It’s Time For New Thinking On Water Management

By Justin Fredrickson

The big dams and reservoirs that make up the California water system transformed the state from a place the Spanish and Mexican colonizers deemed not good for much except cattle and missions into an incredibly fertile and productive agricultural Eden, and a place that could support thriving urban centers.

The architects of the system knew native runs of salmon would be affected. For those generations of Californians, however, this made sense—and even today, it’s undeniable that the dams, canals and pumps that capture the Sierra snowpack and “move the rain” in California were critically important to make our state what it is today.

Faced with these circumstances, and being the action-oriented people they were, our forebears did what they could: They built state-of-the-art, 1950s- and 1960s-era fish hatcheries below the dams, and built structures such as gigantic louvers and fish-counting facilities in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to filter out the fish in the water that was pumped in.

Even with all of the change that occurred, the engineers and biologists of the day knew there were things that could be done to maintain populations of the fish and, in their own pioneering way, they set about doing what they could.

Today, for example, those hatcheries are among the main reasons we can maintain salmon in California. It was a pragmatic solution in the face of what was then seen as a compelling necessity: providing water for a growing economy and population.

Unfortunately, the innovation stopped there, and our water supply, water infrastructure and remaining native fish populations have suffered ever since. While delta pumps in recent years have received disproportionate attention, little has been done to address the introduced, predatory fish that feed on native fish, or to look at other stresses and opportunities in the system. Ocean conditions and management have played a role as well, yet have received scant attention.

From the action-oriented pragmatism of our predecessors, we have moved to hand-wringing reversionism, as those overseeing our water system have imagined that by simply shutting off the spigots we could somehow ignore all of the other factors affecting the fish.