Judge: Feds failed
salmon study
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.
A group of
environmentalists, fishermen and American Indians sued the two federal agencies
in 2005.
“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.”