[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 17484-17485]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE CENTRAL VALLEY PROJECT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. NORMAN D. DICKS

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, July 10, 2009

  Mr. DICKS. Madam Speaker, as the chairman of the Interior and 
Environment Appropriations Subcommittee and someone who shares the 
concern of many in this House about the need to protect and restore 
threatened and endangered species, I wish to bring to the attention of 
my colleagues a report recently released by NOAA's National Marine 
Fisheries Service on the effects of the long-term operation of 
California's Central Valley Project and State Water Project.
  The Central Valley Project is a Federal Bureau of Reclamation water 
project which supplies irrigation and municipal water to inland 
California from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The Sacramento 
River, along with the American River, was once among the top salmon 
spawning rivers on the West Coast, behind only the Columbia and Snake 
Rivers. The Sacramento was the only river in the West with four salmon 
runs, with returning fish numbered in the millions. Now one run is 
gone, and two are endangered, and the fourth could be listed soon. The 
scientists concluded in this most recent biological opinion that 
without wild salmon from the Sacramento and American Rivers, the killer 
whales known so-well throughout the Puget Sound would likely face 
extinction.
  These findings only stress the interconnectedness of our biosphere 
and the need to find a balance between the demands of irrigation and 
agriculture with those required by the species that once thrived in 
these rivers. In Washington State, we have worked very hard to find 
compromises between agriculture, power generation, and salmon 
restoration. While there is still work to be done, we have made great 
strides in implementing a mark selective fishery, one of the best tools 
for restoring wild salmon runs.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues in California, Oregon, 
and Washington, in establishing a comprehensive plan to ensure the 
recovery and survival of our legendary wild salmon and killer whales.
  In closing, Madam Speaker, I am submitting an article recently 
published by McClatchy Newspapers, which provides an excellent overview 
of the biological opinion, the history of wild salmon in California, 
and the recent decline of the killer whales.

[[Page 17485]]



               [From McClatchy Newspapers, July 5, 2009]

          California Water Plan Aims To Save Puget Sound Orcas

                          (By Les Blumenthal)

