the mountain ranges of the West for five decades, suggesting that the region’s long battle for water will only get worse, according to a computer analysis released Thursday.

As temperatures have increased, more winter precipitation has fallen as rain instead of snow, and the snow is melting sooner, according to the study published in the journal Science.

The result is that rivers are flowing faster in the spring, raising the risk of flooding, and slower in the summer, raising the risk of drought.

“These trends will only intensify over the next few decades,” said Richard Seager, a research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, who was not part of the study.

The changes will be felt differently throughout the West, scientists said. In Colorado, colder temperatures will probably protect the snowpack and reservoirs are large enough to store several years of water supply, said Brad Udall, a Western water expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder who was not involved in the study.

But in California, reservoirs already operate on a delicate balance. They are kept well below capacity during the winter as protection against flooding. After the rainy season, they are filled with the spring snowmelt, storing water to be released during the dry summers.

Heavier winter rains and earlier snowmelt can overwhelm reservoirs, causing an early release of water and leaving too little for the summer.

Chart: Global Warming in the Northwest

“The handwriting is on the wall,” said lead author Tim Barnett, a marine geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. “Mother Nature is going to stop being our water banker.”

Between 1950 and 1999, the period the researchers examined, the total amount of precipitation that fell in the Rockies, the Cascades, the Sierra Nevada and smaller mountain ranges across the West did not vary significantly.

But the portion arriving as snow steadily declined by an average of 4.3% per decade in the nine areas included in the study.

Average daily minimum temperatures between January and March climbed an average of 0.34 degrees Celsius per decade.

And three rivers — the Columbia, Sacramento and Colorado — ran higher earlier in the year. The date at which half their yearly flow had occurred was pushed up by an average of eight days each decade.

To trace the cause of the trend, the researchers used computer climate models to simulate a world with greenhouse gases held at preindustrial levels.

They factored in the known fluctuations in solar radiation and changing concentrations of volcanic dust, which reflects the sun’s heat back into space, over the second half of the 20th century.

Based on their simulations, along with historical data on snowpack, temperature and river flow, the researchers concluded that there was a less than 1% chance that the last 50 years constituted a natural aberration.

One computer model showed that rising concentrations of greenhouse gases accounted for 60% of the changes. A second analysis using another climate model calculated a contribution of 35%.

To manage the coming water changes, Udall said, the Western states must begin to adapt.

alan.zarembo@latimes.com

Water managers told: Plan Now for Crises

Published
by
admin
on February 12, 2008
in Streams and Wetlands
. 0 Comments

San Francisco Chronicle - 2/1/08 David Perlman, Science Editor 

SAN FRANCISCO — California and Bay Area cities must start planning now for new and costly systems to control increasing runoff from urban storms, springtime floods from swollen rivers and rising sea levels as they invade lowlands, all as a result of global warming, climate scientists and water experts warn.

Climate change, they say, will result in thinner winter snowpacks in the Sierra and other Western mountains. As snowpacks melt earlier each spring, the meltwater will increase river flows and raise new threats of floods. Even a small rise in sea levels could threaten cities and farmland in low-lying areas, like the Delta and Silicon Valley.

New urban systems to handle winter storm runoff, new designs for dams and flood control structures, and higher dikes and levees around lands that even now lie below sea level will be needed, the scientists argue.

“The challenge is daunting,” said Paul C. Milly of the U.S. Geological Survey, who led an international research team reporting in the journal Science on Saturday. “Patterns of change are complex, uncertainties are large; and the knowledge base changes rapidly.”

Continue reading ‘Water managers told: Plan Now for Crises’

Response to P.D.’s Article on State’s Water Flow Policy

Published
by
Larry
on February 11, 2008
in Agriculture Impacts, Groundwater, Lakes and Resevoirs, Salmonid/Wildlife Impacts, Streams and Wetlands and Watershed Related
. 0 Comments

Hey Endangered Fishworriers,

I have not seen the printed paper as of yet, did the print version come out with “Fishworry” as one word and no punctuation as titled in the online version below??

Gotta love it when a new moniker is coined– I say Unite Endangered Fishworry Warriors! No Water in da Crick – No Fish in da Crick!
Simple stuff –hmm…??

Well well well if the property rights Hornet’s Nest had not been feeling kicked before!!!

