Court sides with Klamath River fish flows over Central Valley districts

August 26, 2015

A U.S. District Court judge has denied two Central Valley Project water districts’ attempt to halt fish kill prevention flows to the Klamath River on Wednesday, making it the second year in a row that the federal court has sided outright with protections of Klamath River fish.

Hoopa Valley Tribe Fisheries Director Mike Orcutt said this is also the first year that the federally promised 50,000 acre-feet of Trinity River water for Humboldt County has come into play in the decision, with a U.S. Department of Interior solicitor’s report formally recognizing this water right after nearly 60 years this past December.

“I think its really good news for fish and the communities of our area,” Orcutt said.

Yurok Tribal Council Chairman Thomas O’Rourke called the decision a “great victory for the Klamath River and its salmon.”

“We are gratified that the judge saw through their desperate efforts to disparage the needs of the fish and to discredit our science,” he said in a statement.

Filed by the Central Valley-based Westlands Water District and San Luis & Delta-Mondota Water Authority against the U.S. Department of the Interior, the request for injunction sought to immediately halt the fish kill preventative flows from Lewiston Dam to the lower Klamath that began on Aug. 21.

The flows were released to mitigate negative health impacts to fish and humans alike caused by low-flowing, warm river water conditions.

Fish surveys recently conducted by the Yurok Tribe found fish with severe infections of the deadly parasite known as ich on the lower Klamath River, with the Hoopa Valley Tribe finding blue-green algae outbreaks as well as fish infected with the gill disease columnaris over the last two months.

“Our salmon fisheries are vital to the economy of the North Coast of California and to the traditions and subsistence needs of our Native American tribes,” North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman said in a press release. “Releasing these cold water flows into the Trinity and lower Klamath Rivers will help prevent a potential disaster in the coming days. The massive fish kill of 2002 should be a constant reminder of what happens when science, environmental laws, and critical fishery requirements are ignored to placate powerful irrigation interests. I commend the Interior Department for doing the right thing, following the law, and taking action to prevent a repeat of 2002.”

In their complaint filed Aug. 21, the two water districts state the Interior Department unlawfully, and without proper agency consultation, released Trinity River Division water to protect a federally unlisted fish species, and in doing so, is further impacting their ability to operate in the midst of an ongoing four-year drought. Both districts are within the Interior Department’s Central Valley Project (CVP).

“Defendants are thus using a CVP resource, stored water in the (Trinity River Division), to address a condition not caused by the CVP, and in a location outside the Central Valley and Trinity River basins, all while they fail to meet their obligations in the Central Valley, and fail to fulfill the ‘principal purpose’ for which the TRD was authorized and constructed, ‘increasing the supply of water available for irrigation and other beneficial uses in the ‘Central Valley of California,’” the complaint states, citing the Congressional Trinity River Division Act of 1955.

The districts also claimed that endangered coho salmon on the Sacramento River are also being impacted by a lack of cold water in CVP storage — specifically citing Shasta Lake — which they claim are further harmed by lack of proper reservoir storage.

However, U.S. District Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill of the Eastern District of California disagreed with their reasoning.

“The potential harm to the plaintiffs from the potential, but far from certain, loss of added water supply in 2015 or 2016 does not outweigh the potentially catastrophic damage that ‘more likely than not’ will occur to this year’s salmon runs in the absence of the 2015 FARs (flow augmentation releases),” he wrote.

 

 


Source: By Will Houston