       Washington.--A plan to restore salmon runs on California's 
     Sacramento River also could help revive killer whale 
     populations 700 miles to the north in Puget Sound, as federal 
     scientists struggle to protect endangered species in a 
     complex ecosystem that stretches along the Pacific coast from 
     California to Alaska.
       Without wild salmon from the Sacramento and American rivers 
     as part of their diet, the killer whales might face 
     extinction, scientists concluded in a biological opinion that 
     could result in even more severe water restrictions for 
     farmers in the drought-stricken, 400-mile-long Central Valley 
     of California. The valley is the nation's most productive 
     farm region.
       The plan has faced heated criticism from agricultural 
     interests and politicians in California, but 
     environmentalists said it represented a welcome departure by 
     the Obama administration from its predecessor in dealing with 
     Endangered Species Act issues.
       The Sacramento plan, they add, is in sharp contrast to the 
     plan for restoring wild salmon populations on the Columbia 
     and Snake rivers in Washington state and Idaho. That plan, 
     written by the Bush administration, essentially concluded 
     that the long-term decline in those federally protected runs 
     didn't jeopardize the killer whales' existence because 
     hatchery fish could make up the difference.
       The 85 orcas of the southern resident killer whale 
     population travel in three separate pods, spending much of 
     their time roaming the inland waters of Washington state from 
     the San Juan Islands to south Puget Sound. During the winter 
     they've been found offshore, ranging as far south as Monterey 
     Bay in California and as far north as British Columbia's 
     Queen Charlotte Islands. Each orca has distinctive markings, 
     which allows them to be tracked.
       In the mid-1990s, there were nearly 100 orcas in the three 
     southern resident pods. The population fell to fewer than 80 
     in 2001. In 2005, they were granted federal protection as an 
     endangered species. They've been studied closely for only 30 
     years or so, but historically there may have been up to 200 
     southern resident orcas.
       Researchers think that the decline has resulted from 
     pollution--which could cause immune- or reproductive-system 
     dysfunction--and from oil spills, noise and other vessel 
     disturbances, along with a reduced quantity and quality of 
     prey.
       With the largest 27 feet long and weighing 10,000 pounds, 
     orcas are constantly on the prowl for food. They've been 
     known to hunt in packs. Their meal of choice: salmon, 
     particularly chinook salmon.
       By some estimates, the orcas eat about 500,000 salmon a 
     year.
       ``We are trying to figure out how killer whales fit in,'' 
     said Bradley Hanson, a wildlife biologist with the National 
     Marine Fisheries Services in Seattle who studies orcas. ``We 
     don't have a lot of information on the movement of southern 
     resident whales down the coast. We don't have a lot of 
     information on adult salmon movements off the coast.''
       Before 2000, Hanson said, no one was quite sure where the 
     killer whales went when they went to sea. It was a surprise 
     when they showed up near Monterey Bay, he said.
       The Sacramento and American river systems combined were 
     once among the top salmon-spawning rivers on the West Coast, 
     trailing only the Columbia and Snake rivers.
       Prompted by lawsuits, the National Marine Fisheries Service 
     last month published its latest plan for the Sacramento and 
     American rivers' winter and fall chinook salmon runs. Without 
     further curtailments of water for the federal Central Valley 
     Project--a several-hundred-mile network of dams, canals and 
     pumping plants--and the California State Water Project--the 
     nation's largest state-built water and power development and 
     conveyance system, which supplies water for 23 million 
     Californians--the two runs are in jeopardy of extinction, the 
     plan said.
       Without changes, the southern resident killer whales, a run 
     of steelhead and a population of North American green 
     sturgeon almost certainly would disappear, according to the 
     plan.
       The killer whale population is extremely fragile, and 
     scientists said the loss or serious injury to just one could 
     appreciably reduce the odds that the southern resident pods 
     would recover or survive.
       The scientists who wrote the Sacramento plan also said that 
     hatchery-raised salmon couldn't be counted on to sustain the 
     killer whales' survival.
       ``Healthy wild salmon populations are important to the 
     long-term maintenance of prey populations available to 
     southern residents, because it is uncertain whether a 
     hatchery-only stock could be sustained indefinitely,'' the 
     scientists said.
       Not only are there concerns about long-term funding for the 
     hatcheries, but scientists also have questions about whether 
     hatchery fish are as genetically strong and healthy as wild 
     ones. Though changes to the hatcheries could improve the fish 
     they produce, there's no agreement on what needs to be done 
     and no guarantees that the changes would work.
       The latest plan for the Columbia-Snake wild salmon runs 
     concluded that continued operation of the federal 
     hydroelectric dams on the two rivers was ``not likely to 
     adversely affect'' the killer whales. Earlier, federal 
     scientists found that ``perhaps the single greatest change in 
     food availability for resident killer whales since the late 
     1800s has been the decline of salmon from the Columbia River 
     basin.''
       Despite the decline in wild runs, the scientists who worked 
     on the Columbia plan concluded that hatchery fish would be 
     able to make up any deficit in the orcas' diet.
       Though the Columbia-Snake salmon plan acknowledges the 
     potential problems with hatchery fish, it dismisses, at least 
     for now, their impact on killer whale food supplies.
       Lynne Barre, a National Marine Fisheries Service scientist 
     in Seattle who helped write both plans, downplays any 
     differences.
       ``I think we say the same thing in both opinions,'' Barre 
     said, adding that both plans recognize that hatchery fish 
     could be a short-term substitute for wild fish but that there 
     were concerns about whether hatchery fish could be a long-
     term food source for orcas. ``The general principles are 
     similar.''
       Environmentalists, however, say that the differences 
     couldn't be more obvious.
       ``The contrasts are striking,'' said Todd True, a lawyer 
     for the Seattle office of Earthjustice, which has challenged 
     the Columbia-Snake plan in a lawsuit in federal court in 
     Portland, Ore.
       True said the Sacramento salmon plan was a ``candid piece 
     of work that had a strong independent review and the absence 
     of political interference.'' As for the Columbia-Snake plan, 
     True said that it ``pretends there isn't a problem.''
       The judge in the Portland case has given the Obama 
     administration until Aug. 15 to indicate whether it'll stick 
     with the Columbia-Snake salmon plan written during the Bush 
     administration or offer a new one. True said he'd raise the 
     orca issue again.
       Other environmentalists said that Jane Lubchenco, who heads 
     the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which 
     includes the fisheries service, must be aware of the 
     differences in how the two salmon plans addressed killer 
     whales. Lubchenco is a marine biologist who taught at Oregon 
     State University.
       ``They need to decide which of the contradictory statements 
     are correct,'' said Pat Ford of Save Our Wild Salmon.

     

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