Settlement May Restore San Gabriel River Trout Habitat

The county would provide $250,000 and help restore a healthy environment for the wild trout native to the San Gabriel River’s West Fork under a proposed settlement of a civil suit over a 1981 fish kill.

But even before it is signed, the proposal has drawn opposition from two sport fishing organizations concerned that it does not include enough protections to ensure that the trout can once again thrive in the West Fork.

Officials of the county Department of Public Works (DPW) and the state Department of Fish and Game confirmed this week that they had reached agreement on key points under negotiation.

The Fish and Game Department filed a $2-million suit against the Los Angeles County Flood Control District (now a subdivision of the public works agency) after the district released water carrying tons of silt into the West Fork during repairs to the Cogswell Dam in 1981. The silt from a reservoir behind the dam destroyed the more than seven-mile-long habitat for an estimated 24,000 trout, killing or displacing thousands of fish, according to Fish and Game officials.

Fish and Game records indicate that the West Fork trout population is now only about 8,000, a third of what it was before the silt destroyed the habitat, which once provided the best fly fishing close to the Los Angeles area.

Under the terms of the proposed settlement, the county public works agency would:

-Seek $250,000 from the county Board of Supervisors to restore and protect the trout population. The money would be used to conduct a geologic study of the stream, ensure that it is not overfished and restore the deep pools and gravel beds, which are critical to trout spawning.

-Provide Fish and Game officials with an environmental impact report each time they planned to remove silt from the reservoir behind the dam. The county agency agrees to consider “all reasonable alternatives” for removing the silt from the bottom of the reservoir.

-Continue to supply the flow of water into the stream to sustain the trout if there is sufficient rainfall, as long as it is consistent with the agency’s “primary mission of providing flood control and water conservation.”

Terms of the settlement must be reviewed by the state attorney general’s office and then approved by the county Board of Supervisors. An aide to Supervisor Pete Schabarum said the supervisors have not seen the proposed settlement.

Fred A. Worthley Jr., manager of Region 5 for the Fish and Game Department, and Jim Easton, assistant director of the county public works department, said that the two agencies had agreed on the major points in the settlement and that the final language is being written by their attorneys.

But two angling organizations that were sent copies of the proposed agreement by Worthley want more assurances that the trout will be protected. The two groups recently criticized Worthley, the head of California’s largest and most populous wildlife management area, for failing to prevent two fish kills this year in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Both agencies blamed a communication breakdown for causing thousands of trout and other native fish to die in May and June in two places in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Jim Edmondson, a director of the Pasadena Casting Club, said his group is concerned that the county public works agency would still have the final say as to how and when water is released from the dam.

He said more binding environmental constraints should be included in the settlement.

For example, Edmondson said, the agreement should specify exactly how much water is needed to sustain the trout population. And the county department of public works should also be forced to find ways to release water from the reservoir behind the dam without sending dangerous amounts of silt into the West Fork.

Worthley said he agreed with the points raised by Edmondson and that efforts may be made to seek some stronger safeguards in the final agreement.

“I’d like to see as firm language as possible in the agreement,” Worthley said. “The trick is getting these conditions included with very definitive language. That’s what the department’s attorneys and the attorney general’s office are working on.”

Edmondson, whose 250-member club has played a leading role in helping to restore some plant life and fish to the West Fork, said he is concerned that county public works has “not lived up to agreements in the past.” Tougher protections are needed, he said, because the department misled the public when it promised to release no more than 1,000 cubic yards of silt while repairing a valve in the dam in 1981. Instead, more than 200,000 cubic yards of silt was released, killing a large portion of the trout population and the plants necessary for them to maintain life.

County public works officials have admitted that trout were killed and the habitat destroyed because of the agency’s action.

“We made a bum estimate” about how much silt would be released into the West Fork, said the county’s Easton. But he denied that the agency had misled the public. Public works had no way of knowing exactly how much silt was at the bottom of the reservoir behind the dam, he said.

Moreover, Easton said, the same thing could happen again.

“At some time in the future, we will have to again replace a valve or move silt away from the dam,” Easton said. “When we do, it will foul up fishing. I don’t know of any way of emptying the reservoir without releasing material into the stream.”

Because of its mission of providing flood control and water conservation, Easton said the county must have the final say on when and how water is released. “Our attorneys have advised us that we should not agree to any binding stipulation” regarding the operation and maintainence of the dam, he said.

“If that’s what Easton wants to say, fine,” said Worthley. “I am not going to roll over if he says he won’t agree to anything.”

Barrett McInerney, vice president of California Trout, a statewide organization of 2,200 anglers, said his group also wants the settlement to include regulations that would control the flow of water into the West Fork.

A Fish and Game regulation enacted by the Legislature in 1937 requiring dam operators to provide enough water downstream to maintain fish life at all times should be written into the settlement, McInerney said.

In a legal opinion issued last year about another reservoir, state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp cited the regulation, calling it “one of the strongest and oldest legislative declarations designed to protect fishery resources by providing adequate water below dams.”

Although he agreed with McInerney that the 1937 law is a useful tool, Worthley said that including it in the agreement was pointless “because you don’t repeat what is already in the law.”

McInerney said this and other state environmental laws need to be included in the settlement because he does not trust Worthley. “You can have Winston Churchill writing the laws, but it’s no use if Neville Chamberlain is doing the negotiating.”

“He has his opinion,” said Worthley.

McInerney said California Trout is prepared to go to court if either agency fails to comply with provisions of the proposed settlement.

California Trout and other environmental groups have already forced the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to preserve the flow in Rush Creek, an Inyo County stream in Region 5 that is a habitat for an estimated 30,000 brown trout.

California Trout obtained a court ruling in May requiring the city agency to maintain a sufficient flow of water in Rush Creek to ensure the survival of the fish. Last month, a Mono County Superior Court judge disagreed with officials of the city-run water agency that use of Rush Creek had been resolved decades ago when the City of Los Angeles was granted the right to divert the tributary’s water to the city. The judge has ordered a hearing to determine the best public use of the stream.

Edmondson and McInerney said that destruction of the West Fork was just one of a continuing series of assaults on the environmental quality of the San Gabriel Canyon.

In May, Fish and Game biologists reported that more than 200 rainbow trout measuring 14 inches and longer had floated to the surface of San Gabriel Reservoir, which is fed by the San Gabriel’s West and East forks. The fish were killed when county public works employees lowered the water level in the reservoir to perform maintenance on San Gabriel Dam.

Fish and Game wardens had planted 8,500 trout in the reservoir just seven days before DPW began to lower the reservoir’s water level. Biologists believe thousands of native and stocked fish died in the reservoir’s oxygen-depleted water.

David Drake, a Fish and Game fisheries biologist, said that the problem was compounded by off-road vehicles that regularly enter the flood plain north of the reservoir, pushing huge amounts of silt and mud into the water.

U.S. Forest Service officials estimate that 6 million people flock to the 100-square-mile San Gabriel Canyon annually, which has a “devastating” environmental impact on the canyon and its streams. Drake said that such heavy recreational use retards the growth of plants along the streams, damaging the traditional breeding ground for insects that provide more than 80% of the wild trout’s diet. Both Worthley and Easton have acknowledged that the San Gabriel Reservoir fish kill, as well as one in Big Tujunga Creek north of Sunland in June, were the result of a communication breakdown between their agencies. Worthley said that Fish and Game “did not understand” just how severe the effects of lowering reservoir water levels would be.

Since those incidents, Easton said, both agencies “have taken action to improve communication, to better coordinate our efforts and to communicate our concerns about dam releases” to fish and game officials.