More Delta Water May Head South

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued an opinion Friday that opens the door to increased water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The agency concluded that additional pumping from the delta, as well as changes in dam operations, would not seriously harm endangered or threatened salmon species.

That reversed earlier draft findings by its biologists that could have stymied plans to send more water south to the farms of the San Joaquin Valley and the cities of Southern California.

In an August draft letter, never publicly released but leaked to the media, the agency said that increased pumping and other proposed changes in the federal water system were “likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of the Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead.

The agency’s regional administrator also had written to county officials in Northern California saying the agency was concerned that a significant amount of spawning grounds would be lost if water managers moved ahead with plans to alter Shasta Dam operations.

The draft revisions, made after a consultation with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, was overseen by Jim Lecky, the Marine Fisheries’ assistant regional administrator for protected resources.

He said Friday the earlier findings that salmon would be jeopardized had been based on faulty analysis.

“I’m pretty familiar with the system and the fish in the system, and my guys didn’t a do a good job,” said Lecky, a career biologist with the agency.

But the reversal of opinion, also leaked in advance to the media and made official Friday, has sparked congressional allegations of political interference. Earlier this month, Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) and 18 other members of Congress asked the inspectors general of the Interior and Commerce departments to investigate whether federal political appointees had played a role in overriding the initial findings. In response, the offices have launched a review.

Environmentalists have also decried the reversal, saying it was done to ease the way for potentially massive water exports to powerful Central Valley farm interests and Southern California water agencies.

Taking more water from the delta, they warn, will undermine the fragile gains that have been made with salmon runs.

“This administrative revision is an outrageous and despicable sacrifice of sound science on the altar of expediency,” contended Bill Jennings of the environmental group DeltaKeeper. “It’s disheartening to see a trustee agency succumb to political pressure and reject the expert opinions of its own scientists in issuing a biological opinion that it knows may push endangered species over the brink of extinction.”

Lecky rejected the suggestions of political tinkering.

“That’s just blatantly not true,” he said, describing the agency’s consultation with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as routine. “We have to come to a common understanding of the project. It requires frank discussions and exchanging documents.”

Lecky said his biologists had erred in assuming the Shasta Dam operation changes would substantially reduce spawning habitat for the winter-run chinook. Although water managers would no longer be required to maintain certain temperatures in a portion of the river, that would not prevent the fish from using it.

“It affects [the habitat] -- that’s much different from a total loss,” Lecky said. “When we corrected that analysis, the argument for jeopardy was no longer [valid].”

Tina Swanson, senior scientist with the Bay Institute, countered that when Sacramento River temperatures rose during a 1970s drought, the salmon population crashed.

“It’s extremely clear you have to maintain these conditions to keep the fish alive,” she said.

Although the number of winter-run Chinook has climbed from a low of 211 in the early 1990s, the population has yet to top 10,000.

It reached 9,757 last year, and state fish and game biologists estimate this year’s population at about 9,000.