January 31, 2008. After months of losing fights over how much water can be pumped to farms from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a coalition of farm groups is striking back with a federal lawsuit blaming state agencies for endangering native fish in the Delta.
In a suit filed in Sacramento federal court, the groups ask for a halt to California's practice of maintaining predatory, nonnative striped bass in the Delta for the benefit of fishermen, claiming the policy violates the Endangered Species Act.
The bass feed on spring- and winter-run chinook salmon, steelhead and Delta smelt – all protected by the Endangered Species Act – and their dwindling populations harm the overall health of the estuary, ultimately resulting in reduced water deliveries to farmers, the lawsuit charges.
"Allowing this destruction to continue when the populations of several of these species – including the Delta smelt – are crashing is outrageous," said Michael Boccadoro, spokesman for the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed late Tuesday.
Biologists already are concerned about drastic reductions in the Sacramento River's fall chinook salmon run, saying it is near collapse.
Sport fishermen, however, scoffed Wednesday at the lawsuit's thesis, saying the real threat to the Delta is all the water channeled to farmers through the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project.
"We're irrigating desert that never should have been irrigated anyway," said Jim Crenshaw, president of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. "The real resolution is to stop sending water to the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
"Anything they can do to relax the restrictions on pumping they'll do," Crenshaw said of the agriculture interests. "I suspect the judge will see through this foolishness."
Members of the coalition include four large agricultural water districts in Kern County, at the southern tip of the San Joaquin Valley. The districts supply State Water Project deliveries to land within their respective boundaries through contracts with the Kern County Water Agency.
The agency has grown over the past 10 years into one of the most powerful and wealthy water players in California.
The coalition's tactics suggest it aims to draw attention from the effects of water exports on the Delta's habitat and fish. Its Web site, for example, offers information about virtually every other problem affecting the Delta except the major pumping systems.
The Delta ecosystem is deteriorating due to a number of factors, including degradation of water quality from urban and agricultural runoff and water withdrawals to support the needs of the state's growing human population.
A federal district judge recently ruled that State Water Project and Central Valley Project water deliveries must be reduced substantially to protect the Delta smelt.
The coalition's suit names as defendants the California Fish and Game Commission and the Department of Fish and Game, along with the agencies' top officials. It has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr.
Department spokesman Steve Martarano declined comment Wednesday.
The suit claims one factor in federal regulators' past decisions to cut San Joaquin Valley farmers' water allocations has been the declining Delta populations of the protected fish, and the "illegal and unmitigated" killing of them aggravates the problem.
Matt Nobriga, a staff environmental scientist at the CalFed Bay-Delta Program, said Wednesday very little is known about whether striped bass are a serious threat to any other fish species. Much of the available information, he said, is decades old.
In 2001 and 2003, Nobriga examined about 1,000 striped bass stomachs to find out what they were eating. He learned they were mainly eating lots of shad and goby, both nonnative species. But, he said, more research is needed before drawing any conclusions.
"It should be studied, but all we can do right now is guess," he said.
He said striped bass are definitely a top predator in the estuary, and are themselves preyed upon only by humans and sea lions.
The coalition's suit says the Department of Fish and Game estimates that, at a population of 765,000 adults, striped bass annually consume 6 percent of Sacramento River winter-run chinook salmon and 3 percent of the Central Valley spring-run chinook salmon.
It says that, at the same population, the department estimates striped bass annually consume 5.3 percent of Delta smelt.
Despite those facts, the Fish and Game Commission's policy "establishes a long-term bass restoration goal of 3 million adult striped bass in the Delta," the suit says. The policy also "requires the Department of Fish and Game to stabilize and restore the striped bass fishery in the Delta," the suit says.
The suit asks Damrell to enjoin the state from enforcing its strict limits on striped bass sport fishing and policies that tend to protect the bass, and to direct the state "to remedy their violations of the ESA."
