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Costa Questions Species Recovery Effectiveness

March 22, 2016

WASHINGTON, D.C. - At today’s U.S. House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power, and Oceans, Rep. Jim Costa (CA-16) questioned the Deputy Director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, Jim Kurth, and the Assistant Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Fisheries, Eileen Sobeck regarding other stressors impeding species recovery efforts and the lack of focus on those stressors compared to the focus on reductions in water supplies for the San Joaquin Valley.

“The drought that continues to impact California and the San Joaquin Valley in particular, is real and demands the immediate and sustained focus of the federal, state and local governments to address for both the short-term and the long-term,” said Rep. Costa. “There is a high likelihood that at this point, both the east side and west side of the San Joaquin Valley will have severely reduced water allocations from the Bureau of Reclamation, despite the significantly higher precipitation and snowpack California has experienced in the last year.”

Costa continued saying, “Some have estimated that restrictions on the operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project pumps as a result of discretionary determinations by the Fish and Wildlife Service to limit pumping below what is allowed even within the biological opinions has led to a loss of over 270,000 acre-feet of water, without any commensurate benefit to the Delta smelt. Not only does this completely defy commonsense, but it is avoidable and immoral.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses an incidental take level (ITL) to determine the amount of smelt that can be legally salvaged by pumping operations while maintaining compliance within the Endangered Species Act. The ITL is the number that defines the authorized take of a species listed under the Endangered Species Act, if the Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives in the biological opinion are followed. The current ITL for delta smelt for this water year is 56, and that the projects have taken 3 smelt, which indexes to 12.

“The USFWS and NOAA must use their resources to appropriately manage delta smelt under the Endangered Species Act and include enough funding to monitor species to fine tune operations and not lose water supplies,” said Rep. Costa. “There is no excuse for losing 270,000 acre-feet of water this year, even under the ranges allowable in the biological opinions issued by USFWS and NOAA, when the projects had so much more flexibility to increase pumping without risk of lawsuits under the ESA. This cannot happen again.”

The video of Rep. Costa in the U.S. House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power, and Oceans can be viewed here.

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