In Sonoma County we don’t have to plumb our recent memories very far back to recall our collective shock and awe with how years of GP2020 process quickly went down with the irrational and angry mob tactics of the private property zealots of all stripes during riparian setback and well monitoring meetings.

A simple mailing of 40,000 inflammatory & fallacious post cards from the Real Estate posse and Tah Dah – watch the Supes roll over and roll back! Whether we like it or not Dumb-ocracy by sheer agitated force appears to work around here. Granted the level of authority in question here is not simply the easy capitulating Board of Supervisors, but the State Water Resources Control Board, but still! I am not advocating anything here, other than some politically pragmatic remembrances. But now that this hornets nest which encompasses all the same-minded folks only they now are from 5 counties and all their cohorts in the rest of the State and West – it’s big hornets nest!

From having attended/ witnessed the barely skin deep seething ire of many in the audience at the Water Board workshop, and with further fueling by the alarmist one-sided tone of today’s PD article (i.e. Nice interview with Ms. Goldsmith!), I think we all should be clear (to no ones surprise really!) of the reality check that it is game-on time for a mother of all water battles here on the North Coast and beyond. What was that bizness about drinking whiskey and fightin over water…?

We know that the property rights fanatics will not hesitate to use all their tricks, both clean & dirty – political & populous, to forcefully intimidate and browbeat all the Water Board staff at the Regional and State level and I can only imagine the lunch date discussion with Mr. Govenator!

Strikes me that this adds some strange new twisted meaning to the torture concept called “Water Boarding”??!! Sorry…so pun-ish me!

Thus it would appear to me that on our end we would be well served by quick & effective organizing to collaboratively shore up our dis-located yet allied troops/affinity groups (comprised of many strange bedfellows) from the Mattole to Marin & all in between. We must bring to bear a coordinated regional response and rescue operation for this Instream Flow Policy with great verve, vim and vigor, lest we watch it all dry up under the giant sucking sound of those who assert that water flows uphill to money and that dry creeks & dead fish are not line items in their water budget!

Thoughts on next steps here…

Yer simple & concerned bipedal sack of saline solution,
Brock

source: http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080211/NEWS/802110314/1033/NEWS01

More time for input on waterways proposal
Policy would further protect streams with endangered fishworry about effects on people

By MIKE GENIELLA
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Facing pressure from North Coast water users, the state Water Resources Control Board has extended until May 1 a deadline for public comment on a proposal to make sweeping changes to state policies governing instream flows to better protect fish.

A lead critic of the draft policy contends state water regulators will “lock up” the region’s water resources including the Russian River “without even pretending to balance communities’ needs for water against needs of fish.”

At stake are hundreds of pending applications to divert and store more water from local streams and rivers, including proposals from the Sonoma County Water Agency and other municipal providers.

The new regulations could affect dams, irrigation ponds and diversions.

First sought in 2001 by the Audubon Society and other environmental groups, the policy changes were set in motion when legislation was signed in 2004 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The changes are envisioned statewide, but are to be first imposed on the North Coast because it represents the greatest numbers and diversity of permit holders.

Sacramento water law attorney Janet Goldsmith said she represents clients who are alarmed about the potential effects. She said they include vineyard owners, water districts and municipalities in Sonoma and Marin counties, and portions of Napa, Mendocino and Humboldt counties that are covered by the proposed changes.

Goldsmith said some property owners and agricultural users in the five-county region remain unaware of the proposed changes, and those who are can’t “fully understand what the policy requires and how it will affect them.”

The Eel River drainage, at the center of an epic water struggle between users in Humboldt, Mendocino and Sonoma counties, is exempt for now from the policy proposals. But beyond the Eel, the sweeping state proposals encompass coastal streams from the Mattole River in Humboldt County to San Pablo Bay.

The goal of the proposed state action is to further protect waterways that support endangered fish.

Goldsmith contends the state’s supporting documentation doesn’t adequately consider “the economic and social impacts” on the five-county region.

“It would affect the available water supply so significantly that land use decisions would essentially be taken out of the hands of local governments, and put in the hands of the state Water Resources Control Board,” Goldsmith said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mike Geniella at 462-6470 or mgeniella@pressdemocrat.com.

