Agency representatives all admitted that the fish kill was a huge blunder, the result of a breakdown in communication and coordination between the agencies. Bureau and Fish and Game (DFG) representatives testifying at the hearing blamed slow response and hesitance to accept volunteers on liability concerns, permit requests, lack of information, and other bureaucratic delays.
If we could go back in time I want to assure you that we would have handled the situation differently, said John Davis, the Bureau of Reclamations Regional Director.
Davis also claimed that he "deeply regretted" the loss of tens of thousands of fish and said that "fish mortality exceeded expectations."
Chuck Armor, DFG Regional Manager, said the agency has opened a formal criminal investigation into the fish and will be working with the Attorney Generals office in the near future. He could not give details on the case at the time, but said that more details would be available by the end of December.
Wolk stressed the need for stronger coordination between government agencies on several occasions during the hearing.
When there is a crisis, it requires action, said Wolk. Someone needs to be in charge. You look at how many agencies are involved here. But no one is in charge. Unless someone really pulls things together, this will happen again, said Wolk.
Leo Winternitz, Deputy Director with the CALFED Bay Delta Program, agreed. We need to be more aggressive, he stated. We need to push each other. We need to make sure weve done everything we can do.
The fishing and local community representatives who testified were Jim Crenshaw, President, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Doug Lovell, Director, Allied Fishing Groups, Gary Adams, President, California Striped Bass Association, Jeffrey Nash, a local fisherman who played a leadership role in the fish rescue, and myself.
Lovell and Nash gave a power point slide presentation, using photos of thousands of dead stripers and other fish and the fish rescue to give Wolk and the media a feeling of the scope of destruction that occurred as a result of the agencies dropping the ball at Prospect Island.
Crenshaw reviewed the history of Prospect Island, from the Bureau of Reclamations purchase in 1994 with public funds for approximately 2.8 million dollars to the levee repair this November that resulted in the fish kill.
This whole scenario is just another example of the Bureaus broken promises and insensitivity to fish and wildlife issues, said Crenshaw. In the 50 plus years of pumping water out of the Delta, the bureau has mitigated for fish losses for only a total of 3 years and is currently refusing to mitigate for any direct or indirect losses.
Crenshaw urged the committee to look into ways to return to the original plan to establish a North Delta National Wildlife Refuge. That would be an important step in restoring some of the fishery losses of the last 50 years, said Crenshaw.
Gary Adams testified as to how the state and federal governments didn’t appear to be concerned about the fish kill because of the lack of endangered and threatened species including delta smelt, steelhead and winter run chinook at the island when the Bureau hired a contractor to do the levee repair.
I personally didn’t see any endangered species at the island when I was there and the pelicans, gulls and egrets weren’t talking, he quipped.
What we find in many cases within management structure of Department Water Resources, DFG and U.S Fish and Wildlife Service is that their concern is only about protected species, said Adams. This attitude should be replaced by one that also protects sport fish such as the striped bass that arent listed.
He urged that anglers be acknowledged by the agencies as full partners in the effort to restored the Bay-Delta Estuary and other California species, rather than being marginalized as was done in the fish kill and in case after case in recent decades.
In my testimony, I proposed that for mitigation to the loss to California's fisheries because of the fish kill, the Bureau should donate Prospect Island to the state of California to be maintained as a public fishing access to Miner Slough and the Sacramento Deepwater Channel. I asked Wolk to author a bill to make the property into the "Prospect Island Public Fishing Access and Wildlife Area" modeled after the Oroville Wildlife Area. I also proposed that the island itself be reflooded to provide fish and wildlife habitat, since this is some of the best habitat on the entire Delta.
Not only should the Bureau donate the land, they should pay for its maintenance in perpetuity. In addition, the Bureau should be required by the state legislature to mitigate for the direct losses of fish at the federal CVP pumping plant near Tracy.
Except for three years when the Bureau signed on to an agreement with DFG, they have not mitigated for any losses at their pumps. The legislature should mandate that the Bureau mitigate for the damage they've done and will continue to do at the Delta pumps, as well as the damage to public trust resources caused by the recent fish kill.
Wolk thanked the sportfishing and local community for their efforts to rescue surviving fish, in spite of all of the bureaucratic inertia that they faced throughout the ordeal and acknowledged the importance of recreational fishing in the California economy.
Sportfishing plays a vital role in the Deltas economy and sustainability, said Wolk, citing how, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the American Sportfishing Association, recreational fishing contributed more than $9.04 billion to California's economy in 2003.
Besides the current DFG criminal investigation, the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) has filed a Freedom of Information Act request on documents pertaining to the Prospect Island fish kill. "We would like to see paper and electronic interagency discussions about the BOR's project between BOR and US Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service," said Jim Martin, RFA West Coast Regional Director. During the hearing, John Davis acknowledged that it had received the RFAs request.
If were going to have major changes in the Delta, we need to come up with a better way of managing these resources and including local partners, concluded Wolk. If the Delta is going to survive, we must look at the big picture.
I completely agree with Wolk and commend her for conducting a hearing so quickly after the fish kill. I was impressed by how well prepared Wolk was for the hearing and by her analysis of how there needs to be some overall body that forces the agencies to coordinate with one another on Delta issues.
Dan Bacher is an editor of The Fish Sniffer , described as "The #1 Newspaper in the World Dedicated Entirely to Fishermen"
