Cheers,  Johnny

 Johann Heubach

5084 Grossgmain

Austria

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10/29/09

morning jack

howard nestell here……is there a better place to stay than the 
mount shasta resort?…..looks decent from their website….pretty 
reasonable rates too…..let me know what you think…howard

*****

*****

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Thanks Tom for your continued work in the ongoing, never to end water wars.  I made the call.

Dear Friends,

I don’t often write to you folks to ask you to take political action. However, it is URGENT that you call your Assemblyman Wes Chesbro’s office and ask him to vote no  on Senator Steinberg’s Water Bill, SBX7 1.  (That stands for Senate Bill No 1 in the 7th Extraordinary Session of the legislature).  Assemblyman Chesbro is on the fence on this issue.

While there is a lot of good stuff in the bill, it also sets up the process for a Peripheral Canal (see the article below) and costly new surface storage projects that won’t produce nearly as much water at a good price compared to conservation and recycling.  It also makes the Public Trust resources of the Delta and water exports to Central and Southern California as “co-equal” purposes, which sounds good, but all of the court decisions now give the Public Trust the priority, so it’s actually a downgrade.

The project will largely benefit Westlands Water District, Kern County Water Agency and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (the evil axis).   They think so too (see article below).

In regard to protection of the Trinity River and Trinity Lake, it’s not even mentioned or considered in the bill, but all of you know by looking at Trinity Lake this year that the Bureau of Reclamation has no intention of reducing water deliveries from Trinity to make up for the fact that there are increased flows down the river. Freeing up Delta exports will simply mean that Trinity Lake will get lower and lower, ultimately ending with a huge fish kill because all of the cold water will be gone during drought.

This bill is being sold as supported by environmentalists, but in reality, it’s only the corporate environmental organizations that are getting big grants and projects from Peripheral Canal supporters such as Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy.  There are good people there, but they are also the same ones who sold us out in 1995 with the Bay-Delta Accord and the expensive and disastrous CALFED program that spent billions of State Bond Act money (that we still have to repay) to lease water for fish because they were afraid to enforce the laws which would take water away from Westlands et al.  When the money ran out, the fish died.

I urge you to give Senator Chesbro a call and let him know you don’t want him voting yes on SBX7 1.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me, or go to the website of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance at calsport.org.

Sincerely,

Tom Stokely
Water Policy Coordinator
California Water Impact Network
201 Terry Lynn Ave (USPS and UPS)
Mt Shasta, CA 96067
V/FAX 530-926-9727
Cell    530-524-0315   530-524-0315
tstokely@att.net
http://www.c-win.org/

Capitol Office:
State Capitol
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0001
Tel:    (916) 319-2001   (916) 319-2001
Fax: (916) 319-2101

District Offices

Humboldt:
(Also represents Del Norte and Trinity Counties.)
710 E Street, Suite 150
Eureka, CA 95501
Tel:   (707) 445-7014  (707) 445-7014
Fax: (707) 445-6607

Mendocino & Lake:
311 N. State Street
Ukiah, CA 95482
Tel:  (707) 463-5770  (707) 463-5770
Fax: (707) 463-5773

Sonoma:
50 “D” Street, Suite 450
Santa Rosa, CA 95404
Tel:  (707) 576-2526  (707) 576-2526
Fax: (707) 576-2297

‘Clear path’ proposed for Delta

Stockton Record-10/27/09

By Alex Breitler

A Westlands Water District representative said in a hearing Monday that new Delta legislation would provide “a clear path toward building new conveyance” to send more water to the south San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

“Conveyance” likely means some kind of peripheral canal. While the 116-page bill legislators began dissecting Monday does not directly authorize a canal, it would establish a new “Delta Stewardship Council” with the power to approve or veto such a project if proposed by the state.

The seven-member council would include four members appointed by the governor, two by the Legislature and one from the Delta Protection Commission.

At a glance

The Delta bill, SBX7 1, would:

.. Establish a seven-member Delta council with broad authority, including approval or disapproval of a peripheral canal.

.. Establish a Delta conservancy to restore habitat in the Delta, buying land from willing sellers.

.. Require a 20 percent reduction in urban water use by 2020.

.. Increase fines for those who illegally divert water from rivers or streams.

.. Require groundwater monitoring by local districts or counties.

The council would consider approving the state’s current study of a canal if it meets certain criteria. That study, known as the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, is already under way and focuses on a canal through the eastern Delta, slicing past Stockton on its way to pumps that ship Delta water to the far reaches of the state.

