News

Mammoth Learns What LA’s Water Thirst Feels Like

February 4, 2012, by Tom Chandler 4 comments

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is not on the Christmas Card list of a lot of Sierra towns, who struggle with the agency’s predatory approach to water.

Mammoth wants to reposition the water gage it uses to measure flows in Mammoth Creek, and LADWP has filed suit challenging their right to do so. This quote doesn’t spell out the details (you can get those here), but you can definitely feel the love:

Norby accuses the enormous L.A. agency of deafness and bad science. “It’s fundamentally false and without merit,” he said. “Less than 1 percent of their water is exported from here. We’ve told them the amount is immeasurable, but they won’t listen.”

A host of environmental agencies signed off on the proposal to change the measuring point for bypass flow, a point emphasized by the local water district’s director.

“These are the experts, the people who really serve the public interest,” he said.

“Their endorsement stands in clear rebuttal to the statements made by the LADWP, which are indicative of the quality of the facts they’re working with,” he added.

“They have no grasp on the basics.”

Norby believes that Los Angeles is simply continuing its 100-year-old campaign of expansion and take over. “They are trying to take away rights that Mammoth Community has exercised for half a century,” he said.

And this love letter:

Calls to the L.A. water agency were met with silence or revealed a lack of knowledge of journalistic practice. Jana Sidley, the Deputy City Attorney on the case, directed calls Chris Plakos, who said he could not comment on the case because the matter was in litigation.

“A reporter for a courthouse news service should have known that,” Plakos added despite the fact that lawyers are regularly televised commenting on ongoing litigation from the courthouse steps, and that Courthouse News regularly includes quotes from lawyers about ongoing litigation.

Norby suggested that obduracy and inpenetrability are the agency’s stock in trade.

“It took six months of effort just for us to get a meeting with them,” he said. “It will likely take many more years of litigation and cost the rate payers millions in legal and consulting fees before anything gets done,” he added. “They’re impenetrable.”

See you remaking Chinatown, Tom Chandler.

California Snowpack at… 14% Of Normal For This Time Of Year (Ouch)

January 11, 2012, by Tom Chandler 5 comments

The days remain cloudless and blue up here — nice if you’re into long lunchtime walks, but hard on the snowpack (and the fish, and the ski park, and the mountain guides, and…), which is at 14% of normal for this time of year.

Ouch.

These are not numbers that trout will love (click map for latest info)

The good news is that a storm is predicted to unfold over the Underground’s part of the state starting next Wednesday. With any luck, we can begin stockpiling next season’s trout water.

And though a reminder is hardly necessary among the savvy Undergrounders, I’d like to point out that after this long, long stretch of low water, the first hint of higher flows sometimes leads to what we’ll characterize as “intense feeding activity.”

Am I coloring in next week’s Wednesday and Thursday squares on the calendar?

Only my crayon knows…

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Out of Nowhere, Dog Paddles Up To Kayak Fisherman. And It All Goes Downhill From There…

January 11, 2012, by Tom Chandler 5 comments

A kayak fishermen is floating offshore, and out of nowhere, a clearly distressed dog swims up to his boat.

Weird enough, but it’s really only the endpoint of a truly tragic story that unfolded over the prior couple of hours.

Starting with: What was that dog doing swimming in the water?

Answer: The dog was being walked by a woman who was struck and killed by a 22 year-old driver who was fleeing another accident he’d caused before losing control of his car.

The dog was injured and apparently freaked out enough that when he saw the kayaker way offshore, decided to swim for it.

Watching the fisherman’s reaction to the dog in the video is priceless; when you learn why the dog was there, it’s downright heartbreaking.

Waiting For The Snow To Fall… Online.

January 4, 2012, by Tom Chandler 4 comments

Thanks to Alert Underground Reader [Name Redacted], we can bring you the West’s bad snow news in graphic form (now there’s an improvement):

Not the best news for next year's trout water...

As he said, “Red is dire, Fuschia is worse.” And you’ll notice it’s Fuschia in Northern California.

Yet it’ early; last year’s March snows are what put us into record-breaking territory.

