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'Trump administration pulls funding for endangered California fish at
heart of water wars'
<
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/delta-smelt-trump-20146471.php>
'Following President Trump’s recent criticism of the delta smelt — a
fish he has tied to the lack of water for fighting the Los Angeles fires
— his administration is planning to cut funding for a captive breeding program intended to ensure survival of the endangered fish.
UC Davis scientists who run the little-known Fish Conservation and
Culture Laboratory in Contra Costa County were told last month that
their financing from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, to maintain a
refuge population of smelt for research and reintroduction, will not be renewed, university officials told the Chronicle. The funding expires
Feb. 28. The bureau did not provide a reason, the UC Davis officials
said.
University officials say they have enough money from other funding
sources to continue the smelt conservation program in some form,
probably through the end of the year. But they would need additional
dollars to carry on longer. They’ve already notified 11 of the lab’s 17 employees that they’ll likely be let go when the federal money lapses, indicating a significant cutback in operations.
Managers of the lab are still figuring out their future and that of the
smelt.
“The UC Davis Fish Culture and Conservation Laboratory’s work is vital
for the long-term health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the
endangered aquatic life currently at the site, including the delta
smelt,” university spokesman Bill Kisliuk said in an email to the
Chronicle. “We are disappointed that the current Bureau of Reclamation
grant has not been renewed for this facility.”
The Bureau of Reclamation, which provides about three-quarters of the
lab’s budget, did not immediately respond to inquiries from the
Chronicle about the discontinuation of funding. The agency has been
providing the hatchery program about $3 million annually through a
five-year grant.
Delta smelt, which live in tiny numbers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin
River Delta and San Francisco Bay, have become a political football in
the high-stakes debate over how much water to pump from California’s
rivers to cities and farms.
Environmental and fishing groups have long fought for protection of the
3-inch smelt, seeing it as foundational to the natural landscape and a bellwether of the health of the ecologically and commercially important bay-delta estuary. Many urban and agricultural water users, meanwhile,
have criticized the fish and its protections for limiting the pumping of
delta water, which serves nearly 30 million Californians.
Under Endangered Species Act rules, delta pumping must be curtailed when conditions there don’t support the smelt.
Since 2016, when Trump first ran for president, he has taken aim at the
smelt for constricting water supplies. He’s long been supportive of
sending more water to farms in the agriculturally rich San Joaquin
Valley. Last month, however, he took his criticism of the fish to a new
level.
In posts to social media and a memorandum and executive order, Trump
implied that protections for the fish kept adequate water from flowing
to Southern California, including where the deadly blazes broke out in
Los Angeles County.
Gov. Gavin Newsom wanted “to protect an essentially worthless fish
called a smelt,” Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after the fires
broke out. “Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that
this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW
INTO CALIFORNIA!”
A memorandum signed Jan. 20 by the president, titled “Putting People
Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to
Southern California,” calls for a review of fish protections in an
effort to boost delta pumping, saying that the “deadly and historically destructive wildfires in Southern California underscore why the State of California needs a reliable water supply.”
Water and wildfire experts say water supply issues in Los Angeles during
the fires are unrelated to the smelt. While some firefighters struggled
to get water from fire hydrants during the recent blazes, the issue was
largely water pressure problems caused by the huge instantaneous demand
rather than a lack of water exports from the delta 300 miles away.
The Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory was established in 1996 to
save the delta smelt. Once the most populous fish in the delta’s
brackish waters, smelt numbers have plummeted to the point that
scientists struggle to find them. Their decline is due to a number of
factors, including loss of habitat, worsening water conditions and too
much pumping.
The lab in the small delta community of Byron has since become home to
the only viable captive population of smelt for rearing new fish,
reintroducing them and safeguarding the species from extinction.
“There are so few delta smelt in the wild that you are basically keeping
them going with this operation,” said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at
the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy
Center.
Should the delta smelt vanish, myriad questions would emerge about the
future of the delta and how it’s managed. Ostensibly, protections for
the fish would eventually be lifted and pumping in the delta would face
less regulation. The federal government, through the Bureau of
Reclamation’s Central Valley Project, as well as the state, through the
State Water Project, run the pumps to export delta water.
“There may be a calculation here that is never spoken about publicly:
Letting delta smelt go extinct would increase the flexibility of Central
Valley Project operations,” Mount said.
The rollback of regulations protecting smelt would also mean less
protection for other endangered fish, including salmon and sturgeon,
which benefit from safeguards enjoyed by smelt, such as the curtailments
of pumping.
More immediately, though, if the hatchery program can’t be sustained,
the loss of the facility is likely to draw criticism and even legal
action from the environmental community.
Permits that allow the federal and state projects to pump water from the
delta are based on biological opinions that factor in the existence of
the conservation program. If the program shuts down or significantly
downsizes, the pumping could be seen as inconsistent with the terms of
the permits, opening it to possible challenges.
“The operation of this hatchery is linked to water-supply reliability in
the state of California,” said Ted Sommer, a retired lead scientist for
the California Department of Water Resources, who has worked as a
liaison between regulatory agencies and the water projects. “This
program has been widely supported. I imagine the state and the feds will
try to put their heads together with the university and figure out how
to keep things going. … But I just don’t know'
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