SARSAS -Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead

Fish Ladder on the Auburn Ravine at the Lincoln Gauging Station is Completed so Salmon and Steelhead for the First Time in Years Have Access to Spawn

2011-12-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

December 7, 2011
Progress in Returning Salmon and Steelhead to Auburn Ravine
A fish screen has been installed on the Scheiber Ranch paid for by Rancher Albert Scheiber. ISI designed, built and installed the fish screen. The Schreiber Ranch was crossed by the new Highway 65 Bypass over the Auburn Ravine. The new screen is located immediately downstream of the new bridge. Albert Schreiber conducted a tour for several SARSAS members last week. The fish screen is a self-cleaning single cone electric powered cleaner. The screen keeps fish in the Auburn Ravine and allows the rancher to take water through the screen without the screen clogging with debris.
Any rancher/farmer living on the Auburn Ravine is encouraged to contain SARSAS (530 888 0281 jlsanchez39@gmail.com) or Family Water Alliance ( 530 844 2310 or aindrieri@frontiernet.net) to inquire about securing funding to install a fish screen on his canal or pump.
NID is currently installing a fish ladder on the Lincoln Gauging Station which will allow salmon and steelhead to pass over the dam this year. The projected date of completion is the end of November this year. Many salmon died trying to get over this dam last year. Any fish that arrive before the fish ladder is finished will be trucked above the dam so all this year’s run has the potential to survive and reach spawning grounds below the Hemphill Dam which is another NID barrier.
NID is currently planning the retrofit of Hemphill Dam upstream of Lincoln near Turkey Creek Golf Course. When the Hemphill Dam is retrofitted for fish passage, salmon and steelhead with then be able to reach the NID Gold Hill Dam two miles upstream from Gold Hill Road. Plans for the retrofit of the Gold Hill Dam have not yet been addressed by NID.
Now all eight dams below Lincoln are in compliance with NOAA regulations, thanks to NOAA Special Agent Don Tanner (who just received the SARSAS King Salmon Award for his work on AR). That means all dams are taken down NLT Oct 15 and stay down until April 15 each year to allow salmonids to reach spawning grounds on the upper Auburn Ravine.
The LGS Fish Ladder currently being installed by NID will be complemented by the Fish Screen, spearheaded by Brad Arnold of South Sutter Water District, to be installed on the Pleasant Grove Canal to prevent fish returning to the Pacific Ocean from being entrained in agricultural fields. The Family Water Alliance secured funding for this fish screen, which has a target date on installation the beginning of 2012.
Ron Ott, SARSAS Fish Passage Specialist, says that the screen on the Pleasant Grove Canal has the potential to keep huge numbers of the anadromous fish returning to the Pacific Ocean in the Auburn Ravine avoiding entrainment.
Much is happening and with each addition, salmon and steelhead can swim and spawn farther up Auburn Ravine, getting ever closer to the SARSAS mission of returning salmon and steelhead to the entire thirty-three mile length of the Auburn Ravine.
The Auburn Ravine is not connected to the American River; it is a tributary of the Sacramento River. It starts in Auburn, flows through Ophir and Lincoln, through miles of fields into the Eastside Canal, the Natomas Cross Canal and enters the Sacramento River at Verona, just downstream of the mouth of the Feather River.

Warming Water Could be the End of Salmon

2011-10-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

Spring-run Chinook salmon, photographed in Butte Creek, upstream from Centerville, Calif., may become extinct in the future due to warming waters. (Allen Harthorn, Friends of Butte Creek/photo)

Warming streams could spell the end of spring-run Chinook salmon in California by the end of the century, according to a study by scientists at UC Davis, the Stockholm Environment Institute and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

There are options for managing water resources to protect the salmon runs, although they would impact hydroelectric power generation, said Lisa Thompson, director of the Center for Aquatic Biology and Aquaculture at UC Davis. A paper describing the study is published online this week by the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management.

“There are things that we can do so that we have the water we need and also have something left for the fish,” Thompson said.

Working with Marisa Escobar and David Purkey at SEI’s Davis office, Thompson and colleagues at UC Davis used a model of the Butte Creek watershed, taking into account the dams and hydropower installations along the river, combined with a model of the salmon population, to test the effect of different water management strategies on the fish. They fed in scenarios for climate change out to 2099 from models developed by David Yates at NCAR in Boulder, Colo.

In almost all scenarios, the fish died out because streams became too warm for adults to survive the summer to spawn in the fall.

The only option that preserved salmon populations, at least for a few decades, was to reduce diversions for hydropower generation at the warmest time of the year.

“If we leave the water in the stream at key times of the year, the stream stays cooler and fish can make it through to the fall,” Thompson said.

Summer, of course, is also peak season for energy demand in California. But Thompson noted that it might be possible to generate more power upstream while holding water for salmon at other locations.

Hydropower is often part of renewable energy portfolios designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Purkey said, but it can complicate efforts to adapt water management regimes to a warming world. Yet it need not be all-or-nothing, he said.

“The goal should be to identify regulatory regimes which meet ecosystem objectives with minimal impact on hydropower production,” he said. “The kind of work we did in Butte Creek is essential to seeking these outcomes.”

There are also other options that are yet to be fully tested, Thompson said, such as storing cold water upstream and dumping it into the river during a heat wave. That would both help fish and create a surge of hydropower.

Salmon are already under stress from multiple causes, including pollution, and introduced predators and competitors, Thompson said. Even if those problems were solved, temperature alone would finish off the salmon — but that problem can be fixed, she said.

“I swim with these fish, they’re magnificent,” Thompson said. “We don’t want to give up on them.”

Other co-authors of the paper are graduate student Christopher Mosser and Professor Peter Moyle, both at the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology, UC Davis. The study was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

About UC Davis
For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has more than 32,000 students, more than 2,500 faculty and more than 21,000 staff, an annual research budget that exceeds $678 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

Media contact(s):
Lisa Thompson, Center for Aquatic Biology and Aquaculture, (530) 754-5732 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (530) 754-5732 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, lcthompson@ucdavis.edu
Marion Davis, Stockholm Environment Institute, (617) 245-0895 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (617) 245-0895 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, marion.davis@sei-us.org
Andy Fell, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-4533 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (530) 752-4533 end_of_the_skype_highlighting, ahfell@ucdavis.edu

The SARSAS Plan for Saving Salmon and Steelhead in California and the Pacific States

2011-10-13T21:41:00.000-07:00

Jack L. Sanchez,
Volunteer Coordinator/President/Founder
501C3 EIN 80-0291680
Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead (SARSAS)
www.sarsas.org
P. O. Box 4269
Auburn, CA 95604
530 888 0281

Yes, the people of California, volunteering together, can save the salmon. The people must spearhead the saving of the salmon because time is critical. The salmon has little time left on the planet without the help of the people.

Salmon expert Peter B Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, University of California Davis, in
“Multiple Causes of Central Valley Chinook Salmon Decline,” Mar 31, 2008, wrote,

Ever since Euro-Americans arrived in the Central Valley, Chinook salmon populations have been in decline. Historic populations probably averaged 1.5-2.0 million (or more) adult fish per year. The high populations resulted from four distinct runs of Chinook salmon (fall, late-fall, winter, and spring runs) taking advantage of the diverse and productive freshwater habitats created by the cold rivers flowing from the Sierra Nevada. When the juveniles moved seaward, they found abundant food and good growing conditions in the wide valley floodplains and complex San Francisco Estuary, including the Delta. The sleek salmon smolt then reached the ocean, where the southward flowing, cold, California Current and coastal upwelling together created one of the richest marine ecosystems in the world, full of the small shrimp and fish that salmon require to grow rapidly to large size. In the past, salmon populations no doubt varied as droughts reduced stream habitats and as the ocean varied in its productivity, but it is highly unlikely the numbers ever even approached the low numbers we are seeing now.

This Golden Age of Salmon is long past but the people can insure at least their continued existence. California salmon were thought to be extinct as early as1865 because of the sediment that choked off the streams from hydraulic mining and strip logging. Salmon are miraculously resilient and they survived. The salmon of California are now once again nearing extinction for many reasons: global warming, pollution, upwelling of ocean currents, lack of fish passage and spawning areas. The main fix we can do quickly is not to argue about the root cause but to quickly open California streams as soon as possible for salmon spawning. Whatever the reasons, a clear, simple plan is necessary to save them. The SARSAS Plan, formulated for the Auburn Ravine, is the simplest way to save salmon from certain extinction and should be implemented on all streams in California immediately. What is the SARSAS Plan?

If every stream in California has a volunteer group working to do what SARSAS is doing with the Auburn Ravine, that is, to return salmon and steelhead to its entire length and secure fish passage, adequate water and spawning grounds, then salmon will not go extinct. The line from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you built it, they will come” can be paraphrased to be applied to anadromous fish:: “If you clear it, they will come”; that is, SARSAS with the cooperation of Governor Jerry Brown and the federal Salmon Czar David Hayes (see Sacbee editorial, “We Might need Salmon Czar, Too,” July 8 09) can encourage other groups to do with other streams, what SARSAS (www.sarsas.org) is doing with the Auburn Ravine. By providing fish passage on all 738 tributaries to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, salmon will have many spawning grounds currently denied them.

Will the Governor help? SARSAS is urging his staff and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and his Water Czar David Hayes to help. President Obama must appoint a Salmon Czar to keep the salmon from going extinct. Only the Governor with his sweeping influence over California agencies and the Obama Administration can coordinate this program and create an incentive program to encourage other organizations to take ownership of particular streams and retrofit them completely for salmon passage so that citizens become the instruments of the salmon salvation. We the People must pressure the President and the Governor to save our salmon. Salmon are moving closer to extinct while we do nothing. Acting now is imperative. Only the Governor can fast track the California 501C3 process, necessary for collaboration and fundraising, and connect each group to the right agencies quickly and efficiently.

An All-Volunteer Oversight Group (A-VOG) for each stream needs to have a lead person who can be connected directly to all California environmental agencies but especially with DFG, CVWQCB, DWR, and EPA. Each group must have an active Special Agent from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency, to provide access to problem areas on each stream over which only the federal government has jurisdiction. The Governor and citizens of California working together with NOAA will save the salmon. Most of the work of saving the salmon will be performed by volunteers, but they must have the coordination from the Governor to network with California government agencies to provide advice and services.

Let’s look at the SARSAS Plan for the Auburn Ravine that can serve as a model for other organizations to work on other streams. To start with, the Auburn Ravine has thirteen diversion dams on its length. SARSAS has put ten flashboard diversion dam in compliance with fish passage, two NID dams are currently being retrofitted, which leaves one dam, the Gold Hill Dam to be retrofitted. When this dam is completed, 32 of the 33 miles will be open to salmon. If we can get 2,500 egg-laying female salmon (Butte Creek near Chico had 6,000 Spring Run salmon in 2008) into this Ravine, each laying up to 8,000 eggs, the Auburn Ravine will contribute up to 20,000,000 (2,500 times 8,000) fry just in one stream, the Auburn Ravine.

If only three percent of those salmon return to the Auburn Ravine after maturing in the Pacific, that is 600,000 salmon, which is almost 15 times the total number of salmon (39, 037) that returned to the entire Sacramento River in 2009 with fewer than 12,000 salmon making it to Coleman National Fish Hatchery near Anderson on the Sacramento River. Remember that the Auburn Ravine is just one stream in California; there are over 738 tributary to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers.

When SARSAS became an All-volunteer, 501c3, public benefit corporation with officers and an eleven-person Board of Directors, it was able to more seriously work on the Auburn Ravine by identifying all thirteen man-made barriers and working to retrofit them. SARSAS then set about creating a network of state and federal governmental agencies, county supervisors, city councilmen, other NGO’s, landowners and individuals, all meeting once a month under the auspices of Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt. The group worked collaboratively, cooperatively, to reach its respective goals as smoothly and as quickly as possible. SARSAS recently acquired the volunteer services of grant writers and one of the nation’s foremost experts on fish passage, Ron Ott.

Having all principals at the same table monthly working in a non-confrontational atmosphere facilitated accomplishing much in a short time. Much progress has been made but much yet needs to be done.

Working with a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Special Agent, SARSAS contacted all private owners of diversion dams on the AR. Many owners simply needed to be reminded of their specific water rights and by not observing those rights doing harm to fishes. Education was and is key. All ten flashboard dams with the cooperation of the landowners were quickly brought into compliance to make them passable for fish. The remaining three dams are owned by a water agency, Nevada Irrigation District (NID). Working with Placer Legacy, NID was able to fund and begin constructing a fish ladder and a fish channel to create fish passage over the Lincoln Gaging Station and the Hemphill Dam scheduled to be completed by the end of summer 2011.

The remaining dam is the NID Gold Hill Diversion Dam, which will be addressed after the other two dams are retrofitted. When the GHDD is retrofitted for fish passage, 32 of the 33 miles length of the Auburn Ravine will be ready for fish passage and much of it opened to spawning.

Is the task completed? Far from it, but the tasks completed to date will allow anadromous fishes to spawn in most of the Auburn Ravine.

The Auburn Ravine is but one stream. Gene Davis’ pesticide studies for CVWQCB Natural Streams and Aquatic Life Within the Central Valley Project Area Pesticide Basin Plan Amendment, 2007, shows a total of 738 identified creeks and possibly over 750 run into California’s two great rivers so 738 times 20,000,000 (2,500 females laying 8,000 eggs each), the potential number of salmon returning to the ocean is 14,760,000,000,000 spawned fishes. If only 3 percent, the standard for most salmon runs, of this total number survive in the ocean to return to spawn in California streams, then 44,280,000 salmon will return to spawn in California streams, up from 39,000 in 2009, and the salmon crisis is no longer a crisis and salmon will no longer be going extinct. If more than that number returns to spawn, then salmon will be with us for a long time. The numbers of salmon spawning will be influenced by whether the stream is above or below a dam on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers.

Is the SARSAS Plan perfect? Of course not. Is this explanation a possible over-simplification of a very complex problem? Probably. Even if the SARSAS Plan is only partially successful, salmon will still survive. The federal government’s plan to get fish above the great dams to spawn is excellent and high tech, very expensive but rather slow; the SARSAS Plan is quick, low tech and inexpensive and designed to complement not replace the federal plan.

Will Governor Brown provide the leadership and support to coordinate the activities needed? Will the Obama administration step up? Will enough volunteer groups take charge of each of the 738 plus creeks to restore salmon? Will the SARSAS Plan be implemented in time to prevent the salmon from going extinct? The SARSAS Plan has a possible successful outcome for anadromous fishes that will cost only thousands not billions of dollars. The SARSAS Plan is a simple, inexpensive plan that may go a long way toward alleviating the salmon march to extinction especially when it is effected in conjunction with the federal NOAA Salmon Recovery Plan.

But even without the Governor’s, the SARSAS Plan can be implemented by the people of California working collaboratively, but not as quickly, and but perhaps quickly enough to save one of the most magnificent creatures in the entire animal kingdom, Chinook Salmon. To hasten the process, please write a letter/email urging the Governor to support the SARSAS Plan.

By rescuing one stream, the Auburn Ravine, the people of California may be rescuing the entire Pacific Coast Salmon Fishery and, in addition, providing food for the endangered orca population that usually lives in the Puget Sound region but has come to within one hundred miles of San Francisco looking for salmon, their only food. This orca pod, which currently numbers 84, must reach 125 animals in order to survive.

Since most tributaries to the Sacramento/San Joaquin Rivers are blocked by diversion dams for irrigation, the salmon cannot currently spawn in numbers large enough to prevent extinction. Using the SARSAS Plan as a model for saving salmon in the Auburn Ravine MAY be enough to save the entire Pacific Coast Salmon Fishery and put thousands of unemployed fishermen back into their boats, free sports fisherman to follow their passion, and help Californians feel good about themselves because they did something to help themselves, the fishes and nature and for their children.

Using the SARSAS Plan as a model for saving salmon in the Auburn Ravine may be enough to begin the restoration of the Pacific Coast Salmon Fishery and put thousands of unemployed fisherman back into their boats, free sport fisherman to follow their passion and help Californians feel good about themselves because they did something to help themselves, their children, and the fishes. The $6 million that will be spent on getting anadromous fishes to Auburn and the tourist dollars spent in our area to watch the salmon spawn with help to create many jobs for the Auburn-Lincoln area.

SARSAS needs help, political will and public support to finish our work on the Auburn Ravine so please contact us at www.sarsas.org. Only volunteers, focusing together, can work quickly enough to revive our salmon population to health and well-being. If salmon are saved by the people of California working cooperatively, not only will the gift to our fellowmen be significant, but the gift to our children will be of historic magnitude and nothing less than heroic. As Norman McClean wrote in A River Runs Through It “Finally, all things merge into one and a river runs through it. I am haunted by water (with salmon in it).”

SARSAS Mission Statement

2011-10-13T21:38:00.001-07:00

SARSAS (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead)
Action Plan
Mission Statement: to return salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine
Organization: SARSAS is an independent, nonprofit, non-governmental organization, whose goal is to work collaboratively and cooperatively to modify the
thirteen man-made barriers on the Auburn Ravine and the six or more beaver dams, making them passable for fishes.
Vision: This undertaking will take much time, effort, coordination and money, but it will have a permanent, lasting effect on the quality of the lives of those in this area and on the participants who will achieve something unique. We have an opportunity to create something no other town in California has: an anadromous fish run with salmon spawning in the center of the city.
Collaborative Technique: SARSAS is working with volunteers, students, local businesses, government agencies and other Non-Government Organizations and donations of money, time and in-kind services to achieve its goal of returning salmon and steelhead with them ultimately spawning in Auburn School Park Preserve in the center of Auburn. SARSAS is currently working with several individuals and agencies to realize its goal.
Locally, we are working with Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt and Loren Clark and Edmund Sullivan from Placer Legacy and the California Department of Fish and Game, NOAA, Auburn City Council and many others. We have been given stream access by property owners along the AR for volunteers to do fish studies. Placer Legacy and NID are modifying the Hemphill Dam and the Lincoln Gaging Station with work to be complete by summer of 2009. Ron Nelson, NID General Manager, plans to continue working with SARSAS to retrofit the Gold Hill Dam when these two are finished.
Operations: SARSAS plans to accept donations of cash and work and professional expertise and to work outside the usual channels of large financial grants. SARSAS has the ability to accept grant money as well as apply for grants through such non- profits as CABY (COSUMNES, AMERICAN, BEAR AND YUBA) and AmericanRivers.org, which already have monies available for grants to work on several of the barriers describe in Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek Eco-System Resources Plan. (http://www.placer.ca.gov/Departments/CommunityDevelopment/Planning/PlacerLegacy/AuburnRavine.aspx).
Model: The greatest stream/fish restoration ever is Fossil Creek in Arizona. All facets of the community worked together. SARSAS intends to make the Restoration of the Auburn Ravine the model for the State of California. In California our model is Butte Creek.

Philosophy: Actions achieve goals but actions are preceded by a dream: Robert F. Kennedy said, “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’" Together we can make SARSAS the model fish restoration IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA AND ENJOY ALL THE REWARDS AND THE ACCLAIM ATTENDANT THEREWITH.
Comments and questions as well as donations made out to SARSAS can be directed to: SARSAS, P.O. Box 4269, Auburn, CA 95604, or call 530 888 0281, jlsanchez39@gmail.com, www.sarsas.org and click on Blog.

SARSAS Strategic Plan for Returning Salmon and Steelhead to the Auburn Ravine, which flows through Placer County and Sutter County, CA from Auburn to

2011-10-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

SARSAS STRATEGIC PART, PARTS I AND II
Effective 9/2010

Part I. Strategic Plan

VISION STATEMENT: Restore Salmon and Steelhead to the Auburn Ravine
MISSION: The mission of the SARSAS Board is to work in a collaborative manner with all individuals, groups and government organizations in order to restore salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine

Goals:
1. To retrofit for fish passage all barriers impeding salmon and steelhead migration
within the Auburn Ravine
2. To install screens on all downstream irrigation pumps and ditches
3. To study the feasibility of fish passage from the Auburn Ravine Cataract to the headwaters of
the Auburn Ravine
4. To develop a strong support coalition through collaborative efforts
5. To restore stream bed and banks along the Auburn Ravine
6. To develop educational and marketing programs for the public at large regarding the
development and maintenance of a healthy Auburn Ravine
7. To provide water necessary to support a healthy salmonid population
8. To assist in efforts increasing a healthy salmon population in the Pacific Ocean
9. To locate funds necessary to accomplish the goals of SARSAS

Objectives:
1.a By October of 2008 identify and provide an action plan for the retrofitting for fish
passage of each flashboard dam by October 15th of each year.
1b. By June 1st, 2009 establish the core group of individuals and groups or entities that will
assist in the planning, implementation and completion of the restoration of salmon and
steelhead to the Auburn Ravine
1c. By August of 2010 retrofit for fish passage the NID gauging station and the NID
Hemphill Dam
1d. Develop an action plan during 2010 with the assistance of NID that will provide the
planning, funding and resources necessary to provide fish passage at the Gold Hill Dam
1e. During the fall and winter of 2009/2010 develop a plan to mitigate fish passage issues caused
by beaver within the Auburn Ravine
2. By September of 2010 implement a fish screening installation on all side ditches along the
Auburn Ravine thus preventing the diversion of smolt from the Auburn Ravine on their
journey to the Sacramento River and eventually the Pacific Ocean
3. By September of 2010 provide $30,000.00 for a fish passage feasibility study inclusive of
the area from the Auburn Cataract to the headwaters of the Auburn Ravine
4. During 2008 and culminating by June of 2009, identify and select a SARSAS
Board of Directors and identify coalition individuals, governmental bodies, and other groups
who will support and work to achieve the mission, goals and objectives of the SARSAS
Strategic Plan.
5. Develop a plan addressing the streambed and bank restoration needs of the Auburn Ravine.
Planning will be completed by August of 2011
6. During the period from January 2009 to September 2010 the SARSAS Board will develop
and implement community outreach education programs for the general public. These
programs will focus upon the SARSAS mission, goals and objectives.
7. By April 2010, the SARSAS Board will identify a source(s) of water sufficient to support
salmonids in the Auburn Ravine. The SARSAS Board will establish meetings with Nevada
Irrigation District, Placer County Water District, Pacific Gas and Electric and the State Water
Board to negotiate necessary water during the fall of 2009.
8. During the entire life of the SARSAS organization, the goals and objectives will center
primarily upon the restoration of salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine with secondary
goals and objectives assisting in the restoration of healthy salmonid populations within the
California Pacific Ocean boundaries.
9. During the period from January 2009 through June 2011, the SARSAS Board will seek and
locate funds necessary to support the goals and objectives of the organization through various
fund raising efforts, individual donations, business sponsors and grants.
10. The SARSAS Board will develop and implement a marketing plan beginning in the fall of
to be completed by March of 2010. The plan shall include the development of a brochure,
multiple power point presentations, a folder, an online newsletter, the use of Twitter,
Facebook and other viable online sources, public presentations, newspaper articles, television
news and other public forums.
11. During the period August 2009 through December 2009, the SARSAS Board will
develop and implement a plan to assure the involvement of key agencies in the SARSAS
Mission. Agencies will be identified and focus meetings will be established with the
agencies and the SARSAS Board in order to develop quality long term relationships focused
upon the SARSAS mission.
12. SARSAS shall develop and implement a plan for monitoring water flow (CFS), water
temperature, water quality to include PH testing and organic material in order to assure
quality spawning conditions for all fishes. Monitoring locations shall be determined, and at
least three sites will be established. Monitoring will begin during the winter and spring of
2009/2010.
13. The president of SARSAS shall establish a meeting with each individual SARSAS Board
member in order to determine each board member’s strengths and desires then develop plans
with each member to assist in making SARSAS assignments specific to the SARSAS
mission and strategic plan. Timeline will span October 2009 through November 2009 with
periodic updates.
14. During 2009/2010, SARSAS will develop and nurture working relationships with key state
legislators and the Governor in order to secure the support for legislation and support for the
SARSAS Plan in order to secure an ongoing commitment for restoration of Salmon and
steelhead in California’s streams and in the Pacific Ocean bordering the state.
15. Complete a SWOT and Strategic Plan by August of 2009
16. The SARSAS Board will work with representatives of the City of Lincoln,
Native American groups, interested service organizations, business sponsors and other
interested parties in order to hold a SARSAS Salmon Festival with a Calling Back the
Salmon Celebration in the City of Lincoln in October of 2010.
17. The SARSAS Board shall strive to focus upon scientific data in order to meet its mission. To
that end, SARSAS shall reach out to the scientific community in order to secure knowledge
and information relevant to its goals, objectives and Strategic Plan.

II. SARSAS STRATEGIC PLAN -- PROJECTS, RESPONSIBILITIES/TIMELINES/FUNDING

Work with Placer Legacy in order to develop plans and funds necessary to retrofit Lincoln gauging station and Hemphill Dam.
Responsibility: Nevada Irrigation District. District will do both retrofits as state funds are released. Originally scheduled for summer 2009 but due to state funding is delayed.

