The Delta restoration and mitigation bill is expected to see the light of the day after the State Senate approval. The bill has already cleared all the hurdles and it is in last stage. The bill was sponsored by Chair of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, Lois Wolk, the bill arose out of the hearing held on the massive Prospect Island Fish Kill near Rio Vista in December 2007 that needlessly destroyed tens of thousands fish.
It is said that this bill will prevent the future fish killing. In addition, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance President Jim Crenshaw testified that federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), who had conducted the project, had not stepped up to mitigate for the horrendous fish kill. According to him a great deal of fish killed by the operations of the State and Federal water projects were blatantly not mitigated and have significantly damaged the salmon, striped bass, Delta smelt, and other fish populations of the Bay-Delta estuary.
Chair of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, Lois Wolk told that numerous fish populations in the Delta are crashing or in precipitous decline. She also told that millions of salmon and other species continue to die annually as a result of both the direct and indirect impacts of the state and federal water project pumps, despite the numerous efforts over the years to restore habitat for fish.
Under this legislation the state and federal projects that pump water out of the Delta to mitigate for these losses, which have huge negative impacts on our state’s fisheries, and the commercial and sport fishing industries that contribute billions of dollars to our economy, informed Wolk.
In testimony before the Assembly and Senate, CSPA’s Conservation Director John Beuttler, notified that CSPA has repeatedly urged our government to correct the impacts caused by the water projects over the past fifty years. The direct and indirect impacts caused by the project operations have only been partially mitigated, at best, and this is one of the principal causes for the declines of our Central Valley fisheries.
