Guides, conservationists demand moratorium on Trinity River channel projects

Guides, conservationists demand moratorium on Trinity River channel projects

By Dan Bacher

History is repeating itself on the Trinity River as fishing guides and environmental activists unite to stop a controversial channel restoration project funded by the federal government.

In 1993, Byron Leydecker, the late founder of Friends of the Trinity River, got stuck in the mud while fishing on the river with Herb Burton of Trinity Fly Shop. The sediment was discharged into the river by a restoration project funded by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The incident so outraged the two anglers that it led to the formation of a broad coalition of recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, environmentalists, the Hoopa Valley Tribe, the Yurok Tribe and local residents to restore the Trinity River back to its former greatness as a fishery.

The river restoration campaign led to the Trinity Record of Decision signed by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and former Hoopa Valley Tribe Chairman Duane Sherman in Hoopa on December 19, 2000. The ROD, for the first time ever since the construction of Trinity Dam, allowed 47 percent of the water to flow down the Trinity rather than being diverted to the Sacramento River via Whiskeytown Reservoir.

Now fishermen and environmentalists say the future of the Trinity River is threatened by the same misguided projects that spurred the campaign to restore the Trinity in the first place. On November 28, the Trinity River Guides Association and the California Water Impact Network asked the Trinity River Restoration Program to "take a break" to determine if river restoration projects completed to date have met their objectives or had unintended impacts.

The letter states that there is public concern about significant filling of pool habitat for adult salmon and steelhead from excessive gravel introduction into the river channel as well as numerous side channel failures.

“Numerous side channels constructed in the Trinity River prior to and since the 2000 Trinity Record of Decision (Trinity ROD) have completely failed,” according to the letter. “The 80,000 tons of spawning gravel placed in the river near Lewiston over the past few years have continued to overwhelm approximately twenty significant adult fish holding/staging pools in the river upstream of Douglas City, with no scouring of additional pools to replace them.”

Bill Dickens of the Guides Association said, “There is no choice but to oppose this type of project until an evaluation of the existing projects is complete. We are just asking the Restoration Program to do what is already required as part of the Trinity River Record of Decision.”

“As fishing guides, we fully support restoration of the river’s fisheries, but we’re not convinced that they are doing it the right way. It’s time to take a break and look at what’s been done before tens of millions of additional taxpayer dollars are spent,” Dickens noted.

Tom Stokely with C-WIN said, “The Interior Department and the Trinity River Restoration Program are not responsive to public concerns. The Guides Association wrote a letter on March 14, 2011 that has still not received a response. It’s inexcusable.”

C-WIN is the successor organization to Friends of Trinity River that closed earlier this year after the passing of Friends founder Byron Leydecker, according to Stokely.

Robin Schrock, the program’s executive director, defended the restoration work in an interview with the Redding Record Searchlight (http://www.redding.com/news/2011/dec/01/trinity-river-advocates-denounce-restoration). She claimed the program has followed the guidelines of the Record of Decision authorizing the work.

However, Stokely emphasized that fishery restoration goals for the Trinity River Restoration Program are not being met while the projects continue. A review of DFG data reveals that the goals for naturally spawning fall chinook, spring chinook, fall steelhead and fall coho were not met in 2010. The hatchery count for steelhead was not met either.

The goal for fall chinook salmon is 62,000 naturally spawning adult fish and 9,000 adult hatchery fish. The natural spawner count in 2010, 20,876, was 34 percent of the goal. The number of hatchery fall chinooks in 2010, 8,953, was 99 percent of the goal.

The adult spring chinook goal is 6,000 natural fish and 3,000 hatchery fish. The natural spring run chinook count for 2010 was 4,477, 75 percent of the goal. The hatchery spring run count was 3,880, 129 percent of the goal.

The goal for fall steelhead is 40,000 natural and 10,000 hatchery adults. The natural steelhead count in 2010 was 3,811 fish, 10 percent of the goal. The hatchery steelhead count was 4,640 fish, 46 percent of the goal.

The coho salmon goal is 1,400 natural adults and 2,100 hatchery fish. The natural coho count in 2010 was 817, 58 percent of the goal. The hatchery coho count was 5,852, 279 percent of the goal.

A copy of the letter can be found at: http://c-win.org/webfm_send/199

The campaign by the river guides and environmentalists to stop the controversial restoration project takes place as the Brown and Obama administrations are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build a peripheral canal or tunnel. The purpose of the peripheral canal, referred as “improved conveyance” by state and federal officials, is to expedite the export of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and the Trinity River to corporate agribusiness and southern California water agencies.

“The Trinity River is at great risk from increased Delta exports," said Stokely. “Anything that reduces pumping restrictions on the Delta adversely impacts the Trinity River by allowing Trinity Lake to be drawn down even more than it is already.”

Leonard Masten, chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, on July, 2, 2010 slammed the state-federal peripheral canal plans in a press release that called on the Legislature to repeal the water bond, Proposition 18, rather than to postpone it until 2012.

Masten noted that the proposition, known as the Safe, Clean and Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act, "is not really about drinking water."

"It’s about building and privatizing taxpayer-built dams and moving the control of the California’s water from the public trust to the private sector," he said. "The measure also paves the way for the construction of a peripheral canal that would more easily ship Northern California Water south."

Masten said he agreed with the statement by Mark Franco, then headman of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, that "The peripheral canal is a big, stupid idea that doesn’t make any sense from a tribal environmental perspective. Building a canal to save the Delta is like a doctor inserting an arterial bypass from your shoulder to your hand– it will cause your elbow to die just like taking water out of the Delta through a peripheral canal will cause the Delta to die.”

Delta and Trinity River advocates oppose the canal because it will likely result in the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and green sturgeon, as well as imperiling Trinity River salmon and steelhead runs.