Delta Fishing Report

Commission votes against pursuing striped bass eradication proposal

The California Fish and Game Commission rejects DFG's proposal to new striper regs. See Fishing News

B and S Bait at McAvoy’s Boat Harbor in Bay Point in ground zero for the Super Bowl Sturgeon Derby, and they are loading up on live bait for the weekend. It is advisable to make your reservation by Wednesday 2-1 since they are ordering bait in the afternoon. Several sturgeon have been landed over the past several days, and there have been a large number of fishermen out fishing since the start of the week searching for the fish. All of the early boat pressure should move the fish around prior to Saturday, especially in the shallow waters.

Clyde Wands, shallow water trolling expert, took a trip on Monday along the Sacramento River. They trolled west of the Rio Vista Bridge for several miles before finding a patch of fish. The water temperature was 49 degrees, but they were still able to find biting fish, landing five linesides to 24-inches. He said, “The stripers are still biting lightly in the cold water, but they were biting.” He had good results on the Alabama rig on the recent trip to the Port of Sacramento, but it was not effective on Monday.

Randy Pringle, the Fishing Instructor, said the warm daytime temperatures are bringing the largemouth bass into the shallows, and he has been scoring with Persuader spinnerbaits with a magnum willow leaf blade in chartreuse/white or gold/gold as the water is very clear in the San Joaquin River. Deep diving chartreuse Timber Tiger or the Poe’s Bull Bluegill crankbaits on the outside edge of the weed line in 8 to 15 feet of water. The key is to keep the lure in the strike zone for an extended period of time.

News from Restore the Delta

Public input on canal planning

The 3-hour January 25 Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) public meeting was devoted to presentations on eight chapters of the BDCP draft by consultants ICF International. Most of the time was spent on appendices to the chapter that analyze biological effects of the plan, and on public comments and questions related to those appendices. With an audience of 40-50 people, plus call-in participants, there were a lot of comments and questions.

Without getting into important technical issues raised by Delta supporters, here are some interesting points that emerged:

The South Delta turns out not to be a very good place for habitat for "covered" (endangered) species. Anticipated temperature changes will make the water too warm. However, that area will still be useful for fish passage and food production - for fish. When the consultant mentioned food production, she didn't mean agriculture.

Consultants used 17 different models to analyze water flows. Contra Costa Water District's Greg Gartrell suggested that consultants might be failing to analyze the precision of the models. For example, one model they used assumes that the San Francisco Bay will not be affected by sea level rise. Gartrell cautioned against believing the models without thinking about what they actually mean.

Ann Spaulding of the City of Antioch noted that noted that BDCP will result in more salt in the western Delta. The consultant agreed, noting that that situation was driven by climate change (a regular scapegoat in the day's discussions), restoration, and less Sacramento River water. For the consultant, less Sacramento River water is just a given, a factor in an equation. Resources Deputy Secretary Jerry Meral, who was chairing the meeting, acknowledged the significance of Spaulding's comment. The question, he said, is What are we going to do about it? But before he could address that question, Westlands' Jason Peltier interrupted with a comment on a different issue, and Meral never got back to the issue of salinity in the western Delta.

Bill Wells of the Delta Chambers and Visitors Bureau asked whether anyone could point to other situations where a restoration effort like this has worked. Someone mentioned the channelizing of Florida's Kissimmee River, a project that is now being reversed to restore habitat. Meral hastened to point out that the situation in Florida is different. "It didn't work," he joked, "but look at the jobs it created." Even Westlands' Peltier didn't think this was funny.

George Hartmann, attorney for several Delta reclamation districts, noted that Governor Brown announced recently that he thinks we should build conveyance now and get to habitat later. (What the Governor said is, "Our obstacle [to an initial plan for the conveyance project] is not the big water bond there. It's the environmental impact report and the state and federal permits, that's what we've got to do. . . . Then at some point, we've got to have the money for the habitat restoration, but these are 50-year programs . . . .")

Meral had a complicated and not very reassuring answer to that, winding up with Brown meaning that you wouldn't want to do habitat all at once because you might get it wrong. A federal fish representative noted that there would have to be a clear schedule for habitat restoration in order for the take permits to be valid. "Do you really believe," asked Hartmann, "that the permits wouldn't be amended [to allow project operations to continue]?"

Anyone who has been following water projects operations for the last 40 years knows that the permits would certainly be amended to enable exporters to get the water they wanted.

