The Sacramento Delta: A Gordian Knot - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 210

In the early twentieth century, the Delta boasted a healthy fishing industry, noted for
its chinook (king) salmon. Canneries processed 5 million pounds of salmon a year ,
plus other valuable fish such as flounder, herring, sardines, and anchovies. By the
1960s, however, overfishing, agricultural pollution, and dams had destroyed fish stocks.
Hatcheries introduced new species, such as striped bass, for sport fishermen, which
feasted on native species. The Delta's fish populations continue to decline for reasons
not fully understood, but scientists worry that if the trend persists, the region's aquatic
food chain could crash.
In the spring of 2007, a California court ruled that the DWR had violated the state
Endangered Species Act by failing to protect salmon and smelt. US district court judge
Oliver Wanger threatened to shut down the pumps altogether. Farmers were outraged,
and the decision was appealed. But in May 2007, a survey found only twenty-ive
smelt —the smallest number ever recorded in the Delta, and 93 percent fewer than the
previous year. The pumps were shut down for ten days to allow the fish to recover.
Bill Jennings , the executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance,
called the pumps “the smoking gun” in the smelt's demise, quipping, “There are so few
smelt out there now that you might as well name them instead of counting them.”
The pumps deliver water to some 25 million people, and the court order was met
with deep concern in the region, especially by irrigators, who rely on timely water de-
liveries to sustain their crops.
In August 2007, Judge Wanger ordered water exports from the Delta cut by 6 to 30
percent between December and June 2008. “The evidence is uncontradicted that these
project operations move the fish,” wrote Wanger.
The decision outraged Governor Schwarzenegger, who declared, “ his federal biolo-
gical opinion puts ish above the needs of millions of Californians …. [It is] a devastat-
ing blow to our economy.” Hundreds of farmers marched through the Central Valley,
chanting, “Water! Water! Water!” and carrying signs that read NO WATER, NO JOBS, NO FOOD .
( Some of them were allegedly paid by wealthy farm-owners to march .)
Too many people have been competing for a finite amount of water in the Sacramento
Delta, and perhaps inevitably the fishermen and farmers began to throw elbows at each
other, as they have done around the Chesapeake Bay. California fishermen have pushed
Central Valley farmers to shift to less water-intensive crops; they have demanded that
officials regulate pesticides and fertilizer runoff; and they have lobbied state regulators
to take conservation and recycling more seriously. It was no mistake, fishermen say, that
as water diversions from the Delta increased, peaking at more than 6 million acre-feet
in 2005, fish stocks began to decline. That year, almost eight hundred thousand ma-
ture salmon returned to spawn in the Sacramento River and its tributaries. By 2009, the