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California Sportfishing Protection Alliance Advisory
3-15-2007
This Advisory has three important components:
(1) The Resources Secretary Appoints an Angler to the
Delta Vision Process
(2) Letter on the Delta Crisis to the LA Times by Dorothy
Green that speaks clearly to the benefits of using water
conservation practices,
(3) Water For Fish Press Conference that kicked off a
critical effort to acquire and organize angler support for
obtaining the water vital to our fishery populations.
Delta Vision Process
Following the Resources Agency's establishment of the Delta
Vision Process to develop "a strategic vision" of those actions
necessary to restore Delta, Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman
appointed a Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force. Chrisman was
quoted in the Stockton Record as saying:
"Common among the task force's members is a strong ability to
understand and solve complex problems, starting from the premise
that 'business as usual' will not - and cannot - work in the
Delta any longer. Californians must protect this natural system,
for the sake of our drinking water and our economy. Delta Vision
is about finding that balance."
Unfortunately the task force lacked any representation of the
recreational anglers that generate millions of dollars of
economic activity annually in the Bay-Delta estuary. Yet,
given the prolonged decline of many of the estuary's fisheries
and those that originate in its tributaries, its hard to
understand why anglers were not appointed to the task force.
Clearly, given the value anglers place on the estuary's fishery
resources and the millions of angling days they still manage to
spend annually utilizing its fisheries, our community warrants
representation.
Close on the heals of the task force appointment came the
selection of the "Stakeholder Group " to work with task force.
This group also lacked representation from the angling
community, nor was anyone selected from the Native American
tribes in Northern California. However, during this past week
the Resources Secretary decided that recreational anglers should
be represented in the Delta Vision process and appointed me to
the Stakeholder Group to represent CSPA and the Allied Fishing
Groups. This appointment can be read as an admission that the
use of the Delta fisheries by anglers is important to the
Governor's shop. Just how important remains to be seen.
The Delta Vision process is a direct administrative response to
Senate Bill 1574 (Kuel) past last year by the State Legislature
that requires the Secretary of the Resources Agency to convene a
committee to develop and submit to the Governor and the
Legislature, on or before January 1, 2009, a Strategic Vision
for a sustainable Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
It's hard to be optimistic about the ultimate outcome of such a
process given the past failure of the government to fulfill
their many promises to restore the estuary and its fishery
resources. It
would also serve us well to remember that the agenda of the
Governor's shop is pro water development; note his recent
endorsement of building of two dams we've been opposed to since
they first surfaced in CALFED, Temperance Flat in the San
Joaquin River drainage and Sites Reservoir that would store
lower Sacramento River water. According to the Department of
Water Resource's Both of these dams would California Water Plan
(Bulletin 160) this would not be necessary if the state
government would champion and fund a statewide water
conservation plan.
However, my participation on this inside track will be closely
coordinated with CSPA's efforts, and possibly those of the
Allied Fishing Groups, outside of the process where we will be
using our
legal and administrative abilities to work for equitable
solutions to the Delta crisis.
John Beuttler, Conservation Director
California Sportfishing Protection Alliance
1360 Neilson Street
Berkeley, CA 94702
510-526-4049
JBeuttler@aol.com
A Letter From Dorothy
Green to the L. A. Times
From: Dorothy Green, Secretary,
California Water Impact Network
Date: February 9, 2007 10:31:05 AM PST
To:
letters@latimes.com
Subject: Another Warning of Sacramento Delta Crisis
It is a fact that the Sacramento Delta is unsustainable as it is
managed, and we must change how it is managed now to protect
both our drinking water supply and the delta ecosystem. However,
hard engineered solutions like a peripheral canal are not the
answer. What makes much more sense, both economically and
environmentally, is to change how we manage and use this
precious resource, water. We can substantially reduce the amount
of water pumped out of the delta by maximizing the use of our
local resources by conservation, wastewater reclamation and
reuse, and by capturing storm water where it falls, and getting
it into the ground for use later in the season.
Studies by the Pacific
Institute have shown how we can save about a third of indoor
residential use, with existing technology, cost effectively.
Outdoor urban use can be reduced by 10% with the installation of
sprinkler controllers that automatically respond to the weather,
and are programmed to optimize existing landscapes. Over half of
outdoor use can be saved by changing landscape materials to
California friendly plants: natives and plants that grow in
Mediterranean climates like our own instead of tropicals or
plants from other wet climate areas.
We have just begun to tap into the benefits of wastewater reuse.