And to be clear, a drought would hammer the rest of the state more than the Upper Sacramento and McCloud, which do OK in drought years.

A drought is harder on some of the small streams, some of which suffered badly under the three-year drought, but are enjoying boosted fish populations after two above-average years.

Even the long-range forecast doesn’t show much happening in my neck of the woods (for fly fishermen, this is real barn burner stuff). We’ll stand by with any breaking precipatory news…

See you on the weather geek sites, Tom Chandler.

More Proof: Hatchery Salmon & Steelhead Actually Damaging Wild Fish Populations

January 3, 2012, by Tom Chandler 5 comments

Another study supports the fact that hatchery salmon and steelhead experience relatively dismal survival rates in the wild — more ammunition for advocates for wild fish (and often, dam removal).

Salmon born in captivity become domesticated in as little as one generation, a new study finds, explaining why hatchery-born fish don’t do as well as wild-born ones in Oregon rivers.

Researchers created an enormous fish family tree using genetic samples from 12,700 steelhead trout (which are in the same family as salmon) returning from the sea to Oregon’s Hood River to spawn. This fishy pedigree revealed the fish that spawned well in hatcheries had offspring that spawned poorly in the wild.

Later, the article quoted a steelhead hatchery fish survival rate only 80% that of wild fish. And the concern is that “hatchery” genes — which result in higher reproduction in hatcheries, but far lower reproduction in the wild — would suppress natural steelhead populations.

In other words, wild fish good, hatchery fish bad. On a lot of levels.

The article makes some intersting points, and is well worth a read.

Gone, Not Forgotten: Martin Seldon

December 30, 2011, by Tom Chandler 1 comment

I never met Martin Seldon personally, but the man knew how important our fisheries were, and he fought like a tiger to protect them. He always contacted me when something was brewing, and I learned pretty quickly the smart play was to listen.

Sadly, just yesterday I received an email from his son saying Martin was gone.

Undergrounders, we have lost us a good one.

See you in better places, Tom Chandler.

——————-
This bio accompanied Marty’s Wild Trout Scholarship:

This scholarship honors the long history of Martin M. (Marty) Seldon’s dedication to fisheries conservation. Marty has played a long and active role as an advocate of wild trout, and has been an enthusiastic volunteer for the Wild Trout Symposium Organizing Committee since Wild Trout-II in 1979. Over the years Marty has been active on the Photography, Awards, and Program Committees, and has chaired the Awards Committee for WT-VII and WT-VIII, and served as its co-chair for WT-IX in 2007. Marty has continued to be active on the Organizing Committee for WT-X.

Among many others, he received the Federation of Fly Fishers’ highest honor, The Order of the Lapis Lazuli Award. He was also the Wild Trout Symposium’s first nonprofessional category Aldo Starker Leopold Wild Trout Medal recipient at Wild Trout-III in 1984.

Marty’s long involvement in wild trout conservation began in the 1960’s, when Marty wrote fishing columns for San Francisco and Central Valley fishing newspapers and was Angler Magazine Conservation Editor. Over the year’s Marty has written extensively on catch-and-release fishing.

Marty has served as a Trout Unlimited chapter president, was a founding director of CalTrout, and has been a Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF) volunteer since 1972. Marty has also served as the Conservation Vice President of the Northern California Council FFF and from 1976-1986 was on the FFF Executive Committee as Senior Vice President Conservation. He has been Chairman of the FFF International Relations and Fish and Wildlife Committees, and managed several FFF fly fishing industry databases. He is presently a FFF Northern California/Northern Nevada Council Director, and a FFF Senior Advisor

Supreme Court To Decide Issues of Commercial Navigability, Public Access For Missouri River (And The Rest Of Us)

December 5, 2011, by Tom Chandler 13 comments

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will hear a case on Wednesday that could have huge implications for river and stream access across the United States.

The question is whether the Montana State Supreme Court ruled correctly when they said the Missouri River’s “Great Falls” were owned by the state instead of PPL Montana — an electrical utility with hydropower installations at Great Falls.

