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Bulletin Board

The Sacramento River

The Sacramento River is toxic 50% of the time to bioassay test species, often exceeds water quality criteria for pesticides, copper, lead and mercury, yet supplies 80% of the Estuary's freshwater. These are three major reasons why the Central Valley Regional Board has deemed the river basin a priority watershed worthy of a combined new watershed management and toxic pollutant control effort.

The pollutant component will implement basinwide water quality monitoring, develop site-specific water quality standards for the river (where appropriate), evaluate pollutant control options for point and nonpoint sources, and develop a program to meet any new standards. It will also serve as the water quality component of the board's new Sacramento River Watershed Program, which seeks to integrate all pollution control and natural resource stewardship programs on a watershed scale.

"The metal problem starts at the top of the watershed with the Shasta mines and reaches all the way down to copper inputs to the South Bay," says the Board's Val Connor. "If you really want to address the problem you have to deal with the whole 26,000 square mile river watershed." Connor is now seeking participants for a stakeholder group of farmers, dischargers, water users, miners, fisherpeople, nature lovers and the like. (916)255-3111

Red-Legged Frog Listed

An old dinner-delicacy - the California red-legged frog - recently leapt onto the threatened species list. The decision marked the first federal listing under the Endangered Species Act in over a year, ending a moratorium on all federal listing activities enacted by Congress in April 1995. The frog, which dwells in small, coastal wetlands and freshwater streams from Marin County down to Ventura, has suffered from habitat loss, stream sedimentation and exotic predators such as the bullfrog. U.S. Fish & Wildlife's Karen Miller expects the listing to provide greater leverage in denying frog-threatening habitat alterations. (916)979-2710

Salmon, Smelt Recovery Plans

Officials are wrapping up two recovery plans for fish in follow-up to the 1993 listing of Delta smelt and 1990 listing of winter-run Chinook salmon as endangered species. The smelt joined a suite of six other native Delta fish in one of the new-style ecosystem-based, rather than single species based, recovery plans U.S. Fish & Wildlife has embraced since 1994. The Final Delta Native Fishes Recovery Plan was completed this June.

Meanwhile, Draft Recommendations for Recovery of Sacramento River Winter-Run Chinook Salmon were completed in March 1996 and are now being reviewed by agencies before release for public comment. Salmon recovery is also pushed in the March 1996 draft Anadromous Fish Restoration Plan. This 176-action plan created to meet the Central Valley Project Improvement Act goal of doubling anadromous fish populations - is due for finalization this summer. (310)980-4021 (salmon); (916)979-2752 (Delta fishes); (209)946-6400 (AFRP)

Water Districts' Deal

"A threat to the truce," is what one environmentalist called a deal proposed by San Joaquin valley agricultural water districts and big city water users to the State Water Board this spring. The deal would decrease minimum San Joaquin river pulse flows at Vernalis set under the Bay-Delta Accord to protect fall-run salmon and Delta smelt - a minimum the dealmakers agreed to when they signed onto the accord along with government and environmental interests in 1994.

The deal proposes a flow reduction from 3000-8000 cfs over 30 days during the critical fall-run migration period to 2000-5000 cfs, flows that U.S. Fish & Wildlife's Marty Kjelson says aren't anywhere near enough to meet federal and state goals of doubling anadromous fish. Also irking environmentalists is a January filing by the City of San Francisco, also an original accord signer, in support of a lawsuit brought by the San Joaquin group last year which challenges the scientific backing of Vernalis flows. In the meantime, the San Joaquin group argues that their proposal is entirely consistent with the spirit of the accord and would even increase the level of environmental protection for San Joaquin River salmon.

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