Agency
representatives all admitted that the fish kill was
a huge blunder, the result of a breakdown in
communication and coordination between the agencies.
Bureau and Fish and Game (DFG) representatives
testifying at the hearing blamed slow response and
hesitance to accept volunteers on liability
concerns, permit requests, lack of information, and
other bureaucratic delays.
If we could go
back in time I want to assure you that we would have
handled the situation differently, said John Davis,
the Bureau of Reclamations Regional Director.
Davis also
claimed that he "deeply regretted" the
loss of tens of thousands of fish and said that
"fish mortality exceeded expectations."
Chuck Armor,
DFG Regional Manager, said the agency has opened a
formal criminal investigation into the fish and will
be working with the Attorney Generals office in the
near future. He could not give details on the case
at the time, but said that more details would be
available by the end of December.
Wolk stressed
the need for stronger coordination between
government agencies on several occasions during the
hearing.
When there is
a crisis, it requires action, said Wolk. Someone
needs to be in charge. You look at how many agencies
are involved here. But no one is in charge. Unless
someone really pulls things together, this will
happen again, said Wolk.
Leo Winternitz,
Deputy Director with the CALFED Bay Delta Program,
agreed. We need to be more aggressive, he stated. We
need to push each other. We need to make sure weve
done everything we can do.
The fishing
and local community representatives who testified
were Jim Crenshaw, President, California
Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Doug Lovell,
Director, Allied Fishing Groups, Gary Adams,
President, California Striped Bass Association,
Jeffrey Nash, a local fisherman who played a
leadership role in the fish rescue, and myself.
Lovell and Nash gave a power point slide
presentation, using photos of thousands of dead
stripers and other fish and the fish rescue to give
Wolk and the media a feeling of the scope of
destruction that occurred as a result of the
agencies dropping the ball at Prospect Island.
Crenshaw
reviewed the history of Prospect Island, from the
Bureau of Reclamations purchase in 1994 with public
funds for approximately 2.8 million dollars to the
levee repair this November that resulted in the fish
kill.
This whole
scenario is just another example of the Bureaus
broken promises and insensitivity to fish and
wildlife issues, said Crenshaw. In the 50 plus years
of pumping water out of the Delta, the bureau has
mitigated for fish losses for only a total of 3
years and is currently refusing to mitigate for any
direct or indirect losses.
Crenshaw urged
the committee to look into ways to return to the
original plan to establish a North Delta National
Wildlife Refuge. That would be an important step in
restoring some of the fishery losses of the last 50
years, said Crenshaw.
Gary Adams
testified as to how the state and federal
governments didn’t appear to be concerned about
the fish kill because of the lack of endangered and
threatened species including delta smelt, steelhead
and winter run chinook at the island when the Bureau
hired a contractor to do the levee repair.
I personally
didn’t see any endangered species at the island
when I was there and the pelicans, gulls and egrets
weren’t talking, he quipped.
What we find
in many cases within management structure of
Department Water Resources, DFG and U.S Fish and
Wildlife Service is that their concern is only about
protected species, said Adams. This attitude should
be replaced by one that also protects sport fish
such as the striped bass that arent listed.
He urged that
anglers be acknowledged by the agencies as full
partners in the effort to restored the Bay-Delta
Estuary and other California species, rather than
being marginalized as was done in the fish kill and
in case after case in recent decades.
In my
testimony, I proposed that for mitigation to the
loss to California's fisheries because of the fish
kill, the Bureau should donate Prospect Island to
the state of California to be maintained as a public
fishing access to Miner Slough and the Sacramento
Deepwater Channel. I asked Wolk to author a bill to
make the property into the "Prospect Island
Public Fishing Access and Wildlife Area"
modeled after the Oroville Wildlife Area. I also
proposed that the island itself be reflooded to
provide fish and wildlife habitat, since this is
some of the best habitat on the entire Delta.
Not only
should the Bureau donate the land, they should pay
for its maintenance in perpetuity. In addition, the
Bureau should be required by the state legislature
to mitigate for the direct losses of fish at the
federal CVP pumping plant near Tracy.
Except for
three years when the Bureau signed on to an
agreement with DFG, they have not mitigated for any
losses at their pumps. The legislature should
mandate that the Bureau mitigate for the damage
they've done and will continue to do at the Delta
pumps, as well as the damage to public trust
resources caused by the recent fish kill.
Wolk thanked
the sportfishing and local community for their
efforts to rescue surviving fish, in spite of all of
the bureaucratic inertia that they faced throughout
the ordeal and acknowledged the importance of
recreational fishing in the California economy.
Sportfishing
plays a vital role in the Deltas economy and
sustainability, said Wolk, citing how, according to
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the American
Sportfishing Association, recreational fishing
contributed more than $9.04 billion to California's
economy in 2003.
Besides the
current DFG criminal investigation, the Recreational
Fishing Alliance (RFA) has filed a Freedom of
Information Act request on documents pertaining to
the Prospect Island fish kill. "We would like
to see paper and electronic interagency discussions
about the BOR's project between BOR and US Fish
& Wildlife Service and the National Marine
Fisheries Service," said Jim Martin, RFA West
Coast Regional Director. During the hearing, John
Davis acknowledged that it had received the RFAs
request.
If were going
to have major changes in the Delta, we need to come
up with a better way of managing these resources and
including local partners, concluded Wolk. If the
Delta is going to survive, we must look at the big
picture.
I completely
agree with Wolk and commend her for conducting a
hearing so quickly after the fish kill. I was
impressed by how well prepared Wolk was for the
hearing and by her analysis of how there needs to be
some overall body that forces the agencies to
coordinate with one another on Delta issues.
Dan Bacher
is an editor of The
Fish Sniffer , described as "The #1
Newspaper in the World Dedicated Entirely to
Fishermen"
