THERE'S A NEW POST AT KLAMBLOG!

[Felice Pace]

Today's post is titled:

Cal Fish and Game goes to the Scott River Valley...with its hand out.

Here's how the post begins:

Officials from the California Department of Fish and Game
have scheduled a meeting next Tuesday evening at Fort Jones in
Siskiyou County. At that meeting CDFG officials will ask Scott River
Valley irrigators to please let some water past the dams and
diversions they operate so that young Coho and Chinook salmon and
Steelhead trout will not be stranded and die. Even in this wet year -
one of the best water years on record - irrigators who divert streams
and also pump groundwater from numerous wells near the river are
collectively dewatering key Scott River tributaries. In average and
dry years, Chinook and Coho salmon have trouble accessing any of their
spawning grounds in or above the 30 mile long agricultural Scott River
Valley.

Here's something from the middle:

It is unlikely Scott River Valley irrigators will budge; why
should they when CDFG has for so long been a paper tiger threatening
regulatory action but never taking a violation there to court? Even
when an irrigator killed hundreds of thousands of salmon and steelhead
a few years back by dewatering a section of the Upper Scott River,
CDFG did not prosecute.

And here's how the post ends:

If they are going to survive, Klamath River Salmon need CDFG
managers who will enforce the laws which should protect the Scott and
Shasta Rivers from dewatering. Politely asking irrigators who for
years have been dewatering rivers to please change course will not
work; when laws are being systematically and intentionally
disregarded, law enforcement is the only effective way forward.


Read the full post, view the three photos and read a 2001SF Chronicle
article which is reprinted at www.KlamBlog.blogspot.com.