Anglers rally against Delta water shift to agriculture
Mike Taugher
Contra Costa Times
04/01/2010
A fairer picture is one that depicts politically powerful agricultural interests with iffy water rights fighting against fishermen and healthy, local salmon, they said.
"We have the fish right here that we could be fishing, but we don't have the water," said Russell Beard, a 31-year-old commercial salmon fisherman from Reno who is headed for Alaska in a few days to fish. "There's not much of a future as it stands right now."
After two consecutive cancellations of salmon fishing off the California coast, there is likely to be a small, perhaps token, season for commercial salmon fishermen this year.
But that does not diminish the fact that salmon populations have collapsed and the outlook for salmon anglers remains grim, as are the prospects for those who like to eat wild California salmon.
The executive chef at a Berkeley restaurant famous for fresh, local food said his customers miss having salmon on the menu.
"I remember when we had the salmon, in season, every day," said Jean-Pierre Moulle, executive chef at Chez Panisse. "We took it for granted for many years. We had wild salmon on the menu. Now, we know it is very special. It's a wild fish, and it's our fish."
The chinook salmon run that comes in under the Golden Gate Bridge each fall to spawn in the Sacramento River collapsed three years ago, breaking the backbone of a commercial salmon industry active since the Gold Rush.
Fishermen and environmentalists are convinced that it was primarily due to increased water diversions from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley farms and Southern California.
In addition to the decline of fall-run chinook salmon, several other Delta fish populations also crashed. Federal regulators, responding to court orders, cut water supplies from the Delta.
Signs along Interstate 5 in the San Joaquin Valley have cropped up with messages faulting politicians for creating a "dust bowl" and blaming Northern California cities, especially Sacramento, for discharging polluted water from sewer treatment plants into the Delta.
Another sign in the region says, "Food grows where water flows." A banner at Thursday's summit said, "Salmon grows where water flows."
Thursday's rally at Fort Mason was meant to prepare and muscle up for political battles as Delta water users continue to fight the new restrictions in court, in the media and in Congress.
"What we saw is a PR (campaign) trying to paint this as a 2-inch fish against people's jobs," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Federation of Fishermen's Associations. That fish is the Delta smelt, whose numbers are a rough measure of Delta health.
"It's not that ag jobs are not important, but they ought to consider our fisheries and the fishing economies."
In addition to anglers, environmentalists and others, a handful of state and federal lawmakers showed up.
"We're going to hold people's feet to the fire," said U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez. "The basic idea that one part of the state gets to rip off another part of the state is just not going to work."
