Delta pumping continues amid worries about fish

Federal officials on Friday approved short-term pumping limits from the Delta that are higher than a team of experts had recommended days earlier to protect imperiled fish.

In theory, the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could lead to the first use of a controversial new law that allows higher levels of pumping under certain circumstances. The drought-related provisions were tucked into a broader water infrastructure bill approved by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in December.

In a written decision on Friday, the agency said it had concluded that vulnerable Delta smelt had already migrated to spawning areas and thus were not in need of a higher level of protection. That’s contrary to recommendations from the fish experts, who called for “immediate additional protections beyond those currently in place.”

The situation shows how complicated Delta pumping can be during the winter, when storms provide the opportunity to divert large amounts of water at the same time that fish nearing extinction need added protection.

A massive storm that pummeled California over the weekend was expected to provide high enough river flows to keep fish away from the export pumps while also allowing for safe increased pumping, said Shane Hunt, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Sacramento.

“Given where the storm is going to hit, we’re going to see San Joaquin River inflows come up quite a bit,” Hunt said.

High flows on the San Joaquin means that two other channels, the Old and Middle rivers, may not flow backward toward the pumps as rapidly, if at all. That would be good news for the fish, since the backward flows draw them closer to death at the pumps; it would also be good news for water users from the Bay Area to San Diego who would benefit from more pumping during the wet days to come.

Even if the storm delivers, Bill Jennings, an environmentalist and head of the Stockton-based California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, called Friday’s decision to go with higher pumping levels an example of “political decision-makers overriding scientists.”

The group that called for greater protections includes experts from the very agencies that operate the pumps; their ongoing review of pumping operations is required under a set of rules known as “biological opinions” to satisfy the Endangered Species Act.

"The biological opinions and the recommendations of the expert technical teams are not being followed” by agency administrators, Jennings said.

Adding yet another layer of complexity is the new law, negotiated by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, which is intended to provide more water during big storms when river flows are high. Those storms are also a sensitive time for fish.

The Delta smelt are drawn into rivers that storms have clouded with mud and silt, and the fish follow those conditions into the danger zone near the pumps.

The expert team found that there was still a “high risk” that smelt would migrate toward the pumps with the coming storms, and would spawn nearby, endangering their offspring and putting a large percentage of the population at risk. They said pumping should be temporarily reduced so the rivers flow backward at a rate of no more than 2,000 cubic feet per second.

But Fish and Wildlife found that the smelt should have already completed their migration after a large storm in December. Friday’s decision allows the rivers to flow backward up to an average 5,000 cfs but adds that provisions in the new law “must be taken into account.”

Those provisions allow even higher levels of pumping. However, Hunt said that additional “flexibility” may not be necessary for the near future if the storms allow the pumps to operate without approaching the limits established in Friday’s decision.