OBJECTIVE 1 a: GOALS 1 and 8
Project: Removal of flashboard dams on or before October 15th of each year
Responsibility: Owners of flashboard dams. NOAA and F&G- inspect for removal and or
notice to remove by officer.
Timeline: Annually on or before October 15th
Funding: Cost neutral

1 b: GOALS 1-9
Project: SARSAS board has identified and established working relationships with major stakeholders.
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: Ongoing
Funding: Cost neutral

1 c: Goals 1-2-4-7-8-9
Project: Work with NID and Placer Legacy in order to develop plans and funds
necessary to retrofit Lincoln gauging station and Hemphill Dam.
Responsibility: Nevada Irrigation District. District will do both retrofits as state funds are
released. Originally scheduled for summer 2009 but due to state funding issues,
bond monies were not released.
Timeline: Summer 2010
Funding: State bond funds

1 d: Goals 1-2-4-7-8-9
Project: Retrofit Gold Hill Dam with fish ladder ands screens
Responsibility: Nevada Irrigation District
Timeline: Uncertain 2010-2014
Funding: None to date. NID

1 e: Goals 1-4-5-6-8-9
Project: Working with the City of Lincoln, local property owners and appropriate water
agencies, reduce the number of beaver dams on the Auburn Ravine. Remove
and relocate beavers as necessary. Work with citizens groups in order to educate
the general public regarding beaver issues and potential solutions.
Responsibility: SARSAS, City of Lincoln, water agencies
Funding: Grants, city funds, water agencies, SARSAS fundraising

OBJECTIVE 2: Goals 2-8-9
Projects: 1. Install appropriate screens on all irrigation ditches within the Ravine.
2. Notify all water users who have irrigation ditches of the issues related to
smolt and trout when ditches are not screened.
3. Develop grants that in part will provide funds for screening projects.
4. Provide water users with information that links unscreened ditches to the
loss of smolt and trout in the Auburn Ravine.
5. Seek funding partners
6. Seek screening enforcement when necessary.
Responsibility: Water agencies, farmers, SARSAS, enforcement agencies.
Timeline: 2010-2012
Funding Sources: Grants, water agencies, water users
Cost: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 3: Goals 1-3-4-5-6-8-9-
Project: Raise $30,000.00 to be used for a feasibility study for fish passage from the Ophir
Cataract to the headwaters of the Auburn Ravine.
Responsibility: SARSAS
Timeline: 2009 to September 2011
Funding: SARSAS fundraisers and donations

OBJECTIVE 4: Goals 1-9
Project: Establish a nine member working board and identify coalitions and partners.
Responsibility: SARSAS president and board members
Timeline: June 2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 5: Goals 4-5-6-8-9
Project: Identify the ten highest priority areas in need of streambed and bank restoration and
establish projects, timelines, volunteers and funds necessary to accomplish restoration
projects.
Responsibility: SARSAS, landowners, Placer Legacy, NOAA, Fish & Game
Timeline: August 2011
Funding: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 6: Goals 4-6-9
Projects: 1. Develop power point presentations
2. Develop a video for presentations
3. Develop presentations materials i. e. FAQ
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: June 2009 through September 2010 and beyond as necessary
Funding: $3000.00 to $4,000.00 SARSAS fundraisers and donations

OBJECTIVE 7: Goals 7-8-9
Project: 1. Work with appropriate agencies to determine the source of water and when it is
needed in order to assure sufficient water to support salmon, steelhead and trout in
the Auburn Ravine.
2. Establish meetings with PG&E, PCWA, NID and representatives of the state water
board to accomplish the objective.
Responsibility: SARSAS and appropriate agencies
Timeline: August 2009 – April 2010
Funding: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 8: Goals 1-9
As the goals of SARSAS are met, there will be a corresponding increase in the California Pacific Ocean salmonid population.
Project: Meet with fishing industry representatives to demonstrate the SARSAS plan for
restoration as well as its application in other streams feeding the Sacramento and San
Joaquin Rivers in order to gain industry support and Pacific Ocean salmonid restoration.
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None
Timeline: February 2010

OBJECTIVE 9: Goal 9
Projects: 1. Write grants
2. Establish SARSAS fundraisers
3. Locate donors
4. Seek business sponsors
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None
Timeline: 2008…ongoing

OBJECTIVE 10: Goal 6
Projects: 1. Develop Portfolio
2. Develop brochure 8X11 tri-fold
3. Update power point presentation
4. Develop on line newsletter
5. Post on Facebook, twitter and other internet sites
6. Continue public presentations
7. Develop media information for radio, television and newspapers
8. Develop a video presentation
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: August 2009 through March 2010
Funding: $6,000.00

OBJECTIVE 11: Goals 1-2-4-6-7
Projects: Identify Key agencies 8/08- 10/09
Establish focus meetings 9/09-4/2010
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 12: Goals 6-7-8-9
Projects: 1. Purchase hand held monitoring devices
2. Train volunteers for monitoring
3. Monitor weekly/monthly beginning October 2009
4. Select three locations for monitoring
5. Develop data base for collected information
Responsibility: SARSAS Board and monitoring volunteers
Timeline: 10/2009- 10/2012
Funding: Approximately $1,600.00 for equipment

OBJECTIVE 13: Goal 4
Project: SARSAS president shall meet with each Board member to determine individual strengths and interests and make board assignments as necessary
Responsibility: SARSAS president
Timeline: 10/2009—11/2009
Funding: None
OBJECTIVE 14: Goals 4-6-8-9
Projects: 1. Establish meetings with at least one key member of the senate and assembly
2. Meet with key leader and accomplish the following:
a. Present SARSAS plan
b. Solicit support for 503 c. legislation {simplify}
c. Gain support for SARSAS plan expansion across the north state
d. Expand support to other legislators
e. Get legislative resolutions from both houses
f. Explore legislation for salmonid restoration
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timelines: September 2009- May 2010
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 15: Goals 1-9
Project: Complete a SWOT and Strategic Plan
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: August 2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 16: Goals 4-6-8-9
Project: Develop a Calling Back the Salmon Celebration in the City of Lincoln on Oct. 23, 2010.
Responsibility: SARSAS Board, City of Lincoln, Chamber of Commerce, Native American
groups, and other interested parties or individuals identified by SARSAS.
Timeline: October 2010
Cost: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 17: Goals 1-9
Project: Reach out to the scientific community to establish factual scientific facts and
information to help guide the SARSAS Board in achieving its mission, goals and
objectives.
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: Ongoing
Funding: Not required

NOAA Special Agent Don Tanner is the Winner -SARSAS King Salmon Award for OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT in returning anadromous fishes to the Auburn Ravine

2011-10-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

The SKSA is given to a person whose collaborative efforts have resulted in a significant and distinguished advancement toward the goal of SARSAS, which is to return salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the AR.
NOAA Special Agent Don Tanner, using gracious and collaborative law enforcement methods, was able to work amiably with the eight dam owners on the AR downstream of the City of Lincoln and with their wholehearted assistance open the Auburn Ravine to fish passage from October 15 to April 15 of each year to allow Fall Run Chinook to migrate upstream toward spawning gravels.

For the first time in decades, his efforts resulted in a significant number of salmon reaching Auburn Ravine Park in Lincoln, where their upstream migration was stopped by the NID Lincoln Gauging Station. Seeing Agent Tanner’s success with salmon, Nevada Irrigation District, contributed $250k of their own money toward the $850K cost, and will install a fish ladder on the LGS this Sept./Oct. to allow salmon to reach spawning gravels upstream of Lincoln. NID is currently planning and designing fish passage over their Hemphill Dam, which will allow fish to migrate many miles upstream to the NID Gold Hill Dam, which hopefully will be retrofitted for fish passage in the near future.
Agent Tanner’s achievement is vital to the success of returning salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the AR and he continues to constantly monitor the Ravine and works toward making his agency realize the infinite possibility of the AR as a significant tributary to the Sacramento River for salmon and steelhead spawning, thereby helping to keep the threatened steelhead population robust and the salmon population from extinction.
Agent Tanner’s efforts working with the South Sutter Water District resulted in SSWD securing funds from Family Water Alliance to install a Fish Screen at the opening of the Pleasant Grove Canal “to prevent”, to quote SARSAS Fish Passage Expert Ron Ott, “up to 90 % of anadromous fishes returning to the Pacific Ocean to mature from being entrained and die in agriculture fields”.

Agent Tanner’s achievement is exceptional, unique and distinguished and shows how one person, who accepts his responsibility and works ethically and collaboratively to achieve a goal can succeed to a monumental degree, inspiring another entities and individuals to contribute to the SARSAS goal.

Agent Tanner’s contribution to the SARSAS goal is unparalleled and laudatory in the highest degree. He is the most deserving first recipient of the SARSAS King Salmon Award.

SARSAS Secretary Kathie Harris will present Don Tanner the award for Outstanding Achievement toward Returning Salmon and Steelhead to the Auburn Ravine.

SARSAS Update on Progress in Returning Salmon and Steelhead to Auburn Ravine

2011-10-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

October 6, 2011

A fish screen has been installed on the Sheiber Canal/Pump , which helps assure fish returning to the Pacific avoid entrainment and dying in the fields.
Next, NID just received the NOAA permit, which allows them to start work on the Lincoln Gauging Station which prevented many salmon from reach spawning grounds last year.
Ron Nelson, General Manager of NID, called me last Monday and say the permits were all in place and much prep work had already been done. He said NID would try to stay with the original schedule and have the fish ladder installed by the end of this month in time for the arrival of the salmon.
So now all eight dams below Lincoln are in compliance with NOAA regulations, thanks to NOAA Special Agent Don Tanner (who just received the SARSAS King Salmon Award for his work on AR). That means all dams are taken down NLT Oct 15 and stay down until April 15 each year to allow the Fall Run Chinook to reach spawning grounds on the upper Auburn Ravine.
The LGS Fish Ladder currently being installed by NID will be complemented by the Fish Screen, spearheaded by Brad Arnold of South Sutter Water District, to be installed on the Pleasant Grove Canal to prevent fish returning to the Pacific Ocean to mature from being entrained in agricultural fields. The Family Water Alliance secured funding for this fish screen.
NID is currently planning the retrofit of Hemphill Dam upstream of Lincoln near Turkey Creek Golf Course. When the Hemphill Dam is retrofitted for fish passage, salmon and steelhead with then be able to reach the NID Gold Hill Dam two miles upstream from Gold Hill Road.
Much is happening and with each addition, salmon and steelhead can swim and spawn farther up Auburn Ravine.

SECOND ANNUAL CALLING BACK THE SALMON CELEBRATION

2011-08-22T05:08:00.000-07:00

Contact Kelly Velasco, 916 434 2759 or kvelasco@wildlifeheritage.org.

This year is the second annual Calling Back the Salmon Celebration whose purpose is to connect our community with the effort to return salmon and steelhead to the 33 mile length of the Auburn Ravine. Our community, individuals and businesses, are asked to rally behind the effort to return anadromous fishes to the Auburn Ravine, which flows from Auburn through Lincoln to the Sacramento River at Verona. Lincoln has two beautiful parks for viewing salmon/steelhead runs in the fall of each year. In addition to the natural beauty and miracle of fishes, after swimming up to 2500 miles to mature from three to five years in the Pacific Ocean, returning to the place of their birth, imagine the economic benefit to Lincoln and Auburn of turning our cities into a major spawning center with tourists coming to see the miracle, staying in the city and spending money during their stay. The business community will profit just as much as the residents and tourists.

The Indian community performed the Spiritual Blessing during the CBTSC last year and two weeks later the salmon had returned to Lincoln after years of absence. This year the leadership of the Indian community, in order to make more pure the Spiritual Blessing, has asked to separate the Blessing from any commercial activities.

In compliance with that request, the Spiritual Blessing with be held on Sunday, September 18, 2011, from 8 to 10:30 am at the Auburn Ravine behind McBean Pavilion here at McBean Park. Please return on Sunday to take part in this magnificent and powerful Spiritual Blessing to call back the salmon.

Salmon are as resilient and adaptive as
humans; when they can no longer adapt,
neither can mankind. They need our
help….

To get additional information or to become a sponsor, contact Kelly Velasco at 916 434 2759 or email her at kvelasco@wildlifeheritage.org.

WHAT HAS SARSAS ACCOMPLISHED AS OF AUGUST 2011 TOWARD ITS GOAL OF RETURNING SALMON TO THE 33 MILE LENGTH OF THE AUBURN RAVINE?

2011-08-22T04:47:00.000-07:00

August 22, 2011

Working with many individuals, agencies and groups, SARSAS has overseen Salmon reaching Turkey Creek Golf Course where another NID dam is in the planning for a fish ladder and screen over the canal or complete removal.

Getting salmon some twenty-two miles up the Auburn Ravine started with NOAA Special Agent Don Tanner working with SARSAS personnel to meet with dam owners to remind them dams must be removed no later than September 15 each year and stay down until April 15 so the Fall salmon run would have access to spawning grounds.

South Sutter Water District was able to raise funds to install a fish screen over the Pleasant Grove Canal, about six miles downstream from Lincoln. This screen should be installed by the beginning of 2013 and, when installed, should prevent up to 90% of anadromous fishes returning to the Pacific from being entrained in the Canal. That means a very large percentage of Auburn Ravine smolt will be able to successfully reach the Sacramento River and swim to the Pacific.

NOAA Agent Tanner and SARSAS personnel met with the owners of the following dams and the owners agreed to comply to the September 15-April 15 dam removal: the Coppin, Davis, Tom Glenn, Lincoln Ranch Duck Club, Aitken Ranch, Moore, Nelson Lane and the Lincoln Gauging Station. The Scheiber Dam was removed.

Nevada Irrigation District is currently installing a fish ladder over the Lincoln Gauging Station, located a quarter mile downstream from Highway 65, making it possible for salmon to swim two miles above Lincoln where they will encounter NID's Hemphill Dam, which is currently in the planning stage of being addressed. The Lincoln Gauging Station fish ladder construction will begin September of 2011 and be completed in October.

Before salmon can reach Wise Powerhouse, located one mile downstream from Auburn, NID must complete work on the Hemphill Dam and the largest dam on the Auburn Ravine, the Gold Diversion Dam and its Canal.

Once these two dams are addressed, salmon can then reach the richest spawning grounds on the Auburn Ravine. Auburn Ravine, according to a fish count done by California Department of Fish and Game in 2005, has an average of 7,000 salmonids per mile, making it one of the richest streams in
Northern California.

Once SARSAS finishes getting salmon to Auburn, it will focus its attention of Coon Creek and get the salmon at least to Hidden Falls Regional Park near Auburn.

A Selected Bibliography on Auburn Ravine and Western Placer County Streams, Presented to Maria Rea, Howard Brown, Brian Ellrott of NOAA on 1 8 10

2011-03-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

1/8/10

American Fisheries Society, 1/20/04, Jim Steele Pres., Cal-Neva Chapter; a letter to Ms. Sammie Cervantes, USBR.

American River Pump Station Project FEIR/FEIS, June 2002, including Executive Summary, Appendices C and D. SCH No. 1999062089.

Auburn Ravine Aquatic Habitat and Biological Resources, Literature Review and Resource Assessment, by Randy Bailey, October 2003, for Sierra Business Council and Placer County Planning Department.

Auburn Ravine Coon Creek Ecosystem Restoration Plan, Placer County, 4/30/02 Public Review Draft. (contact Placer County Planning Department)

Auburn Tunnel Outlet Modification Public Draft, Initial Study and Mitigated Negative Declaration, April 2009, prepared for Placer County Water Agency.

Auburn Wastewater Facility Plan FEIR March 1997, SCH No. 95082040.

Auburn Wastewater Treatment Plant Stream Study, August 1996, by CH2MHILL.

Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Plan, Bill Kier Associates, January 1999.
(Battle Creek-related Documents available via Google search.)

Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Project DEIS/DEIR, July 2003.

Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Project, Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act Report, June 2005.

Bay Delta Conservation Plan/BDCP…Handout #2, see below, Salmonids: Central Valley Chinook Salmon ESUs, Central Valley Steelhead, Conservation Themes and Stressors, Impact Mechanisms, and Conservation Measure Concepts, BDCP Conservation Strategy Work Group Working Draft.

CDFG 6/28/99 Comments on the Proposed Critical Habitat Designation for California Steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

CDFG Summary of 2004 and 2005 fish community surveys in Auburn Ravine and Coon Creek (Placer County), 1/4/08 e-mail from J. Navicky.

California State University, Dr. David Vanicek, 11/9/84, Auburn Ravine Fishery Survey.

Central Valley Steelhead, by Dennis R. McEwan in Brown, RL ed., 2001, Contributions to the Biology of Central Valley Salmonids, CDFG Fish Bull No. 179. Vol 1:1-43.
(Available via Google search.)

Drake letter to PCWA of 3/13/89.

Effect of fluctuating flow and temperature on cover type selection and behaviour by juvenile brown trout in artificial flumes,” by T. Vehanen, et al., Journal of Fish biology (2000) 56, 923-937.

Federation of Fly Fishers/FFF Native Fish Policy, by Richard Williams, December 6, 2001, in FLYFISHER, Spring 2002.

Foothills Water Network, Response to PAD Questionnaire-2, Focus on Western Placer Creeks, 8/27/07. (see PG&E PAD reference below)

Genetics of Central Valley O. mykiss populations: drainage and watershed scale analyses, by Jennifer Nielsen, et al. in San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, Vol. 3, Iss. 2, Art. 3, September 2005. http://repositories.cdlib.org/jmie/sfews/vol3/iss2/art3

Genetic Population Structure” by Nils Ryman in NOAA TM 30. http://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/publications/techmemos/tm30/ryman.html

Goal, Policy and Strategy Recommendations for Stream Management in Placer County, October 1991, prepared for Placer County Flood Control…District.

Goodall Recollections…statement of 5/26/91.

Hydropower Flow Fluctuations and Salmonids: A Review of the Biological Effects, Mechanical Causes, and Options for Mitigation,” by Mark Hunter, September 1992. State of Washington Department of Fisheries, Technical Report No. 119.

Lincoln Creek Week Agenda, 4/21/07.

Lincoln Wastewater Treatment Plant Expansion to 2.4 MGD, DEIR, December 1998, SCN 98102027. Auburn Ravine Fishery Survey.

Lincoln Wastewater Treatment and Reclamation Facility DEIR, September 1999, SCH No. 98122071.

Meador, Michael in the American Fisheries Society Journal--Fisheries 1996; 21:18-23, Water Transfer Projects and the Role of Fisheries Biologists, and 1992; 17:17-22, Inter-basin Water Transfer: Ecological Concerns.

Monitoring, Assessment, And Research on Central Valley Steelhead: Status of Knowledge, Review of Existing Programs, And Assessment of Needs, by the CalFed Interagency Ecological Program/IEP Steelhead Project WorkTeam, March 1999.

NOAA Public Draft Central Valley Recovery Plan and Related Documents, October 2009.

NOAA Technical Memo 30/TM 30, “Genetic Effects of Straying of Non-Native Hatchery Fish into Natural Populations,” W. Stewart Grant, editor. www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/publications/techmemos/tm30/tm30.html

Pacific Gas & Electric Company Drum-Spaulding Project, FERC Project 2310, Relicensing Pre-Application Document (PAD), April 2008.

Placer County Planning Dept., Natural Resources, Biological Studies and Documents—some documents available at the site below. e.g. Aquatic Resources, Salmonid Spawning Habitat Surveys for Placer County Streams, etc.
http://www.placer.ca.gov/Home/Departments/CommunityDevelopment/Planning/PCCP/DocsData/BioStudies.aspx

Salmonid Spawning Habitat Surveys for Placer County Streams 3/24/04, by Jones & Stokes for Placer County Planning Dept. (see above)

Salmonids: Central Valley Chinook Salmon ESUs, Central Valley Steelhead, Conservation Themes and Stressors, Impact Mechanisms, and Conservation Measure Concepts, Bay Delta Conservation Plan, Conservation Strategy Work Group Working Draft, Handout #2, 3/26/07.
(Available on-line via Google search.)

Sarkisian letter to CDFG dated 6/6/90.

Scientific Approaches for Evaluating Hydroelectric Project Effects, Prepared for Hydropower Reform Coalition by Stillwater Sciences, et al., July 27, 2006.

Streams of Western Placer County: Aquatic Habitat and Biological Review, Literature Review and Resource Assessment, December 2003, by R. Bailey for Sierra Business Council and Placer County Planning Department.

The Mines Group: “Auburn Ravine Gaging Station Site Selection and Fish Passage Modifications Conceptual Design Report.” Prepared for Placer County Planning Department. Project No. 04-35-01. June 8, 2005.
Van Riper letter to PCWA of 3/11/89.

Range of pharmaceuticals in fish across US

2011-03-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

By MARTHA MENDOZA

Fish caught near wastewater treatment plants serving five major U.S. cities had residues of pharmaceuticals in them, including medicines used to treat high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression, researchers reported Wednesday.

Findings from this first nationwide study of human drugs in fish tissue have prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to significantly expand similar ongoing research to more than 150 different locations.

"The average person hopefully will see this type of a study and see the importance of us thinking about water that we use every day, where does it come from, where does it go to? We need to understand this is a limited resource and we need to learn a lot more about our impacts on it," said study co-author Bryan Brooks, a Baylor University researcher and professor who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment.

A person would have to eat hundreds of thousands of fish dinners to get even a single therapeutic dose, Brooks said. But researchers including Brooks have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of pharmaceutical residues can harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species because of their constant exposure to contaminated water.

The research was published online Wednesday by the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and also was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Salt Lake City.

Brooks and his colleague Kevin Chambliss tested fish caught in rivers where wastewater treatment plants release treated sewage in Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Orlando, Fla. For comparison, they also tested fish from New Mexico's pristine Gila River Wilderness Area, an area isolated from human sources of pollution.

Earlier research has confirmed that fish absorb medicines because the rivers they live in are contaminated with traces of drugs that are not removed in sewage treatment plants. Much of the contamination comes from the unmetabolized residues of pharmaceuticals that people have taken and excreted; unused medications dumped down the drain also contribute to the problem.

The researchers, whose work was funded by a $150,000 EPA grant, tested fish for 24 different pharmaceuticals, as well as 12 chemicals found in personal care products.

They found trace concentrations of seven drugs and two soap scent chemicals in fish at all five of the urban river sites. The amounts varied, but some of the fish had combinations of many of the compounds in their livers.

The researchers didn't detect anything in the reference fish caught in rural New Mexico.

In an ongoing investigation, The Associated Press has reported trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals have been detected in drinking water provided to at least 46 million Americans.

The EPA has called for additional studies about the impact on humans of long-term consumption of minute amounts of medicines in their drinking water, especially in unknown combinations. Limited laboratory studies have shown that human cells failed to grow or took unusual shapes when exposed to combinations of some pharmaceuticals found in drinking water.

"This pilot study is one important way that EPA is increasing its scientific knowledge about the occurrence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment," said EPA spokeswoman Suzanne Rudzinski. She said the completed and expanded EPA sampling for pharmaceuticals and other compounds in fish and surface water is part of the agency's National Rivers and Stream Assessment.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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AUBURN RAVINE A Community Effort to Restore one small Sierra Foothills stream that may hold the answer to the future of northern California’s

2011-03-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

by Greg Vinci

When just a toddler Jack Sanchez’s mother would take him to the banks of the creek, a mere fifty feet down slope from his boyhood home in the Auburn Ravine, where he would occupy himself by tossing small pebbles into the creek that bordered his parents property in the Sierra foothills. As Jack grew older pebble tossing progressed into exploring the abundant wildlife in and along the creek and eventually he and his buddies would spend summer afternoons sneaking from pool to pool with a spinning rod and a can of worms. Jack spent many hours just sitting on a rock next to the creek, observing the fish in the pool below his house. He observed that each fall, among the school of small Rainbows a few large dark forms would appear seemingly out of nowhere. As the autumn wore on, more and more of these mystery fish would at times be observed and when Jack finally caught one he noted that once out of water the dark hued fish were also Rainbows but much larger and bore a bright chrome hue that could only be present on fish that had at one time been to the sea. Anadromous Steelhead had arrived in the Auburn Ravine. Located along Interstate 80 at the 1000 ft. elevation, Auburn Ravine begins just up the hill from the City of Auburn, California, and flows for about thirty miles to its confluence with the Sacramento River at Verona. Back in the days of the Gold Rush, when it was then known as North fork Dry Diggins, it held the distinction as being one of the very first gold strikes to be established after the initial discovery at Coloma, CA, in 1848. The placer mining method of gold extraction that was utilized on the creek, resulted in an ecological disaster that devastated the creek’s aquatic life. Skip ahead 160 years; placer mining no longer exists, and very little evidence of the damage that placer gold mining caused can be seen.

It’s been over fifty years since Jack discovered his first Steelhead in Auburn Ravine, and during that span of time Jack became acquainted with many others who lived along the creek and who shared similar experiences, and mutual concern that fewer and fewer Steelhead and Salmon were observed in the creek each year. That concern was the catalyst that inspired the Ophir Property Owners Inc. and the Auburn Ravine Preservation Committee to begin searching for ways to protect the AR’s habitat for resident fish and migrating Steelhead and Salmon. They were able to work with the DFG in the early 90s to initiate studies of the potential of the AR to support Steelhead and Salmon spawning. SARSAS, which is an acronym for Save Auburn Ravine Salmon And Steelhead, came about in the first part of the new century, and began formulating a plan to convince the stakeholders which were primarily water districts, to help in their efforts. Many of them had heard stories from old timers about fishing for twenty inch Steelhead and large Chinook Salmon. Some of the members like Jack Sanchez, who had regularly fished the ravine as youngsters, had been witness to the predictable runs of Steelhead that existed there prior to the nineteen sixties. They knew that if they were going to convince the many stakeholders along the stream such as Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Nevada Irrigation District (NID) and the South Sutter Water District (SSWD) to name a few, they would need to gather all of the scientific research that had been done over the years to plead their case. They found for example that the California Dept. of Fish & Game had completed several aquatic surveys in 2004 and 2005 that corroborated the anecdotal evidence of the old timers. Interestingly, they found that 34% of the fish in the AR were Rainbow Trout/Steelhead. The balance of the fish were split between Sacramento Sucker, Lamprey, Sculpin, and Hitch, all of which are indigenous. Non-indigenous fish such as, Green Sunfish, Pumpkinseed, Redear (sic), Sunfish, Red Shiner and Spotted Bass were also found. On one stretch near Ophir, an amazing 7,985 Rainbows (some of which may have been Steelhead) were found per mile. They also identified several issues that were impeding the spawning migrations of Salmon and Steelhead in the AR such as dams (some seasonal and some permanent) that blocked passage of anadromous fish, eratic water flows in the creek caused by irrigation and power needs, and bank erosion that created siltation in the spawning gravels. With this information in hand, they began contacting the stakeholders to see what level of cooperation could be forthcoming.

Since efforts to get stakeholder cooperation in the early nineteen nineties had met with little success, they were fully prepared to hear the word “no” when they contacted the water districts. This time around they were amazed that they received encouragement from all of the agencies that they contacted. Everyone wanted to help, but of course the bureaucracies of each organization needed to be navigated, and money had to be found.

High on their list, was finding a way to assure reasonable minimum flows. The Wise Powerhouse owned by PG&E supplies some of the water to the AR which is transported through ditches and tunnels from storage at higher elevations to the powerhouse which then provides small amount to NID via the creek. There had been several times during the late summer or early fall that the spigot had been turned off so to speak causing many of the land owners along the stream to gather dying fish in the shallows and transport them to the deeper pools that remained. Though some of the AR water comes from springs located along its course in the dry months, much of its flow during that period is dependent on water releases by the various water agencies in the area. NID uses the creek to transport water from higher elevation impoundments to its agricultural customers in the valley below during the summer months and if the stream dries up, chances are that NID had a maintenance project that required turning off the valve. One would think that trying to get a water district to change its policy would be like trying to beat a dead Salmon, but Jack Sanchez says that working with Ron Nelson, NID’s general manager, resulted in restoring the water flow, and it has remained stable during the summer months ever since. Getting the other water district stakeholders was important too. For example the Placer County Water District (PCWD) pumps up to 100 cfs per second at various times of the year and PG&E provides up to 80 cfs to NID via the ravine. As you can see, everyone needs to be on the same page.