If that plan is adopted by the council, “The BDCP would be implemented and would begin restoration of the Delta and with that have a clear path toward building new conveyance,” said Ed Manning, representing Westlands, which relies on Delta exports and has been forced to fallow hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland in the south Valley due to drought and protections for endangered species.

“We’re happy with the package and the Delta piece the way it is,” said Manning, whose comments came during a joint Senate and Assembly committee hearing.

The bill, authored by Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, is substantially similar to earlier legislation that almost made it to the Senate and Assembly floors late Sept. 11, at the end of legislators’ regular session.

Now the bill is back, and will earn more attention as legislators, this time in special session, try to resolve the three-decade stalemate over water.

Many who rely on water taken upstream of the Delta remain opposed to the latest bill, although the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission – which takes its supply from Hetch Hetchy in the Sierra Nevada – is now in support, saying its concerns have been resolved.

Canal opponents at Monday’s hearing hammered on the reported over-allocation of water in California; more water has been promised than can be delivered.

“The legislation fails to solve the water supply issues,” said Tom Zuckerman, Delta landowner. “It dances all around them. It engages in a 21st-century alchemy to try and make water out of… something, I’m not entirely sure.”

The message from supporters of the bill is a need for compromise from all sides.

“The Delta is one earthquake, one flood away from collapse, and 24 million people could potentially lose their drinking water,” Steinberg said.

“The Legislature has attempted to grapple with these issues for many years, and unsuccessfully,” he said. “Now is our opportunity.”

The legislation goes far beyond the new council. It would also create a conservancy to oversee habitat restoration in the Delta, and would mandate water conservation and crack down on those who divert water illegally.

A multi-billion dollar bond measure to pay for these actions is expected to be introduced later this week, followed by more hearings. Monday’s bill says that those who receive exported Delta water would pay for a canal.

—
Aaron Martin                        
Fisheries Biologist II
Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program
23001 Hwy 96
Hoopa, CA 95546
530-625-4130 ext 1625
707-834-2595 Cell

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Hi gang!
Just got back from Redding and the river looks great. Mr. Trout is fishing it today with two or three boats so he’ll have an up-to-date idea of what works best and where. He said they caught a 4-pound wild rainbow trout on Tuesday.
Here are some details:
–Weather looks great for Monday!
–Flows ideal!
–Big 5, located walking distance from Hilltop Best Western, is open until 7 p.m. Sunday and has licenses, stamps and steelhead card, so we can make sure we have everything right there.
–We depart Black Bear Diner at 9 a.m. Monday. So we’ll do breakfast there at 8. If there are any complications for any of you, 9 a.m. Monday is the drop-dead time when we’ll all take off.
–Bring any of your personal gear to feel comfortable, or call Jack to make sure you’re covered. We’ll probably be using red or pink puff balls, some call Globugs, that simulate salmon eggs — the big salmon spawn in the river here and not all of the eggs get buried, so the big trout sit in the current downstream from spawning sites and pick off the eggs as they occasionally float by. That’s why now is the time!
–If you have any fishing gear questions, or anything else, call Jack Trout at (530) 926-4540. He can provide anything you need, but it helps to let him know. His website www.jacktrout.com has lots of photo adventures of similar trips.
–Let me know what time to meet you all at the bar at the Best Western on Sunday night so we can head out to dinner. I’ll probably go down early and play cards with the human ATMs at the Casino Club down the street until its time to eat.
This has been a rough week for me so I am really looking forward to a day with the boys!
See you,

Tom Stienstra                    
 

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SANDY — As dams go, Marmot Dam on the Sandy River wasn’t huge. But now that it’s gone, its impact is turning out to be enormous.

The removal of the nearly 50-foot-high dam by Portland General Electric in October gave scientists perhaps their best chance to watch as a river digested a vast amount of rocks, sand and gravel collected over many decades in a reservoir.

Some had worried that sediment piled behind the dam would suffocate salmon and block tributaries downstream. It did nothing of the sort. In fact, the river has since digested the equivalent of about 150 Olympic-size swimming pools full of sediment — without a hiccup.

“Never has this much sediment been released at once into such an active and hungry river,” said Gordon Grant, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station. He has studied the dam removal and given presentations on the results at conferences from Sacramento to Venice, Italy.

He was just invited to give his Marmot Dam talk in China.

