In an about-face, federal officials will not be cutting farm water supplies from Shasta Dam, California’s largest, after all, reports The Sacramento Bee.
Federal fisheries officials have been in tense conversation over the last month with state and federal water regulators over how much of Shasta’s water to hold back in order to protect the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon. The National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had seemed set to seriously limit water deliveries to Central Valley farmers.
But the final plan published this week will in fact give farmers more water than they’ve seen in recent years, while safeguarding salmon populations, say the agencies. After a wet and relatively cool winter in northern California, regulators felt comfortable relaxing restrictions. Shasta has nearly twice as much water today as it did this time last year. That said, if the weather shifts, the agencies warned that their plan could too.
Environmentalists and salmon fishing groups are calling the looser regulations a disappointment. “They agreed to something earlier in the year that would have been more protective; they failed to make that, and now they’re falling back from that,” said Jonathan Rosenfield, a conservation biologist at the nonprofit Bay Institute of San Francisco.