Smelt hatchery plan draws fire
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 29, 2008 at 6:27 amFrom Stockton’s Record:
A southern San Joaquin Valley lawmaker wants to help restore the endangered Delta smelt by dramatically increasing a tiny hatchery operation in the Delta town of Byron, but the proposal has drawn immediate fire from the environmental community.
State Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, has sponsored a bill to use $5 million in water-bond funds to help the state Department of Water Resources expand hatchery operations for the little fish, possibly on Stockton’s Rough and Ready Island. Florez sees his measure as a way to restore a species that has suffered greatly from the giant pumps near Tracy, which chop up thousands every year. That loss has forced the state to curtail pumping operations, reducing the amount of water available to the south San Joaquin farmers Florez represents.
So what’s the problem?
Tina Swanson of the Bay Institute doesn’t think much of Florez’s idea. “It avoids the problem,” Swanson said. It is hardly wise to spend money to put smelt into an ecosystem that will kill most of them, she noted. Water quality, water flow, nonnative predators such as the largemouth bass and other factors all affect smelt populations in addition to the pumps. What’s more, population levels of threadfin shad, salmon, green sturgeon, steelhead trout, striped bass and several other species are in trouble, too.
Swanson, who has studied the Delta smelt, said large-scale breeding of the fish may or may not be feasible. A small hatchery run by the University of California, Davis, near Byron has been successfully raising smelt for 15 years, but even those scientists are skeptical about the notion of restocking the Delta with hatchery smelt.
So is state Sen. Michael Machado, D-Linden, one of the Legislature’s experts on water issues. Machado says Florez’s idea is misplaced. “I think in concept it’s a nice idea, but it’s being applied to the wrong set of circumstances. It, in effect, just camouflages the problem,” Machado said.
Read the full text of the article from Stockton’s Record by clicking here.
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