They also needed to get the cooperation of federal agencies involved in the restoration of Steelhead and Salmon habitat in the central valley. Such cooperation could provide a possible source of federal funding for any future construction projects such as fish ladders. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had drafted a Central Valley Salmon and Steelhead Recovery Plan that had placed the Auburn Ravine relatively low on the priority list. Armed with the DFG fish survey from 2004 & 2005 plus several other studies that had been compiled since the nineteen eighties, they approached NOAA and were able to convince them of the AR’s viability as a potential spawning waterway for Steelhead and Salmon. Since then they have been very cooperative and their special agent Don Tanner has worked alongside DFG warden Mark Jeter each year to meet with agricultural interests along the creek to make sure that any man made barriers are removed during the spawning migration period between October 15th and April 15th.

(Having a stable flow of water is only part of the equation which allows the fish to travel to the spawning area in the upper reaches of the stream the goal of SARSAS will be partially unfulfilled as will the full potential of the stream.) REWRITE Threee of the twelve dams and diversions along the AR are owned and controlled by NID (Hemphill diversion/dam, Hwy 65 Lincoln Gauging Station Dam, and Auburn Ravine #1 Gold Hill diversion/dam). The other nine dams in the valley portion of the stream are diversion projects owned and controlled by the South Sutter Water District (SSWD), private owners and one private duck club. Several are what are known as flashboard dams that back up the ravine at certain times of the year to divert water into canals that transport it for irrigation. Such diversions also divert fry and smolt in canals where the die in fields as they attempt to return to the estuaries and Pacific Ocean where they will grow to adults. NID has agreed to build a fish ladder on the Lincoln Gauging Station in the Fall of 2011 and is working on a plan to either install a fish ladder and fish screen on the HH Canal or to completely remove the Hemphill Dam. No plans for retrofitting the Gold Hill Diversion Dams have been made. Ron Nelson his wants to retrofit the first two successfully before NID addresses the Gold Hill Dam which will need a large fish ladder and a big fish screen. The SSWD owns two permanent dams and diversions and 23 pumps in the lower valley section of the ravine. SSWD has applied to the Family Water Alliance for $300,000 to put a fish screen on the Pleasant Grove Canal behind the Aitken Ranch Dam to allow fish passage and screen the diversion. PG&E has offered up to $45,000.00 in matching funds to place fish screens on nine privately owned the pumps. Finally, most of the dams are up for re-licensing by FERC, which is an opportunity for the public to ask that the dams be managed for wildlife preservation as a requirement for the renewal of the license. The wheels of progress are moving slowly, but they are moving forward, nonetheless.

The story of the successful steps that have been undertaken to get the project this far on the Auburn Ravine can be a blueprint for conservation organizations up and down the west slope of the Sierras where Salmon and Steelhead have historically spawned. Keeping in mind that it is pretty much an accepted fact that hatchery fish do not survive as well in the environment as do naturally spawned fish, the maintenance and improvement of spawning habitat that will result in more wild fish is very important to the survival of the resource. By doing simple math the potential of the Sierra’s west slope creeks to save this important fisheries resource is huge. There are roughly seven hundred thirty-eight streams on the west slope that comprise the Feather River, Yuba River, American River, and San Joaquin River water sheds to name a few. Keeping in mind that one female Chinook Salmon carries about 3000 eggs, (and on average 3% survive to fry stage and ultimately return to spawn) so if only one female successfully spawns in each of the seven hundred streams of the central valley the consequential 2,100,000. eggs will result in 63,000 wild adult Salmon returning to the valley’s waterways each year. So you can see that the restoration of west slope creeks have the potential to provide the means to save one of California’s most valuable wildlife resources. The same equation can be applied to Steelhead who have been affected by the same problems with degradation of habitat and the introduction of hatchery fish.
It took twenty years of effort by concerned individuals, starting with the Property Owners Association of Ophir, the Auburn Ravine Preservation Association and finally SARSAS, to get this far, and it will be only a short time when Steelhead and Salmon can make an unimpeded journey to the spawning gravel of the upper Auburn Ravine. If conservation groups throughout the valley take the same course as SARSAS, the dismal runs of Salmon and Steelhead that we’ve witnessed over the last few years will be a thing of the past(see The SARSAS Plan for Saving Salmon and Steelhead in the Pacific Marine Fishery at www.sarsas.org).

Send donations to SARSAS, PO Box 4269,Auburn, CA 95604.

DFG
Colin Purdy: (916)358-2832 CEL (530)333-7749 epurdy@dfg.ca.gov
Mike Healey (916)358-4334 mhealey@dfg.ca.gov
Robert Vincik (916)358-2933 vincik@dfg.ca.gov

NOAA (National Marine Fisheries Service-special agent)
Donald Tanner (916)930-3658 CEL (916)871-4862 Don.tanner@noaa.gov

USFWS
Dan Cox dan_cox@fws.gov

Otis Bay Environmental
www.otisbay.com
Chad Gurly

US Bureau of Reclamation
John Hanon jhannon@usbr.gov

The SARSAS 300 Club - 300 People each Donating $300 in 2011

2011-03-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

If you would like to donate money to support the SARSAS effort, you might consider becoming part of the 2011 300 Club. Our goal is to encourage 300 people to sign up to donate $300 during the year. Have your bank send $25 each month, $50 for six months, or a one time donation of $300 or whatever combination is easiest for you, and

send your tax deductible donation to

SARSAS, PO Box 4269, Auburn, CA95604. The SARSAS tax exempt number is 80-0291680.

Your donation will help SARSAS operate during 2011 and, if we make the 300 donations goal, will go toward funding at least two fish screens on the Auburn Ravine to help returning salmon and steelhead survive their voyages back to the Pacific Ocean where they can spend three to five years maturing before returning to the Auburn Ravine.

If you know of large donors or estates to donate, call Jack at 530 888 0281.

One of the goals of SARSAS is to make Auburn, CA, a rare town in California with salmon spawning within the city limits at Auburn School Park and Ashford Park.

2010 Was a Very Good Year for SARSAS

2011-03-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Through SARSAS’ collaborative efforts with many organizations and agencies, salmon were able to travel about twenty miles up the Auburn Ravine and were sighted in some numbers in Auburn Ravine Park in the City of Lincoln, where they were stopped by NID’s Lincoln Gauging Station. The word from NID is this barrier will be fitted with a fish ladder in the Fall of 2011 allowing salmon to swim upstream about two miles to NID’s Hemphill Dam. When it and NID’s Gold Hill Diversion Dam are retrofitted with fish ladders and screens, anadromous fishes will be able to reach Wise Powerhouse, one mile downstream from the City of Auburn. So the year 2010 saw great progress being made in salmon returning to the Auburn Ravine.
Special thanks should go to NOAA Special Agent Don Tanner for bringing nine flashboard dams downstream from Lincoln in compliance with NOAA regulations of dams being removed from the Auburn Ravine for October 15 to April 15 to accommodate the Fall Chinook Run. Brad Arnold of South Sutter Water District has applied for funds for a fish screen on the Pleasant Grove Canal, which will prevent salmon returning to the Pacific Ocean from being entrained in rice fields and pastures.
Much work remains to be done. SARSAS is an all-volunteer organization and makes progress only by the efforts of those who volunteer to do the work. SARSAS needs volunteers for river patrol, tree planting, project managers, water testing, flow testing, photographers, grant writers, event coordinators, teachers to spread the SARSAS message to young people, and people who write well and would like to become grant writers. SARSAS needs people who have worked with fish in their professional life or in fish passage related fields who would like to continue their efforts to benefit our community.
SARSAS is currently working on an application for fish screens for 23 pumps downstream of Lincoln and 4 fish screens. This application is in the millions of dollars and, if successful, will provide many jobs and dollars to our communities. Returning anadromous fishes to the Auburn Ravine, not only benefits fish, but also benefits our economy by providing jobs and tourist dollars.
We need volunteers in the Lincoln area to help with the various projects necessary to upgrade the Auburn Ravine in Auburn Ravine Park and McBean Park. A Lincoln group is currently being formed with Lincoln City Councilman Stan Nader and the City of Lincoln for this upgrading of Auburn Ravine.
In addition, we need visionaries in the Auburn area to help plan how to get the salmon the last mile from Wise Powerhouse to the two parks in Auburn, Auburn School Park and Ashford Park to prepare for spawning in these two parks. Between Wise Powerhouse and the City of Auburn, Auburn Ravine flows under Wise Road, twice under Ophir Road, under Highway 80 w here the two forks of the Auburn Ravine come together. The North Fork of Auburn Ravine flows under Highway 49 near Highway 80, under Elm Street and Palm Avenue up to Ashford Park. North Rich Ravine, the south fork of Auburn Ravine, flows under Old Town Auburn, daylights near the Claude Chana Statue next to the Firehouse and Creekside Café in Old Town Auburn, flows through the Jury Parking lot, behind Courthouse Coffee, under Auburn-Folsom Road to Auburn School Park. In addition to more water, at least half a dozen fish ladders need to be funded and installed and then Lincoln and Auburn will have salmon spawning in the town centers, attracting tourists with big pocketbooks and many jobs for workers to do the installations.
If you wish to get involved with SARSAS, call Jack Sanchez at 530 888 0281 or email him at jlsanchez39@gmail and join the fun.

Auburn Ravine Salmon Have Reached the City of Lincoln, Califronia, Some 22 Miles Upstream from the Mouth at Verona on Sacramento River

2010-12-17T11:54:00.000-08:00

In October of this year, Salmon reached Auburn Ravine Park in Lincoln, California, and started dying banging themselves to death trying to negotiate the Nevada Irrigation District's Lincoln Gauging Station, a quarter mile downstream from Highway 65 that passes through the heart of Lincoln. They are still dying as we write. Ron Nelson, General Manager of NID, assures critics that the LGS will be retrofitted for fish passage with a fish ladder by Fall of 2011, which does little to pacify the angry many who cannot understand why fish who have swum thousands of miles in the Pacific Ocean, grown to maturity over three to five years and then returned to Auburn Ravine to complete their Salmon Life Cycle are being treated to the ignoble death of dying trying to get over this manmade barrier,the Lincoln Gauging Station Dam and concrete apron, after completing their miraculous journey.

SARSAS has worked with NOAA Special Agent Don Tanner, to see that all flashboard dams downstream of the City of Lincoln are in compliance with NOAA regs; that is, the dams are removed from October 15 through April 15 to accommodate returning salmon returning to spawn. As a result salmon have clear passage to the city of Lincoln, Why is NID surprised that their three barriers, the Lincoln Gauging Station, the Hemphill Dam, and the Gold Hill Diversion Dams are the only unretrofitted barriers left on the Auburn Ravine preventing fish from reaching Wise Powerhouse, one mile downstream from the City of Auburn ... why is NID surprised when public outrage and anger are directed at them. The knew the salmon were coming since at least 2008 and yet the barriers still exist and still kill salmon. So the salmon run in Auburn Ravine is forced to die while NID works to provide passage for fish over its three remaining barriers in the Auburn Ravine.
Auburn Ravine will become a major spawning tributary for Fall Run Chinook when NID provides fish passage over its three remaining barriers.

Water Supply Forecast Boosted After Wet Fall

2010-12-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

By Matt Weiser

mweiser@sacbee.com
Published: Friday, Dec. 17, 2010 - 10:15 am

Last Modified: Friday, Dec. 17, 2010 - 11:25 am

The state on Friday boosted its water supply forecast to 50 percent for water contractors who draw water from the Delta.

The move represents a large increase so early in the winter, a measure of confidence in water supplies thanks to a very wet fall in California.

"We don't want to be overly optimistic with most of the winter ahead of us, but recent storms have given us the best early season water supply outlook in five years," said Mark Cowin, director of the California Department of Water Resources.

The forecast indicates to agencies that buy water from the State Water Project that they can expect to get half of the maximum amount of water available to them under existing contracts with the state, which total about 4.2 million acre-feet.

These contractors include 29 public agencies, including urban water agencies in Southern California and the Silicon Valley, and the Kern County Water Agency. Collectively, they serve more than 25 million Californians and close to a million acres of irrigated farmland.

The forecast does not affect water availability in the Sacramento area, which holds its own water rights in the Sacramento and American rivers. It does, however, serve as a general measure of water availability statewide. Thanks to a wet fall, the statewide snowpack stood at 122 percent of average as of Friday.

The State Water Project stores water in Lake Oroville on the Feather River and delivers it to customers primarily via pumps and canals that extract from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The forecast is usually updated monthly in winter and spring as hydrologic conditions change. The season's first forecast in November indicated a 25 percent supply.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Salmon Make a Comeback in Central Valley Rivers by Matt Weiser of Sacbee Nov. 13, 2010

2010-11-13T15:09:00.001-08:00

Salmon Make a Comeback in Central
Valley Rivers
mweiser@sacbee.com
Published Saturday, Nov. 13, 2010
Salmon are returning to Central Valley rivers and streams in impressive numbers this fall,
restoring hope that years of shortages and fishing closures are over.
It's a dramatic turnaround from last year, when the Central Valley fall chinook salmon run
hit a historic low. Scientists blamed poor ocean conditions and a century of habitat
degradation in freshwater spawning areas.
It got so bad that federal officials closed commercial fishing in 2008 and 2009, taking
California salmon off dinner menus for the first time ever.
Now the fish are surging back. The numbers are not nearly as robust as in decades past. But
ocean conditions have improved, and myriad small habitat projects are starting to bear fruit.
Bryon Harris, 26, saw the results. He was walking along Auburn Ravine in Lincoln recently
with a friend. The stream runs through Placer County before emptying into the Sacramento
River via the Natomas Cross Canal.
"We hear this flopping and it sounded like the rocks were crashing," said Harris. "We look
over and there's a big old salmon right there … and there's a few more trapped in there,
trying to make it. It was jaw-dropping, almost."
The salmon made it that far because this is the first year in decades that a number of small,
seasonal diversion dams have been removed from the stream. As a result, 3-foot salmon
have been seen thrashing upstream behind mini-malls and housing tracts in suburban
Lincoln.
The volunteer group Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead persuaded landowners –
with a nudge from law enforcement – to remove the irrigation dams. Federal law requires
removal between Oct. 15 and April 15 so salmon can pass. But before they were reminded
this year, many owners either didn't know or forgot.
"I've fished the Auburn Ravine for 10 years at least, and I've never seen a salmon in there,
ever," said Harris. "I was shocked."
The Central Valley's major salmon hatcheries are reporting big increases in spawning fish
compared with last year. This includes hatcheries on Battle Creek and the Feather River,
among the biggest contributors to the population.
"We're very pleased with the run," said Brett Galyean, deputy manager at Coleman National
Fish Hatchery on Battle Creek, operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It's just been
a good year."
Salmon make a comeback in Central Valley rivers - Sacramento Sports - Kings, 49ers, Ra... Page 1 of 3
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/13/v-print/3181995/salmon-make-a-comeback-in-central... 11/13/2010
The Shasta County hatchery, the Central Valley's biggest producer, has spawned about
16,000 chinook so far. That compares with about 6,500 last year.
The Feather River hatchery in Butte County, operated by the California Department of Fish
and Game, had spawned about 2,600 salmon as of Nov. 6. That is about double last year's
count at the same time.
The Mokelumne River hatchery, a smaller producer in San Joaquin County, had spawned just
over 700 fish as of the same date, or five times more than in 2009.
Nimbus Hatchery on the American River opened just two weeks ago and doesn't have
comparative results yet.
"The run to date is encouraging," said Doug Demko, president and biologist at FISHBIO, a
consulting firm based in Oakdale that monitors the run. "We've seen improvements in ocean
conditions the last few years, so we expect next year we're going to see even more fish
back."
Scientists studying the salmon crash that began in 2007 placed blame largely on poor ocean
health. Salmon in the ocean that year found little to eat, and many died.
The problem was a shift in a Pacific upwelling current that normally drives deep water to the
surface, fertilizing a crop of tiny zooplankton at the base of the food chain.
That upwelling current is back, visible in the abundance of whales and dolphins that tourists
enjoyed off the Monterey coast this summer.
Scientists say poor freshwater habitat and inadequate flows also contributed to the salmon
crash. This, plus the abundance of homogenized hatchery fish, created a weak population
vulnerable to ocean changes.
Federal officials last year imposed new rules to improve water flows on rivers and in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Efforts are also under way to restore creeks that are still
good habitat, but have not seen big salmon numbers in many years.
These small waterways include not only Auburn Ravine but also Dry Creek, which flows
through Roseville and North Sacramento and empties into the American River near Natomas.
The creek saw hundreds of spawning salmon in past years before their numbers plunged
with the rest of the region. Now it seems to be rebounding.
"We're hopeful," said Gregg Bates of the Dry Creek Conservancy, which coordinated a
volunteer salmon survey on Friday. "It doesn't look to me like we're going to reach the
numbers we had four years ago. But if we saw 50 to 100, that would be pretty exciting."
The salmon that Bryon Harris saw in Auburn Ravine was halted by the Lincoln Gauging
Station, an antiquated flow-measuring device that blocks the flow like a dam.
His friend, Carlos Hernandez, jumped into the creek and managed to grab one of the
exhausted salmon. He lifted it over the small dam, and it swam on.
"It's sad to see those fish get stuck right there," Harris said. "The fish was big, man. It was
bigger than a skateboard. It really opened my eyes."
The Nevada Irrigation District owns the gauging station and plans to begin modifications
next year so salmon can pass, said General Manager Ron Nelson. Then it plans the same at
Hemphill Dam, a larger structure upstream.
"It's pretty cool to be hearing about the possibility of fish being up there," said Nelson.
"We're kind of jazzed about that. This is a good deal, I think, for everybody."

Big Ag Cries Big Tears; Salmon Run Dries Up

2010-11-09T21:08:00.000-08:00

By Larry Collin

Special to The Bee
Published: Saturday, Nov. 6, 2010 - 10:00 pm | Page 5E

I've been a California commercial fisherman for almost three decades. For most of that time, Chinook salmon constituted 70 percent or more of my business. Salmon gave me a prosperous living, and they supported the communities that I called home. They fed my family – and helped feed America. I'm proud to be a salmon fisherman, proud to be part of a venerable tradition based on a sustainable – and delicious – resource.
Then in the past few years, everything changed. California's 2008 and 2009 salmon seasons were closed following a catastrophic crash in the stocks. In the area where I fish, we were allowed eight days of fishing this year. Obviously, it's tough to make a living working one week a year.
For the first four days of this year's "season," weather kept our fleet on shore. In the remaining four days, I caught one salmon.
What caused this disaster? Lack of water. Diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta south to corporate farms have deprived salmon of water they need in their spawning streams. Further, huge government-run Delta pumps that send taxpayer-subsidized water south destroy great numbers of young salmon trying to migrate downriver to the ocean.
The biological facts are bad enough. Even worse are the power plays of Big Agribusiness. Faced with modest restrictions on subsidized water deliveries to protect fish, Big Ag bleated like an old sheep, claiming economic ruin. Politicians rewarded their calculated hysteria, augmenting their supplies with "emergency" deliveries.
Foremost among the corporate crybabies is Westlands Water District, at 600,000 acres the country's largest irrigation district. Westlands is a junior water rights holder, meaning it's legally the last in line for water during drought. Only a few hundred corporate entities make up this agricultural empire – plus a battery of lawyers working to overcome their junior water right status.
From all the wailing, you'd have thought Westlands was in worse shape than the salmon fishing ports. But – surprise! Westlands not only had enough water for their crops – they had leftovers. In fact, they had a 2010 surplus of about 450,000 acre-feet, enough water to supply 1.8 million urbanites for one year. So, they decided to trade 150,000 acre-feet to the Metropolitan Water District and generate $30 million of benefit for themselves.
In other words, Westlands is receiving subsidized water at low rates, then peddling it to cities to generate a windfall. Meanwhile, salmon – a public resource – are going belly-up, fishermen are going bankrupt and the communities that depend on commercial fishing, recreational angling and seafood processing are hollowing out.
Wonder why west-side corporate farmers fight against reasonable water policy? While crying "wolf" over water, they continue to plant more orchard crops, which require plentiful irrigation. They then use these plantings to justify their demands for more water. But their real agenda isn't crop security: It's control over the water. They'd like to be middlemen in the transfer of subsidized water from the Delta to southland cities. They dream of the day when all they'll have to do is watch the water flow and listen to the "ka-ching" of the cash registers.
Salmon are resilient, but they can't live on sunlight alone. They need water, and we should give it to them. Salmon fishing is one of America's most regulated industries. Fishermen understand the necessity for resource protection – but we demand a level playing field. The regulations that apply to us must also apply to the westside's water buccaneers. It's a matter of law and fairness.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved

Brainstorm Session on How to Get the Salmon From Wise Powerhouse on Tuesday, October 19 at 1pm at the Domes, 175 Fulweiler Avenue, Auburn CA95603

2010-10-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

All interested people are invited to take part in a Brainstorming Session exploring how the Auburn community can get salmon from Wise Powerhouse to Auburn. Salmon are not yet to Wise Powerhouse but will be there shortly so advanced planning is imperative.

SARSAS will show a brief power point presentation describing the Auburn Ravine streambed and riparian habitat from Wise Powerhouse, along Ophir Road which the Auburn Ravine goes under three times, and the culvert where Auburn Ravine goes under Highway 80 and under Historic Auburn behind Courthouse Coffee and under Auburn Folsom Road, to Auburn School Park. The north fork of Auburn Ravine runs along Auburn Ravine Road and passes Ashford Park.

The meeting will begin at 1 pm, Tuesday, October 19, at the Domes, 175 Fulweiler in CEO 1. Please bring your thoughts and ideas and share them for the advanced planning.

Please respond to jlsanchez39@gmail.com to RSVP.
Thanks

SARSAS General Meetings, Fourth Monday of each Month, 175 Fulweiler, Auburn, CA95603 at 10 am

2010-07-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

Agenda for July 26, 2010 SARSAS General Meeting

Agenda for July 26, 2010 - Monday 10-11:00 a.m.
175 Fulweiler Avenue, Auburn, CA 95603 (The Domes)
Contact: Jack at 530-888-0281.

Meetings are Fourth Monday of each month at 10-11 a. m

I. Self- introductions

II. SARSAS Philosophy – We believe by working together with
many individuals and agencies at the same table we can make
progress working collaboratively to make Auburn Ravine navigable for anadromous fishes.

III. Monday, July 26 - Confirmed speakers are Brett Storey, Placer County Senior Management Analyst -- “The Middle Fork and Joint Powers Authority: What They Are and How They Work”.

V. Stan Nader, SARSAS Board Member and Calling Back the Salmon Celebration Chairperson – “Update”

V. Greg Nelson, SARSAS Event Coordinator– “Summary of June 7 Rubino’s Dinner”

VI. Gen Sparks, RWB, “CVRWQCB Update”

VII. Ron Ott, SARSAS Board Member, “Meeting with FWS and GPS Map of Auburn Ravine Update”

VIII. Next Meetings Scheduled:

Monday, September, 27, Confirmed speaker is Mike Brenner, District Conservationist, Natural Resources Conservation Service, “What NRCS Can Do for SARSAS and the General Public”.

Monday, October 25, 2010, Confirmed speaker is Robert Hane, “Creating Your Own Fish Runs and Habitat” – Robert owns and operates an environmentally friendly Christmas Tree Farm on the North Ravine, a tributary of the Auburn Ravine.

Monday, November 22, Confirmed speakers, Bernie Schroeder, City of Auburn Engineer, and Dan Rich, Nexgen Utility Management

Monday, August 23, Confirmed speaker is Katherine Hart, Chairperson of the California Valley Water Quality Control Board -- “How the Board Protects California’s Water Quality” and Colin Bear, Auburn Journal, “Salmon in the Classroom”.

Ron Ott Holds Key to Auburn Ravine Restoration

2010-07-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

By Colin Berr Journal Staff Writer

Ron Ott may soon hold the key to the Auburn Ravine restoration in his hands.

After months of tireless research, Ott is creating a unique book on the Auburn Ravine which lists every dam, diversion and pump from Auburn to Verona on the Sacramento River.

“Ron’s book will allow us to completely restore the Auburn Ravine to salmon and steelhead runs for spawning and return to the Pacific for maturation,” said Jack Sanchez, president of SARSAS (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead). “His work is absolutely key to what we’re doing.”

Salmon have been a major part of Ott’s life. Growing up on the Sacramento River, Ott went on to receive three advanced degrees from Stanford, which included specialties in hydrology, hydraulics and water resources.

He has since worked nationwide on stream, river and lake restoration projects for fisheries for 43 years.

“One of the most exciting parts of my career happened when I was jogging through a neighborhood in Seattle. I turned to go by a stream that was no bigger than 6-feet-by-3-feet, and I saw hundreds of salmon thrashing and spawning,” Ott said. “It was just incredible to see nature flourishing within the confines of an urban community.”

Ott’s work seeks to counter the damage created by human diversions, such as flashboards and dams, which are set to divert water flow during certain times of the year. Salmon and steelhead are caught in the diverted water flow, and end up dying, often on the banks of farmland.

Illustrated with photographs, the book describes the maximum flows and owners of each pump, diversion and dam, cost of screening, and more extensive details.

With the information supplied by Ott, SARSAS will work to implement fish ladders and screens throughout the Ravine to divert the salmon and steelhead back along their desired route to the ocean.

“So far, SARSAS has been successful in phase one of its mission, which is to remove diversions from the Sacramento area to the city of Lincoln,” Sanchez said. “Ron’s really boosting up phase II, which runs from Auburn to the Sacramento River.”

If all goes as planned, Auburn will be one of two cities in California to see salmon spawn within city limits.

“Seeing salmon spawn and travel upstream in large numbers is very uplifting for the community,” Ott said. “In a way, the health of a salmon run can reflect the health of society.”

---------------------------

Get to know

Ron Ott

Profession:

• Started his career working for the California Department of Water Resources

• Joined major international consulting firm CH2M HILL and served as Director of Environmental Sciences, followed by Director of Water Resources and lastly the Director in Integrated Water Management.

