Bakersfield.com: Kern County news, events, classifieds, shopping, & search

Bill would establish fish hatchery for smelt

The Bakersfield Californian | Sunday, Apr 20 2008 9:38 PM

Last Updated: Monday, Apr 21 2008 7:18 AM

If we want more delta smelt, a finger-length minnow at the center of California’s latest water crisis, why don’t we just grow more, asked State Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter.

He plans to introduce a bill to that effect on Monday.

His bill, SB 994, would establish a fish hatchery in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta to grow smelt on a scale that would increase the population enough to take them out of the “threatened” category under Endangered Species laws.

He said he came up with the idea when he and a couple of farmers were sitting around talking about the water crisis.

“It’s just a common sense deal,” Florez said.

Brent Walthall, assistant general manager of the Kern County Water Agency, called the bill a “very good first step.”

He said hatcheries, which have aided salmon populations for decades, could be supplemented by using riparian lands to increase the smelt’s habitat.

Westlands Water District in Fresno County has already bought land in the north delta to begin that process.

Walthall also liked Florez’s approach to pay for the hatchery.

Water districts, or even in-delta businesses, would pay for “credits” if their actions adversely affected the smelt, and that money would go to upkeep of the hatchery.

The initial cost to build the hatchery, Walthall said, would be covered by environmental bonds already passed.

“That seems like the right way to do it,” Walthall said.

Whether environmental organizations will feel the same remains to be seen.

While they could not be reached on Saturday, Florez said he did talk to some environmental groups and didn’t get a totally negative reaction.

“They might argue that this is an ‘unnatural’ way for the smelt population to increase,” he said. “But we would argue that with other species, like the California condor, we take them out of their natural environment, raise them and then put them back in their environment hoping they’ll flourish. Under this plan, the smelt would be raised in their natural environment.”

The timing of his bill is critical as U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger will hold a hearing Friday in Fresno on overall delta management.

Wanger was the judge who ruled last year that state and federal officials had to cut water deliveries in order to maintain enough flow in the delta to protect spawning smelt.

That has created the prospect of water cuts of up to 30 percent, which could cripple the Central Valley’s farm economy, Florez and others have said.

Farmers, environmentalists and others have spent their energies fighting about the cause of the smelt’s decline, Florez said.

Finding the cause is good, “but it doesn’t create more fish,” he said.

Florez’s bill could be seen by the judge as a viable solution, which could help increase supplies for farmers and the millions of city dwellers who rely on delta water every day, Florez said.

Others have pointed to numerous problems in the delta besides pumping water south.

The Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, made up of local farmers, chief among them Paramount Farming, has filed at least two lawsuits against the state over a power plant in the delta it says is allowed to overheat the water and doesn’t screen its pumps, and for policies that maintain the striped bass, a non-native species that preys on the smelt and native salmon species.

The delta also suffers from invasive mussels, chemical and sewage runoff, and urban encroachment.