Experts: Water tunnels’ esect on Calirornia fish depends

SAN FRANCISCO — Gov.jerrybrown’splantoroutemuchof California’s mightiest river into two massive tunnels poses new perils for salmon and other struggling native species, but could give them a couple of breaks as well, experts and project supporters and opponents say in the wake of two newly issued wildlife rulings on the $16 billion project.

Ultimately,waterexpertssay, whether Brown’s two 35-mile tunnels hurt salmon, whales and other imperiled species depends, as always, on the intent and smarts of the officials who manage the Sacramento River’s delta with the San Joaquin River, that fought-over, overtapped spigot for the U.S. state with the most people, most crops and the biggest estuary on the West Coast.

“People just don’t trust that it will be operated as planned,” Peter Moyle, a professor emeritus and fishery expert at the University of California at Davis, notes of Brown’s tunnels project.

The giant tunnels would make it easier to ship water from California’s wetter north to cities and farms in the San Francisco Bay and Central and Southern California, even during droughts. They got an initial, crucial OK from federal fish and wildlife officials this week.

Moyle’s career has followed decades of decline of native fish in California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their Delta, now re-engineered with dams, pumps, levees and canals to supply at least part of the water supply for twothirds of the state’s people. The complex north-south water delivery system has helped put three-fourths of the state’s salmon and trout species on the path to extinction within 100 years, according to a study Moyle and others released earlier this year.

Another Delta native fish, the small and silvery Delta smelt, is so near extinction that scientists talk of freezing samples to preserve its genes. In the 1980s, the smelt were so plentiful that researchers once sampled them by the pickup load, Moyle recounts.

Brown’s father, the late Gov. Pat Brown, helped put in the water projects that the younger Brown now wants to modernize. He is pushing to get the tunnels approved before he leaves office next year.

Moyle is on the side of those open to letting Brown’s administration and a bloc of influential local water districts put in their tunnels. If nothing else, getting their way will incline supporters to follow through on separate, longstanding pledges to restore a big part of the Delta as fish habitat, he hopes.