• Fish Facility Coordinator for the California Bay Delta Program (CALFED) for 12 years

• Stared his own firm, Ott Water Engineers, which specialized in anadromous fishery restoration projects, especially fish passage projects.

• Currently owns and operates a hydro-electric plant in Northern California

Resumé highlights:

• Led science and engineering studies for water supply, water quality and fisheries on major river and estuary systems in California, Washington, Oregon, Florida, Wisconsin and Alaska.

• Published extensively in professional journals

• A registered civil engineer in eight states

• Received several awards from the American Society of Civil Engineers for his publications on fish passage engineering.

Favorite Pastimes:

Gold prospecting while swimming in streams; also riding ATVs throughout Northern California and Nevada with his family.

Panel sets fishing seasons for West Coast salmon

2010-04-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

By ABBY HAIGHT Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press
April 15, 2010, 9:14PM
PORTLAND, Ore. — For the first time since 2007, commercial and recreational fishermen will be able to cast their lines for ocean salmon from the Canadian border to Mexico.
The Pacific Fishery Management Council approved seasons and quotas for chinook and coho salmon off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California on Thursday, as it completed a weeklong session establishing policy and seasons for ocean fisheries. The coast off California and much of Oregon has been closed to commercial fishing the last two seasons because of declining salmon runs.
The council's decision should bring some relief to an industry knocked down by the one-two punch of a dismal economy and dramatic losses in the once-healthy runs of Sacramento River Basin fall chinook — the large, flavor-rich salmon that is the cornerstone of Oregon and California coastal fisheries.
"This is nothing more than a token," said Zeke Grader, director of the San Francisco-based Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which represents about 1,500 individual members.
Coastal communities rocked by two years of closures to commercial salmon fishing have received $170 million in federal disaster relief to help deal with the losses.
"Fishing is a gamble," said Jeff Reeves, a fisherman from Charleston, Ore., and a member of the Oregon Salmon Commission, speaking by cell phone as he pulled in crab pots. "But this is as bad as it's gotten."
The most dramatic losses have been in the Sacramento River Basin, which has seen its numbers plummet from 769,868 returning chinook in 2002 to a record-low 39,500 fall chinook last year. The management council predicts 245,000 fall-run chinook will return this year.
Many in the fishing industry blame the diversion of the Sacramento River to irrigate the San Joaquin Valley.
"California and Oregon fishing jobs are just as important as those agricultural jobs," said Paul Johnson, president of the Monterey Fish Market, a wholesale and retail seafood company in San Francisco and Berkeley. "It would be criminal to lose something that is as spectacular as a wild chinook salmon to flood a cotton crop in the desert."
Despite the reduced numbers, commercial and recreational salmon fishing contributed $17 million to the West Coast economy in 2009, according to the council.
The commercial and recreational seasons for northern Oregon and Washington, which depend on Columbia River chinook stocks, will generally run from June to late September.
The recreational season for southern Oregon and California will run from April through early September.
Oregon's commercial chinook season will run limited days from May through the end of August and include a quota of 3,000 chinook from July 1 to Aug. 31 in southern Oregon.
California's commercial season opens coastwide for eight days in July. After that, it is limited through August to the Mendocino County area and carries a 27,000-fish quota.
Getting a chance to catch chinook again has raised hopes, especially in the small fishing community of Fort Bragg, Calif. For 40 years, the town of 6,000 has celebrated July 4 with the World's Largest Salmon Barbeque, a tourist draw that benefits salmon restoration projects. It has had to buy Oregon- and Washington-caught chinook the last two years.
This year, the 400 salmon will be locally caught, organizer Jim Martin said.
________________________________________

Stewart Resnick, California Billionaire, Sued For Selling Stored Water Illegally

2010-04-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

LA billionaires sued over Calif. water sales
By GARANCE BURKE (AP) – Apr 10, 2010

An $11.1 billion water bond was signed last year by Schwarzenegger. Feinstein spent $1.5 million on UCD water conference at Resnick's urging.

FRESNO, Calif. — They grew their fortune in the California sun, turning pedestrian fruits and nuts into a vast and varied empire that secured their place in Hollywood.

Stewart and Lynda Resnick's flashy bottles of Fiji Water and POM Wonderful are now coveted across the globe. Their donations keep the lights on in art museums across the country. And Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arianna Huffington count them among their dearest friends.

But as their marketshare rises worldwide, one of the billionaires' competitors is fighting back, accusing the Western power couple of profiting at the public's expense, court records and interviews show.

Now, as drought-stricken California weighs whether to give private companies more control in managing its scarce water supplies, a new lawsuit claiming the Resnicks violated utilities law by making money from a vast, taxpayer-funded underground reservoir is causing a stir in the state Capitol.

"Water is a public resource, owned by the people," said Democratic Assemblyman Jared Huffman of San Rafael. "We shouldn't be giving away public funds to private sector interests, let alone choosing winners and losers in the business world."

The Resnicks, who live in a Beverly Hills mansion and have a second home in Aspen, Colo., are among the nation's largest corporate farmers and are generous philanthropists and political donors, giving $536,000 to Democratic and Republican California governors in the last decade.

The Los Angeles Business Journal estimates the couple's empire is worth $1.5 billion. It includes about 120,000 acres in California's Central Valley — where they say they own more fresh citrus, almond and pistachio trees than anyone else in the country — and a facility akin to the Fort Knox of water.

That kind of success, Lynda Resnick said in a telephone interview, can inspire jealousy, and likely motivated this most recent "nuisance" lawsuit. Her husband declined to be interviewed.

After growing up working class in Highland Park, N.J., Stewart Resnick started a business waxing floors while in law school at the University of California, Los Angeles. The couple bought farmland in the 1980s as a hedge against inflation, gaining access to water contracts attached to those parcels.

As drought has hammered the region, leading farmers to abandon their dry fields, the Resnicks' 48 percent stake in the Kern Water Bank, an underground pool that stores billions of gallons of freshwater, has become increasingly valuable.

Court records show that in early 2007, the Resnicks' companies' combined water holdings reached 755,868 acre feet — more than twice the size of San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy reservoir. In 2007, that volume would have qualified as California's 11th largest reservoir, but the firms' water holdings have diminished significantly since, company officials said.

That cache provided enough to nourish the Resnicks' orchards, but it also offered another benefit. From 2000 to 2007, records show the state paid the Resnicks an additional $30.6 million for water previously stored there as part of a program to protect fish native to the ecologically fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Lynda Resnick's marketing savvy helped build cachet around her otherwise obscure brands, such as POM Wonderful pomegranate juice, Cuties mandarins and Teleflora floral bouquets.

Revered among advertisers as the "Pom Queen," she has hired medical scientists to bear out health claims that their fruits and nuts help fight disease and extend life expectancy. Last year, following a nationwide recall of pistachios over salmonella fears, she hired Levi Johnston, the teen father of Sarah Palin's grandson, to promote the snack nuts. The domestic business grew by 40 percent over the last crop year.

"We've done more for the pistachio than anyone ever since it was planted in the Garden of Eden," she said in the phone interview. "My husband should be canonized for all the work he's done."

Others in agribusiness see it differently.

Ali Amin, a Persian immigrant who owns a competing processing plant, filed a lawsuit in late March in Fresno County Superior Court claiming the Resnicks violated California public utilities laws because they turned a profit by selling water to farmers who weren't members of their Bakersfield-based water company, Westside Mutual Water Co.

"You feel like David fighting Goliath," Amin said. "If they're allowed to keep doing this, the rest of the independents and small growers won't be able to compete."

Amin's lawsuit alleges he lost $5.5 million in revenue when growers lured by water supplies sold their nuts to the Resnicks' plant, which processes almost two-thirds of the nation's pistachios. Amin controls about 5 percent of the market.

Resnick and other water users in agricultural Kern County gained control of the Kern bank — the largest underground water storage facility in the nation — in the mid 1990s, following a round of negotiations with the state Department of Water Resources. Their position was that the state had shorted rural areas in allotting water in a previous drought.

To avoid potential litigation from unhappy water users, state officials ceded ownership of the Kern Water Bank — developed with $74 million from the department and $23 million in taxpayer-approved bonds — to a local water agency. In return, water users gave back 45,000 acre feet from the amount they contracted to receive each year.

The deal was a pivotal moment in the rise of the Resnicks' business interests. Ownership of the bank ultimately was transferred to a joint powers authority including the local water agency, the Resnicks' Westside Mutual Water Co. and four water districts.

Westside distributes water stored there to its members, the operations that grow Resnick's fruits and nuts, according to court records.

To prevent price-gouging, the California Public Utilities Commission requires most mutual water companies to register as public utilities and subject their rates to state regulation if they sell water to nonmembers for profit. There are some exceptions, such as a "water emergency," but the PUC rules require those sales to nonmembers to be at cost.

PUC staff attorney Fred Harris said Westside had not registered with the PUC. If the company skirted the law, by selling water to nonmembers at a profit — as the Amin suit alleges — Harris said Westside could be required to register and set up rates with the commission.

Assemblyman Huffman and Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, said those allegations in the Amin lawsuit touch on a broader debate about whether companies should be able to profit from taxpayer-funded waterworks amid a drought.

An $11.1 billion water bond signed last year by Schwarzenegger would allow private companies to partially own, operate and profit from dams, reservoirs and water banks built with billions in public funds. It won't become law unless voters approve it on the November ballot, and it's unclear how the bond proposal would interact with current laws on public-private partnerships.

"I don't think anyone wants to see this become a gift of public funds to private corporations," said Huffman, who is considering introducing a bond amendment to remove or clarify the language.

Bill Phillimore, who directs Resnick's water company, said the company has managed scarce water supplies responsibly, and he and his bosses have spent "a considerable amount of time to make sure we get value out of the last drop."

Rob Six, a spokesman for the couple's private holding company, Roll International Corp., said the Amin suit was "frivolous," and said the company would seek sanctions against Amin's processing business.

Both sides claim victory in a previous suit in which many of the same claims were raised. A jury awarded Amin $3.46 million late last month after deciding a pistachio grower who had supplied his plant breached his contract by later sending his nuts to the Resnicks. A Fresno County Superior Court judge granted the Resnicks' request to be dismissed from the suit.

After Amin's first suit was filed, two of Resnick's companies filed a federal suit in Los Angeles against Amin, his processing plant and his agricultural consultant, alleging Amin's plant engaged in false advertising that Resnick's companies to suffer up to $15 million in damages.

"There are very jealous people out there," Lynda Resnick said. "But we usually win because we have such good in-house counsel."

The Resnicks, who have had legal tangles with everyone from Tiger Woods to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, have a good track record at winning.

Their suit to kill the California Pistachio Commission, a board farmers paid to do generic marketing for the snack nut, proved so expensive that after spending more than $2 million in legal fees, farmers gave up and voted to disband the commission three years ago.

"Here you had one man who had the money and thought he knew what was best, and didn't want to take part in a democratic organization," said Brian Blackwell, president of the Western Pistachio Association, which now represents smaller growers. "Whatever he's doing, he's going to try to run the show."

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Stewart Resnick, Governor Schwarzenegger, and Senator Diane Feinstein Collude to Destroy What Is Left of West Coast Salmon

2010-04-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

The Water Bond: A Gift of Public Funds to Private Corporation

An $11.1 billion water bond was signed last year by Schwarzenegger.

April 17, 2010 in Water | Tags: $11.14 Billion water bond, Central Valley, illegally profits by selling water, Jared Huffman, No on water bond, November Ballot, Pistachio Farmer, Resnick, Water Bond, water bond opposition, water privatization, Westside Mutual Water Co. | by PCL Staff

This week, the Associated Press (AP) reported that a pistachio farmer in the Central Valley has filed a lawsuit alleging that the Westside Mutual Water Co. illegally profits by selling water to non-members. The Westside Mutual Water Co. is owned by billionaires Stewart and Linda Resnick, who control a 48 percent share of the publicly-funded Kern County Water Bank. In 2007, the Resnicks owned more than 755,868 acre-feet of water – twice the capacity of the massive Hetch-Hetchy reservoir that serves the city of San Francisco. Under California law, companies that sell water for a profit must register as public utilities and set rates with the oversight of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC); the Westside Mutual Water Co. is not registered with the PUC.
The AP report connected the lawsuit to a privatization clause included in the $11.14 billion water bond that will appear before voters this November. This clause would allow private companies to own water storage projects funded by the bond, essentially spending public funds to allow private companies to make profits on water. According to the report, Assemblymember Jared Huffman of San Rafael is considering introducing an amendment to remove the clause: “I don’t think anyone wants to see this become a gift of public funds to private corporations,” he said.
The privatization clause is one of many reasons why groups like the Planning and Conservation League, Sierra Club, and Food & Water Watch oppose the bond.

After spending another $750,000 on studies, Delta fish are still in trouble

March 22, 2010 | Lance Williams

It wasn’t sloppy science after all.

After spending $750,000 in taxpayers’ funds to assuage the suspicions of a grower with close ties to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the National Academy of Sciences says that the Delta’s fisheries are in deep trouble, all right.

Restricting the pumping of irrigation water from the Delta to try and save the Sacramento River’s storied Chinook salmon run “is scientifically justified,” the academy also declared Friday.
Those are the key conclusions of a rush-job scientific reconsideration of the shocking collapse of the Delta’s aquatic ecosystem and the efforts of federal wildlife agencies to save it – even as farmers clamored for more water during a crippling drought.
Feinstein persuaded the Obama administration to order the study last fall, a week after billionaire grower Stewart Resnick – owner of Kern County’s Paramount Farms, and her friend and political contributor for more than a decade – complained that the save-the-fish program was worsening the recession in the hard-hit Central Valley.
Besides, Resnick argued in a letter to Feinstein, there was no obvious connection between the diversions of Sacramento River water for irrigation in recent years and the disaster in the Delta, where the annual Chinook salmon run had declined from 800,000 fish to 40,000 in only eight years. Smelt and sturgeon are also in a bad way.
The pumping restrictions were based on “sloppy science,” he wrote. It was likely that urban water pollution, global warming and other factors were the real culprits, he wrote.
Resnick may be the most politically influential grower in California.
He has donated $29,000 to Feinstein over the years and also given $246,000 to Democratic political committees during years when she sought re-election. He, his wife and executives of his companies have donated nearly $4 million to favored candidates and causes, most of them in the Golden State, California Watch has reported.
Corporate farmer calls upon political allies to influence Delta dispute
December 6, 2009 | Lance Williams
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Wealthy corporate farmer Stewart Resnick has written check after check to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s political campaigns. He’s hosted a party in her honor at his Beverly Hills mansion, and he’s entertained her at his second home in Aspen.
And in September, when Resnick asked Feinstein to weigh in on the side of agribusiness in a drought-fueled environmental dispute over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, this wealthy grower and political donor got quick results, documents show.
On Sept. 4, Resnick wrote to Feinstein, complaining that the latest federal plan to rescue the Delta’s endangered salmon and smelt fisheries was “exacerbating the state’s severe drought” because it cut back on water available to irrigate crops. “Sloppy science” by federal wildlife agencies had led to “regulatory-induced water shortages,” he claimed. “I really appreciate your involvement in this issue,” he wrote to Feinstein.
One week later, Feinstein forwarded Resnick’s letter to two U.S. Cabinet secretaries. In her own letter, she urged the administration to spend $750,000 for a sweeping re-examination of the science behind the entire Delta environmental protection plan.
The Obama administration quickly agreed, authorizing another review of whether restrictions on pumping irrigation water were necessary to save the Delta’s fish. The results could delay or change the course of the protection effort.
To environmentalists concerned with protecting the Delta, it was a dispiriting display of the political clout wielded by Resnick, who is among California’s biggest growers and among its biggest political donors.
Resnick’s Paramount Farms owns 118,000 acres of heavily irrigated California orchards. And since he began buying farmland 25 years ago, Resnick, his wife, and executives of his companies have donated $3.97 million to candidates and political committees, mostly in the Golden State, a California Watch review of public records shows.
They have given $29,000 to Feinstein and $246,000 more to Democratic political committees during years when she has sought re-election.
“It is very disappointing that one person can make this kind of request, and all of a sudden he has a senator on the phone, calling up (U.S. Interior Secretary Ken) Salazar,” says Jim Metropulos, senior advocate for the Sierra Club.
Feinstein’s letter was “based on what she believes to be the best policy for California and the nation,” spokesman Gil Duran said in a statement. “No other factors play a role in her decisions.”
With the Valley’s economy battered by recession and drought, Feinstein believed it was important to reconsider the restrictions on pumping Delta water for irrigation, he said. Many farmers have urged such a review, he added.
In an interview, Resnick said he didn’t leverage his relationship with Feinstein to persuade her to intervene.
“Honestly, I’m not saying we could not have done that, but I don’t think that’s the way it happened,” he said. Feinstein long has had an interest in water issues, and “she just wanted to get to the bottom of this,” Resnick said.
A Troubled Estuary
The Delta provides drinking water for 20 million people and irrigation for the state’s vast agriculture industry. But after decades of water diversions, Delta fish populations are in catastrophic decline, scientists say.
Prodded by lawsuits from environmentalists, federal wildlife agencies commissioned scientific studies of the Delta’s ecological crisis. Based on the studies, the agencies launched a restoration program that curtailed pumping for irrigation and increased water flows for migrating fish.
Meanwhile three years of drought have forced big cuts in water allotments for farmers, and swaths of valley farmland lie fallow. The recession pushed the unemployment rate in some valley towns to 40 percent.
As a result, the restrictions on pumping Delta water became the target of a series of noisy protests that played out over the summer. Farmers and politicians blamed “radical environmentalists” – and the Obama administration – for ignoring the drought’s impact on the valley’s economy. “The government decided that the farmers come second and the delta smelt come first,” as Sean Hannity of Fox News put it on a visit to Fresno.
Farm groups filed 13 different lawsuits to overturn the restoration plans, arguing that climate change, urbanization, and discharges from sewers and factories are causing the Delta’s problems. One suit was filed in August by the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, a non-profit founded by three executives of Resnick’s Paramount Farms. Resnick said he is “on the periphery” of the non-profit.
People familiar with Resnick’s political operation say Feinstein’s letter is a reminder of the power he can wield on water issues.
“Paramount Farms is a huge player,” says Gerald Meral, former director of the Planning and Conservation League environmental lobby.
“They are just way different from the average farmer – far more strategic” in their thinking, Meral says.
Wealth and Philanthropy
In Los Angeles, Resnick, 72, is known as one of the city’s wealthiest men and among its most generous philanthropists. He’s given $55 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, millions more for a psychiatric hospital at UCLA and an energy institute at Cal Tech.
His wife and business partner, Lynda Resnick, is an entrepreneur, socialite and writer. Her 2008 marketing book, “Rubies in the Orchard,” had blurbs from Martha Stewart and Rupert Murdoch, and her “Ruby Tuesday” blog is sometimes featured on huffingtonpost.com. The couple live in a Beverly Hills mansion that writer Amy Wilentz called “Little Versailles.” It’s the scene of parties for celebrities, charities and politicians – governors, senators and presidential candidates.
Resnick said he worked his way through UCLA “washing windows,” and made his first million running a burglar alarm service. Since then, the couple’s Roll International holding company has profitably operated a long list of businesses: Teleflora florist wire service; POM Wonderful pomegranate juice; Franklin Mint, a mail-order collectibles firm; and FIJI bottled water, imported from the South Seas.
Underpinning their fortune is agribusiness – 70,000 acres of pistachios and almonds, 48,000 acres of citrus and pomegranates – most of it in Kern County at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, and all requiring irrigation to survive.
Resnick said he makes political donations “without much real strategy,” other than to give to centrists from both parties. Water issues aren’t a major factor, he said.
Records show Resnick often contributes to politicians with power over the bureaucracies that make decisions affecting farming’s financial bottom line.
Since 1993, the Resnicks have given $1.6 million to California governors, key players in determining state water policy. Their donation pattern seems non-partisan, with the money following who’s in power.
In the 1990s, they gave $238,000 to Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, records show, although Resnick says he doesn’t recall giving to Wilson and doesn’t think he ever met him.
The Resnicks also backed the Democrat who replaced Wilson, Gray Davis. They gave Davis $643,000 and $91,500 more to oppose Davis’ recall in 2003.
With Davis gone, Resnick began donating to Arnold Schwarzenegger – $221,000, records show – plus $50,000 to a foundation that pays for the governor’s foreign travel.
Other big donations include $776,000 to Democratic political committees; $134,000 to agribusiness political committees and initiatives; and $59,000 to Republican committees.
Hedging Bets
The Resnicks have developed easy access to some of the politicians to whom they donate.
Schwarzenegger has called them “some of my dearest, dearest friends,” and like Feinstein, he has urged a review of the science behind the Delta restoration plan. Davis appointed Resnick co-chair to a special state committee on water and agriculture.
A more enduring benefit came during Wilson’s administration, when Paramount Farms gained part ownership of what was to have been a state-owned storage bank for surplus water.
As recounted in a report by the advocacy group Public Citizen, in the 1980s state water officials devised a plan to ease the impact of future droughts by collecting excess water during rainy years and storing it underground.
The water was to be pumped south via the California Aqueduct, then put into a vast aquifer in Kern County that could hold a year’s water supply for one million homes.
The state spent about $75 million to buy a 20,000-acre site and to design the water bank. But in 1994, state water officials transferred the water bank site to the local Kern County Water Agency in exchange for significant water rights, Resnick said. The water agency developed the water bank in partnership with four other public agencies and one private business – a subsidiary of Paramount Farms. Paramount wound up controlling a 48 percent share of the bank.
Resnick said the state had been unable to develop the water bank and gave up on the project. The local agencies and his company spent about $50 million to engineer the project and make the bank a success, he said.
Paramount’s control of the bank continues to infuriate some environmentalists. In recent dry years, the bank sold some of its stored water back to the state at a premium, Public Citizen reported.
“Resnick likes to call himself a farmer, but he is in the business of selling public water, with none of the profits returned to the taxpayers,” says Walter Shubin, a director of the Revive the San Joaquin environmental group in Fresno.
A supportive community
When she first emerged as a statewide candidate in the 1990 governor’s race,Feinstein made little headway in the Central Valley, and she was defeated by Wilson. After she was elected to the Senate two years later, Feinstein set out to befriend farmers.
Her attention to agriculture and water issues has paid off, says Dan Schnur, director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a former Wilson aide
“That community has been very supportive of her, much more for her than for most statewide Democrats,” Schnur says.
The Resnicks contributed $4,000 to Feinstein’s 1994 re-election campaign. When she ran again in 2000, they gave her $7,000. Resnick also donated $225,000 to Democratic political committees that were active in key Democratic races.
Resnick said he first got to know Feinstein personally 10 or 12 years ago because the senator also has a second home in Aspen.
In August 2000, when the Democratic National convention was in Los Angeles, the Resnicks hosted a cocktail party for Feinstein in their home. Among the guests were the singer Nancy Sinatra, then-Gov. Davis and former President Jimmy Carter, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In 2007, they gave $10,000 to the Fund for the Majority, Feinstein’s political action committee. In June, another committee to which Resnick has contributed, the California Citrus Mutual PAC, spent $2,500 to host a fundraiser for Feinstein, records show.
Feinstein also socializes with the Resnicks. Arianna Huffington, the blog editor and former candidate for governor, told the New York Observer in 2006 that she has pent New Year’s with Feinstein at the Resnicks’ home in Aspen. “We wore silly hats and had lots of streamers and everything,” she said of the party.
On Aug. 26, Feinstein met with growers and water agency officials in Coalinga, Fresno County. While there, she told the Fresno Bee that she wanted the U.S. Interior Department to reconsider the biological opinions underlying the Delta protection plan.
The following week, she received the letter from Resnick, which was first reported by the Contra Costa Times. She then sent her own letters to Interior Secretary Salazar and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. Days later, the administration agreed to pay $750,000 to have the National Academy of Sciences re-study the scientific issues underlying the Delta protection plan.
Last month, state lawmakers enacted a package of measures aimed at reforming the state’s outmoded water allocation system. The centerpiece – an $11 billion bond to build new dams and canals – must be approved by voters.
•
Lance Williams reported this story.
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Resnick and associates spend nearly $4 million on campaigns

December 6, 2009

Stewart Resnick, his wife, and executives of his companies have donated $3.97 million to candidates and political committees, mostly in the Golden State since 1993. Here are the recipients of contributions of $10,000 or more. You can sort by clicking on any of the column headers.

