Fishery Restoration Network Advisory

Anglers Criticize CalFed's "Comprehensive Plan" To Save Estuary

CalFed's Environmental Impact Report and Statement alleged plan to fix the
collapse of the Bay-Delta estuary and its fisheries has come under strong
criticism from anglers during recent hearings in Stockton, Los Angeles, and
Oakland due to the document's failure to specify where and when the water
will come from to restore the estuary's productivity and its fishery
resources.

The positions taken by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the
Northern California Federation of Fly Fishers and CalTrout has been strongly
supported by the environmental community during the hearings. These groups
are trying to change the environmental document by having CalFed specify
exactly how much more water is needed to restore the estuary and its
fisheries. These groups also want assurances that this water will be
supplied to the estuary regardless of the alternative CalFed selects as the
"solution" to restore the estuary.

CalFed Hearings Continue

Anglers are urgently needed to attend upcoming hearings and ask CalFed, "Why
their environmental document fails to clearly specify how much additional
water is needed for the restoration or estuary's fish, where the water needed
to achieve this goal will be found and when?" It also important to tell them
that it improper to treat the steelhead and striped bass fisheries like
second rate resources. They need to be restored and provided the same level
of priority just as the estuary's other fisheries.

The fish need your help and that of your friends because now is the time for
anglers to take action to ensure CalFed knows how we feel about restoring the
Bay-Delta estuary's fisheries and the fact that their "preferred alternative"
-- as detailed in their Draft EIR/S -- will not achieve this goal. If we want
to have our fisheries around for future generations, its imperative to let
the CalFed leadership know of our support for meaningful restoration and not
just words that look good on paper.

In a very real sense, this hearing is a popularity contest. If anglers do not
show up and voice their concern, the CalFed leadership will believe anglers
don't care about restoring the estuary and its fisheries. Please get involved
and help ensure they don't get away with making shallow promises while they
continue to deliver all the water they can to agribusiness and urban sectors.
They have put together a strong ecosystem restoration programs, but it lacks
the water required to actually bring the fish and the habitat they need back!

Once CalFed has completed the public hearing, it must revise it to respond to
public comments. It will then be submitted for certification and it will
change from a draft to a reality that will be implemented. The documents that
accompany the EIR-S weight about 50 lbs. However, they have put out an
Executive Summary that provides an overview. You can contract CalFed at
800-900-3587 / 916-657-2666 . Or, see their website http://calfed.ca.gov.

What is important now is to get every angler and angling organization to
attend the upcoming hearings and let them know anglers want their fisheries
back!

Hearings to be held by CalFed in Northern California:

September 7 - San Jose : SJ Unified School District, 855 Lenzen Ave. near The
Alameda.
September 8 - Antioch: Rodiguez Community Center Theater, 213 F Street.
September 9 - Santa Rosa: Luther Burbank Center / Merlo Theater, 50 Mark West
Springs Road.
September 15 - Chico: Community Center, 545 Vallombrosa Ave.
September 21 - Redding: Double Tree Hotel, 1830 Hilltop Drive.
September 22 - Sacramento: (the site has not been announced).

All of the hearings will have an informal session that begins at 6 PM during
which CalFed will run their information video followed by a question and
answer session. At 7 PM they will begin the public hearing. What is important
now is to get every angler and angling organization in the area to attend.
Your assistance in giving anglers a voice in these proceedings is critical.
Remember, you will not be cross -examined or questioned regarding your
comments. Its your turn to tell the government you want them to give the
estuary and the fish top priority! Please let me know if you or any of your
friends will attend any of the hearing either by email or phone
(510-526-4049)!

CalFed's Hearing - Presentation Guidelines

~ Find and fill out the "Speaking Cards" as soon as your arrive. Arrive early
and wait for them to open the doors and fill out and return the cards as soon
as you can since the moderator will call speakers in the order that the cards
are returned.

~ Your oral comments will be limited to 3 minutes. The ideal approach is to
present your most important comments first. If you have additional comments,
prepare a written statement to hand in to CalFed after you have made your
oral statement.

~ Try to personalize your comments when appropriate and present supportive
information about how Calf's actions will affect the quality of your life and
that of your family, the sportfishing community (recreation and business),
etc.

Points to Make

The documents below will provide you with some additional background and
possible points to make. Remember not to get caught up in details. It is
enough to say that the law requires the government to restore our fisheries,
and that the only way this can be done is to send enough water through the
system to restore the natural ecological processes that provide the fish the
habitat they need. Tell CalFed they need to revise their EIR-S so the
preferred alternative accomplishes this objective.

California Sportfishing Protection Alliance
17720 Road 97E / Woodland / CA 95695 / 530-661-0997
"Saving, Restoring and Protecting California's Fishery Resources"

Comments on the CALFED Bay-Delta Program's Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement / Environmental Impact Report Draft of June 1999

Made During the Oakland Public Hearing of 8-26-99 by John Beuttler

Good Evening:

My name is John Beuttler and I would like to make the following comments on
behalf of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance regarding the
environmental document.

