This is just one post in the Judge Wanger delta smelt ruling Category

Feds’ plan to improve Delta water system isn’t accurate, agency warns

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 1, 2008 at 6:51 am

From the Sacramento Bee:

A court-ordered fix for the threatened Delta smelt population is running into trouble before it has even seen daylight.

Federal water officials have been warned that their work on a draft plan for operating the Delta’s water works “contains deficiencies, incomplete analysis, inaccuracies and omissions.”

The warning came from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which faces the same court deadline of Sept. 15 to submit the plan, called a “biological opinion.” The goal is to create a new set of operating rules for the massive state and federal pumping systems that export water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the Bay Area and Southern California.

Federal Judge Oliver Wanger, in Fresno, ordered the new plan in December. His ruling found that the state Department of Water Resources and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had violated the Endangered Species Act because their prior pumping rules did not adequately protect Delta smelt. The fish are ground up in the pumps and also killed by changes in water flows caused by the powerful pumps.

In its letter, the service set a July 7 deadline for the Bureau of Reclamation to fill in the data gaps, or it will be forced to complete the study using available information. The bureau is the lead agency responsible for drafting of the new rules. If that deadline isn’t met, the Fish and Wildlife Service could be forced to use incomplete information to prepare the new rules.

“We’re going to go with the best information we have when we prepare the biological opinion,” said service spokesman Al Donner. “Hopefully, we will have all the information we think we need.”