Recipient Campaigns Party Amount
DEMOCRATIC PARTY COMMITTEES INCLUDES DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE DEM $776,638
GRAY DAVIS GOVERNOR UNTIL 2003; LT. GOV.; CONTROLLER DEM $643,030
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER GOVERNOR REP $271,990
PETE WILSON GOVERNOR UNTIL 1998 REP $238,500
RICHARD RIORDAN LOS ANGELES MAYOR UNTIL 2001; INCLUDES BALLOT MEASURES REP $135,000
OPEN-PRIMARY INITIATIVE FAILED 2004 BALLOT MEASURE NP $150,000
AGRICULTURE PACS INCLUDES WESTERN GROWERS POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE NP $134,889
KATHLEEN BROWN FORMER STATE TREASURER; LOST 1994 GOVERNOR'S RACE DEM $118,437
JERRY BROWN ATTORNEY GENERAL; INCLUDES DONATIONS TO A CHARTER SCHOOL HE FOUNDED DEM $85,800
REPUBLICAN PARTY COMMITTEES INCLUDES REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE REP $59,276
FOSTER-CARE REFORM INITIATIVE PROPOSED STATE INITIATIVE NP $50,000
STEM-CELL-RESEARCH INITIATIVE BALLOT MEASURE PASSED IN 2004 NP $50,000
STEVE WESTLY LOST 2006 PRIMARY FOR GOVERNOR DEM $48,600
RECALL OPPONENTS FAILED MEASURE TO STOP RECALL OF GOV. DAVIS IN 2003 NP $91,500
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA LOS ANGELES MAYOR DEM $41,500
JANE HARMAN CONGRESSWOMAN FROM LOS ANGELES DEM $37,900
DIANNE FEINSTEIN SENATOR FROM CALIFORNIA DEM $29,950
ED RENDELL GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA DEM $29,000
JAMES HAHN LOS ANGELES MAYOR UNTIL 2005 DEM $28,000
GAVIN NEWSOM SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR DEM $27,150
PHIL ANGELIDES TREASURER; LOST 2006 GOVERNOR'S RACE DEM $27,000
HILLARY CLINTON SECRETARY OF STATE, FORMER NEW YORK SENATOR AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DEM $26,950
CLASS-SIZE-REDUCTION INITIATIVE STATE MEASURE PASSED 1998 NP $25,000
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON EDITOR-IN-CHIEF HUFFINGTON POST, CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR IN 2003 IND. $25,000
DON PERATA STATE SENATE LEADER; RETIRED IN 2008 DEM $25,000
BARACK OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL AND ILLINOIS SENATE CAMPAIGNS DEM $22,150
JOHN MCCAIN PRESIDENTIAL AND ARIZONA SENATE CAMPAIGNS REP $20,750
KEVIN DE LEON ASSEMBLYMAN FROM LOS ANGELES DEM $19,200
DARRELL STEINBERG SENATE PRESIDENT PRO TEMP, CALIFORNIA STATE SENATE DEM $18,600
GARY CONDIT CONGRESSMAN FROM CENTRAL VALLEY; DEFEATED IN 2002 DEM $17,700
BARBARA BOXER SENATOR FROM CALIFORNIA DEM $17,000
DAN LUNGREN CONGRESSMAN FROM SACRAMENTO; LOST 1998 GOVERNOR'S RACE REP $17,000
GIL GARCETTI LOS ANGELES DISTRICT ATTORNEY UNTIL 2000 NP $16,000
ROCKY DELGADILLO LOS ANGELES CITY ATTORNEY UNTIL 2009 DEM $15,200
PLANNED PARENTHOOD PAC FEDERAL AND STATE COMMITTEES NP $15,000
TOBACCO TAX INITIATIVE 1998 STATE BALLOT MEASURE NP $15,000
JIM COSTA CONGRESSMAN FROM FRESNO; FORMER STATE SENATOR DEM $14,950
BRAD SHERMAN CONGRESSMAN FROM LOS ANGELES DEM $13,650
ED MARKEY CONGRESSMAN FROM MASSACHUSETTS DEM $13,300
RUSTY AREIAS FORMER STATE SENATOR FROM LOS BANOS DEM $13,000
DEAN FLOREZ STATE SENATOR FROM BAKERSFIELD DEM $13,000
DENNIS CARDOZA CONGRESSMAN FROM MERCED; FORMER ASSEMBLYMAN DEM $12,800
CHUCK POOCHIGIAN FORMER FRESNO LAWMAKER; DEFEATED FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL IN 2006 REP $12,425
TOM HARKIN SENATOR FROM IOWA DEM $12,200
HENRY WAXMAN CONGRESSMAN FROM LOS ANGELES DEM $12,000
KEVIN MCCARTHY CONGRESSMAN FROM BAKERSFIELD REP $11,150
TOM LANTOS LATE CONGRESSMAN FROM SAN MATEO DEM $11,100
JOE BIDEN U.S. VICE PRESIDENT; FORMER SENATOR FROM DELAWARE DEM $11,000
HOWARD BERMAN CONGRESSMAN FROM LOS ANGELES DEM $10,900
CAL DOOLEY FORMER CONGRESSMAN FROM VISALIA DEM $10,250
MICHELA ALIOTO-PIER SF SUPERVISOR; LOST SECRETARY OF STATE RACE IN 2002 DEM $10,000
JOHN GARAMENDI CONGRESSMAN FROM THE EAST BAY, DEFEATED FOR GOVERNOR IN 1994, NOW RUNNING FOR CONGRESS DEM $10,000
JOHN KERRY SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS; LOST PRESIDENTIAL RACE IN 2004 DEM $10,000
REDISTRICTING INITIATIVE STATE INITIATIVE PASSED IN 2008 NP $10,000
Sources: Federal Election Commission; California Secretary of State; California State Archives; San Francisco and Los Angeles ethics commissions; Pennsylvania Department of State.
Produced by Lance Williams, Agustin Armendariz and Lisa Pickoff-White
Within a week, Feinstein wrote to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, dropping Resnick’s name and urging a new look at the science. Salazar promptly agreed.
The transaction dispirited environmentalists. They argued that another study was pointless, especially given that this latest save-the-Delta effort was only a few years old.
After its results were announced, the Environmental Defense Fund’s Ann Hayden told the San Francisco Chronicle, "We're looking forward to moving on from this whole fish vs. farm focus.”
But the urge to ridicule environmental-protection efforts that cost working people their jobs may be irresistible this election year.
There’s even a right-to-life angle, says GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard executive who hopes to run against Sen. Barbara Boxer in the fall.
Boxer, like most state Democrats, took the environmentalists' side in the dispute.
“Isn’t it ironic that Barbara Boxer worked so hard to protect a 2-inch fish, but she can’t find it in her heart to protect the lives of the unborn?” the L.A. Times quoted Fiorina as saying.

Corporate farmer calls upon political allies to influence Delta dispute
December 6, 2009 | Lance Williams
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Wealthy corporate farmer Stewart Resnick has written check after check to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s political campaigns. He’s hosted a party in her honor at his Beverly Hills mansion, and he’s entertained her at his second home in Aspen.
And in September, when Resnick asked Feinstein to weigh in on the side of agribusiness in a drought-fueled environmental dispute over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, this wealthy grower and political donor got quick results, documents show.
On Sept. 4, Resnick wrote to Feinstein, complaining that the latest federal plan to rescue the Delta’s endangered salmon and smelt fisheries was “exacerbating the state’s severe drought” because it cut back on water available to irrigate crops. “Sloppy science” by federal wildlife agencies had led to “regulatory-induced water shortages,” he claimed. “I really appreciate your involvement in this issue,” he wrote to Feinstein.
One week later, Feinstein forwarded Resnick’s letter to two U.S. Cabinet secretaries. In her own letter, she urged the administration to spend $750,000 for a sweeping re-examination of the science behind the entire Delta environmental protection plan.
The Obama administration quickly agreed, authorizing another review of whether restrictions on pumping irrigation water were necessary to save the Delta’s fish. The results could delay or change the course of the protection effort.
To environmentalists concerned with protecting the Delta, it was a dispiriting display of the political clout wielded by Resnick, who is among California’s biggest growers and among its biggest political donors.
Resnick’s Paramount Farms owns 118,000 acres of heavily irrigated California orchards. And since he began buying farmland 25 years ago, Resnick, his wife, and executives of his companies have donated $3.97 million to candidates and political committees, mostly in the Golden State, a California Watch review of public records shows.
They have given $29,000 to Feinstein and $246,000 more to Democratic political committees during years when she has sought re-election.
“It is very disappointing that one person can make this kind of request, and all of a sudden he has a senator on the phone, calling up (U.S. Interior Secretary Ken) Salazar,” says Jim Metropulos, senior advocate for the Sierra Club.
Feinstein’s letter was “based on what she believes to be the best policy for California and the nation,” spokesman Gil Duran said in a statement. “No other factors play a role in her decisions.”
With the Valley’s economy battered by recession and drought, Feinstein believed it was important to reconsider the restrictions on pumping Delta water for irrigation, he said. Many farmers have urged such a review, he added.
In an interview, Resnick said he didn’t leverage his relationship with Feinstein to persuade her to intervene.
“Honestly, I’m not saying we could not have done that, but I don’t think that’s the way it happened,” he said. Feinstein long has had an interest in water issues, and “she just wanted to get to the bottom of this,” Resnick said.
A Troubled Estuary
The Delta provides drinking water for 20 million people and irrigation for the state’s vast agriculture industry. But after decades of water diversions, Delta fish populations are in catastrophic decline, scientists say.
Prodded by lawsuits from environmentalists, federal wildlife agencies commissioned scientific studies of the Delta’s ecological crisis. Based on the studies, the agencies launched a restoration program that curtailed pumping for irrigation and increased water flows for migrating fish.
Meanwhile three years of drought have forced big cuts in water allotments for farmers, and swaths of valley farmland lie fallow. The recession pushed the unemployment rate in some valley towns to 40 percent.
As a result, the restrictions on pumping Delta water became the target of a series of noisy protests that played out over the summer. Farmers and politicians blamed “radical environmentalists” – and the Obama administration – for ignoring the drought’s impact on the valley’s economy. “The government decided that the farmers come second and the delta smelt come first,” as Sean Hannity of Fox News put it on a visit to Fresno.
Farm groups filed 13 different lawsuits to overturn the restoration plans, arguing that climate change, urbanization, and discharges from sewers and factories are causing the Delta’s problems. One suit was filed in August by the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, a non-profit founded by three executives of Resnick’s Paramount Farms. Resnick said he is “on the periphery” of the non-profit.
People familiar with Resnick’s political operation say Feinstein’s letter is a reminder of the power he can wield on water issues.
“Paramount Farms is a huge player,” says Gerald Meral, former director of the Planning and Conservation League environmental lobby.
“They are just way different from the average farmer – far more strategic” in their thinking, Meral says.
Wealth and Philanthropy
In Los Angeles, Resnick, 72, is known as one of the city’s wealthiest men and among its most generous philanthropists. He’s given $55 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, millions more for a psychiatric hospital at UCLA and an energy institute at Cal Tech.
His wife and business partner, Lynda Resnick, is an entrepreneur, socialite and writer. Her 2008 marketing book, “Rubies in the Orchard,” had blurbs from Martha Stewart and Rupert Murdoch, and her “Ruby Tuesday” blog is sometimes featured on huffingtonpost.com. The couple live in a Beverly Hills mansion that writer Amy Wilentz called “Little Versailles.” It’s the scene of parties for celebrities, charities and politicians – governors, senators and presidential candidates.
Resnick said he worked his way through UCLA “washing windows,” and made his first million running a burglar alarm service. Since then, the couple’s Roll International holding company has profitably operated a long list of businesses: Teleflora florist wire service; POM Wonderful pomegranate juice; Franklin Mint, a mail-order collectibles firm; and FIJI bottled water, imported from the South Seas.
Underpinning their fortune is agribusiness – 70,000 acres of pistachios and almonds, 48,000 acres of citrus and pomegranates – most of it in Kern County at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, and all requiring irrigation to survive.
Resnick said he makes political donations “without much real strategy,” other than to give to centrists from both parties. Water issues aren’t a major factor, he said.
Records show Resnick often contributes to politicians with power over the bureaucracies that make decisions affecting farming’s financial bottom line.
Since 1993, the Resnicks have given $1.6 million to California governors, key players in determining state water policy. Their donation pattern seems non-partisan, with the money following who’s in power.
In the 1990s, they gave $238,000 to Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, records show, although Resnick says he doesn’t recall giving to Wilson and doesn’t think he ever met him.
The Resnicks also backed the Democrat who replaced Wilson, Gray Davis. They gave Davis $643,000 and $91,500 more to oppose Davis’ recall in 2003.
With Davis gone, Resnick began donating to Arnold Schwarzenegger – $221,000, records show – plus $50,000 to a foundation that pays for the governor’s foreign travel.
Other big donations include $776,000 to Democratic political committees; $134,000 to agribusiness political committees and initiatives; and $59,000 to Republican committees.
Hedging Bets
The Resnicks have developed easy access to some of the politicians to whom they donate.
Schwarzenegger has called them “some of my dearest, dearest friends,” and like Feinstein, he has urged a review of the science behind the Delta restoration plan. Davis appointed Resnick co-chair to a special state committee on water and agriculture.
A more enduring benefit came during Wilson’s administration, when Paramount Farms gained part ownership of what was to have been a state-owned storage bank for surplus water.
As recounted in a report by the advocacy group Public Citizen, in the 1980s state water officials devised a plan to ease the impact of future droughts by collecting excess water during rainy years and storing it underground.
The water was to be pumped south via the California Aqueduct, then put into a vast aquifer in Kern County that could hold a year’s water supply for one million homes.
The state spent about $75 million to buy a 20,000-acre site and to design the water bank. But in 1994, state water officials transferred the water bank site to the local Kern County Water Agency in exchange for significant water rights, Resnick said. The water agency developed the water bank in partnership with four other public agencies and one private business – a subsidiary of Paramount Farms. Paramount wound up controlling a 48 percent share of the bank.
Resnick said the state had been unable to develop the water bank and gave up on the project. The local agencies and his company spent about $50 million to engineer the project and make the bank a success, he said.
Paramount’s control of the bank continues to infuriate some environmentalists. In recent dry years, the bank sold some of its stored water back to the state at a premium, Public Citizen reported.
“Resnick likes to call himself a farmer, but he is in the business of selling public water, with none of the profits returned to the taxpayers,” says Walter Shubin, a director of the Revive the San Joaquin environmental group in Fresno.
A supportive community
When she first emerged as a statewide candidate in the 1990 governor’s race,Feinstein made little headway in the Central Valley, and she was defeated by Wilson. After she was elected to the Senate two years later, Feinstein set out to befriend farmers.
Her attention to agriculture and water issues has paid off, says Dan Schnur, director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a former Wilson aide
“That community has been very supportive of her, much more for her than for most statewide Democrats,” Schnur says.
The Resnicks contributed $4,000 to Feinstein’s 1994 re-election campaign. When she ran again in 2000, they gave her $7,000. Resnick also donated $225,000 to Democratic political committees that were active in key Democratic races.
Resnick said he first got to know Feinstein personally 10 or 12 years ago because the senator also has a second home in Aspen.
In August 2000, when the Democratic National convention was in Los Angeles, the Resnicks hosted a cocktail party for Feinstein in their home. Among the guests were the singer Nancy Sinatra, then-Gov. Davis and former President Jimmy Carter, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In 2007, they gave $10,000 to the Fund for the Majority, Feinstein’s political action committee. In June, another committee to which Resnick has contributed, the California Citrus Mutual PAC, spent $2,500 to host a fundraiser for Feinstein, records show.
Feinstein also socializes with the Resnicks. Arianna Huffington, the blog editor and former candidate for governor, told the New York Observer in 2006 that she has pent New Year’s with Feinstein at the Resnicks’ home in Aspen. “We wore silly hats and had lots of streamers and everything,” she said of the party.
On Aug. 26, Feinstein met with growers and water agency officials in Coalinga, Fresno County. While there, she told the Fresno Bee that she wanted the U.S. Interior Department to reconsider the biological opinions underlying the Delta protection plan.
The following week, she received the letter from Resnick, which was first reported by the Contra Costa Times. She then sent her own letters to Interior Secretary Salazar and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. Days later, the administration agreed to pay $750,000 to have the National Academy of Sciences re-study the scientific issues underlying the Delta protection plan.
Last month, state lawmakers enacted a package of measures aimed at reforming the state’s outmoded water allocation system. The centerpiece – an $11 billion bond to build new dams and canals – must be approved by voters.

SARSAS and Calling Back the Salmon Celebration, October 23, 2010

2010-04-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead Inc. (SARSAS), an all-volunteer 501C3 Non-profit, public benefit corporation, is doing with one stream, the Auburn Ravine, what must be done to all streams and rivers on the entire West Coast and that is to make the entire thirty–three mile length of the Auburn Ravine, starting in Auburn, flowing through Ophir and Lincoln and emptying into the Sacramento River at Verona, navigable for anadromous fishes.
The health and well-being of salmon and steelhead is directly linked to that of people. If we improve the health and well-being of anadromous fish, we improve the health and well-being of mankind and therefore ourselves.
Salmon are as resilient and adaptable as humans; when anadromous fishes can no longer adapt, neither can mankind. They need our help … now … and when we help them, we are really helping ourselves.
SARSAS is sponsoring the Calling Back the Salmon Celebration (CBTSC) in Lincoln, which will be held in McBean Park in the heart of Lincoln on the Auburn Ravine on Saturday, October 23, 2010. The all-day event is chaired by Stan Nader, SARSAS Board Member and former Lincoln City Councilman and School Board Member, who lives in Lincoln. To become a sponsor or a volunteer to help with CBTSC or to ask questions, contact Stan at 916 300 4335 or email him at stann@gtinternet.com. SARSAS urges local businesses and agencies to become Sponsors at any level (See CBTSC Flyer).
The mission of the SARSAS CALLING BACK THE SALMON CELEBRATION is to stimulate a collaborative relationship between our community, the Auburn Ravine Community of Auburn and Lincoln, and groups and government organizations to educate and engage all to the importance of returning the salmon and steelhead runs to the Auburn Ravine. The presence of healthy salmon and steelhead in a healthy Auburn Ravine is a nexus to a healthy community and environment.

SARSAS wishes to promote student and community Stream Teams, Salmon/steelhead and Watershed Stewards. Potential activities for these groups include tree planting, monitoring water quality, monitoring plant, survival, educational outreach such as raising anadromous fishes in the classroom and planting them in the Auburn Ravine, fish counts, observing fish morphology and other aquatic life beneficial and harmful to fishes.

Working collaboratively SARSAS wishes to develop partnerships with agencies, environmental organizations and, most of all, with individual members and groups of the Auburn Ravine community and promote Auburn Ravine community participation in local water quality and fish and wildlife enhancement and educational outreach programs.
Many activities are planned at the Calling Back the Salmon Celebration. Activities for Children include a Salmon Run(footrace), Treasure hunt Climbing Wall, Pony Rides, Face Painting, Carnival Games with a SARSAS bent, Crafts Projects (Painting, drawing, ceramics), and Watershed model interactive display.
Activities for Everyone include Multiple Musical Presentations including
Loping Wolf Flute Circle flutecircle@lopingwolf.com Dan Dicicco
http://www.lopingwolf.com/, Local Folk music performers and Commercial and non-profit vendors and informational displays. The CBTSC has something for everyone so come, learn and enjoy.
Local Indigenous People will be calling back the salmon and steelhead in numerous traditional ways throughout the day and in days leading up to the Celebration. The Auburn Ravine was the main stream for catching salmon and steelhead for Indigenous People for centuries. Salmon and steelhead were a major food source. Local Indigenous power will be added to the effort to call back salmon at the Celebration. SARSAS is delighted that Local Indigenous People are adding their strength and traditional insights and ways of returning the fishes to the Auburn Ravine. The Auburn Ravine is filled with evidence of the close relationship Indigenous People had the Auburn Ravine over the centuries.
Most important for the people of the Auburn Ravine Community is to come to the McBean Park on Saturday, October 23, 2010, and take part in the Calling Back the Salmon Celebration to learn what SARSAS is doing to return salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine and to become part of that most enjoyable, uplifting and necessary local effort.

SARSAS Tax Exempt Number from IRS

2010-04-10T16:14:00.000-07:00

Designated Locator Number: 1705 3278 3480 49 to be used for all donations to SARSAS for the tax exemption on your income tax form.

Official SARSAS Blog #1

2010-04-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.auburnjournal.com/detail.html?sub_id=83086
Copy and paste into address bar.

SARSAS Mission Statement and Action Plan

2010-04-10T16:09:00.000-07:00

SARSAS (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead)
Action Plan
Mission Statement: to return salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine
Organization: SARSAS is an independent, nonprofit, non-governmental organization, whose goal is to work collaboratively and cooperatively to modify the
thirteen man-made barriers on the Auburn Ravine and the six or more beaver dams, making them passable for fishes.
Vision: This undertaking will take much time, effort, coordination and money, but it will have a permanent, lasting effect on the quality of the lives of those in this area and on the participants who will achieve something unique. We have an opportunity to create something no other town in California has: an anadromous fish run with salmon spawning in the center of the city.
Collaborative Technique: SARSAS is working with volunteers, students, local businesses, government agencies and other Non-Government Organizations and donations of money, time and in-kind services to achieve its goal of returning salmon and steelhead with them ultimately spawning in Auburn School Park Preserve in the center of Auburn. SARSAS is currently working with several individuals and agencies to realize its goal.
Locally, we are working with Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt and Loren Clark and Edmund Sullivan from Placer Legacy and the California Department of Fish and Game, NOAA, Auburn City Council and many others. We have been given stream access by property owners along the AR for volunteers to do fish studies. Placer Legacy and NID are modifying the Hemphill Dam and the Lincoln Gaging Station with work to be complete by summer of 2009. Ron Nelson, NID General Manager, plans to continue working with SARSAS to retrofit the Gold Hill Dam when these two are finished.
Operations: SARSAS plans to accept donations of cash and work and professional expertise and to work outside the usual channels of large financial grants. SARSAS has the ability to accept grant money as well as apply for grants through such non- profits as CABY (COSUMNES, AMERICAN, BEAR AND YUBA) and AmericanRivers.org, which already have monies available for grants to work on several of the barriers describe in Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek Eco-System Resources Plan. (http://www.placer.ca.gov/Departments/CommunityDevelopment/Planning/PlacerLegacy/AuburnRavine.aspx).
Model: The greatest stream/fish restoration ever is Fossil Creek in Arizona. All facets of the community worked together. SARSAS intends to make the Restoration of the Auburn Ravine the model for the State of California. In California our model is Butte Creek.

Philosophy: Actions achieve goals but actions are preceded by a dream: Robert F. Kennedy said, “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’" SARSAS started with the dream, then the vision and now we have the plan. Together we can make SARSAS the model fish restoration IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA AND ENJOY ALL THE REWARDS AND THE ACCLAIM ATTENDANT THEREWITH.

Comments and questions as well as donations made out to SARSAS can be directed to: SARSAS, P.O. Box 4269, Auburn, CA 95604, or call 530 888 0281, jlsanchez39@gmail.com, www.sarsas.org and click on Blog.

SARSAS Strategic Plan for Returning Salmon and Steelhead to the Entire 33 Mile Length of the Auburn Ravine, Located in Placer County Near Sacramento.

2010-04-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

SARSAS Strategic Plan – Part I and II - for returning salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine

Part I. Strategic Plan

VISION STATEMENT: Restore Salmon and Steelhead to the Auburn Ravine

MISSION: It is the mission of the SARSAS Board to work in a collaborative MANNER with all individuals, groups and government organizations in order to restore salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine

Goals:
1. To RETROFIT FOR FISH PASSAGE all barriers impeding salmon and steelhead migration within the Auburn Ravine
2. To install screens on all downstream irrigation pumps and ditches
3. To study the feasibility of fish passage from the Auburn Ravine Cataract to the headwaters of the Auburn Ravine
4. To develop a strong support coalition through collaborative efforts
5. To restore stream bed and banks along the Auburn Ravine
6. To develop educational and marketing programs for the public at large regarding the development and maintenance of a healthy Auburn Ravine
7. To provide water necessary to support a healthy salmonid population
8. To assist in efforts increasing a healthy salmon population in the Pacific Ocean
9. To locate funds necessary to accomplish the goals of SARSAS

Objectives:
1.a By October of 2008 identify and provide an action plan for the RETROFITTING FOR FISH PASSAGE of each flashboard dam by October 15th of each year.
1b. By June 1st, 2009 establish the core group of individuals and groups or entities that will assist in the planning, implementation and completion of the restoration of salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine
1c. By August of 2010 reTROFIT FOR FISH PASSAGE the NID gauging station and the NID Hemphill Dam
1d. Develop an action plan during 2010 with the assistance of NID that will provide the planning, funding and resources necessary to provide fish passage at the Gold Hill Dam
1e. During the fall and winter of 2009/2010 develop a plan to mitigate fish passage issues caused by beaver within the Auburn Ravine

2. By September of 2010 implement a fish screening installation on all side ditches along the Auburn Ravine thus preventing the diversion of Smolt from the Auburn Ravine on their journey to the Sacramento River AND EVENTUALLY THE PACIFIC OCEAN
3. By September of 2010 provide $30,000.00 for a fish passage feasibility study inclusive of the area from the Auburn Cataract to the headwaters of the Auburn Ravine
4. During 2008 and culminating by June of 2009, identify and select a SARSAS
Board of Directors and identify coalition individuals, governmental bodies, and

other groups who will support and work to achieve the mission, goals and objectives of the SARSAS Strategic Plan.

5. Develop a plan addressing the streambed and bank restoration needs of the Auburn Ravine. Planning to be completed by August of 2011

6. During the period from January 2009 to September 2010 the SARSAS Board will develop and implement community outreach education programs for the general public. These programs will focus upon the SARSAS mission, goals and objectives.

7. By April 2010, the SARSAS Board will identify a source(s) of water sufficient to support salmonids in the Auburn Ravine. The SARSAS Board will establish meetings with Nevada Irrigation District, Placer County Water District, Pacific Gas and Electric and the State Water Board to NEGOTIATE necessary water during the fall of 2009.

8. During the entire life of the SARSAS organization, the goals and objectives will center primarily upon the restoration of salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine with secondary goals and objectives assisting in the restoration of healthy salmonid populations within the California Pacific Ocean boundaries.

9. During the period from January 2009 through June 2011, the SARSAS Board
will seek and locate funds necessary to support the goals and objectives of the
organization through various fund raising efforts, individual donations, business
sponsors and grants.

10. The SARSAS Board will develop and implement a marketing plan beginning in
The fall of 2009 to be completed by March of 2010. The plan shall include the development of a brochure, multiple power point presentations, a folder, an online newsletter, the use of Twitter, Facebook and other viable online sources, public presentations, newspaper articles, television news and other public forums.

11. During the period August 2009 through December 2009, the SARSAS Board will develop and implement a plan to assure the involvement of key agencies IN THE SARSAS MISSION. Agencies will be identified and focus meetings will be established with the agencies and the SARSAS Board in order to develop quality long term relationships focused upon the SARSAS mission.

12. SARSAS shall develop and implement a plan for monitoring water flow (CFS),
water temperature, water quality to include PH testing and organic material in
order to assure quality spawning conditions for all fishes. Monitoring locations
shall be determined, and at least three sites will be established. Monitoring to
begin during the winter and spring of 2009/2010.

13. The president of SARSAS shall establish a meeting with each individual
SARSAS Board member in order to determine each board members’ strengths
and desires, then develop plans with each member to assist in making SARSAS assignments specific to the SARSAS mission and strategic plan.
Timeline to span October 2009 through November 2009 with periodic updates.

14. During 2009/2010, SARSAS will develop and nurture working relationships
with key state legislators and the Governor in order to secure the support for legislation and support for the SARSAS Plan in order to secure an ongoing commitment for restoration of Salmon and steelhead in California’s streams
and IN the Pacific ocean bordering the state.

15. Complete a SWOT, and Strategic Plan by August of 2009

16. The SARSAS Board will work with representatives of the City of Lincoln,
native American groups, interested service organizations, business sponsors
and other interested parties in order to hold a SARSAS Salmon Festival WITH A CALLING BACK THE SALMON CEREMONY in the City of Lincoln in October of 2010.

