Big News for Yuba Salmon!

July 15, 2010 | Dams & Dam Removal, Restoring Rivers

Throughout California, the construction of dams has extirpated salmon and steelhead from over 95% of their ancestral spawning grounds.  This loss of essential habitat has contributed greatly to epic declines of anadromous fish populations and has resulted in the listing of five species of Central Valley salmon, steelhead, and green sturgeon under the Endangered Species Act. 

Last Friday, Judge Karlton of the United States District Court in Sacramento handed down a huge victory for California’s anadromous fish that could help restore the populations of these threatened and endangered species. In a lawsuit brought by South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) and Friends of the River, the citizens groups challenged the validity a Biological Opinion, issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2007, on the effects of several Yuba watershed dams on threatened and endangered anadromous fish. Four years after the citizens groups initiated the lawsuit, Judge Karlton ruled that the Biological Opinion—rewritten three times under the Bush Administration—was “arbitrary and capricious.”  

The biological opinion failed to adequately analyze the impacts of several dams operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers and associated non-federal projects (operated by PG and the Yuba County Water Agency).  Fish passage at Daguerre Point Dam is inadequate and fish passage at Englebright Dam is non-existent—preventing access to over 100 miles of historic spawning habitat.  The court ordered NMFS to conduct a more thorough analysis on the impacts of dam operation on anadromous fish in the Yuba watershed. 

This ruling, combined with the Yuba Accord (a collaborative agreement to improve instream flow in the Lower Yuba) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) relicensing process, underway for hydropower dams in the Yuba watershed, represents “the next—and perhaps last--opportunity for bold Chinook salmon restoration measures in California” according to Steve Evans of Friends of the River. 

The full press release on this historic victory for Yuba salmon is available on SYRCL’s website.

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