San Joaquin Valley Growers File Suit Challenging Salmon Fishery

San Francisco — A group of San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to stop the first full salmon fishing season since 2007. The groups fear if salmon continue recent past population declines, they would be forced to release more of their water to increase river flows.

The suit was filed by a group called the San Joaquin River Users Group which includes the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco reportedly abstained when group members voted on bringing the suit.

Excessive diversion of Delta waters to San Joaquin Valley growers during the years of 2000 to 2007 killed millions of juvenile salmon, resulting in the unprecedented shutdown of ocean salmon fishing in 2008 and 2009 and an abbreviated season in 2010.

Salmon recovered to fishable levels this year following court-ordered pumping restrictions that began in 2008. The years of no salmon fishing were economically devastating to commercial salmon fishermen and businesses throughout the state that serve both the commercial and sport salmon fishing interests.

“The economically crippled salmon industry is looking forward to getting back to work,” said commercial salmon fisherman Larry Collins. “Rather than let that happen, the growers are trying to drive a stake through the economic heart of the fishing industry by shutting it down.”

New federal rules starting in June of 2009 ordered enough water be left in the rivers and delta to help two protected salmon runs recover. Water users have brought numerous lawsuits seeking to block these rules; so far to no avail. Salmon fishermen have united to defend the new rules and have proven to be a significant obstacle to water users’ hopes to take even more water.

“The water users have learned over the past few years that their only real obstacle to sucking California dry is the salmon fishermen and salmon fishing businesses. That’s why they’ve brought this lawsuit aimed at driving salmon fishermen extinct,” said Victor Gonella, president of the Golden Gate Salmon Association.

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council, in conjunction with the states and the National Marine Fisheries Service, strictly regulates the west coast salmon fishery to assure stocks are responsibly and legally managed.

“By any calculation, the delta pumps and associated mismanagement of upstream reservoirs that feed the pumps, causes the loss of many hundreds of times more salmon than all the anglers on the west coast combined,” said Marc Gorelnik of Coastside Fishing Club.

The filing of the suit against salmon fishing came the same week as a report from independent scientists working under the National Research Council. The NRC report found a severe lack of science employed by many of the same water users in their plans to build a huge peripheral canal around the delta aimed at seizing even more water for themselves.

Dick Pool of Water4fish said, “Cutting fishing will not solve anything and neither will this lawsuit. Science clearly shows that the fall run crash was caused by unregulated Delta pumping between 2002 and 2008 and for the wild fish, the impact pumping had on the upriver flows and temperatures that wild salmon need to survive.”

Recent improvements to run size have most noticeably occurred in salmon originating north of the delta, in the Sacramento River and its tributaries. Salmon from the San Joaquin River and its tributaries haven’t fared as well since the suction of the pumps regularly causes the San Joaquin River to run backwards, creating a death trap for juvenile salmon on their migration from the river to the ocean.

Instead of lawsuits, we think it would be far more productive for the San Joaquin River Group Authority to join the state, the federal government, the salmon industry and the farm groups who are all working to find the best way to recover Delta fisheries while scientifically-identifying reliable water deliveries.

Source: Golden Gate Salmon Association