17. The SARSAS Board shall strive to focus upon scientific data in order to meet
its mission. To that end, SARSAS shall reach out to the scientific community
in order to secure knowledge and information relevant to its goals, objectives
and Strategic Plan.

II.SARSAS STRATEGIC PLAN -- PROJECTS, RESPONSIBILITIES/TIMELINES/FUNDING

OBJECTIVE 1 a: GOALS 1 and 8
Project: Removal of flashboard dams on or before October 15th of each year
Responsibility: Owners of flashboard dams. NOAA and F&G- inspect for
removal and or notice to remove by officer.
Timeline: Annually on or before October 15th
Funding: Cost neutral

OBJECTIVE 1 b: GOALS 1-9
Project: SARSAS board has identified and established working relationships
with major stakeholders.
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: Ongoing
Funding: Cost neutral

OBJECTIVE 1 c: Goals 1-2-4-7-8-9
Project: Work with NID and Placer Legacy in order to develop plans and
funds necessary to retrofit Lincoln gauging station and Hemphill Dam.
Responsibility: Nevada Irrigation District. District will do both retrofits as state funds are released. Originally scheduled for summer 2009 but due to state funding issues, bond monies were not released.
Timeline: Summer 2010
Funding: State bond funds

OBJECTIVE 1 d: Goals 1-2-4-7-8-9
Project: Retrofit Gold Hill Dam with fish ladder ands screens
Responsibility: Nevada Irrigation District
Timeline: Uncertain 2010-2014
Funding: None to date. NID

OBJECTIVE 1 e: Goals 1-4-5-6-8-9
Project: Working with the City of Lincoln, local property owners and
appropriate water agencies, reduce the number of beaver dams on the Auburn Ravine. Remove and relocate beavers as necessary. Work with
citizens groups in order to educate the general public regarding beaver issues and potential solutions.
Responsibility: SARSAS, City of Linclon, water agencies
Funding: Grants, city funds, water agencies, SARSAS fundraising

OBJECTIVE 2: Goals 2-8-9

Projects: 1. Install appropriate screens on all irrigation ditches within the Ravine.
2. Notify all water users who have irrigation ditches of the issues related to
smolt and trout when ditches are not screened.
3. Develop grants that in part will provide funds for screening projects.
4. Provide water users with information that links unscreened ditches to the
Loss of smolt and trout in the Auburn Ravine.
5. Seek funding partners
6. Seek screening enforcement when necessary.
Responsibility: Water agencies, farmers, SARSAS, enforcement agencies.
Timeline: 2010-2012
Funding Sources: Grants, water agencies, water users
Cost: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 3: Goals 1-3-4-5-6-8-9-

Project: Raise $30,000.00 to be used for a feasibility study for fish passage from the
Auburn cataract to the headwaters of the Auburn Ravine.
Responsibility: SARSAS
Timeline: 2009 to September 2011
Funding: SARSAS fundraisers and donations

OBJECTIVE 4: Goals 1-9

Project: Establish a nine member working board and identify coalitions and partners.
Responsibility: SARSAS president and board members
Timeline: June 2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 5: Goals 4-5-6-8-9

Project: Identify the ten highest priority areas in need of streambed and bank restoration
and establish projects, timelines, volunteers and funds necessary to accomplish
restoration projects.
Responsibility: SARSAS, landowners, Placer Legacy, NOAA, Fish & Game
Timeline: August 2011
Funding: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 6 Goals 4-6-9

Projects: 1. Develop power point presentations
2. Develop a video for presentations
3. Develop presentations materials e.g. faq’s

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: June 2009 through September 2010 and beyond as necessary
Funding: $3000.00 to $4,000.00 SARSAS fundraisers and donations

OBJECTIVE 7: Goals 7-8-9

Project: 1. Work with appropriate agencies to determine the source of water and when it
is needed in order to assure sufficient water to support salmon, steelhead and
trout in the Auburn Ravine.
2. Establish meetings with PG&E, PCWA, NID and representatives of the state water board to accomplish the objective.

Responsibility: SARSAS and appropriate agencies
Timeline: August 2009 – April 2010
Funding: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 8: Goals 1-9

As the goals of SARSAS are met, there will be a corresponding increase in the California Pacific Ocean salmonid population.

Project: Meet with fishing industry representatives to demonstrate the SARSAS plan for
restoration as well as its application in other streams feeding the Sacramento
and San Joaquin Rivers in order to gain industry support and Pacific Ocean
salmonid restoration.

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None
Timeline: February 2010

OBJECTIVE 9: Goal 9

Projects: 1. Write grants
2. Establish SARSAS fundraisers
3. Locate donors
4. Seek business sponsors

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None
Timeline: 2008…ongoing

OBJECTIVE 10: Goal 6

Projects: 1. Develop Portfolio
2. Develop brochure 8X11 tri-fold
3. Update power point presentation
4. Develop on line newsletter
5. Post on Facebook, twitter and other internet sites
6. Continue public presentations
7. Develop media information for radio, television and newspapers
8. Develop a video presentation

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: August 2009 through March 2010
Funding: $6,000.00

OBJECTIVE 11: Goals 1-2-4-6-7

Projects: Identify Key agencies 8/08- 10/09
Establish focus meetings 9/09-4/2010

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 12: Goals 6-7-8-9

Projects: 1. Purchase hand held monitoring devices
2. Train volunteers for monitoring
3. Monitor weekly/monthly beginning October 2009
4. Select three locations for monitoring
5. Develop data base for collected information

Responsibility: SARSAS Board and monitoring volunteers
Timeline: 10/2009- 10/2012
Funding: Approximately $1,600.00 for equipment

OBJECTIVE 13: Goal 4

Project: SARSAS president shall meet with each Board member to determine
individual strengths and interests and make board assignments as necessary

Responsibility: SARSAS president
Timeline: 10/2009—11/2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 14: Goals 4-6-8-9

Projects: 1. Establish meetings with at least one key member of the senate and assembly
2. Meet with key leader and accomplish the following:
a. Present SARSAS plan
b. Solicit support for 503 c. legislation {simplify }
c. Gain support for SARSAS plan expansion across the north state
d. Expand support to other legislators
e. Get legislative resolutions from both houses
f. Explore legislation for salmonid restoration

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timelines: September 2009- May 2010
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 15: Goals 1-9

Project: Complete a SWOT and Strategic Plan

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: August 2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 16: Goals 4-6-8-9

Project: Develop a Return of the Salmon Festival in the City of Lincoln

Responsibility: SARSAS Board, City of Lincoln, Chamber of Commerce, Native
American groups, and other interested parties or individuals identified by SARSAS.
Timeline: October 2010
Cost: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 17: Goals 1-9

Project: Reach out to the scientific community to establish factual scientific facts and
information to help guide the SARSAS Board in achieving its mission, goals
and objectives.

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: Ongoing
Funding: Not required

The Next Step

2010-04-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

The Next Step

Now that salmon can pretty much get to Lincoln, the next step is to get them back to the Pacific if and when they spawn. Between the Sac River and Lincoln, starting at the lower end moving upstream, the Auburn Ravine contains eight diversion dams: 1)Coppin, 2)Davis, 3)Tom Glenn, 4)Lincoln Ranch Duck Club, 5)Aitken Ranch, 6)Moore, 7)Nelson Dams and the 8)Lincoln Gaging Station. Please memorize these eight names.

In order for the fish returning to the Pacific to spend 3-5 years maturing, they must not be entrained into rice fields, pastures and other ag fields through the canals that divert water. Without screens on these diversions, the fish will end up in fields and die. These diversion canals must be screened so that the fish can stay in the Auburn Ravine to reach the Sac River and continue their odyssey to SF Bay and the open waters of the Pacific.

I am asking for your thinking and input on this plan. We are working with Brad Arnold of South Sutter Water District to get his Board’s commitment to begin screening the Coppin, Tom Glenn, and Aitken Ranch dams. We are working with Rich Arruda on the Lincoln Ranch Duck Club Dam. I will work with Don Tanner to gain access to the Moore and Nelson dams to contact the owners. Most of the eight dams have one diversion canal with the Davis Dam having three. So we are probably talking about at least ten screens needed and there may be multiple diversions on the Moore and Nelson Dams.

What I am thinking about is creating a community outreach program that secures one business in Auburn and/or Lincoln to adopt a diversion canal and raise money to pay for one screen. SARSAS will not ask the business to contribute any money itself but to find a way to raise money. The average cost Tim Buller told me would be $300,000 per screen, but Ron Ott believes many would cost much less. We would need at least ten businesses, each adopting a screen to make the plan work. How can businesses raise funds?

Ron Ott will be giving his presentation on Friday, November 13, at 9a.m. at John Rabe’s home, 980 Stonewood, Newcastle, CA 95658, to help us decide what type of screen is best for each diversion canal and what each screen costs. Please try to attend because our next major task is to become knowledgeable about screens and their costs. Then we can implement this plan.

What we need now is a name for the plan, i.e. Invite a Salmon to the Pacific, Send a Salmon Home, This is My Salmon … some name we all agree on. Then how do we do outreach to the communities to secure business sponsors, and what will SARSAS’ role be? Board Member Kathleen Harris of Harris Industrial Gasses likes the idea and is already working on some details.

No idea is too outlandish. We are brainstorming now so send me all your ideas.

Thanks, Jack

SARSAS Spring 2010 Update

2010-03-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

Posted March 21, 2010

Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead (SARSAS) Update

Jack L. Sanchez, President
PO Bx 4269
Auburn, CA95604
530 888 0281

SARSAS General Meetings, which are open to the public, are held the fourth Monday of every month at the Domes, 175 Fulweiler in Auburn at 10am and are limited to one hour. SARSAS believes that many people sitting at the same table WORKING COLLABORATIVELY in the best way to accomplish the SARSAS mission which is to return salmon and steelhead to the entire thirty-three mile length of the Auburn Ravine.

SARSAS’ next fundraising dinner will be held at Rubino’s Italian American Cuisine Restaurant at 5015 Pacific Street in Rocklin on Monday, June 7, at 5:30 pm. Wine tasting and a raffle will be included. Contact SARSAS Event Coordinator Greg Nelson at 916-663-4914 for details. Then, the Second Annual SARSAS-Pescatore Winery Wild Salmon and Tri-Tips Dinner is scheduled for two evenings: Friday and Saturday, September 24-25 at Pescatore Vineyard and Winery, 7055 Ridge Road in Newcastle. Contact owner Dave Wegner at 916-663-1422 for details.

Many good things have taken place recently. To repeat, we had a documented sighting of a salmon in the Auburn Ravine on Monday, March 23, 2009, by three reliable people: Richard Harris, Lisa Thompson, a UC Berkeley Fish Biologist, and Edmund Sullivan, Placer Legacy. While looking for spawning sites, they spotted a Chinook salmon from the Fowler Bridge a few miles upstream from Lincoln. This sighting is a defining moment for SARSAS because no salmon has recently been spotted above Lincoln in a long time. Additionally, two fishermen reported to Board Member John Rabe they had sighted two large salmon below the Hemphill Dam upstream from Lincoln at the Turkey Creek Golf Course. If one salmon is sighted, how many more were not seen … ten, fifty or a hundred?

All flashboard dams downstream from Lincoln are now in compliance with NOAA regulations for upstream fish passage. That means from November 15 through April 15, all dams are removed so fish can swim upstream to spawning grounds. The next great push will be getting screens installed on all diversions that take water out of the Ravine for irrigation. Unless screens are installed, salmon smolt and steelhead returning to the ocean to grow up for three to five years, will be entrained into rice fields and pastures and die without ever returning even to the ocean. So SARSAS is now working with landowners and especially with General Manager Brad Arnold of the South Sutter Water District, which operates five diversion dams, to get screening in place. Ron Ott, SARSAS Board Member and one of the nation’s great authorities on fish passage, is currently working with SARSAS Grant Writer Cathie DuChene, to design, plan and fund fish screenings for the Pleasant Grove Diversion Canal a few miles downstream of Lincoln, which diverts at least fifty percent of the water in the Auburn Ravine for irrigation, and the dozen or so pumps that take water for irrigation and are perilous to fishes. Once the Pleasant Grove Canal and the pumps are screened, then the Ravine will be guaranteed a viable anadromous fish run to the City of Lincoln.
SARSAS’ current focus is to raise money to install these fish screens.

To get fish above the city of Lincoln, SARSAS is working with Placer Legacy and NID to create fish passage around the Lincoln Gaging Station, half mile downstream of Highway 65 in the center of Lincoln; the Hemphill Dam, adjacent to the Turkey Creek Gold Course two miles upstream from Lincoln; and finally the Gold Hill Diversion Dam, a mile upstream from Gold Hill Road in Newcastle. Ron Nelson, General Manager of NID, had planned to have these retrofitted for fish passage last summer but funding dried up. He is currently working for a fall 2010 target date. Once fish can pass these barriers, they can swim to the Gold Hill Diversion Dam, an NID Diversion Dam upstream from Gold Hill Road. This is the largest dam and diversion on the Auburn Ravine and has not yet been addressed for fish passage. Once Gold Hill Dam is retrofitted, fish can swim upstream through Ophir, up the Ophir Cataract, a half mile upstream from the Lozanos Bridge to Wise Powerhouse. Once salmon and steelhead reach Wise Powerhouse, one mile from the city of Auburn and the real work begins to get the salmon to Auburn School Park Preserve, behind Auburn City Hall to spawn.

NOAA Special Agent Don Tanner continues his low key, collaborative approach working with landowners to secure fish passage by comply with regulations that provide passage for the fishes to get to spawning gravels and are able to return to the Pacific. Don is currently working on identifying the owners of the pumping stations on the Cross Canal, the last four miles of the Auburn Ravine before it empties into the Sacramento River at the City of Verona.

SARSAS Board member and former Lincoln City Councilman and Lincoln School Board member Stan Nader has been methodically connecting us with the local fathers in Lincoln and plans are underway for a SARSAS-Lincoln Calling Back the Salmon Celebration to be held in Lincoln all day on Saturday, October 23, 2010, at McBean Park on the Auburn Ravine. Stan is the CBTSC Chairperson and if you would like to be a part of the Celebration call Stan at home at 916-645-1149 or his cell at 916-300-4335. The Celebration will include the Native American sacred and religious ceremony Calling Back the Salmon conducted by Bill Jacobson, who was taught the ceremony by Pacific Northwest tribes. Ty Gorre is working with Bill on the Ceremony.

Businesses can sponsor the Celebration by donating amounts from $25 to $2,500 with listings of the company logos and other benefits listed on the brochure on the callingbackthesalmoncelebration.org.

Speaking of Native Americans, SARSAS has finalized an Alliance with the Washoe Tribes of Nevada and California to mutually work to return anadromous fish to the Auburn Ravine. SARSAS is pleased that Darrel Cruz and the Washoe, headquartered in Gardnerville, NV, have joined us in our work on the Auburn Ravine.

The City of Auburn is still being penalized for its discharge from the Auburn Wastewater Treatment Plant into the Auburn Ravine, and Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln has been granted the right to triple its discharge into Orchard Creek, a tributary of the Auburn Ravine, but the decision by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board is being appealed to the State Water Board.

SARSAS Grant Writer Cathie DuChene has secured a five thousand dollar grant from the Tides Foundation to help return salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine, the SARSAS mission. Scott Johnson has secured grants of about fifteen hundred dollars for educational outreach to children in our local schools. And $1,000 has been donated by PC Supervisors Jim Holmes and Robert Weygandt for educational outreach.
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The outpouring of community support such as Ken Clark offering the equipment of his excavating company is solidifying the realization of the SARSAS mission. If the entire communities of Lincoln and Auburn support SARSAS’ effort, the return of salmon and steelhead in the Ravine will quickly become a reality.
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You can help return salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine by sending donations to SARSAS, PO Box 4269, Auburn, CA 95604, or by volunteering to write grants, operate a SARSAS booth at local festivals, represent SARSAS at other functions, coordinate an activity, monitor a section of the Auburn Ravine, perform water quality tests, speak to service and other clubs on behalf of SARSAS, do clerical work or research on fishes, or just find a way to contribute what you do best to SARSAS, all by calling 530-888-0281.

SARSAS Calling Back the Salmon Celebration

2010-01-30T08:32:00.000-08:00

The SARSAS Calling Back the Salmon Celebration will be held October 23, 2010, at McBean Park in the center of Lincoln on the Auburn Ravine. A Native American Calling Back the Salmon Ceremony with be held along with music, food, raffles and many other enjoyable activities.
If you would like to become part of the Celebration, please contact Stan Nader of Lincoln, a SARSAS Board member and Chairperson of the Celebration at 916 300 4335 0r at stann@gtcinternet.com.

Feinstein: Wasted Time, Wasted Money?

2010-01-30T07:20:00.000-08:00

The SacBee’s 1 23 10 editorial on “Feinstein’s $1.5 Million Review” concludes with “if the academy’s review only reaffirms the current science, then Feinstein will need to be held accountable.” She is a politician and must support her donors, but to do support one donor at the expenses of a species so vital to the economy of California and the West Coast and such a miracle of the animal kingdom as the two runs of salmon and steelhead, and at the expense of her other supporters, is really unforgivable and injudicious politically. Her attempt to delay a decision already confirmed by time and science is really indefensible and appears to be nothing more than “an effort to shore up her support among farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, an area in which farmers are already on government welfare and an area in which needless crops are grown for profit in toxic, alkaline lands mainly in the western San Joaquin Valley at the expense of fishes and the environment as the catastrophic Kesterson Reservoir toxic mess still unaddressed is the result. No amount of political will can return the salmon and steelhead once they are extinct … extinction is forever and extinction caused by a political quid pro quo to one donor, Stewart Resnick, is unconscionable.
The cost of the National Academy of Science five day conference at UCDavis, which Feinstein financed, would do much for fishes if used differently. The $1.5 million would do much for a specific stream, the Auburn Ravine, the stream Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead (SARSAS, a non-profit whose mission is to return salmon and steelhead to the entire lengthe of the Auburn Ravine, has worked diligently on for the last year and a half to make it a salmon/steelhead spawning tributary of the Sacramento River. The Auburn Ravine originates in Auburn, thirty five mile east of Sacramento on Hwy 80. SARSAS, working with NOAA, has made the Auburn Ravine navigable for fishes to the city of Lincoln, about an 18 mile reach. Anadromous fishes may now spawn in the Auburn Ravine, historically a rich anadromous spawning stream before the thirteen diversions dams were built to divert water to farms. These flashboard dams are now in compliance for upstream fish passage, removed October 15 and installed again in April 15, to allow fish to spawn; the problem is SARSAS has not been able to fund the screening of the thirteen diversions canals on the Auburn Ravine so even though the anadromous fishes may reach spawning beds, spawn and become smolt, when they return to the Pacific to mature for three to five years, most, if not all, will be entrained in rice fields and pastures and die because SARSAS has been unable to raise the $1.5 -3 million necessary to screen these diversions.
$1.5 million definitely would have saved countless anadromous fishes if spent for fish screens on the Auburn Ravine, which is one of the richest, if not the richest fishery in Northern California with the 2004-5 FG Fish Count Survey documenting 7,000 salmonids per mile.
Auburn Ravine is one of at least 738 tributaries to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers. If SARSAS can return the Auburn Ravine to spawning viability, then countless other tributaries will have a model to follow. The SARSAS Plan (www.sarsas.org) outlines this plan in detail. Imagine if the Auburn Ravine had one thousand females spawn this year, each laying 8,000 eggs. If only three percent of the 80,000 fishes return after maturing in the Pacific, one stream, the Auburn Ravine, would be enriched by 2,400 fish reproducing and sending smolt to the Pacific. Numbers increase geometrically over time. If over the next few years, only ten other streams were opened for spawning, then immediately 24,000 females would be laying eggs and sending thousands of smolt to the Pacific to mature and this small change would go a long way toward returning anadromous fishes to help reopen the $3 billion commercial fishing industry and the season to sports fishermen. Farmers wins; fish supporters win.
Salmon and steelhead become strays if their native spawning stream is blocked so strays spawn any place available. Like the mantra in Field of Dreams, “Build it, they will come”: for fishes it is referring to the stream, “Open it, they will come and spawn?”
So Feinsteins’s $1.5 million could have been spent to create harmony between farmers and environmentalists by providing fish screens so farmers would get their water uninterruptedly and environmentalists would help anadromous fishes. If Feinstein could have created a win-win for herself and her constituents. Her current decision is dubious at best.
It is not too late for Feinstein to do good for all. She can stop this waste of money after five days and create a win/win options by funding fish screens on the Auburn Ravine. Feinstein still needs to be held accountable to her constiuents and to salmon and steelhead, whose only voice is the people.

HOW YOU CAN HELP SARSAS

2009-11-16T07:05:00.000-08:00

The SARSAS organization (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead) has just completed an ambitious and very successful year and a half. We have made significant enough progress that there is a high likelihood of salmon and steelhead returning in numbers that will bring back a positive spawn in the Auburn Ravine. That's great news, but with success comes additional work. If we were a business we would be at that point where the business would now begin hiring employees in larger numbers. SARSAS is an all-volunteer organization; therefore, it is time for us to reach out and call for you to volunteer. Your skill, knowledge and motivation to work on behalf of salmon restoration will move SARSAS forward and at a faster pace.
There is a niche just right for you. You may have lots of time to provide or you may have a very limited amount but all assistance is welcome and will be appreciated. How can you help? Well, take a look at some of the needs and see if you might be just the right person for the job. Don't see the right job? Just contact us and let us know what you see as your skill or desire and we will work with you to find a way for you to succeed and at the same time make a valuable contribution to SARSAS. Here is a partial list of some needs we currently have:
1. clerical; 2. various computer skills such as word processing, building graphs and charts using excel, power point projects, development of data bases, web site marketing using twitter, Facebook and other online uses, or other services you can provide with technology; 3. fisheries expertise; 4. marketing skills; 5.sales skills; 6. engineering/ especially those related to hydrology or civil; 7. expertise in stream bed and bank restoration; 8. labor of all sorts; 8. und raising skills; 9. grant writing skills or assistance in application writing;. 10. education expertise especially developing curriculum and lessons related to k-12 programs about salmon and restoration of salmon; 11. telephoning 12 artistic skills; 13. how about wandering up the middle of the Auburn Ravine counting salmon and other in stream activities? 14. assisting SARSAS in the development of a salmon festival in Lincoln in October of 2010; 15. have another idea or role you would like to volunteer in? Just let us know. There are many other ways you can provide help so just contact us and we will find the right fit for you. Please contact me or Scott Johnson at scott@johnsonpianoservice.com.

We at SARSAS look forward to working with you as we all work to bring salmon and steelhead back to the Auburn Ravine.

Sincerely,
Jack Sanchez
Founder and Board President
SARSAS
jlsanchez39@gmail.com

Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead (SARSAS) Update, Nov 5, 2009

2009-11-09T20:10:00.001-08:00

Many accomplishments have been made recently. The Healthy Auburn Ravine Workshop in Lincoln was a success with many local attendees learning what to do to help return salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine. We had a documented sighting of a salmon in the Auburn Ravine on Monday, March 23, 2009, by three reliable people, Richard Harris and Lisa Thompson, UCBerkeley and Edmund Sullivan, Placer Legacy, looking for sites on the Auburn Ravine to take attendees to during our May 2 workshop in Lincoln. They spotted a Chinook salmon from the Fowler Bridge a few miles upstream from Lincoln. This sighting is a defining moment for SARSAS because no salmon has recently been spotted above Lincoln. Two fishermen reported to Board Member John Rabe they sighted two large salmon below the Hemphill Dam upstream from Lincoln. If one salmon is sighted, how many more were not seen … ten, fifty or a hundred?

All flashboard dams downstream from Lincoln are now in compliance with NOAA regulations for upstream fish passage. What the next great push will be is getting screens installed on all diversions canals that takes water our of the Ravine for irrigation. Unless screens are installed, salmon smolt and steelhead returning to the ocean to grow up will be entrained into rice fields and pastures and die without ever returning even to the ocean. So SARSAS is now working with landowners and especially with General Manager Brad Arnold of the South Sutter Water District which operates five diversion dams to get screening in place. Once the diversions are screened, then the Ravine will be guaranteed a viable anadromous fish run.

To get fish above the city of Lincoln, SARSAS is working with Placer Legacy and NID to create fish passage around the Lincoln Gaging Station, half mile downstream of Highway 65 in the center of Lincoln, the Hemphill Dam, adjacent to the Turkey Creek Gold Course two miles upstream from Lincoln and finally the Gold Hill Diversion Dam, a mile upstream from Gold Hill Road in Newcastle. Once fish can pass these barriers, they can swim to Wise Powerhouse, one mile from the city of Auburn and then the real work begins to get the salmon to Auburn School Park Preserve, behind Auburn City Hall to spawn.
NOAA Special Agent Don Tanner continues his low key, collaborative approach to working with landowner to secure fish passage by compliance with regulations that provide passage for the fishes to get to spawning gravels and are able to return to the Pacific form up to five years on maturing before they return to the Ravine to spawn, die and start the cycle all over again.

Board member Stan Nader has been methodically connecting us with the local fathers in Lincoln and plans are underway for a SARSAS-Lincoln Salmon Festival to be held in Lincoln on October 23, 2010, at McBean Park on the Auburn Ravine. We have made countless beneficial connections and have talked with many groups in the Lincoln area, all of whom are supportive of SARSAS. Plans are in the germinal stage for a Salmon Festival in Auburn. Both will include the Native American sacred and religious ceremony Calling Back the Salmon conducted by Bill Jacobson, who was taught the ceremony by Pacific Northwest tribes.
SARSAS has finalized an Alliance with the Washoe Tribes of Nevada and California to mutually work to return anadromous fish to the Auburn Ravine. SARSAS is pleased that Darrel Cruz and the Washoes, headquartered in Gardnerville, NV, have joined us in our work on the Auburn Ravine.
Unfortunately, there has been another sewage spill into the Auburn Ravine in the city of Auburn on November 3. The city of Auburn responded quickly to stop the leak and clean up the sewage.

SARSAS Grant Writer Cathie DuChene has secured a five thousand dollar grant from the Tides Foundation to help return salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine, the SARSAS mission. Scott Johnson, SARSAS Event Coordinator, has secured grants of about fifteen hundred dollars for educational outreach.

This weekend the Pescatore Winery and Vineyards on Ridge Road in Newcastle is hosting a Wild Salmon and Tri-tip Fundraising Dinner on Friday and Saturday, November 6 and 7, 2009. The tickets are all sold.

