Quote:
To protect smelt from water pumps, government regulators have flushed 1.4 trillion gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay since 2008. That would have been enough to sustain 6.4 million Californians for six years. Yet a survey of young adult smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta last fall yielded just eight fish, the lowest level since 1967. An annual spring survey by state biologists turned up six smelt in March and one this month. In 2014 the fall-spring counts were 88 and 36. While the surveys are a sampling and not intended to suggest the full population, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warns that “the delta smelt is now in danger of extinction.”
Every year they flushed enough water for 6 million people to save few tiny fish.
Quote:
In 2009 Central Valley farmers sued the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Administrative Procedure Act for failing to apply the “best available science.” In a 225-page decision in 2010, federal Judge Oliver Wanger skewered the federal agency for not conducting an environmental-impact statement, and for misapplying data and making unexplained assumptions. “The public cannot afford sloppy science and unidirectional prescriptions that ignore California’s water needs,” he wrote. The judge ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to redo its “arbitrary, capricious and unlawful” regulations.
To protect smelt from water pumps, government regulators have flushed 1.4 trillion gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay since 2008. That would have been enough to sustain 6.4 million Californians for six years. Yet a survey of young adult smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta last fall yielded just eight fish, the lowest level since 1967. An annual spring survey by state biologists turned up six smelt in March and one this month. In 2014 the fall-spring counts were 88 and 36. While the surveys are a sampling and not intended to suggest the full population, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warns that “the delta smelt is now in danger of extinction.”
Every year they flushed enough water for 6 million people to save few tiny fish.
Quote:
In 2009 Central Valley farmers sued the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Administrative Procedure Act for failing to apply the “best available science.” In a 225-page decision in 2010, federal Judge Oliver Wanger skewered the federal agency for not conducting an environmental-impact statement, and for misapplying data and making unexplained assumptions. “The public cannot afford sloppy science and unidirectional prescriptions that ignore California’s water needs,” he wrote. The judge ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to redo its “arbitrary, capricious and unlawful” regulations.
But last year the Ninth Circuit of Appeals—renowned for its liberal outlook—reversed the decision. The three-judge panel did rip the agency’s biological opinion as a “jumble of disjointed facts and analyses.” Yet the ruling said that the restrictive pumping limits were warranted to “counteract the uncertainties” of its scientific analyses. In other words: The government’s actions were justified by its sloppy science.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/forget-the-missing-rainfall-california-wheres-the-delta-smelt-1430085510