Definitions of Streams from Instream Flow Policy

Published
by
Larry
on February 7, 2008
in Salmonid/Wildlife Impacts and Streams and Wetlands
. 1 Comment

John - I am somewhat aware of the proposed instream flow policy (others in the office are participating more closely). This policy should not affect the definitions of ephemeral/perennial in our Basin Plan onsite policy. We are aware that the Basin Plan definitions are unique and intended to represent a conservative approach to stream protection in relation to onsite systems. It was never intended to apply to other programs.

Charles

To Water Board,

I am wondering about the definitions in the Instream Flow Policy
regarding ephemeral and perennial streams.

The following is from a letter I sent out regarding this issue. Are you
changing the definitions in the Basin Plan?

In the Basin Plan -

Ephemeral Stream - Any observable water course that flows only in direct
response to precipitation. It receives no water from springs and no
long-continued supply from melting snow or other surface sources. Its
stream channel is at all times above the local water level. Any water
course that does not meet this definition is to be considered a
perennial stream for the purposes of this policy.

Perennial Stream - Any stretch of a stream that can be expected to flow
continuously or seasonally. They are generally fed in part by springs.

In the instream flow policy -

Ephemeral Stream - A stream or part of a stream that flows only in
direct response to precipitation. It receives little or no water from
springs, melting snow, or other sources. Its channel is at all times
above the water table.

Perennial Stream - A perennial stream has flowing water year round
during a typical year. The water table is located above the stream bed
for most of the year. Groundwater is the primary source of water for
stream flow. Run-off from rainfall is a supplemental source of water for
stream flow.

The differences in definitions are very important. For septic systems
there is a 100′ setback from perennial streams and a 50′ setback from
ephemeral streams. We fought the county for over two years re: a septic
system they wrongly approved, in part because they claimed a stream
within 100′ of the site was ephemeral, not perennial. There is a spring
directly across from the septic site that feeds this stream year round,
albeit not with a large amount of water. We live in a waiver prohibition
area re: septic systems (which the county has ignored more than once)
because of the fragile nature of our community water supply. This issue
went all the way to the Regional Water Quality Board where we lost
because WQB granted two waivers to the applicants - 1. reduced setback
from the perennial stream to 70′. and
2. Allowed the system to be installed on a cut bench that was created on
a slope of over 40%.

Changing the definitions of ephemeral and perennial streams gives both
the county and the state a little more leeway in skirting the issue. I
do not know if the instream flow policy definitions constitute a change
in the Basin Plan.

I am also including an article from the Anderson Valley Advertiser dated
Jan.2 and wonder what your thoughts are on this perspective.

*A WHOLE NEW KIND OF WATERSHED GROUP*

By Mark Scaramella

Late last month California’s Water Resources Control Board issued the
final draft of their “Policy for Maintaining Instream Flows in Northern
California Coastal Streams.”

The new policy was prepared in accordance with Ca. Water Code Sec.
1259.4 which states that “On or before Jan. 1, 2008, the board shall
adopt principles and guidelines for maintaining instream flows in
coastal streams from the Mattole River to San Francisco…”

In other words, guaranteed water for fish, the achievement of which
/might/ result in fish in the guaranteed water.

There wasn’t much critical comment about this bold-sounding initiative
aimed at keeping enough water in streams to ensure that Northern
California’s once lush fish runs, at a minimum, might begin to
re-establish themselves. Mendocino County offered no formal comment and
most of the comment the Water Board did receive were generally
supportive, agreeing that something must be done, that it’s long
overdue, along with encouragement to do it, do it right and do it better.

Back in Oct. of 2004 after Gov. Schwarzenegger first signed the enabling
legislation – AB 2121, authored by liberal Assembly Member Sheila Kuhl
before she was elected to the State Senate – the enraged Ca. Farm Bureau
declared that the draft guidelines were going to be written in secret
without public (i.e. Farm Bureau) participation, and that the process
would impose “burdensome and illegal” water rights fees on landowners.
Then-Farm Bureau Pres. Bill Pauli (a Potter Valley grape grower) called
the original legislation “the worst kind of back room legislation.”
Pauli added that the legislation and the Water Board’s policy proposals
“pose a clear threat to the viability of agriculture in the North Coast
area, with the ominous possibility of greater statewide impact…[The Farm
Bureau] believes that this bill impairs private property rights,
threatens jobs and livelihoods, increases government red tape, and flies
in the face of public participation in government decision making.
California’s farmers and ranchers can now look forward to higher fees,
less stable water rights and more regulation.”

