A River Banks on a Bailout

The Colorado has provoked more undiluted belligerence than any other California river. And the Los Angeles River surely provokes the most ridicule. But the state’s hardest-working river is the Sacramento, which rises in far northern California, flows past stately Mt. Shasta and serves as the heart-pump of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta on its way through to the Golden Gate.

The Sacramento helps feed California and slake the thirst of two-thirds of its residents. It once carried adventurers to the gold fields on stern-wheelers. It was storied in Joan Didion’s novel “Run River.” It has been the conduit for one of the world’s great chinook salmon and steelhead trout runs.

But the Sacramento is a troubled river these days, as documented in a recent series of incisive articles by Jim Mayer in the Sacramento Bee. Mayer opened his series by declaring, quite simply, that the river is dying. The river is polluted by industry and agriculture, stressed by irrigation water diversions, and is forever being diked, dammed, dredged and eroded.

A bailout may be on the way, however. Rep. Doug Bosco (D-Occidental) and Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) have proposed a $185 million program to restore Upper Sacramento River fish populations over the next decade. The legislation is the result of agreement by fishermen, water agencies and environmental groups on a recovery plan. It involves construction of fish ladders, fish screens at dams and canal works, reduction of toxic pollution and increasing the spawning beds. Bosco said these efforts should result in an increase of fish populations to as much as 70% of what they were 40 years ago. In the past four decades, the steelhead population has fallen 90% and salmon runs are down between 50% and nearly 100%, depending on the year.

Construction of Shasta and Keswick dams by the federal government has blocked off prime spawning areas. In the past, water agencies that relied on diversions from the Sacramento fought such fisheries projects. But now, those agencies realize that their fortunes may be tied to those of the fish and are supporting this program. For the only other way to restore the fisheries is to cut back on diversions to places like the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California and leave more water in the river--a course of action that’s anathema to the water bureaucracies, of course.

In recent years, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has made commendable efforts, with limited resources, to improve the Sacramento River area fisheries. In 1990, Congress should make sure the money is there to complete the job.