More restrictions on Delta water pumping adopted as Department of Fish & Game passes regulations to protect longfin smelt

From Mike Taugher of the Contra Costa Times:

The reliability of California’s water supply took another huge hit Friday when state regulators adopted more restrictions on Delta water pumping to protect yet another fish species whose population is sinking fast. Water agencies portrayed Friday’s decision by the California Fish and Game Commission to protect longfin smelt from Delta pumps this winter as potentially crippling to water supplies on San Joaquin Valley farms and elsewhere.

Regulators acknowledged that the new regulations, which could go into effect as early as Dec. 1, could lead to major water supply cuts but said the rules probably would not be activated at all.

Perry Hergesell, a water policy analyst for the Fish and Game Department, told commissioners that if the new rules had been in place they would have been needed in just two of the past 17 years.

Still, Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow, the state’s top water official, said that if additional cutbacks were ordered, it “could create a water supply and delivery crisis the likes of which Californians have not seen in decades.”

Read more from the Contra Costa Times by clicking here.

From the Central Valley Business Times:

The commission, meeting in Huntington Beach, approved a six-month emergency regulation to protect the longfin smelt. A cousin of that fish, the Delta smelt, is already protected by federal court order lowering the amount of water that can be pumped from the Delta to the Central Valley, Bay Area and Southern California. The Delta is California’s main source of fresh water.

DWR estimates the emergency regulations have the potential to reduce state and federal water project deliveries up to 1.1 million acre feet, or an additional 17 percent in an average water year. This is in addition to the existing export restrictions already in place as a result of a federal court decision to protect Delta smelt.

DWR had asked the commission to extend incidental take authority of the longfin smelt adopted under the California Endangered Species Act and include proposed revisions to help assure that DWR would only be required to mitigate impacts caused by the State Water Project.

The commission instead adopted the regulation that authorizes take but includes additional measures for the protection of adult, larval, and juvenile longfin smelt.

Click here to read the rest of this article in The Central Valley Business Times, which includes an audio clip of an interview with DWR spokesperson Don Strickland about the decision, as well as a link to the action passed on Friday.

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