Westlands plan to create smelt habitat has a few skeptics

From Stockton’s RecordNet.com:

A massive water district long targeted by environmentalists for its thirst for Delta water says it wants to help the estuary’s most infamous yet inconspicuous fish.

Westlands Water District this month purchased more than 3,000 acres of farmland in the north Delta, where it says it intends to restore wetland habitat for threatened Delta smelt. The crash of the smelt in recent years has been blamed at least in part on pumps near Tracy that ship Delta water to Westlands and other farms and cities as far south as San Diego. Smelt are caught in the current and killed at the pumps. A federal judge earlier this month ordered water exports be reduced to protect smelt.

“We entered into this to try to create habitat for the Delta smelt,” said Westlands spokeswoman Sarah Woolf. “It’s to our benefit to create that habitat. We have every intention of making this happen.”

But many doubt the effectiveness of Westland’s plan:

Stockton environmentalist Bill Jennings said Westlands’ gesture is “nice,” but he questioned how much of a difference the $12 million purchase would make. The land purchase doesn’t cancel out the harm caused by immense amounts of water diverted south, he said. “Additional habitat is a good thing. I just don’t see the benefits coming from 3,000 acres” of restored habitat, Jennings said.

To read the full text of this article from Stockton’s RecordNet.com, click here.

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