The dead fish plan
Why the latest proposals to save the delta aren't going to work
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Going, gone: CALFED did nothing to help the delta Smelt
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The recently formed Delta Stewardship Council, charged with protecting the San Francisco-San Joaquin Delta Estuary, released a draft report in February with more bad news about the possible fate of aquatic species.
A number of the fish, which have been the focus of national attention, are already listed as threatened or endangered under the provision of the Endangered Species Act.
This preliminary finding comes after more than $10 billion has been expended over the course of a decade by federal and state officials — who have insisted that their plans would not only restore estuary fisheries but would double the populations of endangered species such as salmon.
But CALFED — the joint federal/state effort — failed to restore fish populations, and now the state says some species may never recover. So it's hard to have a lot of confidence in the new agency.
The draft report was released by DSC's executive officer, Joe Grindstaff, former director of CALFED's Bay-Delta program. At one point, in 2007, Grindstaff acknowledged: "Fundamentally, the system we designed didn't work."
That's an understatement. Tens of millions of fish have been killed by government-operated projects pumping and exporting water from the delta. More than 50 million fish were considered "salvaged" — saved from the pumps — but millions of them also wound up dead. And there are tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, more that are unaccounted for.
Ironically, this unfathomable loss occurred while officials were engaged in several failed fish-doubling plans that spanned decades, cost the public billions of dollars in borrowed money, and contributed the California's deficit-ridden budget crisis. Read more ...http://www.sfbg.com/2011/03/08/dead-fish-plan?page=0,0
