Public need clashes with Delta effort

By Mike Taugher
Sunday, July 31, 2005

Water officials twice this year overrode protection measures for Delta smelt by sustaining and increasing pumping even as the estuary's fish were declining at an alarming rate, documents show.

In January, a team of biologists assigned to protect Delta smelt urged officials to slow down water deliveries for one week out of concern for their record low numbers.

The recommendation was not followed.

Four months later, state water officials abruptly cut short a 31-day period designed in part to improve conditions for fish by cranking up their pumps five days ahead of schedule, immediately increasing the number of Delta smelt killed.

The pair of incidents, revealed in documents obtained by the Times and interviews, offer a glimpse into how biologists and water operators in California handle the inevitable conflict between environmental protection and the thirst of farms and cities. And it comes during a time when the Delta appears to be in its most serious environmental crisis ever as populations of open-water fish and zooplankton organisms are inexplicably falling.

"When the level of concern for Delta smelt was at its greatest level ever, (biologists) did make recommendations and they were apparently unable to implement them," said Tina Swanson, a scientist at the Bay Institute, an environmental research group. "Not being able to get a (reduction in pumping for water deliveries), that's outrageous."

Some officials defended the decisions to maintain higher pumping levels, saying fewer smelt were killed this year compared with past years, and that the number of fish killed at the pumps did not violate regulatory limits.

They also said their ability to curtail water deliveries was limited by the size of an environmental water account on which regulators are increasingly relying. The ledger is essentially an innovative new checking account opened five years ago that gives fish biologists more authority to lower pumping levels by promising a payment of water to the farmers and cities that take a hit when water deliveries are not made.

But some doubt the account's effectiveness, particularly since authorities have had difficulty making deposits.

Swanson and others said extra caution was needed this year because the Delta smelt population fell to a record low last fall amid a widespread ecological crisis. Scientists believe the crisis may have begun three years ago but was only recently confirmed with new data.

Earlier this month, biologists delivered more bad news: an annual summer survey showed that the population of Delta smelt -- once one of most common fish in the Delta and a species that many consider a barometer of the health of the West Coast's largest estuary -- appeared to drop yet again to another new low.

Did the failure to follow through on pumping cutbacks in February and in May contribute to the summer drop-off?

"It's really hard to tell. That's kind of the $100 million question," said Ryan Olah, chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service branch that oversees endangered species actions in the Delta, San Francisco Bay and the coast.

Olah is a member of the Delta smelt team that recommended the curtailment for the first week of February. He defended the subsequent decision by a separate committee to maintain pumping levels higher than what his team recommended, saying water deliveries were still cut somewhat.

"If we hadn't done this, it probably would have been worse," he said.

Another member of the Delta smelt science team was more critical.

"It would have been good if we could have had a more rapid and large response," said Bruce Herbold, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency biologist.

Herbold said Delta smelt numbers were so low last fall that scientists feared they might not see any fish in that part of the Delta at all. They were surprised in January when the fish showed up near the Delta pump stations at Byron and Tracy.

Knowing the female fish were carrying up to 2,000 eggs each at the time, the science team called on water managers to slow Delta pumps from about 12,000 cubic feet-per-second to about 1,500 cfs for a week, a temporary reduction of nearly 90 percent. Slowing the pumps would have reduced the danger of fish being stranded and killed in the pumps' forebays and channels.

The Delta smelt working group, the team that includes Olah, Herbold and other scientists, was formed last year specifically to make such recommendations as part of the Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to protect the smelt under the Endangered Species Act.

The team's recommendation went to a group of senior managers at five state and federal agencies that deliver water and enforce fish and wildlife protection.

The management team, called the Water Operations Management Team, or WOMT, agreed to curtail pumping, but only to 3,000 cfs for the week.

Even that decision was not fully implemented. The pumping rate dropped to 3,000 cfs for only two days instead of a full week, documents show.

"The (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) decided they were not going to go along with the proposed reduction. They unilaterally decided not to go along," said Herbold. "It didn't make people happy."

The state Department of Water Resources also kept its pumps running at levels higher than biologists recommended

Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Jeff McCracken said there was nothing wrong with the decision to override the science team's recommendation. He said WOMT managers decided to increase pumping rates when the number of Delta smelt being killed at the pumps fell.

"If it was decided that the smelt were not in the vicinity ... we could go ahead with the pumping," McCracken said. "We did listen to them (the Delta smelt working group). We reviewed what they told us and made a decision. That's the way the system works."

The conflict between the demand for water in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California and environmental protection in the Delta has always been controversial.

But now, with new evidence that the Delta's open-water ecosystem appears to be mysteriously in danger of collapse, the conflict has intensified.

Many anglers and environmentalists blame the bulk of the Delta's problems on water deliveries to Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities. And, in fact, state water officials agreed earlier this month to delay a final decision on their plan to increase pumping rates out of the Delta until the cause of the crisis is learned.

But few scientists think those pumps are the sole reason for the Delta's woes. Most speculate that the pumps, invasive species and toxic contaminants are all at least partly to blame.

The problem is so complex, however, scientists do not expect to determine its cause this year. What scientists do know is that the major open-water, or pelagic, fish and zooplankton of the Delta are in an unexplained decline that dates to about 2002.

Delta smelt, listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, are getting the most attention. But young-of-the-year striped bass, longfin smelt and threadfin shad -- previously one of the most common fish in the Delta -- have also dropped off precipitously. In addition, a key food source for those fish, a zooplankton, has become scarce.

This was well known by May, when the state Department of Water Resources cut short a one-month period to gather scientific data and increase protection for juvenile salmon and Delta smelt. Five days before the end of the month, state water officials ramped up their pumps more than four-fold, from about 1,300 cfs to 5,500 cfs.

Delta smelt, which had not been seen at the pumps all month, began showing up, signaling fish were being killed.

The numbers of fish killed each day reached 213 on May 30, not as high as previous years. In a conference call June 7, a team monitoring water operations and fish decided that "at this time" the fish kills did not appear high enough to trigger "a population-level problem," according to the official notes of that conference call.

DWR deputy director Jerry Johns said the decision to cut short the 31-day experiment and fish protection period was driven by two factors.

First, scientific information collected this year was of little value because the department was unable to install a temporary barrier that is normally in place. That meant observations made this year could not be compared with data collected in other years.

The second reason was that fishery agencies were reaching the limit of what they could do: The "environmental water account" that is becoming a key environmental protection measure was running low.

The account was an effort at compromise designed to make it easier for biologists to order pumping slowdowns, while at the same time putting a limit on how often they could do so. But water officials have been unable to get the account up to the size it was supposed to be.

This year, water managers and fishery agency officials decided not to run the account too deeply into debt, opting instead to restore full water deliveries to the farms and cities south of the Delta before the end of May.

"You have to adapt to the resources you have," Johns said. "We provided better protection than we would have (without that water.)"

Swanson, of the Bay Institute, questioned the effectiveness of the water account and the wisdom of a conservation strategy for Delta smelt that relies on it so heavily.

"After four years of environmental water account protection, we have the lowest Delta smelt population on record? The EWA isn't big enough," Swanson said, adding that it is unclear to her whether even a larger account would work.

Mike Taugher covers the environment and energy. Reach him at 925-943-8257 or mtaugher@cctimes.com.