Study shows Bureau of Reclamation is denying the state’s salmon the water they need to survive – even in wet years.
From the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN)
An analysis sponsored by the California Water Impact Network confirms the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) – the federal agency that controls flows from Shasta Dam down the Sacramento River – is violating its own policies to maximize water deliveries to corporate farms at the expense of California’s once mighty salmon runs.
The study by estuarine fisheries ecologist and biostatistician Tom Cannon shows that BoR consistently ignores its own plan and state and federal law requiring the release of salmon-sustaining cold water from Shasta Reservoir. The practice continues today, even though 2023 was one of California’s wettest years on record, with plenty of water available for the fish. While the agency has justified these actions during droughts as a needed water conservation measure, it has refused to increase fishery flows even during years of abundant precipitation and maximum reservoir storage.
As C-WIN expert policy consultant Max Gomberg confirms, BoR’s undermining of the law is nothing new. Gomberg observes that both federal and state regulators routinely ignore explicit legal requirements for the operation of California’s two major water transport projects: the federal Central Valley Project (CVP) and the State Water Project (SWP). These actions have devastated California’s iconic salmon runs for the direct benefit of San Joaquin Valley corporate agriculture, which receives most of the state’s developed water. BoR operates Shasta Reservoir under federal and state water quality permits and orders, which include Sacramento River water temperature specifications downstream from Shasta Dam. If these criteria are not met, both adult and juvenile salmon perish in large numbers. This has happened consistently in recent years – including the wet years 2011, 2017, and 2019 – and it’s happening again in 2023, the “wettest” year of all.
For 2023, BoR has acknowledged it has no intention of meeting federally mandated temperature standards in reaches of the Sacramento River essential for salmon. This decision, observes Cannon, violates federal and state water quality standards, the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, and state water rights permits. Water temperatures have already reached lethal levels for upriver-migrating adult salmon and downriver-migrating young salmon (smolts), and conditions will only worsen through the remainder of summer and into fall.
BoR’s actions may seem puzzling, given the agency is charged with both delivering water from Shasta Reservoir for the CVP and protecting the Sacramento River’s beleaguered salmon runs. But the reason is clear – though never articulated by BoR managers. As Gomberg notes, roughly 90% of the CVP’s transported water is earmarked for corporate farms in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys – and these powerful beneficiaries wield tremendous influence with federal and state government agencies and legislators. It’s therefore expedient for managers in BoR and its supervisorial agency, the U.S. Department of Interior, to blatantly ignore legal restraints, drive California’s salmon to the brink of extinction, violate the law, and betray the public trust. When the salmon are gone, all legal constraints on the delivery of water to San Joaquin Valley corporate agriculture will disappear as well.
CWIN_Extinction_July2023SEE ALSO: Sacramento River 2023 Temperature Management Plan – What is Missing, from Tom Cannon at the California Fisheries blog
