San Joaquin River Plan Aims to Improve Fish and Wildlife Habitat

The launching of a federal plan to improve and perhaps restore fish and wild life habitat in the San Joaquin River is drawing the interest and concern of community groups seeking to safeguard the river bottom and farmers opposing any reduction in water supply.

The Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA) directed the Interior Department to produce by Sept. 30, 1996, a "reasonable, prudent, and feasible" plan for improving declining fishery resources and wildlife habitat in and along the San Joaquin River from Friant Dam to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Soon after enactment of the law in 1993, the U.S. Bureau of >

Declining Fishery - The Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are working on a plan to improve declining fishery resources and wildlife habitat in the San Joaquin River. (Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation)

Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service appointed a team representing diverse interests to begin drafting a San Joaquin River Comprehensive Plan. Led by two program managers, the team includes technical experts in water quality, facilities and supplies, fisheries, wildlife habitat, soil and geology, air quality, and economics.

CVPIA authorization for a plan boosted the goals of the San Joaquin River Committee, a Fresno group working to safeguard the river bottom.

"We don't see this as a fish vs. farmers issue. We want agriculture in the river bottom because wildlife preservation is more compatible with agriculture than real estate development," said Mike Caetano, a committee spokesman. "We endorse efforts to improve habitat along the river, and that's what we see as positive about the planning effort."

Initially, the plan was aimed at encouraging the return of fish such as the fall -run chinook salmon, which spawned in the upper San Joaquin River prior to construction of Friant Dam, but now spawn only in the larger tributaries of the lower river. After Friant Dam was built in 1944, diversion of the San Joaquin River into the Friant-Kern and Madera Canals greatly reduced downstream flows. Now, two reaches encompassing about 20 river miles are typically dry year-round. Spring-run chinook salmon once numbered in the tens of thousands, but dwindled to about 2,000 by 1948. Today, the spring-run salmon are extinct in the San Joaquin River and its tributaries.

But in October, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said any diversion of water from the Friant Division of the Central Valley Project to restore the San Joaquin River salmon run below Friant Dam clearly would exceed the "reasonable, prudent and feasible" criteria.

Since Babbitt's announcement, work on the plan has shifted its focus from the biological feasibility of reestablishing anadromous fish in the mainstem of the San Joaquin River to an evaluation of other alternatives that fulfill the law.

Program Managers Valerie Curley of the Bureau of Reclamation and Meri Moore of the Fish and Wildlife Service introduced the comprehensive plan concept at public hearings.

An audio information line, the Grapevine, was created to provide callers with notice of public meetings and updates on the plan development process. Messages can be left for program managers by calling 800-742-9474 and entering 953.