“There’s a global interest right now in river restoration,” Grant said. “Marmot is certainly one of the best-documented and most spectacular examples of dam removal in the sense that the river was allowed to process the material itself.”

The river has so far removed about half the material backed up behind the dam. It’s difficult to tell that a dam once blocked the popular salmon stream. The river shoves and piles gravel and cuts into the shore the way a healthy river should.

Scientists were especially impressed with how rapidly the river scoured the sediment away. Some models predicted the river would need two to five years to carry off half the sediment pile, but it did so in months.

Though some officials had worried that the sediment would linger and pose an obstacle to fish, federally protected coho salmon were swimming upriver the day after the dam crumbled. Salmon spawned in the river as they always have.

“This was a grand experiment that came out just like people hoped it would,” said John Esler, project manager in PGE’s hydropower licensing division.

The river’s rapid recovery might help answer questions that may have held up removal of other dams. But Grant cautions against making the leap that removal of major dams on the Klamath River in southern Oregon and northern California would be as smooth or easy as the Sandy dam. “That is a very different river system.”

“Blow and go”

Marmot Dam was built in 1913, part of a system of dams and flumes to generate power. But PGE decided in 1999 that updating it to help declining fish runs would cost more than the dam was worth for the hydroelectric power it generated.

A coalition of PGE and 22 environmental groups worked out a plan to remove the dam. A key question was whether PGE should mechanically scoop out the sediment behind the dam or simply “blow and go” — blast the dam with explosives and let the sediment go.

The decision was to blow and go. But concern remained that the loosed sediment might bury salmon spawning areas downstream, so teams collected wild fall chinook salmon from spawning areas beforehand. The fish went to a hatchery, where they were spawned, and fry were raised to be released into the river to keep the stock going.

The young wild fish were so skittish in the hatchery that they raced away from people who walked by their tanks, said Todd Alsbury, a fish biologist overseeing the project for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The hatchery had to use an automated system to feed them.

The spawning areas were fine, but biologists released the young fish after the dam was removed to help support the river’s fish population.

The dam never blocked salmon passage: A fish ladder allowed fish to get past the dam. Ironically, some fish advocates were disappointed to see the dam go because it actually kept hatchery-raised fish from mingling with wild salmon above the dam.

Biologists could sort the fish as they entered the fish ladder, allowing the wild fish upstream past the dam but keeping the hatchery fish out. That had effectively made the region upstream a sanctuary for wild fish.

“In a way, it’s too bad the dam’s gone,” said Bill Bakke, executive director of the Native Fish Society. But he recognizes that lessons from the dam’s removal will create momentum for removing other dams. “That lays more groundwork for a lot more dam removals, which have value for our rivers.”

Fish hatchery shifted

The Fish and Wildlife Department shifted its Sandy fish hatchery in the years before the dam removal to raise fish stocks native to the Sandy, rather than more generic hatchery fish it used to raise. Releasing native fish reduced the risk of diluting the genes of the wild fish population. The release of hatchery fish will support continued fishing close to Portland, Alsbury said.

Another big plus for fish is that the dam no longer will divert water from the Sandy to a remote powerhouse. That means more water will remain in the river for fish, especially important in the summer heat, when flows typically decline.

“One of the best things to come out of this is learning how it can be done, and done successfully,” Alsbury said. “I really just could not believe how quickly it looked natural again.”

Removing the dam makes for faster and easier fish access to about 100 miles of river above the dam. The project also calls for removing a dam on the Little Sandy this summer, opening six miles of salmon stream that had been completely blocked.

Walking around the former dam site, PGE’s Esler points out tree stumps that had been underwater since the dam was built in 1913. Now the river is cutting into the earth alongside, dropping trees and rocks into the river that will provide new habitat for fish. “Everything’s going to benefit a little,” he said. “It’s not so much the short term. It’s the long term.”

Researchers have found that about 80 percent of the sediment that has washed downriver has spread out over the two miles below the dam, Grant said.

PGE is donating much of the land in the area to public use, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management hopes to tie a trail network together along the river.

It’s a river that’s now ever-changing. A new island of gravel and sediment has built up below where the dam used to be. Rocks and logs fill pools along the river’s edge. Alsbury spots a young steelhead hovering in a pool.

“This is the kind of complexity you love to see,” Esler said.

Michael Milstein: 503-294-7689; michaelmilstein@ news.oregonian.com For environment news, go to oregonlive.com/environment