The outpouring of community support such as Ken Clark offering the equipment of his excavating company is solidifying the realization of the SARSAS mission. If the entire communities of Lincoln and Auburn support SARSAS’ effort, the salmon in the Ravine will quickly become a reality.
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You can help return salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine by sending donations to SARSAS, PO Box 4269, Auburn, California, or by volunteering to write grants, operate a SARSAS booth at local festivals, represent SARSAS at other functions, coordinate an activity, monitor a section of the Auburn Ravine, perform water quality tests, speak to service and other clubs on behalf of SARSAS, do clerical work or research on fishes, find a way to contribute what you do best, write for SARSAS, all by calling 530 888 0281.Many accomplishments have been made recently. The Healthy Auburn Ravine Workshop in Lincoln was a success with many local attendees learning what to do to help return salmon.

The Next Step - Raising Money for Ten Fish Screens

2009-11-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

November 8, 2009

Now that salmon can pretty much get to Lincoln, the next step is to get them back to the Pacific if and when they spawn. Between the Sac River and Lincoln, starting at the lower end moving upstream, the Auburn Ravine contains eight diversion dams: 1)Coppin, 2)Davis, 3)Tom Glenn, 4)Lincoln Ranch Duck Club, 5)Aitken Ranch, 6)Moore, 7)Nelson Dams and the 8)Lincoln Gaging Station. Please memorize these eight names.

In order for the fish returning to the Pacific to spend 3-5 years maturing, they must not be entrained into rice fields, pastures and other ag fields through the canals that divert water. Without screens on these diversions, the fish will end up in fields and die. These diversion canals must be screened so that the fish can stay in the Auburn Ravine to reach the Sac River and continue their odyssey to SF Bay and the open waters of the Pacific.

I am asking for your thinking and input on this plan. We are working with Brad Arnold of South Sutter Water District to get his Board’s commitment to begin screening the Coppin, Tom Glenn, and Aitken Ranch dams. We are working with Rich Arruda on the Lincoln Ranch Duck Club Dam. I will work with Don Tanner to gain access to the Moore and Nelson dams to contact the owners. Most of the eight dams have one diversion canal with the Davis Dam having three. So we are probably talking about at least ten screens needed and there may be multiple diversions on the Moore and Nelson Dams.

What I am thinking about is creating a community outreach program that secures one business in Auburn and/or Lincoln to adopt a diversion canal and raise money to pay for one screen. SARSAS will not ask the business to contribute any money itself but to find a way to raise money. The average cost Tim Buller told me would be $300,000 per screen, but Ron Ott believes many would cost much less. We would need at least ten businesses, each adopting a screen to make the plan work. How can businesses raise funds?

Ron Ott will be giving his presentation on Friday, November 13, at 9a.m. at John Rabe’s home, 980 Stonewood, Newcastle, CA 95658, to help us decide what type of screen is best for each diversion canal and what each screen costs. Please try to attend because our next major task is to become knowledgeable about screens and their costs. Then we can implement this plan.

What we need now is a name for the plan, i.e. Invite a Salmon to the Pacific, Send a Salmon Home, This is My Salmon … some name we all agree on. Then how do we do outreach to the communities to secure business sponsors, and what will SARSAS’ role be? Board Member Kathleen Harris of Harris Industrial Gasses likes the idea and is already working on some details.

No idea is too outlandish. We are brainstorming now so send me all your ideas.
Please contact us at P O Bx 4269, Auburn CA95604, jlsanchez39@gmail.com or 530 888 0281.

How SARSAS Will Return Salmon to the Auburn Ravine, Part 1

2009-11-06T08:03:00.000-08:00

SARSAS ANALYSIS OF AUBURN RAVINE, Part 1 Nov 5, 2009

For purposes of this report the Auburn Ravine is divided into sections as follows:

1. Coppin Dam to Highway 65

2. Highway 65 east to Fowler Bridge

3. Fowler bridge to the Ophir tunnel

4. Ophir tunnel to the City of Auburn

SECTION ONE----WHAT WE KNOW

A. There are 11 man made barriers between Coppin Dam and highway 65. Ten of the barriers are flashboard dams and one is a gaging station.
The ten flashboard dams were a problem as not all were being taken down thus preventing upstream migration. SARSAS, NOAA and the SSWD work together and all dams are removed on or before October 15th.
The Lincoln gaging station is the remaining barrier west of highway 65 that needs to be mitigated.

B. There are numerous irrigation ditches and pumps that will require fish screens. We know where most pumps are located and we know where all irrigation canals/ditches are located. We know most of the canals are part of the jurisdiction of South Sutter Water District. Further we know that SSWD has been cited by NOAA for non-compliance regarding screening.

C. We know that the Auburn Ravine between the Coppin Dam and highway 65 is ill suited for salmon and steelhead spawning. Further, we know that salmon and steelhead can navigate the distance from the Sacramento River to the City of Lincoln in less than a 24 hour period if they choose to do so. We also know there are numerous resting pools along this span of the Auburn Ravine. We know that gravel restoration projects along this stretch of the Auburn Ravine would be ill advised as water temperatures are somewhat higher, and continuing siltation is probable. We know there is ample water in the Auburn Ravine in this area to allow for upstream migration during those times salmon and steelhead may access the Auburn Ravine. In conclusion, we know the stretch of the river between Coppin Dam and highway 65 is a reliable conduit for the transportation of salmon, steelhead and their fry to utilize.

D. We know after flashboard dams are put in place sometime around April 15th of each year that these dams may provide some type of barrier for downstream migration. We know ample water overflows some of these dams and others will need some type of notch. We know the Coppin dam will need further study and recommendation in order to assure downstream migration of fishes.

E. We know this stretch of the river is mainly within levee banks and in some locations has cut banks that contribute to ongoing siltation issues. And finally, we know some stretches have little or no cover along the banks while other stretches have excellent shading and cover from predators.

F. We know that beaver are problematic along this section of the Ravine and in some cases may restrict upstream migration.

G. We know SARSAS efforts along this section of the Auburn Ravine will be limited to assuring that flashboard dams are placed and removed according to regulations. Further SARSAS efforts will be related to screening of ditches and pumps and continuing an ongoing collaborative relationship with the management of South Sutter Water District.

How SARSAS Will Return Salmon to the Auburn Ravine, Part 2

2009-11-06T08:02:00.001-08:00

Analysis of AR, Part 2----- WHAT WE KNOW

A. There is one barrier between highway 65 and Fowler road. The barrier is the Hemphill Dam located approximately two miles east of Lincoln along the north edge of Turkey Creek golf course. The dam is a flashboard dam with a formidable concrete apron plunging into a deep pool. We know the flashboard dam is taken down on or before October 15th. We know the dam creates a lake about four to five feet deep. This lake is approximately 150 feet wide and backs up a considerable distance. We know this dam differs considerably from all other flashboard dams along the Auburn Ravine in that the flashboard dam is not level with the downstream. The result is a considerable amount of silt above the dam. Silt is from bank to bank and backs up the length of the lake (a considerable distance) This portion of the Ravine would not support spawning. We know NID is looking at several alternatives regarding the future of the Hemphill dam. There is one pump serving the Hemphill dam and it will require screening.

B. The lake formed behind the dam would make an excellent holding pond for smolt. PCWA water temperature data show favorable year round water temperatures in this location. Further, the water is deep and protected from many predators. Also, there is ample shading of the waters in this area. Additionally, we know based upon water quality testing by the Lincoln Waste Water Treatment plant that conditions are quite favorable for trout, salmon and steelhead in this stretch of the Ravine.

C. SARSAS members have walked considerable lengths of the Auburn Ravine between Highway 193 and the Fowler Bridge. We know that silt in this section is minimal, cut banks are limited and spawning gravel is superior in quality. We have researched gravel needs by study online and this study supports our observation of the gravel along this section of the Auburn Ravine. Previous writings have reported a lower quality and quantity of spawning gravel than what we have learned in our direct observations of the stream bed. We now know that the potential for successful spawning of salmonids in this section of the Auburn Ravine is favorable. Further, this section has exceptional resting ponds with very favorable stream depth even in observed low water conditions typical of October flows.

D. We know there are beavers along this section of the Ravine, but there is an absence of the dams that are characteristic of the areas west of Highway 193.

E. Overall we are encouraged by this section of the Auburn Ravine for its ability to support spawning and rearing. This is far more encouraging than our knowledge in the past as we have done the observations and research to support what we now know versus some of the reports we read in the past.
We know this may require further studies and observation.

F. We will consider this area for spawning observation this year.

G. We know four salmon were observed in this section of the Ravine last year. Three salmon were observed in the pool below the Hemphill dam on December 8, 2008 by three fishermen. One salmon was reported below the Fowler Bridge in March of 2009. We know the salmon spotted at the Fowler Bridge was a salmon as experts observed this fish. The fish observed below the Hemphill dam were described as between six to ten pounds. These fish could have been salmon or steelhead.

How SARSAS Will Return Salmon to the Auburn Ravine, Part 3

2009-11-06T08:00:00.002-08:00

Analysis of AR, SECTION 3, Rabe------- WHAT WE KNOW

A. There is one barrier on this section of the Ravine. It's popular name is the Gold Hill Dam. This is a formidable dam with no possibility of fish passage in its current configuration. There is a large canal at the dam site on the south side of the Auburn Ravine.
We know this dam will require a retrofit of some type of fish ladder. We also know the canal will require screening. NID has stated they are planning for these needs.

B. We know this section of the Auburn Ravine has the highest quality spawning beds and rearing environment. This is based on previously reported data as well as direct observation. We know best steelhead spawning beds are above the Gold Hill Dam (See Appendix D report) We know by reading the PCWA temperature charts that this section has excellent year round temperature required by trout, salmon and steelhead. We know by DF&G reports there are healthy populations of trout and steelhead in this section. Further, we observe large quantities of fry although we do not know what those fry may be.
We know this section has excellent water quality.

C. We know this section of the Auburn Ravine had significant numbers of salmon and steelhead prior to the late 1980'S. DF&G reports. Further, we have talked with reliable sources who witnessed significant numbers of, "stacked" salmon in pools all along this section of the Auburn Ravine. Observations span the period 1958-1988. Some spoke joyously about how they used pitchforks to catch salmon while a number spoke of, "blowing them out of the water with their shotguns"

D. We know there are Beaver within this section but they rarely build dams.

E We know there are land owners willing to have restoration projects on their property within this section of the Auburn Ravine.

How SARSAS Will Return Salmon to the Auburn Ravine, Part 4

2009-11-06T08:00:00.001-08:00

Analysis of AR, Part 4, Rabe 11 05 09----- WHAT WE KNOW

A. We know there are a number of barriers on this section of the Auburn Ravine, some man made and some natural. There is a significant cataract beginning just above the Ophir tunnel. The Ravine flows underneath Interstate 80, underneath a portion of Old Auburn and emerges as a small stream in a beautiful restored park. We know our Mission envisions this as the last spawning area on the Auburn Ravine.

B. We know it will cost approximately $36,000.00 to do a feasibility study in order to determine if salmon and steelhead can navigate the cataract, and the remaining man made barriers along this section of the Auburn Ravine

C. We know water temperatures are adequate to support salmonid species. We know there are some resting ponds, some gravel beds suitable for spawning and during the winter, adequate flows to support both spawning and rearing of salmonids.

D. We have worked with NID and PG&E in order to assure adequate water during the October 15th to November 8 water outage each year. We know that PG&E has altered their ditch cleaning procedures and the result has been a superior flow during this year's outage compared to the past several years.
We know this has occurred due to the successful collaborative process SARSAS has developed and implemented.

SUMMARY----- We know that SARSAS has made a major difference regarding the fate of salmon and steelhead in the Auburn Ravine during the past one and one half years. Our collaborative process, highly effective volunteers, our strategic plan, to name a few have moved Auburn Ravine to the forefront in creating what is now likely to be the most successful project in the county. We know salmon and steelhead are returning, we know the tenacity of our drive will accomplish our mission.

Blocked Pipe Sends Raw Sewage Flowing into Auburn Ravine in City of Auburn, Ca

2009-11-06T07:56:00.000-08:00

11/3/09 | 13 comments | 1105 views
Blocked pipe sends raw sewage flowing into Auburn Ravine Creek
By Gus Thomson, Journal Staff Writer

Auburn city employee Miguel Bravo removes a motorized camera used Tuesday to probe a sewer line near the Highway 49-Elm Avenue crossroads following a spill into Auburn Ravine Creek.

A plugged line sent raw sewage flowing into fragile Auburn Ravine Creek Tuesday.

A city of Auburn Public Works Department estimate calculated 90 gallons flowed into the creek.

But a Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead spokesman said his group believes the amount of the spill to be much more.

Jack Sanchez, founder of the fish and river preservation group, said a member of his organization reported the spill to Placer County environmental health officials Monday evening but no action was taken. SARSAS had received two reports about a terrible stench by then, he said.

“They sent someone after dark and couldn’t find anything,” Sanchez said. “It ran all night. That’s a tremendous amount of sewage.”

Bernie Schroeder, Auburn Public Works engineering division manager, said the city was called out at about 11 a.m. Tuesday and discovered a manhole overflowing at the back of Pace Auto Sales. The sewage was flowing from the manhole over the bank into the creek at a rate of about three gallons a minute, Schroeder said.

City employees witnessed about 30 minutes of overflow caused by the blockage, she said. Normal flows in the pipe were restored after rags were removed, Schroeder added.

The section of the ravine is an exposed area covered in blackberry bushes next to a strip of businesses along the 300-block of Grass Valley Highway in Auburn. Lisa Kodl, of Auburn Bike Works, 350 Grass Valley Highway, said the sewage stench was strong in the morning but eventually cleared out.

Sanchez said steelhead runs are going to be impacted by a spill that highlights the fragile nature of a stream running through the city.

“It’s terrible that they can’t stop polluting the Auburn Ravine,” he said.

Wild Salmon or Tri-Tip Dinner SARSAS Dinner at Pescatore Winery, in Newcastle, Ca off Ridge Road

2009-10-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

A benefit dinner for SARSAS hosted by Pescatore Winery
Two Evenings on Friday November 6, 2009 or Saturday November 7, 2009
6:00pm
at 7055 Ridge Rd. Newcastle 95658

www.pescatorewines.com
$30 per person

Artists displays, raffle & wine sales all benefiting Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead

For Tickets and Information About This Event Call Scott at 530-878-1566

SARSAS thanks for their sponsorship and donations,
Pescatore Estate Vineyard and Winery, Lincoln Rotary,
LeBellig French Restaurant in Auburn,
ceramic fish artist Christine Kotcher.
Thank you for Salmon and Tri-Tip donations from
Auburn Save-Mart and Auburn Grocery Outlet

Auburn a Salmon Haven? It's Retired Teacher Jack Sanchez' Dream

2009-10-26T19:47:00.000-07:00

Ex-Del Oro English teacher at forefront of Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead

By Gus Thomson, Auburn Journal Staff Writer

Jack Sanchez is working with a dedicated band of volunteers to bring spawning salmon and steelhead up the Auburn Ravine again to the Auburn School Park Preserve.

Jack Sanchez calls salmon the earth’s canary in a coal mine.

If the salmon disappear, Sanchez said he strongly believes that the human race will disappear along with them.

And Sanchez works to help bring the fish back to a stream that flows through Auburn and links the city with the Pacific Ocean.

The founder of Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead group is a strong advocate for bringing spawning salmon back from the ocean and upstream to the city. The non-profit organization’s ultimate goal is to have spawning salmon traveling every fall for people to view at the Auburn School Park Preserve on the edge of Downtown Auburn.

“When they go, we go,” Sanchez said. “They’re the most miraculous creature on the earth in terms of their resiliency and ability to survive.”

Born and raised in Ophir, Sanchez has spent most of his life in the Auburn area. He taught English at Del Oro High School from 1964 to 2001 and founded the salmon preservation group to work with water providers, government officials and the general public on forging a plan to bring the fish back.

Scott Johnson, Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead activities director, said that Sanchez’ roots in the community go a long way in helping the group cultivate supporters.

“The thing that jumps out at you right away is that he’s been active in our community for so long,” Johnson said. “A lot of people who work in local government have connections with him, either directly or through relatives.”

Sanchez, 70, is optimistic about the eventual success of the group’s work, citing efforts to provide paths past dams along the ravine between Lincoln and Auburn. One of the future keys will be installing a fish ladder at the Gold Hill Diversion dam and Wise Road powerhouse. After that the riverbed would have to reconstructed to move salmon farther upstream.

Lincoln is already feeling the excitement of a spawning run. Sanchez said there is anecdotal evidence by two fishermen that salmon had moved upstream past Lincoln last year. A salmon festival is planned for next year, including a Native American ceremony to call the salmon back.

In the meantime, the Auburn-based salmon organization meets monthly to move Auburn Ravine salmon spawning plans forward.

Until the spawning salmon return, Sanchez has faith that the day will come.

“Salmon have so few places to go,” Sanchez said. “My belief I that if you open the waterways and fish passages the fish are going to come.”

----------------------------

Jack Sanchez Fast Facts

- Favorite movie: “Casablanca”

- Favorite authors: Albert Camus, William Faulkner

- Highest mountain climbed: Mt. Kilimanjaro

- Marathon ran: Avenue of the Giants Marathon

- Students taught at Del Oro High School include: Sheriff Ed Bonner, chief assistant county executive officer Rich Colwell, county Facility Services Director Jim Durfee, district attorney’s office prosecutors Suzanne Gazzaniga and Tom Beattie, and defense attorney Thomas Leupp.

- Sanchez is a 1957 Placer High School graduate

- Earned degrees in English, German and philosophy from California State University, Sacramento

- Taught English at Del Oro High School for nearly four decades

- Married to Valerie, who is also a retired Del Oro English teacher. He has two adult sons from a previous marriage.

River Restoration: Ready for Dry Run

2009-09-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Fresno Bee
Published Tuesday, Sep. 29, 2009

FRESNO It all starts Thursday with a gentle surge of water to be released from Friant Dam,
northeast of Fresno, into the San Joaquin River.
A massive, unprecedented and unpredictable river restoration project will begin, reawakening
miles of dried riverbed and salmon runs that have been extinct for six decades.
Long stretches of the river have been dry since the dam was built in the 1940s. Parts have
become a gutter for the San Joaquin Valley, collecting muddy seepage, trash and abandoned
cars.
Now, in a nine-year effort that could cost up to $1.2 billion, the 350-mile San Joaquin will be
reconnected with the Pacific Ocean. Salmon, which once teemed in its waters, may again
migrate from near Fresno to the ocean.
The project begins with test releases to determine how the river will respond. Engineers then
will widen the riverbed in some places and dig new channels around obstacles.
In recent years, government agencies across the nation have attempted other big-river
restoration projects, from the Penobscot River in Maine to the Klamath in Oregon. But
nobody is restoring a big, salmon-supporting river this far south or a river as damaged as
the San Joaquin.
"I've never seen anything like this on this scale," said Bay Area-based biologist Chuck
Hanson, a longtime fisheries consultant and now a member of an independent advisory
committee on the San Joaquin restoration.
Farmers will lose water
Not everyone relishes the challenge.
Under terms of a complex, controversial court settlement, east-side valley farmers 15,000
of them, cultivating 1 million acres from the center of the valley to the foothills will give up some of their irrigation water so the San Joaquin can be reborn.
The water loss comes at a dark moment for California agriculture.
The valley's west side a national symbol for farmers battling environmentalists over water already is reeling from three years of drought and restrictions to preserve a rare fish species, the Delta smelt.
Though river restoration will send more water downstream into the west side, farmers in the hard-hit Westlands Water District would get no share. Some could benefit from river water that seeps into the water table, but the potential benefit is unknown.
There are plans to pump some replacement water back through an aqueduct from the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where the river ends, to help east-side farmers. But that
water may instead be needed downstream to ease problems for threatened fish, such as the
Delta smelt.
For worried farmers, the restoration boils down to a single question: Can the government
rebuild this river without crippling the valley's internationally known farming industry?
Environmentalists and scientists think the odds are good, but nobody knows for sure.
Waste of taxpayer money?
Farmers have dreaded this moment since 1988, when environmentalists sued to rescue the
San Joaquin. Decades earlier, it was the river that rescued farms. Friant Dam was built in the
1940s to capture most of the river's water and irrigate dying farms in Merced, Madera,
Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties.
The river and its salmon runs were deliberately sacrificed, although even then the state fish
and game code required a stream of water beyond the dam for the native fish.
Environmentalists used that provision as a cornerstone in their 1988 lawsuit.
Farmers fought the suit for 18 years, but decisions in the case were consistently going
against them. They were running out of options. So they cut a deal in 2006 a compromise
intended to restore the river and salmon runs but preserve most east-side farming.
Three years later, some farmers have begun to doubt they will see much river water
circulating back from the restoration to their fields. And they wonder whether salmon, a coldwater
fish, will even survive in a warming climate over the next century.
Farmer Kole Upton, one of four people who negotiated the restoration deal in 2006, has
changed his mind about the settlement for many reasons, including the salmon issue.
With climate change, "It's going to get very warm here," he said. "This looks like an ultimate
waste of taxpayer money."
Fishery biologist Peter Moyle of the University of California, Davis, disagrees, saying the San
Joaquin may be a refuge for salmon because it taps a part of the Sierra likely to remain a
source of ice-cold water in spring.
"It does drain some of the highest Sierra, which will still have a snowpack," he said.
Salmon runs won't be big
The fishing industry is elated about this restoration. Decimated fisheries in the Pacific Ocean forced authorities to shut down salmon fishing for the second consecutive season this year. The idea of restarting San Joaquin salmon runs sounds good. "I don't know if we'll ever get 110,000 fish (in the river) like we did before, but I think it will help," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations, which was a plaintiff in the 1988 lawsuit.
But the restoration probably won't return the river to a pristine state with robust salmon runs, said Ron Stork, senior policy expert for Friends of the River, a statewide advocacy group. There's not enough water in the settlement for big salmon runs, he said.
Stork's group also was among the 14 environmental, fishing and conservation organizations that filed the 1988 lawsuit.
"The restoration is symbolic," Stork said. "This is a very big undertaking in a place where the
political and institutional culture is to capture every bit of water that falls on the Sierra
Nevada and use it in the valley. The culture is that none of this water should leave the area."
Cost could hit $1 billion
The restoration will span the middle 150 miles of this 350-mile river from Friant Dam to
the place where the Merced River empties into the San Joaquin.
But there is much more to the San Joaquin, especially above Friant Dam. The headwaters are
at Thousand Island Lake, east of Yosemite National Park.
The river runs through a mountain wonderland, passing near the spectacular volcanic
columns of the Devils Post Pile and flowing through breathtaking glacial canyons. It arrives at
Millerton Lake after about an 80-mile journey that takes it through several hydroelectric
dams and lakes, such as Redinger and Kerckhoff lakes.
The 150 miles from Friant Dam to the confluence of the Merced is where the river must be
rebuilt. Beyond that, it refills with tributary water from the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus
rivers on its run to the Delta. All three major tributaries have salmon runs.
Even far downstream, however, the river has problems: Farm pesticides and urban waste
contaminate the flow. Some cities, such as Antioch, get water from the Delta. Fresh water from the restoration might help water quality for those residents. It also might improve conditions at the deep port of Stockton, where fish suffer from a lack of dissolved oxygen in the slow-flowing river. The city discharges millions of gallons of treated sewage into the river each day. Many believe a restored San Joaquin ultimately will improve the health of the Delta by providing a stronger push of fresh water to guide dwindling species away from massive water pumps.
The cost of the river revival isn't small, although it could be as little as $600 million. The price tag easily could push beyond $1 billion because officials may need to buy private property to widen the river and build expensive facilities to help replace irrigation water farmers lose.
Congress has authorized $250 million, but the money will have to be approved by federal lawmakers, as it is needed for projects in the next decade. The state has committed about $200 million through water bonds. The work will be done over the next nine years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, owner of the dam and architect of the restoration plan.
Officials will release water from the dam during the next several years to study the river and
answer several questions, including: How much water will sink into the ground? How much
will seep into neighboring property? How fast will the vegetation return?
Potential for water damage
While east-side farmers have reached an uneasy peace over the river's fate, the fight over
the restoration has shifted to the valley's west side, where the most significant expense is
anticipated.
Farmers working 240,000 acres near the river already are considering their own lawsuit,
fearing a reinvigorated river will destroy their crops.
They are part of the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Authority, representing growers
who traded their historic river rights for Northern California water decades ago.
These west-side farmers have developed crops near a 25-mile stretch of the old, dried
riverbed beyond the Mendota Pool, which is part of Reach 2, the section of river from
Gravelly Ford to Mendota Dam. When the river fills, water might seep through the levees and
onto their land, swamp their crops and cause big losses.
The Bureau of Reclamation has assured them monitoring wells will be in place and water flow
will be slowed if excess seepage is detected.
But farm officials say the monitoring wells have not been installed, and the government will
run out of time.
If officials decide to use the natural river, they'll have to spend $350 million or more to buy
miles of private land so they can rebuild the waterway deeper and wider. Federal officials will
decide in the next two years.
Chris Acree, executive director of Revive the San Joaquin, a Fresno-based advocacy group,
prefers to see the natural river restored, even though there are obstacles. For instance,
someone 30 years ago built a house in the river channel in Merced County. It would have to move.
But, "It's only one house," Acree said. "There could have been cities built."
ShareThis
Contact The Fresno Bee's Mark Grossi, (559) 441-6316 or mgrossi@fresnobee.com.

SARSAS Monthly Meetings

2009-09-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

SARSAS Monthly Meetings, hosted by Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt, are held on the fourth Monday of each month at 10 a.m. at the Domes, 175 Fulweiler in Auburn, Ca 95603. Meetings are open to the public; meetings are ONE HOUR in length.

Next meeting is Monday, September 28, 2009 at 10 a.m at the Domes, 175 FULWEILER AVENUE, AUBURN,CA95603.

October meeting is Monday, October 26, November meeting is Monday, November 23, and December meeting is Monday, December 28, 2009.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE OBAMA SALMON PLAN FOR THE SNAKE AND COLUMBIA RIVERS

2009-09-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

The dust is settling and opinions are beginning to circulate
from across the West Coast and the Nation about the former Bush
Salmon Plan for the Columbia and Snake Rivers that has now been
adopted by the Obama Administration and submitted to federal
judge James Redden for review. This email contains a number of
links to a partial list of these opinions. In the Pacific
Northwest, newspaper editorial boards have expressed varying
opinions, including some serious skepticism about whether the
very modest changes to the 2008 Plan will be sufficient to pass
legal muster in court.