The CalFed EIR/S is supposed to be "comprehensive plan" to restore the
estuary while assuring water supplies for export out of the estuary. It
proposes to use an "enlarged through the Delta" export system in conjunction
with an ecosystem restoration program as the best way to fix the estuary. The
document does not disclose how sending more water through the Delta for water
export purposes will solve the disastrous decline in the ecology of the
estuary and its fishery resources caused by the current through Delta export
system. In this case more of the engineering that destroyed the estuary's
ecology is not better!

The EIR-S proposes no re-allocation of the public's water supply currently
being exported from the estuary, nor does it provide a program for water
acquisition. Without a substantial increase in the amount of water dedicated
to the estuary, the "comprehensive plan" CalFed proposes will not restore the
estuary.

The document needs to specify exactly how much water, above what it is
currently made available, will be allocated to restore the estuary's ecology
and the public fishery resources dependent upon such flows. The EIR-S fails
to establish a clear plan of action and a deliverable assurance on how and
when such water will be acquired and made available to flow through the
estuary into San Francisco Bay. While good work has been done on the
ecosystem restoration plan, all the plans and adaptive management in the
world cannot bring the fish and the ecosystem back without the water
necessary to restore that estuary's ecology.

The document also fails to make restoration of recent historical levels of
fish and wildlife an objective. Instead, it opts for arriving at "sustainable
levels" which may well be far below the average of abundance of these
resources during the period from 1950-1970. While we agree that such
sustainable goals would be good interim objectives, the long term goal of the
estuary's ecological recovery should be tied to the restoration of the
public's fishery resources to the levels from which they have been degraded
due to the development of the estuary's water resources by the federal and
state water projects. The government is obligated to restore these fisheries
as the trustee of these public trust resources. Yet, no mention of this is
made in the environmental document. It should be amended to rectify this
intolerable oversight.

CSPA believes it is vital that the EIR-S specify the flows needed for
restoration and that it demonstrate how such flows will be acquired and when
this will be achieve. This kind of specificity should also be done for all
interim objectives. Such an acquisition program does not exists and the EIR-S
fails to make an unequivocal commitment to achieve the flows necessary a
meaningful restoration objective.

The proposed Environmental Water Account could be configured to include the
water acquisitions needed to ensure the flows necessary for ecosystem
recovery and fishery restoration, but the document fails to make this kind of
a disclosure. Without this kind of program, the EWA has little meaning.

Specific Comments

In addition to the issues raised in our preceding comments, the EIR-S also
fails to:

* stipulate that all the tributaries to the Bay-Delta estuary should be
required to supply a fair and equitable share of their water to the Delta as
their contribution to Delta outflow.

* require water pollution to be stopped at its source and to establish and
enforce water quality standards that actually protect the entire food web of
the estuary from agricultural runoff and other sources of pollution that has
been found at times to be so toxic that it kills and prevents a substantial
part of the estuary's food web from developing and greatly reducing the
estuary's productivity.

* mandate that water saved by water conservation, recycling, groundwater
management and from water developed through alternative water supplies be
used to reduce the amount of water exported from the Delta. All additional
water conserved or developed should be dedicated to environmental restoration
of the estuary whenever possible.

* establish the assurances that the Environmental Water Account will be
dedicated to restore the estuary; that it will be configured to establish an
appropriate baseline of flows and that all new flows will be additive to and
not merely replace existing flows in the estuary.

* set a sufficient steelhead restoration objective for the Central Valley.
The 40,000 steelhead goal noted in the document should be just an interim
objective. CalFed's long-term goal in the EIS-R and in the ERPP should be
revised to optimize the carrying capacity of all the steelhead habitat in the
Central Valley. The Ecosystem Restoration Program Plan does not provide
sufficient cold water summer flows in Central Valley rivers to realize this
steelhead objective and it should be corrected.

* provide adequate flows and affirmative actions to restore the striped bass
fishery which has been devastated by water export from the estuary. The
restoration of this public resource should be on a coequal basis with other
of the estuary's fishery resources. While such actions will need to be
closely coordinated with the restoration efforts for salmon and steelhead to
ensure compatibility, it is imperative that this fishery be provided the
flows required to restore its natural spawning success and the survival of
young fish in the spring and summer. The Delta outflow required to carry
these young fish away from the state and federal pumping plants in the
Southern Delta must be provided on an annual basis so their entrainment can
be substantially reduced. The EIR/S needs to be revised to achieve this
objective.

On behalf of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, I'd like to
thank you for the opportunity to express our concerns regarding your
environmental document and to urge you to rectify the problems above in order
that your efforts actually protect and restore our unique natural resource
heritage.