As for implementing the BDCP, Deirdre Des Jardins of California Water Research Associates wanted to know what entity - the Delta Stewardship Council? the Department of Water Resources? the Legislature? - would enact governance changes. Meral said that the Implementation Board would consist of DWR, the Bureau of Reclamation, and permitted agencies. That appears to give the water contractors quite a lot of authority over a plan that is supposed to govern their activities. How concerned can we expect them to be about the public trust?

At this point, nobody seems to know who's going to be in charge.

This month's smoke and mirrors

If you are having trouble keeping track of what's going on here, you're in good company. We have the BDCP going forward with a plan that the 2009 legislation said was supposed to be incorporated into the Delta Plan. But the Delta Stewardship Council plowed on ahead to produce a draft Delta Plan WITHOUT the BDCP and has done a draft EIR (environmental impact report), on which interested parties are hurrying to comment before February 2. They're commenting on a Delta Plan that is missing its most controversial constituent. In fact, despite the fact that the Delta Plan Draft EIR is thousands of pages long, there is no actual project in it at all.

Meanwhile, the 2009 legislation directed the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) to develop flow criteria to determine appropriate water diversion amounts associated with BDCP. The SWRCB did that in 2010. But a coalition of water contractors has asked the SWRCB to delay setting Delta outflow objectives until AFTER the BDCP is complete. They're concerned that the Board's 2010 Delta Flow Criteria would interfere with other beneficial uses of water.

In other words, they want to wait to set outflow objectives until AFTER they've completed their plan for diverting Sacramento River water away from the Delta.

You can read the letter here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/78877062/SWRCB-Water-Power-Letter

Next up is the EIR for the BDCP, which will have to analyze alternative sizes of diversions. But all the analysis so far is predicated on a conveyance capacity of 15,000 cfs.

Where there's a will, there's a way to pay?

Natural Resources Secretary John Laird has added his voice to those who want to slow down on flow studies and determinations for the Delta. He's also asking outside groups not to engage in discussions with legislators about water conveyance, Delta levees, or financing, saying that such discussions are premature.

It looks like problems with financing high speed rail may be spilling over into the peripheral canal debate.

The Governor doesn't want to talk about the water bond. In this economy, an $11.14 billion general obligation bond is going to be a hard sell, and he is more interested in taking a new tax plan to California voters.

Besides, the bond explicitly does not provide funding for the design, construction, operation, or maintenance of Delta conveyance facilities.

So where is the money supposed to come from? A potential financing solution is buried in the Fifth Draft of the Delta Plan, discovered by Deirdre Des Jardins: The Delta Stewardship Council wants revenue bond authority to implement the Delta Plan, which is understood to include conveyance once the BDCP is incorporated.

Revenue bonds are bonds repaid solely from revenues generated by a specific revenue generating entity. The DSC doesn't generate revenues, so they would have to find a fiscal partner who does generate revenues. Presumably, that would be the water contractors, who will be collecting revenues from beneficiaries of the project. But with or without a fiscal partner, it isn't clear that the DSC even has revenue bonding authority.

Meanwhile, the flaws in the "beneficiary pays" plan for paying for Delta conveyance are becoming clear. Most farmers won't be able to afford the water, and urban water agencies are finding their ratepayers are increasingly reluctant to pay more for imported water.

A cost/benefit analysis of the BDCP and Delta conveyance would clarify some of those issues. We expect to see a bill calling for such a cost/benefit analysis introduced in the legislature shortly.

We are asking readers to take just three minutes to write a letter to the DFG Commission. Please send your letter to stop the striped bass eradication plan through the water4fish.org website. It only takes a few clicks. If your organization would like to sign as a supporter of this letter, contact Dick Pool, rbpool@protroll.com. For my report on the DFG public meeting on this proposal, go to: http://www.fishsniffer.com/content/1500-public-voices-100-percent-opposition-striped-bass-reduction-plan.html.

Urgent Action Alert!

Send letters opposing the DFG's striped bass proposal to:
California Fish and Game Commission
P.O. Box 944209
Sacramento, CA 94244-2090

Phone: (916) 653-4899
Fax Number: (916) 653-5040

E-Mail to Submit Comments on Proposed Regulations: fgc@fgc.ca.gov.

For more information about upcoming Fish and Game Commission meetings, go to: http://www.fgc.ca.gov.