It should be used to recharge our over drafted groundwater,
using the soil as a final cleanser of this readily available
water source. The
Bureau of Reclamation (Right Click & "Save Target As" to
download PDF format report) has studied the potential in
Southern California and it is enormous.
Los Angeles & San Gabriel
Rivers Watershed Council is engaged in a massive study with
nine other partners to quantify how much storm water can be used
to augment our drinking water supply by capturing it where it
falls, and getting it into the ground instead of running off to
the sea. There are no numbers yet, but worries about impacts on
groundwater quality have now been laid to rest. One local water
district, the Inland Empire
Utility Agency, is working toward a goal of total self
sufficiency based on all of these concepts.
The agricultural sector can also make great contributions to
better management. Because of giant agribusiness' insistence,
groundwater is not managed at all except where the courts have
adjudicated who owns how much of the groundwater and how much
they each can pump out. As a result, many groundwater basins are
over drafted, resulting in the inability of the state or anyone
else to use these groundwater basins to store wet year surpluses
against dry year need, or winter and spring floods against
summer and fall need.
There are also over 200,000 acres of land that should never have
been irrigated. The land has naturally occurring selenium which
leaches out in the drain water to poison wildlife refuges and
local groundwater. Also in the same region are many more acres
that have a clay lens underground, holding the drain water
within the root zone of crops. All of this land should be
purchased by the state, and retired from irrigation. Then the
two million acre feet of water now used for irrigating these
lands can be left in the delta to help deal with the problems
there.
There is more than enough water in the state to meet our growing
population, meet agriculture's legitimate needs, and put a lot
of water back into the ecosystem. Only by reducing the pressure
on the delta to provide ever more water for export, can we begin
to address the real problems that exist there: the levees, the
collapse of the delta ecosystem, sea level rise due to global
warming, and the considerable water quality problems that exist
there. This most important estuary on the coasts of both
Americas deserves no less.
Dorothy Green, Secretary
California Water Impact
Network
Water for Fish
campaign fights for restoration of the Bay-Delta, Klamath River
by Dan Bacher
A broad coalition of recreational fishing organizations, fishing
businesses and boat and tackle manufacturers, as well as
representatives of the Klamath River Indian Tribes, officially
kicked off the "Water for Fish" Campaign in a press conference
held on February 15 at the Fred Hall Fishing Tackle, Boat and
Travel Show at the Cow Palace.
Water for Fish,
a grassroots effort to restore California's besieged fisheries,
is different from most past projects in that it looks at the
"big picture" of why our fisheries are declining. Too many
efforts to restore fisheries have been piecemeal - and the
consequence is that one fishery is helped while another is hurt.
This campaign is based on the premise that you cannot separate
the problems of ocean fisheries from those of our rivers and
lakes and the fisheries of the Klamath River from those of the
Sacramento River. What happens on the Klamath River impacts the
ocean fishery on the Central Coast down to Morro Bay - and what
happens on the Sacramento River impacts what occurs in the
Klamath Management Zone.
Dick Pool, campaign coordinator and owner of the Concord, Calif.
based tackle company,
Pro-Troll," explained the reason behind the campaign.
"Dams, diversions and (water) mismanagement are leading to a
massive fisheries failure in California and we must take action
now to save our fisheries," said Pool. "Fish and fishermen are
being left out of water policy decisions of the state and
federal governments. This campaign gives anglers a way to be
heard politically." The goal of the campaign is to get a minimum
of 50,000 signatures on petitions or letters to a number of
officials in Washington over the next several
months.
Gordon Robertson, governmental affairs coordinator for the
American Sportfishing
Association, underlined the economic importance of
sportfishing in the U.S. and California.
"Recreational fishing contributes $116 billion to the national
economy each year," disclosed Robertson, "while California
sportfishing contributes $12 billion per year to the state's
economy and supports 43,000 jobs."
The 2.4 million anglers in the state also generate $456 million
in state and federal taxes. Fishery closures and restrictions
threaten to undermine this economic engine.
"Clean water is important to a healthy fishery in California,"
he emphasized. "If you want to fish, anglers will have to get
active in the political process. It takes persistence and
tenacity, but the days of sitting back and letting somebody else
do the job are over."
Chris Hall, the president of the 13,110 member
Coastside Fishing
Club, emphasized that "fighting the lawmakers for fish
is not the answer."
"We need to mitigate the problem all together. We need to save
the fish, save our economy and save our future, and the plans
laid out by Water for Fish are a giant first step," said Hall.
Hall recounted how Coastside Fishing Club, along with
other groups including ASA and
United Anglers of
California, engaged in a successful battle last year to
save the salmon season from being closed by the federal
government. The water issues in California, primarily the Delta
and Klamath, are having a tremendous increasingly devastating
impact on our fisheries, according to Hall.
