October 2024
Resource management in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta over the past 20 years can rightly be characterized as a failure. Despite costly management actions, many involving the augmentation of flows through the Delta, available data indicate a number of protected fish have declined precipitously. At the same time, water available for urban and agricultural uses, including growing food, has been reduced significantly. The concept of managing natural resources based on the Delta “co-equal goals” has, in a word, evaporated.
One management action, included in the USFWS 2008 Biological Opinion, was specifically intended to benefit delta smelt by increasing outflow through the Delta. The Fall X2 Action requires the low-salinity zone to be forced with freshwater “downstream” in the upper San Francisco Estuary during September and October of wet and above-normal water years. Entering this autumn, the action had been implemented in 2011, 2017, 2019, and 2023. It had been controversial due to its uncertain conceptual foundation, its excessive costs in terms of freshwater sent into the Bay, and the lack of evidence that action contributed to increased delta smelt numbers or the extent or quality of the fish’s habitat.
Reflecting those facts, numerous attempts had been made to adjust or retire the Fall X2 Action. This note provides insights as to why, finally, efforts this year were at least partially successful. Some parties give full credit to two letters written to resource agency heads by water-agency administrators in late August. But similar letters had been written previously, and numerous appeals to agency heads had been made both in personal meetings and in public comments. In that light, it is worth asking, what was different this time?
The Coalition for a Sustainable Delta (Coalition) has worked with the Center for California Resources Policy and Management (Center), long appreciating that to improve resource management in the Delta a fundamental examination of the “science” behind management and policy decisions is necessary. Many of the current regulatory actions targeting protected fishes in the Delta and its tributary rivers have shown little demonstrated benefits for those fishes, yet once in place they have been resistant to being replaced with more promising conservation actions.
The basis for any challenge to the Delta’s management agenda, whether as part of the administrative process or in the courts, needs to be peer reviewed science. Recognizing that route to meeting the Delta co-equal goals, the organizations above convened a science and legal team, making review and evaluation of the Fall X2 Action a top priority. As a result, the following peer reviewed papers have appeared, aimed at both what was considered the flawed approach to science by the agencies managing the Delta’s natural resources and in particular the location of the low-salinity zone in the estuary.
Among more than 30 frontline articles on Delta scientific issues and science-policy concerns developed and funded by the Center, Dennis Murphy and Paul Weiland published three papers — The Route to Best Science in Implementation of the Endangered Species Act’s Consultation Mandate: The Benefits of Structured Effects Analysis in 2011, Science and structured decision making: fulfilling the promise of adaptive management for imperiled species in 2014, and Guidance on the Use of Best Available Science under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2016. They followed those with a paper The low-salinity zone in the San Francisco Estuary as a proxy for delta smelt habitat: A case study in the misuse of surrogates in conservation planning in 2019. The Center’s scientists had also become aware that diminishing zooplankton foods used by delta smelt, and not constrained freshwater outflow through the Delta, was the dominating environmental factor limiting the recovery of the fish. Two papers published by Scott Hamilton and Dennis Murphy in 2018 and 2020 explain how and why — Analysis of limiting factors across the life cycle of delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) and Use of affinity analysis to guide habitat restoration and enhancement for the imperiled delta smelt. Dr. Hamilton also produced a 70-page white paper in December 2022 documenting numerous statistical and methodological flaws in studies that had been used to justify and validate the Fall X2 Action. In addition, the Center has published more than three dozen blog posts describing appropriate approaches to applying science in resource management decision-making and implementing federal and state Endangered Species Acts consistent with their statutory authorities.
The Coalition aggressively engaged in the Collaborative Science and Adaptive Management Program (CSAMP) process as the only seated non-environmental NGO. It was apparent that CSAMP was not encouraging the implementation of rigorous science in key issue areas, including competent monitoring and cost and benefits analyses. Coalition representatives have pressed CSAMP to engage the government agencies to responsibly address both. At the urging of a Coalition scientist, a pilot Structured Decision-making process was initiated, then followed by a full-fledged SDM process for delta smelt starting in 2019. The Coalition was represented on both the SDM oversight body and in the technical process where ecological modeling and analytical work was done. Four quantitative models were used to evaluate alternative management actions, one from a Coalition representative and two models contributed by USFWS, none of them demonstrated material benefits to delta smelt from the Fall X2 action.
As a result, the USFWS in their re-consultation comments for the 2024 Biological Opinion on water-project operations stated that the Fall X2 Action offered no apparent benefits to the survival and recovery of delta smelt. It was the results of the SDM delta smelt population modeling, together with the USFWS conclusions in the biological opinion record, that provided the necessary support for the subsequent letters to agencies heads, the Governor, and the Secretary of the Interior appealing for the Fall X2 Action to be suspended. That sequence of activities led to the suspension of the management action for October 2024, after it had been in effect for just one month. The water savings to the projects are likely to be well in excess of 100,000 acre-feet.
On reflection, the successful modification of the Fall X2 Action can be attributed in large part to a long and sustained process by the Coalition, maintained by investments from the water community, primarily in Kern County, with some help from the SWC and other Public Water Agencies.
The Coalition and the Center have been involved in a wide range of scientific, policy, and legal matters, including issues related to predation on listed fish species, the lack of adequate monitoring, the federal listing of longfin smelt and proposed state-listing of white sturgeon, salmon management (with emphasis on hatchery issues), along with other pressing Delta management actions and emerging resource agency initiatives. The Coalition concludes that despite claims that they utilize the “best available science,” the decisions made by the regulatory agencies are too often based on political considerations. Accordingly, as a result of inadequate resource monitoring, there is typically no clear indication as to whether management actions targeting protected fish species meet their stated purposes. With freshwater flows the favored solution to conservation challenges, the Coalition’s efforts to demand transparency and hold the federal and state resource agencies accountable must continue apace.
California can ill-afford the ongoing mismanagement of the Delta resulting in ongoing deleterious repercussions for the California economy while at the same time failing to improve the numbers of at-risk fish species. Until recently we have seen the courts defer to the regulatory agencies; we hope that is now changing. But we still need to make certain that the best available science is being utilized, which involves both time and a great deal of hard work. The Coalition is committed to first getting the science right and then following up with public explanation of the facts, negotiating with the regulatory agencies, and, if necessary, going to court. We are keen to work with others who share the same concerns and understand the approach.
William Phillimore, Coalition for a Sustainable Delta