Officials’ Deal Will Save Water While Protecting Bird

With the U.S. government on the brink of releasing billions of gallons of storm water into the ocean, county and federal authorities have agreed to raise the water level behind Prado Dam while still protecting an endangered bird that nests there, officials said Monday.

William Mills, general manager of the Orange County Water District, was awakened before dawn on Saturday with word that so much rain had fallen overnight that the Army Corps of Engineers would open the gates of Prado Dam within two hours. The corps was required to do so under federal rules to save the habitat of the least Bell’s vireo, a small bird on the edge of extinction.

After a flurry of pre-dawn phone calls among Mills, a corps district engineer and a federal wildlife biologist, all sides reached an agreement Saturday to store more water behind the dam for the rest of the spring season. The flows can now be released slowly and captured in the water agency’s reservoirs in Anaheim instead of flowing into the ocean.

In return, the Orange County Water District will guarantee to pay at least $100,000 for monitoring the vireos, improving 30 to 50 acres of habitat and trapping cowbirds that prey on the rare species. The agency also agreed to pay $390,000 for preserving an old stagecoach stop behind the dam at the request of state archeologists.

“It was nip and tuck,” Mills said Monday. “We finally hashed it out on Saturday morning, just in the nick of time.”

The new agreement at Prado Dam, located on the Santa Ana River just over Orange County’s border in Riverside County, will remain in effect through the spring. A new agreement has to be reached every year until a permanent solution is approved by corps officials in Washington.

“We’re satisfied we worked out a decent deal for the vireo. Our biologist was satisfied,” said Jeff Opdycke, field supervisor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional office in Carlsbad.

Already, the district has saved about 4.2 billion gallons of storm runoff since Saturday--about 2.8 billion more than it could have saved under the old rules. That extra water, worth about $1.1 million, would serve the needs of about 65,000 people for a year, and new storms are approaching.

Prado Basin is the prime breeding ground of the five-inch, olive-gray least Bell’s vireo, a songbird listed nationally in 1986 as an endangered species. About 95% of the vireo’s habitat is already gone because of the paving of Southern California’s rivers and creeks, and only about 300 pairs exist.

The storm water will help nourish the ground-water basin that underlies the northern two-thirds of Orange County. The basin, which supplies about half of the county’s water, is below normal in storage after a six-year drought.

Under the old federal restrictions, storm water had to be released after March 15 each year whenever it reached an elevation of 490 feet to protect fragile willows where the vireos nest every April. The new rule allows it to reach 500 feet, flooding some of those willows.

The negotiations had been going on for months. The Fish and Wildlife Service had verbally agreed a few weeks ago, but the Corps of Engineers had not yet granted approval, and state historic preservation officials also wanted assurances about funding for the stagecoach stop. It took concern over the wasted water from the latest storms to seal the agreement.

“It took us a long time to get to this point, but (Fish and Wildlife officials) were willing all along to have some kind of program like this,” Mills said. “As it turns out, I think we came up with a program that works.”

Mills said the agreement shows that it is possible to find creative, positive approaches to enforcing the Endangered Species Act, which many business and water officials condemn as inflexible.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service is concerned about living within the Endangered Species Act, while I live in a world (the water industry) where a lot of people think the act is too harsh,” Mills said. “It’s a credit to guys like (federal wildlife biologist) Dick Zembal who recognize there is a need to work with the water industry to meet their needs as well.”

Last March, the federal wildlife agency also allowed storage to reach 500 feet after the water district agreed to set aside and restore 122 acres of habitat for the vireo. The habitat is being maintained by the Nature Conservancy, an environmental group that specializes in endangered species.

Wildlife officials say some of the birds had difficulty finding good breeding grounds last spring because the willows were flooded by the water storage. There were 64 pairs nesting there last April, compared to 41 pairs the year before.

In addition to the $100,000, the water district will pay a fee of $5 per acre-foot of water made available under Saturday’s agreement, after the first 20,000 acre-feet. The money will be used in monitoring the least Bell’s vireo.