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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Ag water use tied to ruling on smelt Battle starts Tuesday in Fresno courtroom By MICHAEL DOYLE Environmentalists have a plan to protect the tiny delta smelt, but the idea will require time, money and more than 1 million acre-feet of water that Central Valley farmers say they can't afford to lose. The stage is set for a courtroom face-off. On Tuesday, lawyers and scientists will bring their clash before a federal judge in Fresno, where they will fight over how to preserve the slender-bodied fish that casts an outsized political shadow. "The time for timid, tentative actions to protect the smelt and other declining species is past," University of California at Davis biologist Peter Moyle wrote in a legal filing. In reply, farmers' attorneys warn of "devastating impacts for agriculture." Water contractors say that if California suffers another dry year, agriculture on the San Joaquin Valley's west side could potentially lose all federal irrigation water. "This will result in significant hardship, not only on the landowner but on the local communities and economies that are highly dependent on local agricultural activities for jobs, service and supplies," said Del Puerto Water District General Manager William Harrison. The Del Puerto district irrigates 45,000 acres of farmland on the west side of Merced, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. Like the much larger Westlands Water District, Del Puerto now has its fate tied to the smelt and the lawsuit initiated in 2005 as Natural Resources Defense Council v. Norton. The smelt was the most populous fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta at one time. Now, it is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Described in one legal filing as "small, fragile and poor swimmers," the smelt have lost their habitat, been sucked into pumps and become trapped in fish screens. Since June, despite the fish's protected status, environmentalists report that about 1,605 delta smelt have been killed by state and federal pumps. "The delta smelt cannot sustain further losses like this if it is to survive," Natural Resources Defense Council attorneys said. But Dan Nelson, executive director of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, said, "The tragedy and outrage is that the proposal submitted by environmental groups ignores 95 percent of the causes for a declining fish population in the delta." Nelson said scientists have concluded that other factors — such as loss of food supplies and the introduction of foreign plant and fish species — have altered the environment, which in turn has had a greater impact on the smelt numbers. Reducing the water supply to the Central Valley and the Bay Area will bring no long-term benefits to the smelt, he added. As part of the lawsuit, the environmentalists have proposed a sweeping plan that will be the subject of Tuesday's hearing before U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger. The plan and its potential consequences have spurred voluminous court filings that underscore the gap between environmentalists and farmers. They can't agree on the most fundamental facts. Environmentalists say their smelt-protection plan would require 1.5 million acre-feet of water, or about 9 percent of the average deliveries over the past several decades. Farmers say the plan would need as much as 3 million acre-feet. Environmentalists say the delta smelt is "near extinction." Government scientists estimate there are more than 1 million delta smelt. Environmentalists say farmers can readily ease the conservation burden by switching to different crops and installing more efficient irrigation systems. Economists hired by farmers say agricultural losses under the environmentalists' plan could range from $111 million to $484 million next year . "At certain times of the year, the west side is growing 90 percent of some of the different types of produce available in the U.S.," Nelson said. "It is incredible what is being proposed here." In any event, environmentalists argue that the cost of saving the smelt shouldn't be taken into account. The environmentalists' proposed 10-point plan covers several areas. Monitoring. Officials, for instance, would check for smelt four times a day — "evenly spaced in time during both the day and night" — at state and federal water facilities. Managing water flow. Officials, for instance, would maintain water flowing through the delta at certain minimum levels during the fall. This would increase the amount of low-salinity habitat the smelt like. Managing irrigation contracts. Environmentalists want dozens of long-term contracts in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys rescinded and replaced with a one-year contract to allow terms to be renegotiated. "The Bureau (of Reclamation) executed the long-term water contract renewals based on the … faulty conclusion that the water deliveries would not jeopardize the delta smelt," the NRDC attorneys argued. Westlands Water District Deputy General Manager James Snow declared that "deliveries to south of delta agricultural contractors would be reduced to zero" under the environmentalists' plan. Westlands farmers say that this, in turn, will cause more groundwater pumping, widespread fallowing of land and the potential loss of permanent crops. "Here we are in the place where the debate is showing other factors affecting the decline of the delta smelt," Nelson said, "and yet the only thing on the table is curtailing the water deliveries."
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