The Salmon got humongous. Humans also lived here with the oversized trees and fish. They left no tracks. Historical verity, and the means of arriving at it, have been "whitenized", to use a friend's descriptive term. So let's just shrug off 10,000 years, maybe more, and try to describe the Eel River - Russian River watershed in its present condition. We'll start with Canadian fish.
In British Columbia, where the deforestation of watersheds has gone on faster and more thoroughly than it has here, fish technologists have developed a Salmonoid that can live and mature to eating-size in a pen. There can be fish farms as surely as there can be tree farms. Nothing in the NAFTA agreements says it can't happen here.
PGandE owns Lake Pillsbury, Scott Dam, and the land on both sides of the Eel River from Scott Dam to the Cape Horn Dam. It owns the Van Arsdale reservoir behind Cape Horn Dam North of Potter Valley, where it owns and operates a power station and a 90-year-old water diversion tunnel. The tunnel brings water from the Eel River to the Russian River through Lake Mendocino. Lake Mendocino is owned by Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, with Sonoma County owning over 80% of the water in the Lake. The Army Corps of Engineers operates the Lake. It is important to note that though P.G.andE. operates the diversion, generates the power and owns the dams, they own no consumptive water rights.
According to Bill Townsend, President of Salmon Unlimited, a full 80% of the fish trying to co-exist with PGandE's power generating equipment don't succeed. He's seen how it happens himself.
"Pieces!" he murmurs incredulously.
"Tails! Chopped fish coming out in our faces!"
It is difficult to believe that PGandE has been getting away with this mayhem since 1972 in violation of an order to build a fish-saving screen around the operation.
According to PGandE's Gary Green, work on the screen began September 26th. Permits have to be arranged. There will be delays. PGandE wants a re-hearing on their "Notice of Violation" from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It wants to be legally forgiven.
Mr. Green informs us that this year has been designated a "dry" year meaning that only 90 cubic feet of water per second is being sent down the tunnel to Lake Mendocino. There was a little hiatus in late August when suddenly, for reasons that are not clear, P.G. and E. cut the water flow through the tunnel to only 30 cubic feet per second. The Potter Valley Irrigation District, apparently unaware of the reduced flow, continued to take its usual 40 - 50 cubic feet per second, resulting in no water going into the Lake. Did P.G. and E. reduce the flow on purpose to give the farmers and downstream urban water users a "taste" of what it would be like if they pull out and shut down the project? Or was the sudden reduced flow simply a strangely-timed error? That question is open to debate; P.G. and E. certainly isn't telling!
Another topic for debate is: does the Potter Valley Irrigation District really need 40 - 50 cubic feet per second? Could sustainable agriculture flourish in Potter Valley without this much water being diverted? Should rice really be grown in Potter Valley? Grapes don't need irrigation. Other Mediterranean crops can also be dry-farmed: such as figs, olives, dates, etc.
For the last five years, we have had no fall rains. The Van Arsdale reservoir is badly choked with gravel. The tunnel is in questionable condition. There is very little water in the Eel River below the dam.
PGandE wants to sell its entire holdings on the watershed. It will be required to build the fish screen first. A consortium of three counties, Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin, was being organized to buy out PGandE., but that proposal has apparently stalled for the time being. If such a consortium does move forward, shouldn't Lake and Humboldt Counties be included? Just wondering. Humboldt County, especially, has seen a lot of water go the other way over the last ninety years.
Whatever happens, don't worry. A whole array of agencies are in control: Federal Energy Regulatory Agency, California Department of Fish and Game (DFG), the Army Corps of Engineers, to name just a few. And who's the "lead agency in charge"? That's not entirely clear!
Now we have to poke at some wriggling little factoids regarding Fish and Game fish hatcheries. Hatchery people have been driving Salmon and Salmon eggs all up and down the watersheds of the Northwest for many years in an attempt to replace the big aboriginal runs and keep everybody in fish. As is well known, even to themselves, their programs have been worse than mere failures. Hatchery fish have infected the wild stocks with liver and kidney viruses; but even worse, the hatchery fish have seriously overwhelmed the native stocks, and crowded them out of their dwindling habitat. The introduction of the hatchery fish has also seriously jeopardized the gene pool for the long term. Fish from those "successful" hatchery batches are themselves squeezed into narrow concrete waterways, their tails characteristically shredded from being so crowded and whipping against other tails.
At first, it was not understood the wild Salmon were very finely genetically tuned to their particular waters. Hatcheries got eggs from any watershed and would develop them in any other watershed. Genetic types were freely distributed. The hatchery fish are, therefore, haphazardly cosmopolitan and as a result, get tired of themselves after awhile, and go away. They don't have any "home" waters, genetically speaking. They have to be artifically imprinted, sometimes with odd results.
I have few specifics in my notes about hatchery practices in the Eel-Russian River watershed, and what I have, even I don't quite believe. It seems to be business as usual, with no apologies.
Eggs from Mad River fish are hatched at Warm Springs in Sonoma County. The young are brought over to the Potter Valley impoundment, and artifically imprinted with Eel River water. They are released downstream to the sea at Arcata. Where the Russian River empties into the Ocean, there is actually more water from the Eel River in the Russian than there is in the Eel where the Eel empties into the Ocean. No wonder the fish are confused and end up in the "wrong river". However, even the most perfectly naturally imprinted fish could not run up the Eel right now. No water.
Here's a real squirmer about hatchery folks: Fish and Game had a meeting in Yountville, recently, at which they recognized that virtually all wild Salmonoids are extinct in the Eel-Russian River Watershed, and further declared that their continued hatchery operations in this watershed are entirely appropriate, there being nothing to lose.
Between Cave Creek and Willits, there is a wild Steelhead run. There are wild runs in several other tributaries, as well. These gene pools must be protected, and not lost due to the introduction of the hatchery fish.
Cave Creek lost its Salmon in 1988 when a landslide on 101 caused traffic to be re-routed down the dirt road in Berry Canyon. For a few days, large numbers of our wheeled species splashed across Cave Creek 9 times each on their way to work. I have done it myself. (Almost drowned my truck). No Salmon have ever been seen in Cave Creek since that time.
The Eel River is presently being impacted by timber harvest plans (THPs) along the tributaries and by "puke-outs", or gravel slides from abandoned logging roads. Jack Cox is making his mark. New roads are going in all over. I can hear the backhoes and see many new scars from my window.
Speaking of gravel needs, did you know that the Coastal Conservancy's plan to "widen" the main stem of the Russian River was originally presented to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors as a "gravel mining plan"?
People in Sweden do not use water to process sewage. What about that, Santa Rosa?
There is a plan afoot from the DFG to bring together the U.S. Forest Service and all the other agencies with jurisdiction to "manage" (read poison) all gilled aquatic life between Scott Dam and the Cape Horn Dam, leaving a large - - pen? Mr. Blaine of the U.S. Forest Service says that if poison is unacceptable for some reason, explosives will work just fine. He says, "Explosives are easy!" While this plan to "extinguish the gilled aquatic life" was not Mr. Blaine's idea, his enthusiasm was evident.
I met a master bureaucrat at a recent bioregional conference. He gave a seminar on WA, pronounced "Whaa". WA is a slow dance with paper. WA has a deep Zen significance, I'm told, that goes far beyond its mundane meaning of "watershed assessment". The exercise of WA has no known purpose. WA-knowledge has no known application. Is this something like Origami?
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited