Tightening the tap: Feds order state to cut water-project flows to Southern California

From the Sacramento News & Review, this article by Dan Bacher:

In a court-ordered plan released on June 4, scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that current water-pumping operations of the federal Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project should be changed to ensure survival of four imperiled fish species and one orca population.

The “biological opinion” lists a number of steps the state and federal governments must take to protect winter- and spring-run chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, southern green sturgeon and southern resident killer whales from going over the abyss of extinction. The whales, now numbering only 85 individuals along the coast from Puget Sound to California, rely on Sacramento River salmon for food.

Changing water operations will impact an estimated 5 to 7 percent of the water exported annually to San Joaquin Valley water contractors and Southern California by the federal and state pumps. That’s 330,000 acre feet per year, according to Maria Rea, the NMFS area supervisor.

The opinion also calls for pilot passage programs at Folsom, Nimbus and Shasta dams to reintroduce salmon and steelhead to historic cold-water habitat above the dams. “We want to get winter-run chinook back to habitat in the McCloud River and steelhead back to habitat in the upper American River,” said Rea.

Read more from the Sacramento News & Review by clicking here.

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