Judge: Feds failed to help salmon

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that water regulators failed to consider the effects of global warming and other environmental issues related to the decline of California salmon populations when they approved increased pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger said a 2004 study prepared by federal regulators to support the increased water exports was scientifically inadequate.

``There is no analysis of adverse effect on critical habitat,'' Wanger wrote about winter-run chinook salmon.

The judge also ruled that there was a ``total failure to address, adequately explain, and analyze the effects of global climate change on the species.''

The study had concluded that more water could be taken from California's Central Valley to quench residential and agricultural thirsts throughout the state. The new pumping plan was already on hold because of a similar ruling the judge made about the Bush administration's failure to address its effects on a threatened fish species called the Delta smelt.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the National Marine Fisheries Service, the agencies that prepared the study at issue, plan to submit a new study by the end of the year, said NMFS spokesman Jim Milbury.

``I'm sure they will look at the judge's opinion in developing it,'' he said.

\Wanger scheduled a hearing April 25 to begin determining how the delta should be managed until the new study is published.

Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow said the agency is unsure how Wanger's ruling will effect water deliveries, but said it was ``further evidence that the delta is teetering on the brink of collapse.''

Wednesday's ruling was the latest decision affecting water pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the heart of California's massive water-delivery system.

Environmentalists blame the pumps for a steep decline inthe population of the Delta smelt, a finger-length fish that is considered a key indicator of the delta's overall health.
Last year, a federal court ordered water deliveries from the delta reduced up to 30 percent to protect the smelt. The state Department of Water Resources already has started cutting back on the amount of water it sends to communities and farms in the Central Valley, San Francisco Bay area and Southern California.

In February, the California Fish and Game Commission adopted emergency regulations that require state and federal water managers to reduce pumping operations whenever another delta fish – longfin smelt – are near the pumps.

The delta's continuing problems and the subsequent reductions in water delivering have accelerated calls to build a canal around the delta. In theory, that would allow the state and federal governments to provide drinking and agricultural water without upsetting the delta's ecosystem.

The federal court ruling on Wednesday came in a lawsuit against the two federal agencies filed in 2005 by a group of environmentalists, fishermen and American Indians.

``This is a historic decision,'' said Mike Sherwood, an Earthjustice lawyer who represents the environmentalists. ``It may well be the turning point to reverse the decline toward extinction of these fish.''

Some scientists have pointed to increased water exports from the delta as one possible cause for an unprecedented decline in the number of chinook salmon returning to spawn in the Sacramento River and its tributaries.
last fall. Other researchers blame changing ocean conditions for the decline.

Earlier this month, federal fishery regulators voted to ban salmon fishing along the California coast and most of Oregon to protect California's shrinking salmon stocks.