Of the several dozen comments sent to the Water Board in 2006 regarding
the first draft of the new policy, the only one with enough substance to
be worth quoting at any length was this comment from Richard LaVen and
David W. Goble, water staffers for the City of Fort Bragg:

“The USGS website lists 775 water data sites for Mendocino County. Of
those, only 53 contain data (some dating from 1911) that might (or might
not) be useful in defining a ‘winter 20% exceedence flow’ [i.e. minimum
high flow level below which water diversion would be prohibited] at a
given point of diversion. Of those 53 stations, only 12 are currently
operating. None of the operating stations are representative of the
water yield from small watersheds. When faced with increasing water
demands and climate change that may well lead to longer term reductions
in available water supply, our institutional policy appears to be
directed toward making complex quantitative decisions with decreasing
amounts of information.”

In other comments about the earlier draft posted online late in 2006 at
the Water Board’s website, however, even organizations like the Farm
Bureau, the Russian River Property Owners Association, and the Sonoma
County Wine Commission voiced no serious objection, saying they’d be
“willing to cooperate with others in the same watershed in a process
that could result in flow standards tailored to meet local conditions.”

In suspiciously identically worded letters, the Russian River Property
Owners Association and the Sonoma County Wine Commission added that “it
is better that all parties work together to achieve on-the-ground
changes than spend time and money on multiple steps in the standard
water rights process,” adding, “We find the concepts being put forward
for process changes, a North Coast Permit and a watershed management
approach can deliver improvements that will benefit the Board,
applicants, and fish.”

This new cooperative-sounding stance was a dramatic reversal for the
Farm Bureau especially.

What happened between 2004 and 2006 to explain the conciliatory new tone
from the Farm Bureau and their fellow diverters?

We read in the Farm Bureau newsletter of Oct., 2004 which had the
originally angry complaint that “the Calif. Farm Bureau Federation and
other agriculture and business organizations already have been meeting
with state officials to discuss future implementation of AB2121.”

What kind of implementation were the growers and developers discussing?
We don’t know exactly, but looking at the finished product we can make a
pretty good guess.

* * * *

If you follow these matters at all, you probably think that a watershed
group is a motley collection of “stakeholders” in a watershed –
envionmentalists, bureaucrats, and property owners – who sit around
talking about how everybody has to work together to achieve consensus
about improving practices which harm rivers and streams and the few fish
left in them. Unreadable reports from these groups are the work product,
but the reports are written in prose that would put a cranker to sleep
an hour into a run.

Anyone who’s attended a watershed group meeting on the North Coast knows
that they never achieve anything because the enviro members tend to
limit their requests to very modest things like installing stream gauges
or taking water temperatures or doing small creekside stabilization
demonstration projects which the property owners – mainly grape growers
in this area now, formerly timber companies – object to strenuously.
Consensus is generally achieved only after most of the enviros resign in
frustration, after years and years of fruitless bickering and posturing
– and after most of whatever damage was being addressed by the group is
already well-documented history.

That was the watershed group of yesteryear.

Then came the Water Board’s new policy guidelines.

Paragraph 12.1 of the new draft policy defines a Watershed Group this
way: “A watershed group is a group of diverters in a watershed who enter
into a formal agreement to effectively manage the water resources of a
watershed by maximizing the beneficial use of water while protecting the
environment and public trust resources.”

That’s right. A watershed group is made up /only/ of the people who want
the water!

To be a state-sanctioned watershed group the diverters have to apply for
a state-approved charter. “The purpose of the charter is to ensure that
watershed group participants are in agreement regarding the goals of the
group and the tasks that must be completed to achieve these goals. The
charter shall contain watershed group participant names, roles, and
responsibilities, and a description of the individual water right
applications or petitions involved. It shall also describe the key
contents of the technical documents that will be prepared by the
watershed group, and include an estimated schedule for submitting these
documents to the State Water Board. The State Water Board shall review
and concur with the proposed project charter before the watershed group
commences work. The State Water Board will consider the extent of
participation from applicants and petitioners relative to the total
number of pending applications and petitions in a watershed as one
factor in deciding whether to approve the proposed project charter.”

Translation: the Water Board, having only minimal staff and funding, is
turning over the regulation of water to the very people who have pending
permits for water diversions.

