Wildlife Officials Charged in Lake Poisoning

Tiny, rural Plumas County took the unusual step this week of filing criminal charges against the state Department of Fish and Game, alleging that agency officials broke the law when they poisoned Lake Davis to get rid of the notorious northern pike.

The chemical offensive in October garnered national attention and created a local furor that continues to burn. Lake Davis is a major water supply for the city of Portola, which is bracing for a water shortage caused by the effort to eradicate the pike.

Portola residents fought for three years to stop fish and game officials from dousing the pristine trout lake with a chemical called rotenone after predatory pike were found there. The pike threatens the state’s salmon fisheries.

While going forward with the eradication effort over vociferous local objections, fish and game agents promised that there would be no lasting impact on the lake or the tourism-based local economy. But six months after the lake was supposed to have returned to normal, small amounts of chemicals are still being found there.

So Plumas County Dist. Atty. James Reichle filed the misdemeanor charges against the agency and three officials for violating the state water code during the poisoning and allowing the chemicals to poison waterways beyond the lake.

“Unless something happens to show there are consequences for this violation, there’s nothing to prevent [fish and game officials] from doing it again--here or in some other jurisdiction,” Reichle said Wednesday. “This is what it’s about.”

The prosecutor charged the department and three employees--regional manager Banky Curtis, pesticides unit chief Brian Findlayson and biologist Richard Flint--with a total of 12 violations of the California Water Code.

On Wednesday, state wildlife officials called the criminal charges part of Plumas County’s continuing effort to “retaliate and seek retribution” for the eradication of northern pike from Lake Davis.

“This continues a pattern of baseless legal challenges, personal attacks and inflammatory remarks that have occurred over the history of the project,” agency officials said in a statement.

In the legal complaint filed Tuesday, prosecutors accused state officials of “willfully, unlawfully, intentionally and negligently” violating waste discharge requirements by allowing excess chemicals to go downstream and kill trout that were not targeted by the treatment of Lake Davis, about 60 miles northwest of Reno.

Other charges included the alleged “long-term degradation of aquatic communities by killing all of the fish in Grizzly Creek . . . for five miles from the dam.” The department had promised residents that the poison would not effect fish beyond a few yards from the lake.

Curtis, Findlayson and the department also are charged with failing to give key personnel in the poisoning effort sufficient information about discharge requirements.

Each of the 12 charges carries a sentence of up to one year in jail. In addition, the defendants each face possible fines of up to $25,000 for each day the water code was violated.

Fish and game officials contend that Reichle is “misdirected” when he alleges that the department and its agents willfully violated the state water code.

“The criminals here are the individuals that planted northern pike in Lake Davis, not the DFG or the employees that stopped the known threat to California’s ecosystem before it was irretrievable,” Ryan Broddrick, chief deputy fish and game director, said in the statement. The agency “is committed to defending and exonerating our employees,” he said.

Reichle insisted Wednesday that the charges were not fueled by politics. His goal, he said, “is to achieve some jail time.”

“I’m a tilting-at-windmills kind of guy,” Reichle said. “I’ve dealt with entrenched bureaucracies. This is one of the worst cases I’ve seen. . . . This is an example, in my mind, of that immovable object, bureaucratic arrogance. They claim that they can do this without harm to anyone. It’s not true.”

Staci Turner, a spokeswoman with the state Department of Justice, said there is nothing in the law that bars a local prosecutor from filing charges against a state agency or employee.

Turner said that her office “is not familiar with any other time when a D.A. has filed a criminal complaint against a state agency in California.”