Happy Camp, California – The majority of California farms face water regulations to save dwindling water resources and protect fisheries in an unprecedented drought, but Siskiyou County’s Scott Valley alfalfa growers continue to pump groundwater “with no regulatory oversight,” the Karuk Tribe reports.
The Scott River, a 60-mile stream that flows north from the Marble Mountains to its confluence with the Klamath River, is now “a series of shrinking puddles full of Endangered Species Act (ESA) listed Coho salmon,” according to the Tribe.
For example, the above photo taken by the Tribe shows a small, disconnected puddle on the dry bed of the Scott River at Blacks Bridge in the Scott Valley.
“It’s heart breaking for me to see this fish slowly suffocating in these small puddles while the alfalfa fields are emerald green,” said Karuk Chairman Russell ‘Buster’ Attebery in a statement on August 13. “State and federal agencies are failing to protect our tribal trust resources and letting yet another native fish species go extinct.”
While the Coho salmon’s historic range includes many tributaries of the Klamath River, the Tribe said the Scott is the “most important for spawning and juvenile rearing.”
“Coho Salmon prefer low gradient valley type streams with large floodplains and require a close connection between surface and groundwater to keep water cool during the summer to keep juvenile fish healthy and this makes the Scott River valley uniquely special Coho salmon habitat,” according to Karuk Senior Fisheries Biologist Toz Soto. “Studies show a large proportion of Coho in the Klamath use the Scott River at some point in their lifecycle and the Scott River is home to one of the few remaining viable spawning populations in California.”
The California Water Resources Control Board will consider a petition filed by the Karuk Tribe back on July 1, 2021 at the August 17 Board Meeting in Sacramento. The petition calls on the Board to use its emergency powers granted by the Governor’s Drought Emergency Declaration to curtail water use to ensure a minimal flow is maintained in the river, the Tribe reported.
In its draft Order, the Board describes the process for curtailing water use as well as the process for avoiding any restrictions if the Deputy Director of the Division of Water Rights if landowners can devise “cooperative solutions” to provide fishery benefits by other means.
“The fish need quick decisive action to simply keep them wet. The Board should provide strong clear language that minimal flows must be met and violators will face stiff penalties. This is no time for half measures,” says Attebery.
To underscore their point, the Karuk Tribe released a Report detailing the extent to which the Scott has been degraded and dewatered while offering recommendations for restoration.
“This report confirms what I have known for some time. If we don’t aggressively and immediately pursue restoration of the Scott River, we are going to lose Coho salmon forever from the Klamath Basin,” said Karuk Tribal Council member and traditional fisherman Troy Hockaday.
The report, titled Assessment of Scott River Salmon Performance Under Historical, Current, and Restoration Scenarios, is based on a fish production model of the Scott Basin. The model and the report were developed by Biostream Environmental under contract for the Karuk Tribe. Federal agencies had the report peer reviewed by third party experts.
The assessment is presented in three parts: (1) an analysis of historical and current baseline habitat conditions and associated salmon performance; (2) a diagnosis of the effects of past habitat alterations on salmon performance, and (3) an analysis of a set of generalized habitat restoration scenarios to address major limiting factors and provide guidance for prioritizing actions.
The report states bluntly, “Coho salmon have the greatest risk of extirpation given recent patterns of production observed in the subbasin. The modeling results presented in this report support this conclusion. Without some form of major interventions in the subbasin to restore watershed processes and habitats, I expect coho salmon to be extirpated from the subbasin sometime over the next 20 years.
“While for many years, ESA requirements have affected irrigators on the federal Klamath Irrigation Project along the California/Oregon border; irrigators in the Scott Valley have never faced similar water use restrictions. If the Water Board approves emergency instream flow requirements, it could mean water use in the Scott Valley will be curtailed for the first time in history,” according to the Tribe.
“We are all in this climate crisis together. Its simply not fair or ethical for some communities to suffer from the results of water shortages while others continue business as usual,” concluded Attebery.
On May 10, 2021, Governor Newsom expanded California’s drought emergency declaration to include the Klamath Basin.
The proclamation states: “To ensure protection of water needed for health, safety, andthe environment in the Klamath River and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watershed Counties, the Water Board shall consider emergency regulations to curtail water diversions when water is not available at water rightholders' priority of rightor to protect releases of stored water...”
“To ensure critical instream flows for species protection in the Klamath River and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watersheds, the Water Board and Department of Fish and Wildlife shall evaluate the minimum instream flows and other actions needed to protect salmon, steelhead, and other native fishes in critical streams systems in the State and work with water users and other parties on voluntary measures to implement those actions. If the extent voluntary actions are not sufficient, the Water Board, in coordination with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, shall consider emergency regulations to establish minimum drought instream flows.”
In an August 16 post on the California Fisheries Blog webpage, fisheries biologist Tom Cannon of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance points out that a recent article in Science Magazine provides a possible clue as to why the Scott River still produces a relatively large amount of coho salmon — and why it is so important to provide sufficient stream flows for these fish to survive and thrive.
“A chemical released onto roads as tires wear has been found to kill young coho.1Watersheds like the Scott River are pristine, sourced directly from springs and snowmelt, with low highway interaction. The Scott contrasts with its neighbor the Shasta River, which runs very close to Interstate Highway 5, and which produces few coho salmon,” explained Cannon.
“Absence of pollution from tire debris may also be part of the reason why Butte Creek is able to produce so many spring-run salmon. On the other side of the coin, the prevalence of roads may help explain why coho salmon have been extirpated from many of the highly urbanized Puget Sound watersheds in Washington State and British Columbia,” noted Cannon.
“The recent study regarding pollution from tires emphasizes the need to protect pristine watersheds like the Scott River, as well as the need to restore those like the Shasta River. There is likely to be more public discussion of this subject in the coming months and years, hopefully as the tire industry seeks alternatives to its problem chemical,” Cannon concluded.
- As described in Science Magazine, the chemical is: “a highly toxic quinone transformation product of N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine (6PPD), a globally ubiquitous tire rubber antioxidant.”
Coho are one of the runs of salmon in the Klamath that made up part of the traditional diet of the Karuk and other Tribes in the basin. Called achvuun in Karuk, Coho are a fundamental part of Karuk culture.
Coho should not be confused with Chinook, or King, Salmon which is a separate salmon species. Both Coho and Chinook are important to Native cultures throughout the Pacific Northwest. All sport and commercial intentional fishing on SONCC and all other California Coho stocks was ended in 1994 because those stocks were too depleted from lack of habitat and poor inland spawning conditions to sustain any directed harvest. However, restrictions on even accidental harvest of Coho still limit California and Oregon fall-run Chinook fisheries coastwide so as to avoid even accidental harvest of Coho.