“The watershed group shall study the instream flow needs of fish and
fish habitat using the site specific study guidance contained in this
policy. The watershed group shall submit a report detailing the results
of the study to the State Water Board. The watershed group shall submit
information necessary to prepare appropriate environmental documents so
that the State Water Board may make a determination of the impacts of
the proposed projects to the environment, public trust, and the public
interest for the purposes of preparing water right permits for the
proposed projects…”

“Watershed groups proposing to coordinate operation of water diversions
shall provide a a watershed management plan that describes how
diversions will be operated, monitored, and maintained, including
monitoring and reporting methods…”

So the diverters will study their own water flows and also enforce
/their own/ diversion permits.

“The watershed management plan shall include a certification that the
watershed group has the financial resources to build, operate, maintain,
and monitor the proposed projects consistent with the terms of any water
right permits issued for the project(s) and shall provide proof of
financial resources.”

Adios, hippies.

Who do you think will have the “financial resources” to do all this? The
public? Of course not. The only people with these kinds of financial
resources are Big Ag, large developers, and large, well-funded
governmental organizations like the Sonoma County Water Agency.

If a member of the public wants to challenge the new diverters’
watershed group’s diversion plans, the watershed management plans or
their (lack of) monitoring and enforcement, they’ll have to pay through
the nose to come up with their own data, their own lawyers and their own
experts.

Which of course, won’t happen.

At last count, the Water Board has 310 pending applications to take
water from North Coast streams for private use. Of those, about 200 are
on the already hugely overdrawn Russian River, which is already on
minimum flow because of the current drought combined with the 15%
reduction in Eel River diversions and various conservation programs from
Humboldt to Marin. The Russian River is expected to be a priority body
of water for implementation of the Water Board’s new policy – handing
water management of the Russian over to developers, the wine industry,
and Sonoma County. Soon we’ll be reading press releases from a newly
formed Russian River Watershed Group full of happy-talk about how
they’re moving forward to protect the fish and become state-certified
stewards of North Coast rivers and fisheries!

No wonder everyone’s happy with the Water Board’s new proposal. Enviros
are pleased that there’s a nice-sounding policy in place to protect the
water for the fish. The state is happy because the diverters have to pay
for the burdensome data and paperwork. And the water diverters are
pleased because they get to control the entire process.

It’s a win-win-win solution for everybody and everything except water
and fish.

I hope that both of you are doing well these days. The lot in Larkin
Woods is still for sale. I still have serious reservations as to the
design, which doesn’t match the existing topography. I wonder who will
address these issues.

Sincerely, John Roberts

France scraps licenses for 1,500 pesticides

Published
by
Larry
on February 5, 2008
in Agriculture Impacts, Groundwater, Lakes and Resevoirs, Pesticide pollution, Salmonid/Wildlife Impacts, Streams and Wetlands and Waste Discharge
. 0 Comments

Regarding pesticides that get into our water systems:

France scraps licenses for 1,500 pesticides

I’ve got the lists of what is used locally and went to article link but
found no lists, if anyone finds the France list please pass it along and
we can compare!

-Don

Tom:

It would be interesting to know which of these are being used in the
Russian River watershed. A list would make a good website sidebar.

–Brian

FYI:

France scraps licenses for 1,500 pesticides

France will ban the sale of more than 1,500 pesticides from
February 1 as part of a larger plan to cut by 50 percent the use
of phytosanitary products in the next 10 years, the farm ministry
said.

“Michel Barnier, minister for agriculture and fisheries, has
announced the cancellation, before February 1, of marketing
licenses for products containing 30 substances considered as the
most worrying,” it said in a statement released late on Tuesday.

“These substances are contained in more than 1,500 commercial
phytosanitary products,” it added.

The ministry was not immediately able to provide the names of the
companies producing these pesticides.

France aims gradually to end the use of 53 phytosanitary
substances, of which 30 this year, in its fields.

The sale of stocks of the pesticides will be authorized until the
end of April and farmers may use them until the end of the year,
except for products made of carbendazime, molinate and dinocap,
for which alternative solutions should be available for the 2009 crop.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL3080402220080130

Where have all the coho gone?

Published
by
admin
on February 5, 2008
in Salmonid/Wildlife Impacts and Streams and Wetlands
. 0 Comments

Mark Prado 02/05/2008

Salmon swimming upstream

Salmon return to Marin as rainfall fills Lagunitas
and San Geronimo… (IJ archive/Robert Tong)

FEWER endangered coho salmon are spawning in Marin this season than at any time in the past dozen years - and biologists don’t know why.

What concerns fish watchers is that this year should have been a prime year for coho, based on their three-year life cycle. Yet the number of redds - clusters of eggs - is at an all time low.

“This year’s count has turned the best year-class into the worst,” said Todd Steiner, biologist and executive director for the Lagunitas-based Salmon Protection and Watershed Network.

Coho salmon have a three-year life cycle. The 2004-05 winter was a banner year for the return of coho to spawn in Marin, meaning this winter - three years later - should be just as strong.

Instead, the numbers have dropped precipitously.

Continue reading ‘Where have all the coho gone?’

Healdsburg Wild Steelhead Festival

Published
by
admin
on February 4, 2008
in Watershed Related
. 0 Comments

February 8-10, 2008
Sonoma County, CA

California Water II Cover

The Festival  kicks off Friday evening at 6pm with the Steelhead Reception in the Lobby at Hotel Healdsburg. The Gala Dinner, prepared by Chef Michael Ellis of the Dry Creek Kitchen Restaurant, will be held at Hotel Healdsburg. We are proud to announce that Russell Chatham, reknowned artist and author, joins us as keynote speaker for the evening. For menu, information and tickets, please visit the festival’s Tickets and Merchandise page.

Continue reading ‘Healdsburg Wild Steelhead Festival’

State Policy to Maintain Instream Flows

Published
by
Larry
on February 4, 2008
in Salmonid/Wildlife Impacts and Streams and Wetlands
. 0 Comments

State Policy to Maintain Instream Flows - now open for comment - The comment period has been extended to May 1st.

I have been working on comment. There still is a long way to go. This extension probably means that the diverters have been raising hell.

Steam Classification - as part of this policy has not, or, is not proposed to be altered. The policy will remain - simply put:

Class I streams - have fish or historically had fish

Class II streams - support aquatic life - plants, insects, amphibians - do not have to flow year round

Class III streams - ephemeral, have a bed and bank ( can be a swale), and do not support aquatic life - plants, insects, amphibians

Low salmon run returns have been reported up and down the coast for both coho and chinook (King).

A hole in the Marin county returns is a bad sign for coho.

On the Sacramento the low chinook returns are making DFG and the SWRCB nervous. The causal factors for this fishery collapse can be many - or - cumulative. Large amounts of water diverted from the Bay Delta is one reason often pointed at. Another reason pointed at by Ag is the maintenance of large bass populations in the Delta. The bass love to eat the millions of chinook salmon fingerlings dumped in the delta every year. The finger also can be pointed out to loss of spawning habitat.

The one issue that is rarely mentioned is the reliance on hatchery fish for the Sacto salmon run. For many years DFG has dumped millions upon millions of hatchery raised fish in the delta. Hatchery fish are genetically and physically weak. Hatchery monoculture progeny are subject to disease and lacking genetically disposed skills for feeding and survival in various conditions. The hatchery fish, if they do return, compete with wild fish and alter wild fish genetics - thus imposing limiting factors on wild fish survival where enough problems already exist.

This hatchery problem extends to coho also - but to a somewhat lesser extent - as the practices are done on such a smaller scale.
Coho salmon need specific conditions for survival. If these conditions are altered - removal of riparian shade, warm water, and silted spawning gravels all will limit coho production, return, and survival.

Alan Levine

Hike and Observation of Steelhead Leaping

Published
by
Larry
on February 1, 2008
in Streams and Wetlands
. 0 Comments

FYI,

Watch the spectacular sight of steelhead leaping up Salmon Creek and learn from local experts about our watersheds and forests.

Sunday, February 10, 2008
10:00-12:30
Rain or Shine
Salmon Creek School
1935 Bohemian Highway in Occidental

Please join us in a day of learning and fun! Try to catch a glimpse of migrating steelhead from the observation deck at Salmon Creek School while Brock Dolman, biologist and director of the WATER Institute at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, discusses watershed protection and restoration. Steelhead talk will be followed by a hike through the adjacent forest to learn about the natural history of the area and fundamentals of forest stewardship.

Families are welcome at this exciting annual event. Lecture appropriate for ages 10 and up. Bring your own water and lunch and wear sturdy hiking boots. We hope to see you there!

Please RSVP to Email: outings@landpaths.org
or call LandPaths Event Line: (707) 524-9318
Event sponsored by Landpaths and Salmon Creek School

–Larry