"Although we recognize the need for water for agricultural use,
our fishery needs to be given an equal consideration," he said.
"The mismanagement of the Klamath River is a blinding indication
of the reality of this, leaving us with a parasitically infested
river that threatened to shut down salmon fishing all together
last year."
John Beuttler, conservation director for the
California Sportfishing Protection Alliance
and spokesman for the Allied Fishing Groups, spoke on the
alarming food web decline and fishery declines in the Bay-Delta
Estuary, the West Coast's most important estuary.
"Its food web and many of its fisheries are in, or near, a
collapse that if not reversed soon will be terminal to key
estuarine species such as striped bass, Delta Smelt, threadfin
shad, critical runs of salmon and other species vital to the
estuary's ecology."
"Anglers are now the last line of defense for the estuary and
its fishery resources," added Beuttler. "We must hold our
government responsible for a half century of broken promises
they made to the public about protecting a restoring these
important public fishery resources."
Ron Reed, cultural biologist for the
Karuk Tribe, said
his tribe and other Klamath Basin Tribes have been hurt
dramatically by the decline in Klamath River water quality and
fisheries.
"The Karuk, the second largest tribe in California with over
3000 members, caught only 200 salmon in our traditional dip net
fishery last year," said Reed. "This impacts not only our
health, but our culture and way of life. The Karuk Tribe is in
dire straits. We suffer from obesity, diabetes and hypertension
three times the national average."
However, he noted that it is not just the Karuk and other tribes
that are impacted, but farmers, the commercial fishermen,
recreational anglers and everybody affected economically by fish
declines.
"Now is the time for all of us, to come together," said Reed.
"We can't solve the problem by single species management - we
need to manage all of the species. If we don't restore the Delta
and the Klamath, we will not be able to save our fisheries. I'm
very much proud and honored to be part of Water for Fish."
Troy Fletcher, Yurok Tribal member and the tribe's consultant on
natural resource issues, emphasized the need to remove
PacifiCorp's Klamath River dams, now owned by billionaire
Warren Buffett. He invited recreational anglers to go on a
trip with the tribes and commercial fishermen to
Berkshire-Hathaway, Inc. headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska,
this year to pressure the Warren Buffett-owned subsidiary to
remove its dams.
"If you don't take down the dams and restore the Klamath, there
won't be any thriving salmon fisheries left. The good thing is
that the Klamath River can be restored," Fletcher concluded.
Gary Adams, president of the California Striped Bass
Association, whose members collected thousands of signatures on
Water for Fish petitions at the sports shows, noted that the
current problems on the Delta are a result of the exclusion of
fishermen and those most impacted by Delta diversions when the
CalFed process unfolded beginning in 1994.
The Water For Fish petition calls for specific actions,
including:
* Removal of
PacifiCorp's dams on the Klamath River and increased water
flows.
* A moratorium on any California Delta or Klamath water
development project or water contract unless it can be proven it
will have no negative impact on fisheries.
* A moratorium on any increases in water exports from the
Delta until the estuary's fishery resources have been restored
to self sustaining population levels including all species
listed under the Endangered Species Act.
* Full funding and compliance with the provisions of the
Central Valley Project Improvement Act that requires the
doubling of salmon, steelhead and striped bass populations.
* A freeze on any Federal government funding which would
divert, allocate or increase any water diversions or
construction of facilities which would allow these activities
until all impacted fish runs show increases for at least five
years in a row.
We hope to receive increasing help from recreational anglers,
commercial fishermen, Indian Tribes, conservation groups and
others to spread the word about our campaign. The petition and
letter count now totals 9,004, with the Fred Hall Cow Palace
Show generating 2,179 signed and certified Water for Fish
petitions. Volunteers from the California Striped Bass
Association and Coastside Fishing Club gathered the signatures.
The coalition includes over 60 companies and fishing
organizations including the American Sportfishing Association,
California Striped Bass Association, Coastside Fishing Club,
California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Federation of Fly
Fishers, PCFFA, Pro-Troll and the Fish Sniffer. For more
information and to sign the petition, see the Water4Fish website
by going to
http://www.water4fish.org/
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CSPA is a nonprofit fishery conservation organization that
actively works to restore fisheries and their habitat. You can
support our efforts by becoming a member. Donations are
tax-deductible, greatly needed and appreciated. Send checks to
CSPA at 1360 Neilson Street, Berkeley, CA 94702-1116. Annual
membership starts a $30. Questions? 510-526-4049.
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