While the case revolves around a few obscure points — one of them being whether the Missouri was commercially navigable during the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition — the outcome could have a huge impact on recreational access, as this quote from the Great Falls Tribune story suggests:

“The fundamental thing here is PPL wants to take land owned by Montana for its own good,” said Bruce Farling, executive director for Montana Trout Unlimited, which filed a brief supporting Montana in the case. “The state of Montana is saying, ‘No, that’s our land, you’ve got to pay rent for occupying it.’”

With state ownership of major riverbeds, the public has more influence over conservation and fishery protection in instances such as the installation of pipelines and bridges, Farling said.

Montana already has the toughest stream-access law in the country, giving recreationists access to any natural stream irrespective of who owns the banks, he said. But the PPL case could affect recreation in states where stream access laws aren’t as strong, and are based on navigability, he said.

To get a sense for the extreme level of water law geekery involved, you should probably read the article, though I’ll try to keep an eye on this one for you.

UPDATE: ChiWulff posted a good summary of this issue here.

See you in court, Tom Chandler

Did the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans Try to Coverup Evidence of Deadly Fish Virus?

December 3, 2011, by Tom Chandler 4 comments

Recently, West Coast fisheries managers were troubled by reports that a deadly virus — which had decimated salmon farms in Scotland and Norway — had appeared in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Now it appears the Canadian government knew of positive test results as early as 2004, but refused their biologists permission to publish the findings (from the Seattle PI):

A 2004 draft manuscript, leaked out of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, indicates that the deadly infectious salmon anemia virus was identified eight years ago in coho, pink and sockeye salmon taken from southern British Columbia, Southeast Alaska and Bering Sea waters.

Testing done in 2002 and 2003 “lead us to conclude that an asymptomatic form of infectious salmon anemia occurs among some species of wild Pacific salmon in the north Pacific,” said the manuscript.

But a senior official at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans recently rejected a request to submit the manuscript for publication.

…

The manuscript surfaced less than a month after disputed findings of the virus in fish taken from the Harrison River in B.C.’s lower Fraser Valley, not far from the Washington border, and juvenile sockeye collected at Rivers Inlet about 400 miles north on the British Columbia Coast.

Infectious salmon anemia, or ISA, is a severe disease of marine-farmed Atlantic salmon, characterized by anemia and hemorrhaging livers as well as kidney damage.

ISA has already done a great of deal to salmon farming operations around the globe (British Columbia is home many salmon farming operations), but the fear is that the disease is jumping to wild salmon (Fraser River salmon stocks collapsed two years ago), and that the fisheries department is protecting salmon farms at the expense of wild fish.

The Underground Blowing Shit Up Post

October 26, 2011, by Tom Chandler 12 comments

Take that, Condit Dam — a river-killing structure that was partially taken out the right way (and by “right” we mean by the use of explosives):

Now if only we could convince somebody to involve A few B-26 Marauder fast attack bombers…

Pit River #5 Will Be Blown Out This Tuesday

October 7, 2011, by Tom Chandler No comments yet

PG&E’s conducting flow gate tests on Pit 5 this Tuesday, which not only means high water that day, but likely unsettled fishing the next day or two.

From PG&E:

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has rescheduled to Tuesday, Oct. 11 an increased flow test on the Pit River below the Pit 5 Diversion Dam. The test was originally scheduled for Monday, Oct. 3.

PG&E is conducting a regular test of dam flow gates, which is required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The test is being done on a weekday in the fall when recreational use of the river is low and before winter rains increase river flows. Water levels will rise about half a foot an hour for about six to eight hours, starting before dawn so that the river stops rising before sunrise.

The increased flows will not be noticeable beyond the Pit 6 Dam. This portion of the Pit River is remote with no established recreational facilities.

The higher flows will not exceed those experienced in fall and winter.
The maximum flow of 1,800 cubic feet per second (cfs) will be held for about six to eight hours, then gradually reduced over a period of about six to eight hours until all gates are closed.

The anticipated flow before and after testing will be 350 cfs.

See you anywhere but the Pit, Tom Chandler.