19 January 1999

Mr. Joe Polos
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
1655 Heindon Road
Arcata, CA 95521

RE: Comments -EIR/EIS Secretarial Flow Decision for the Trinity River

Dear Mr. Polos:

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) represents working men and women in the west coast commercial fishing fleet. Through its member organizations, it represents all of California’s organized commercial salmon fishermen. Salmon stocks from the Trinity River contribute to the ocean salmon fishery that our members participate in. More significantly, the measures taken to conserve Trinity River salmon stocks affect the regulation of the salmon fishery offshore northern California and southern Oregon. The loss of flows from the Trinity Unit of the Central Valley Project (CVP) has had a direct and adverse impact on salmon populations of the Trinity River, the mainstem Klamath and the Klamath River estuary, as well as adversely impacting the commercial salmon fishery and the coastal communities whose economies the fishery contributes to.

PCFFA has extensive knowledge of and experience with the Trinity River, Trinity salmon stocks and efforts to restore the river and its fisheries. In 1971, the California Citizens Advisory Committee on Salmon & Steelhead Trout, in its report to the California Legislature, entitled “An Environmental Tragedy,” documented the loss of salmon (chinook, coho) and steelhead at declines between 85 percent and 90 percent as a result of the diversion of 85 percent of the river’s flow. Interestingly, the biggest losses were for steelhead for which there is no commercial or ocean recreational fishery.

Since mid-1970's, PCFFA has argured for increased flows into the Trinity River from the Trinity Unit CVP (reducing the diversions into the CVP). This was at a time when U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) and other Department of Interior agents were actively stirring up tribal Mr. Joe Polos hatred against the offshore salmon fleet to divert attention from the devastation of diverting 85 percent of the Trinity flow to the CVP. The duplicity of USFWS and Interior was duly noted by PCFFA at the time: Interior and its agents were promoting a fifty percent allocation of the Klamath-Trinity fish stocks to two of the four tribes of this river system, while taking 85 percent of the water that these same fish needed for survival, and sending that water south to its CVP contractors, including to contractors in areas clearly forbidden from receiving Trinity water (e.g., Westlands Water District) under the law.

In 1980, PCFFA along with California Trout, the Hoopa Valley Business Council and others requested of then-Secretary of Interior Cecil Andrus an increase in flows into the Trinity. Unlike, the modest and inadequate requests made by others, however, PCFFA based its recommendation on biological science and the law, not political science. It requested minimal annual flows of 700,000 to 800,000 acre-feet annually for release into the river - a restoration of approximately 70 percent of the river’s annual flow (reducing diversions from 85 percent to 30 percent). This recommendation was based on scientific studies made in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere that found irreparable harm to rivers, estuaries and the fish and wildlife they support when annual diversions exceed 30 percent of flow. Moreover, under the statutes authorizing the construction of the Trinity Unit of the CVP, special protections were afforded the Trinity, that were not provided other rivers within the CVP (e.g., mainstem San Joaquin, American). For example, the fish and wildlife resources of the Trinity River were to be protected, and diversions were to be limited to that water that was surplus to the needs of the counties in the basin. Further, the Trinity, unlike other rivers diverted for the CVP, was subject to tribal water rights. PCFFA’s position therefore was based on science and law. PCFFA will be pleased to provide for the record both the references for the scientific studies and citations for legal statutes if requested by USFWS; however, this material should already be in the agency files.

Following Secretary Andrus’ decision on the study flows, PCFFA worked for passage to the 1984 federal legislation establishing a Trinity River fish and wildlife restoration program. It worked on the subsequent reauthorization and reforms to the 1984 act, including the appointment of a commercial fishing representative to the Trinity River Task Force. PCFFA is also a member of the Friends of the Trinity River.

PCFFA is both gratified and troubled by the Secretarial flow decision EIS/EIR, that has finally been prepared nearly two decades after the decision by Secretary Andrus to increase Trinity flows from 119,000 acre-feet annually to 346,000 acre-feet in normal to wet years (or about 30 percent of the historic Trinity flow) and some eight years after the 12-year flow study was to be completed. It is gratified by the fact that even USFWS and Interior recognize, in the preferred alternative, that substantially more water is needed for release into the Trinity than is now being provided under the study flows. PCFFA is dismayed, however, that Interior and USFWS have chosen to “downsize” the Trinity River instead of, as the authorizing Trinity Unit statutes require, fully protecting the fish and wildlife resources of the basin and the county and tribal interests in the waters of the basin. The Trinity River is not the Tuolumne River. Whereas it may have been acceptable to develop a fishery restoration plan around the Tuolumne for what amounts to a “downsized” river; the Tuolumne does not enjoy the same level of statutory protection, nor have tribal water rights, as the Trinity does. So while the scientific studies that were done on the Tuolumne for restoring its resources were valid, the legal premise that the same approach could be done for the Trinity River is fatally flawed.

PCFFA is further dismayed with Interior’s blatant hypocrisy regarding Trinity River fish and wildlife resources. In 1993, Secretary Babbitt ordered an allocation of half of the Klamath basin’s (including Trinity River) salmon resources to two of the basin’s four tribes. That order was upheld by the courts in Parravano v. Babbitt. (Interestingly, Interior was able to act on this issue almost immediately following the 1993 inaugural, but has taken nearly eight years, and some 30 years before that, to take any steps whatsoever to redress the fish and wildlife declines directly attributable to the Trinity diversions.)

PCFFA acknowledges the court decision and the tribe’s rights to up to 50 percent of the Klamath Basin’s harvestible salmon. But the tribal rights here go beyond a 50 percent allocation; they go to having a resource. Interior’s position has been to offer the tribes 50 percent of almost nothing. The fish need water, yet even in the preferred alternative Interior is offering the river less than 50 percent of its flow. What strikes PCFFA here is that Interior will uphold its trust obligation to the tribes only as far as it concerns non-Interior contractors, non- Interior constituencies. It is clear to us that Interior’s position on the fishery allocation would have been far different had fishermen been fat-cat CVP water contractors, instead of working stiffs under the authority of a weak-willed Department of Commerce. PCFFA is not arguing here against the tribal fish allocation, but that the water allocated back to the river, to make any fishery allocation meaningful, must be far greater than exists currently or is being recommended in the preferred alternative.

The Trinity River is legally owed that amount of water necessary for the full protection and recovery of its fish and wildlife resources to pre-project levels - the same as the counties and the tribes are owed that amount of water necessary for all of their immediate and future uses, prior to any diversions. It is PCFFA’s position, therefore, that the maximum flow alternative or an alternative providing for diversions of not more than 30 percent of annual flow, is the only alternative that meets the legal and scientific requirements for the Trinity River.

If you or staff have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our office. Thank you for this opportunity to comment.

Sincerely,

W.F. “Zeke” Grader, Jr.
Executive Director

cc: Honorable Bruce Babbitt, Secretary
Mr. Mike Spear, Regional Director, USFWS