Given the "new" Obama Plan's significant shortcomings, the Save
Our Wild Salmon Coalition cannot support this plan, and we will
continue to work in court and in the public and political arenas
to encourage the establishment of a truly inclusive
collaborative process that includes all the interests who have
been involved in this debate for the last two decades. A
science-driven stakeholder negotiation process represents our
best opportunity to develop a cost-effective, biologically-sound
salmon restoration plan that is durable, works for both salmon
and people, saves money, and creates good family-wage jobs in
areas like fishing, clean energy, and construction.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? The Obama Administration, under
court-order, submitted its "new" plan to Judge Redden, and he
will, with input from the plaintiffs (conservation and fishing
organizations, State of Oregon, Nez Perce and Spokane Tribes)
and defendants (federal agencies and their allies), review the
plan and decide whether it complies with the law. A ruling could
occur as early as the end of the year. We will keep you posted
as this court process proceeds.

Enjoy reading the articles below, have a great weekend, and we
will follow up soon with additional news and ways that you can
help build further support for restoring healthy, abundant wild
salmon and steelhead in the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

As always, thank you for your support!

Joseph Bogaard
206-286-4455, x103

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: Not There on Salmon
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20sun2.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=not%20there%20on%20salmon&st=cse

CROSSCUT.COM: Obama Science Goes Shizophrenic on Salmon
Restoration
http://crosscut.com/2009/09/23/animals-wildlife/19247/

OREGON FLY FISHING BLOG: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
http://oregonflyfishingblog.com/2009/09/15/meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss/

FLY FISHING JOURNAL: Obama Endorses Salmon Extinction via No
Action Plan
http://www.theflyfishjournal.com/news/2009/09/25/obama-endorses-salmon-extinction-via-no-action-plan

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Obama Hooked into Salmon Plight.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/24/EDO719RE9P.DTL

--------------------------------------------------

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http://ga0.org/join-forward.html?domain=save_our_wild_salmon&r=GdNtxbpqoPiC

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Response to Kevin Hanley, Placer Sentinel, 9 21 09, "Save Lake Clementine"

2009-09-24T13:56:00.000-07:00

A dam is a made-man structure which is usually built for hydroelectric power, water diversion or flood control. The Age of Dam Building may be over and the Age of Dam Removal or Retrofitting may be upon us.

What if a dam has been in existence since 1938 and was built for none of these reasons and no longer serves its original function? What if the dam needlessly interrupts the natural flow of the river and harms aquatic life? Most people would say the dam should be removed and the canyon flooded behind the dam should once again be returned to its natural state. However, the Hetch Hetchy Dam has been providing pure water for the City of San Francisco since it was built and water companies in the Bay Area are very reluctant to remove the dam even though the same amount of pure water can be supplied by other methods so the movement to restore Hetch Hetchy is very strong and may succeed in removing the dam and restoring the Hetch Hetchy Valley, said by many to be a smaller and more beautiful version of the Yosemite Valley.
But we are not talking about Hetch Hetchy. Kevin Hanley (“Saving Lake Clementine”, 9 22 09) argues for the federal government putting money, $200k for a start, into our local Lake Clementine in this time of dam removal and little monies. Hanley argues against the Army Corp of Engineers closing Lake Clementine:

“How can this be? By Beltway standards, $200,000 is “chump change.” The popular Lake Clementine had 63,277 visitors in 2008. What is wrong with the federal government?”

Perhaps nothing is wrong with the federal government. Hanley’s argument is really his opinion. There are simply not enough federal monies to do everything in this age of tax revolt. Hanley himself advocates tax cuts and is now critical of the federal government for not having the money to spend the way he wants it to. And the purpose for which the North Fork Dam was built is now long ago unneeded. It was built with private funds to store sediment and then donated to the state to bear the cost of operation and maintenance.

Wikipedia states,
“Did You Know? – Lake Clementine is used exclusively for public recreation. It resulted from the North Fork Dam completed in 1938 and built by private funds in order to collect sedimentation from upriver hydraulic mining. It was made superfluous a few years later when such operations were discontinued by state edict.”

The North Fork Dam has been superfluous since the 1940’s because hydraulic mining has been “discontinued by state edict”. The sediment which the dam was originally built to collect is still behind and dam and has changed the aquatic ecosystem by covering spawning areas for fish, raising water temperature and impeding the natural flow of the American River reducing oxidation for aquatic life. Properly release this sediment would be an environmental boon to life in the river.

Those who have read Jordan Fisher Smith’s expose of the Auburn Recreation Area Nature Noir know that law enforcement costs in this area are very high and cannot be dismissed. Closing Lake Clementine may be the first step in returning this beautiful reach of the North Fork on the American River to its natural state. Hanley writes,

“ If the federal government did not provide or pay for around-the-clock security around the recreation area, damage and vandalism will likely occur to the dam and facilities, and illegal camping
could result in human-caused catastrophic fires to ignite in the American River Canyon. This would result in large new costs to the federal government and a much lower quality of life for recreation users in Auburn and Placer County.”

“Damage and vandalism will likely occur … and a much lower quality of life for recreation users in Auburn and Placer County.”

Mr. Hanley should try to get out more.

He states, “Our federally elected and appointed officials must become much better stewards of the American River Canyon.” How is maintaining an antiquated dam that serves no useful purpose being “better stewards of the American River Canyon”?

Mr. Hanley concluded with his rallying cry,

“Ensure safe public access to public lands. Get back to the basics!” which is really a plea for the federal government to pay the cost for his recreation.

How is artificially maintaining a dam that was superannuated and non-functional from its inception a way to “Get back to basics”?

There is a season for all things and maybe Lake Clementine is no longer in season.

Comment by Peter B Moyle,Professor of Fish Biology, University of California," Multiple Causes Of Central Valley Chinook Salmon Decline"

2009-09-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

Ever since Euro-Americans arrived in the Central Valley, Chinook salmon populations have been in decline. Historic populations probably averaged 1.5-2.0 million (or more) adult fish per year. The high populations resulted from four distinct runs of Chinook salmon (fall, late-fall, winter, and spring runs) taking advantage of the diverse and productive freshwater habitats created by the cold rivers flowing from the Sierra Nevada. When the juveniles moved seaward, they found abundant food and good growing conditions in the wide valley floodplains and complex San Francisco Estuary, including the Delta. The sleek salmon smolts then reached the ocean, where the southward flowing, cold, California Current and coastal upwelling together created one of the richest marine ecosystems in the world, full of the small shrimp and fish that salmon require to grow rapidly to large size. In the past, salmon populations no doubt varied as droughts reduced stream habitats and as the ocean varied in its productivity, but it is highly unlikely the numbers ever even approached the low numbers we are seeing now.

Unregulated fisheries, hydraulic mining, logging, levees, dams, and other factors caused precipitous population declines in the 19th century, to the point where the salmon canneries were forced to shut down (all were gone by 1919). Minimal regulation of fisheries and the end of hydraulic mining allowed some recovery to occur in the early 20th century but the numbers of harvest salmon steadily declined through the 1930s. There was a brief resurgence in the 1940s but then the effects of the large rim dams on major tributaries began to be severely felt. The dams cut off access to 70% or more of historic spawning areas and basically drove the spring and winter runs to near-extinction. In the late 20th century, thanks to hatcheries, special flow releases from dams, and other improvements, salmon numbers (mainly fall-run Chinook) averaged nearly 500,000 fish per year, with wide fluctuations from year to year, but only about 10-25% of historic abundance. In 2006, numbers of spawners dropped to about 200,000, despite closure of the fishery. In 2007, the number of spawners fell further to about 90,000 fish, among the lowest numbers experienced in the past 60 years, with expectations of even lower numbers in fall 2008 (probably <64,000 fish). The evidence suggests that these runs are largely supported by hatchery production, so numbers of fish from natural spawning are much lower.

So, what caused this apparently precipitous decline in salmon? Unfortunately, the causes are historic, multiple and interacting. The first thing to recognize is that Chinook salmon are beautifully adapted to living in a region where conditions in both fresh water and salt water can alternate between being highly favorable for growth and survival and being comparatively unfavorable. Usually, conditions in both environments are not overwhelmingly bad together, so when survival of juveniles in fresh water is low, those that make it to salt water do exceptionally well, and vice versa. This ability of the two environments to compensate for one another’s failings, combined with the ability of adult salmon to swim long distances to find suitable ocean habitat, historically meant salmon populations fluctuated around some high number. Unfortunately, when conditions are bad in both environments, populations crash, especially when the heavy hand of humans is involved.

The recent crash has been blamed largely on “ocean conditions.” Generally what this means is that the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water has slowed or ceased, so less food is available, causing the salmon to starve or move away. Upwelling is the result of strong steady alongshore winds which cause surface waters to move off shore, allowing cold, nutrient-rich, deep waters to rise to the surface. The winds rise and fall in response to movements of the Jet Stream and other factors, with both seasonal and longer-term variation. El Nino events can affect local productivity as well, as can other ‘anomalies’ in weather patterns. And Chinook salmon populations fluctuate accordingly.

The 2006 and 2007 year classes of returning salmon mostly entered the ocean in the spring of 2004 and 2005, respectively (most spawn at age 3). Although upwelling should have been steady in this period, conditions unexpectedly changed and ocean upwelling declined in the spring months, so there were fewer shrimp and small fish for salmon to feed on. According to an analysis by an interdisciplinary group of scientists, conditions were particularly bad for a few weeks in spring of 2005 in the ocean off Central California, resulting in abnormally warm water and low concentrations of zooplankton, which form the basis for the food webs which include salmon. All this could have caused wide scale starvation of the salmon. Note the emphasis on could. While the negative impact of ocean anomalies is likely, monitoring programs in ocean are too limited to make direct links between salmon and local ocean conditions.

“Ocean conditions” can also refer to other factors which can be directly affected by human actions, especially fisheries. For example, fisheries for rockfish and anchovies can directly or indirectly affect salmon food supplies (salmon eat small fish). Likewise, fisheries for sharks and large predators may have allowed Humboldt squid (which grow to 1-2m long) to become extremely abundant and move north into cool water, where they could conceivably prey on salmon. These kinds of effects, however, are largely unstudied.

Meanwhile, what has been going on in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers? On the plus side, dozens of stream and flow improvement projects have increased habitat for spawning and rearing salmon. Removal of small dams on Butte Creek and Clear Creek, for example, has increased upstream run sizes dramatically. Salmon hatcheries also continue to produce millions of fry and smolts to go to the ocean. On the contrary side:

* The giant pumps in the South Delta have diverted increasingly large amounts of water in the past decades, altering hydraulic and temperature patterns in the Delta as well as capturing fish directly.
* The Delta continues to be an unfavorable habitat for salmon, especially on the San Joaquin side where the inflowing river water is warm and polluted with salt and toxic materials. Most of the rest of the Delta lacks the edge habitat juvenile salmon need for refuge and foraging.
* Hatchery fry and smolts are released in large numbers but their survivorship is poor, compared to wild fish, although they contribute significantly to the fishery. Nevertheless, they may be competitors with better-adapted wild fish under conditions of low supply in the ocean. Most of the hatchery fish are planted below the Delta, to avoid the heavy mortality there.
* Numbers of salmon produced by tributaries to the San Joaquin River (Merced, Tuolumne, Stanislaus) continue to be exceptionally low, in the hundreds, and the promised restoration of the San Joaquin River appears to be stalled for lack of federal funds.

Thus reduced survival of wild fish in fresh water, especially in the Delta, combined with the naturally low survival rates of hatchery fish, most likely contribute to the plummeting numbers of adult spawners. This is especially likely to happen if young salmon also hit adverse conditions in the ocean, especially as they enter the Gulf of the Farrallons. The growing salmon can also hit other periods when food is scarce in the ocean, along with abundant predators and stressful temperatures, at any time in the ocean phase of their life cycle.

The overall message here is that indeed “ocean conditions” have had a lot to do with the recent crash of salmon populations in the Central Valley. However, they are superimposed on a population that has been declining in the long run (with some apparent stabilization in recent decades). The salmon still face severe problems before they reach the ocean, especially in the Delta. In the short run, there are only a few ‘levers’ we can pull to improve things for Central Valley salmon which include shutting down the commercial and recreational fisheries, reducing the impact of the big pumps in the South Delta, and perhaps changing the operation of dams (increasing outflows at critical times), regulating hatchery out put, and reducing other ocean fisheries. In the longer run (10-20 years) we need to be engaged in improving the Delta and San Francisco Estuary as a habitat for salmon, reducing inputs to the estuary of toxic materials, continuing with improvements of upstream habitats, managing floodplain areas such as the Yolo Bypass for salmon, restoring the San Joaquin River, and generally addressing the multiplicity of factors that affect salmon populations. There is also a huge need to improve monitoring of salmon in the ocean as well as the coastal ocean ecosystem off California. Right now, our understanding of how ocean conditions affect salmon is largely educated guesswork with guesses made long (sometimes years) after an event affecting the fish has happened. An investment in better knowledge should have large pay-offs for better salmon management.

Thus blaming “ocean conditions” for salmon declines is a lot like blaming the iceberg for sinking the Titanic, while ignoring the many human errors that put the ship on course for the fatal collision. Managers have optimistically thought that salmon populations were unsinkable, needing only occasional course corrections such as hatcheries or removal of small dams, to continue to go forward. The listings as endangered species of the winter and spring runs of Central Valley Chinook were warnings of approaching disaster on an even larger scale. “Ocean conditions” may be the potential icebergs for salmon populations but the ship is being steered by us humans. Salmon populations can be managed avoid an irreversible crash, but continuing on our present course could result in loss of a valuable and iconic fishery.

On a final more optimistic note, there is a reasonable chance that Chinook salmon populations will once again return to higher levels, as they have in the past, although not quickly. However, the lower the population goes and the more the environment changes in unfavorable ways, the more difficult recovery becomes.

Recovery is officially defined by the goals set by the Anadromous Fish Restoration Program under the Central Valley Project Improvement Act which has pledged to use "all reasonable efforts to at least double natural production of anadromous fish in California's Central Valley streams on a long-term, sustainable basis". The final doubling goal is 990,000 fish for all four runs combined. We have a long way to go and some major course modifications to make if we are to reach anything close to that goal.

Comment by Peter B Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, University of California Davis (from Google News)

Submitted to GBF's message board by Mike Laing

__________________

The Salmon's Prayer

2009-09-16T20:55:00.000-07:00

If I can no longer survive and I live on in your memory so doing is the best kind of immortality.
__ The Prayer of the Last Salmon

Save the Salmon

2009-09-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

When a creature as resourceful as the salmon can no longer survive on this earth, neither can man.

"Salmon at the Heart of Nature", Placer Nature Center’s 4th Friday Lecture - September 25, 2009

2009-09-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

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Placer Nature Center’s 4th Friday Lecture - September 25, 2009

Salmon at the Heart of Nature

Get tickets Now! Season Passes available!

Sweeping changes are coming for endangered populations of winter and spring run Salmon. Dams built decades ago without fish ladders and creating still waters that block access to hundreds of miles of historic spawning grounds must be adapted to ensure species survival under a ruling by the National Marine Fisheries Service. At the State level – Governor Schwarzenegger signed legislation banning dredge mining in California rivers. Have these rulings come too late? Is the situation for Salmon so dire that we’ve passed the tipping point?

We’ll find out on Friday, September 25th at Placer Nature Center’s 4th Friday Lecture Series. The 5th season of the popular Lecture series makes a splashing opening with Dr. Tim Horner, Internationally recognized expert on the salmon species, fish ecology and habitat issues. While Dr. Horner will discuss broader issues of fish populations globally, he will concentrate his comments on our local fisheries and the American River.

“Best news of all.” According to Leslie Warren, Executive Director of Placer Nature Center, “is that two of Auburn’s finest restaurants are creating special meals for 4th Friday Lecture goers and 20% of the meal proceeds will be donated to Placer Nature Center to support environmental learning projects.” “Dine at 5:00 PM at Tsuda’s or Latitudes – enjoying a special themed menu and delight in science learning at 7:00 P.M.! What a great night out! It is an easy walk between the restaurants and our venue at 1212 High Street too,” Warren said.

“It is kind of ironic that our restaurants cannot serve local wild salmon because our species are so depleted. We’ll see what creative menu is offered even as we bemoan the disappearance of our favorite entre!”

“Salmon have long been considered a key indicator species. It is almost as if the salmon swims at the heart of the web of life on earth. Orca whales’ survival, maintenance of nutrient rich soils in the northwest, sustaining Native American and Inuit culture – the salmon is critical to these and so much more,” Warren explained. “We are so very pleased to kick off our Lecture series with such an esteemed scientist and educator!”

The American river has changed significantly in the past 150 years, and salmon and steelhead populations have decreased and whole seasonal runs have disappeared. This decrease could be related to ocean conditions, global warming, commercial or recreational fishing, delta water demands, mining, sediment input, water diversions, water quality, dams and water releases, water temperature, hatchery practices or habitat reduction. All of these issues will be reviewed to help put the problem in context for the American River, and identify the stressors that are responsible for the population decline.

Tickets are available securely on line at www.placernaturecenter.org, by calling 530-878-6053 or at the following businesses Tsuda’s Café, Latitudes Restaurant and Newcastle Produce. Tickets are $10 general, $8 for members and $5 for full time students. Season tickets are only $55 for the general public and $45 for members – making one Lecture in the 6 Lecture Series FREE!

About the Speaker:

Dr. Tim Horner graduated from The Ohio State University in 1992, and joined the Geology Department at CSU Sacramento in Fall 1993. He specializes in groundwater/surface water interaction, and teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in sedimentology, field geology and hydrogeology.

He received the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008. Much of Tim's time is devoted to habitat assessment and in-stream monitoring work on local rivers, with special emphasis on salmon and steelhead spawning gravels.

Tim and his students are frequent partners on local stream restoration projects, and have collected information about the health and habitat suitability of the American River system. CSUS faculty and students have helped to characterize the physical conditions that are ideal for salmon and steelhead spawning. This set of physical conditions can then be used as a target to guide restoration projects. Several restoration projects have addressed the problem by creating more habitat or restoring degraded parts of the river.

Leslie Warren
Executive Director, Placer Nature Center
Leslie@placernaturecenter.org
Placer Nature Center
530-878-6053
www.placernaturecenter.org

SARSAS Sac-Joaquin Delta Fish Plan Prepared by Dr. Stacy Li

2009-09-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

SARSAS Sac-Joaquin Delta Fish Plan
Prepared by Dr. Stacy Li
Aquatic Systems Research
National Marine Fisheries Service - retired

I provide the following list of components that should be included in any Delta water solution:

1) Outflow to San Francisco Bay has been reduced by 50% of historical levels. Not only should Delta outflow not be reduced any further, it should be increased. This is a key design control consideration.

2) The design functions of the two rivers should be switched. The original fundamental design of the CVP (Central Valley Project) was to use San Joaquin River as water supply and the Sacramento River for water quality. The Sacramento River should be used as water supply because it is more than three times more abundant than the San Joaquin River. The Sacramento River should also provide flows to resist salt intrusion into the Delta, add to Delta outflow and be used to dilute pesticide and fertilizer residues in the agriculture return water in the San Joaquin River. I can’t think of another way to get water from the Sacramento River to the California Aqueduct other than a Peripheral Canal.

3) San Joaquin River should be switched from water supply to being used primarily to resist salt intrusion into the Delta. None of this water should be used as water export. If this action is adopted, there will be no flow reversals in either the Sacramento River or the San Joaquin River. Sacramento River salmonids would be unaffected because the river’s momentum and inertia would prevent flow reversals by pumping. San Joaquin salmon and steelhead smolt would finally be able to find their way to the ocean and returning adults would finally be able to find their natal streams. The San Joaquin Delta would become more of a backwater habitat as it was historically. That would benefit Delta smelt and longfin smelt. Water residence time in the Delta would also be longer, allowing plankton communities to develop that would benefit threadfin shad and young-of-the-year striped bass populations. Finally, importation of 1 million tons of salt into the San Joaquin Valley would stop by not exporting San Joaquin River water.

4) The Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River do not mix downstream of Sherman Island because of differences in many physical and water quality parameters. Therefore, through Delta water conveyance is impossible. The SWP (State Water Project) assumes through Delta conveyance. Refurbishing the present water export facilities would be a big waste of money because not only are they extremely susceptible to levee failure, but water supply capacity of the San Joaquin River is near exhaustion.

5) Present fish protection and fish salvage facilities are woefully inadequate. The present fish louvers do not work. Fish screens are needed because they are state of the art.

6) More dams are not needed at this time. Besides flows from the proposed Temperance Flat Dam would not flow north to the Delta to restore Delta health, but be exported at Friant Dam and sent south to Kern County via the Friant-Kern Canal.

7) Remember that California is a major world economy, estimates ranging from 4th to 9th largest in the world. This important world economy is dependent upon a secure water supply. Without it there will be severe economic disruptions. This is would be a consequence if political inertia continues.

8) Remember that two-thirds of the California population depends upon CVP/SWP water. If the water system fails, it will cause a negative economic ripple throughout the world. So even if you live in a California community not dependent upon CVP/SWP water, you will be adversely affected. The world will be affected.

9) Remember that the California population is still growing at a rate of about 1 million new residents a year. The State water system must account for this increase.

10) Water Rights in California need to be revised. State Water Resources Control Board has identified about 300 million acre-feet per annum of authorized consumptive water rights of different types (pre-1914, appropriative, riparian, federal reserve and pueblo). California receives only about 73 million acre-feet of runoff each year.

11) The new water system must not only function to provide water supply, improve habitat and ecological conditions, control salt intrusion, and account for climate change, it must also be compatible and integrated within the state’s flood control system.

12) Let us justify repair of Delta levees based upon public safety concerns rather than defending the state's water supply. There are 1100 miles of Delta Levee. There are 5280 feet in a mile. Current levee construction is running around $8,000/foot. Operations and maintenance budgets for levees should be 3% of the initial construction cost each year. Levees are not assets. They are liabilities.

13) Those who use the water system must pay for its use. They are the ones that should provide the revenue stream for construction, and operations and maintenance costs. No more freeloaders!

A warning: Now is the time for action. We can’t wait for the system to fail or to build something that doesn’t work. The time needed to recover from those mistakes will be too long to avoid worldwide depression caused by lack of water availability in California. Now is the time for decision based upon physics, biology, hydrology, ecology and plans that benefit the entire state not just parts of it.

A final aside: Since the vast majority of water used as water supply originates from the San Joaquin River, Southern California has not stolen water from Northern California. If they have been stealing water, they have been stealing it from themselves. The vast majority of Sacramento River water ends up in the Pacific Ocean.

Dinner at Pescatore Winery, Nov 6 & 7, 2009 in Newcastle, Ca off Ridge Road

2009-09-13T20:10:00.001-07:00

Wild Salmon or Tri-Tip Dinner

A benefit dinner for SARSAS hosted by Pescatore Winery

Two Evenings
Friday November 6, 2009 or Saturday November 7, 2009
6:00pm
at 7055 Ridge Rd. Newcastle 95658

www.pescatorewines.com
$30. per person
Artists displays, raffle & wine sales all benefiting

Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead
For Tickets and Information About This Event Call 530-878-1566.

SARSAS thanks for their sponsorship and donations,
Pescatore Estate Vineyard and Winery, Lincoln Rotary,
LeBellig French Restaurant in Auburn,
ceramic fish artist Christine Kotcher.
Thank you for Salmon and Tri-Tip donations from
Auburn Save-Mart and Auburn Grocery Outlet

Editorial: It's not only fish vs. people

2009-09-13T20:01:00.000-07:00

This story is taken from Sacbee / Opinion

Published Monday, Jun. 29, 2009

The National Marine Fisheries Service has issued a wake-up call on the dangers facing the Central Valley's salmon and, ultimately, the water system they depend on. It should be mulled and acted upon.
The wake-up call came in the form of a "biological opinion" that the fisheries service filed earlier this month. Prompted by a federal court ruling on a lawsuit by environmentalists and fishermen, it found that the ways the state and federal water projects operate threaten the survival of endangered chinook salmon and steelhead, and it required that they change their policies.
The changes the agency envisions include finding ways to get the fish around the dams and other barriers that currently stop them as they migrate upstream to spawn. With immense structures like Shasta Dam spanning the Sacramento River, and Folsom Dam the American, this will not be a simple task. It will require the construction of fish ladders, or elevators, or perhaps truck-and-haul operations. Experts aren't sure if any are feasible. The estimated price tag starts at $1 billion.
The price of not acting, however, will likely be steeper.
To begin with, the winter- and spring-run chinook salmon of the Sacramento River and the steelhead of the American are almost certainly doomed if their journeys to spawning habitat continue to be blocked.
That probably won't take salmon off diners' plates, although there are persistent questions about the taste, healthfulness and environmental impact of what's produced on fish farms.
But if these natural populations vanish, they will likely take with them the state's commercial salmon industry, which has already been shut for two years in the wake of the fish population's crash. The Fish and Game Department estimates that in 2008, the shutdown cost $255 million in revenue and more than 2,200 jobs.
Beyond that, the federal fisheries service's opinion is a wake-up call on the need for a major reassessment of state water policy. Pretty much everyone involved in the current system recognizes that it's broken, unable to store excess supply in wet years or deliver needed supply in dry ones.
The new federal rules, which will likely face a court challenge, don't require an immediate solution. The current blueprint requires studies starting later this year, trials of fish-moving procedures by 2012 and a decision on an ultimate answer by 2020.
Water officials should use that time not only to find the best way to get the fish around the dams but to explore cheaper ways to save them. One possibility being pushed by a Placer County group called Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead seeks the restoration of 600 small creeks between Modesto and Redding. The group says these creeks were once the sites of significant fish runs and offer a much less expensive way to provide spawning habitat than laboriously transporting fish around dams.
Whatever solution is ultimately embraced, the region will likely never return to the days when so many salmon choked the Sacramento River that Indians and settlers could catch dinner with their hands. But a revived commercial fishing industry, and an answer to one relatively small piece of the state's water policy puzzle, is a pretty good consolation prize. We should try to seize it.
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Restoring fisheries above Folsom, Shasta dams faces high hurdles

2009-09-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

This story is taken from Sacbee / Our Region / Environment

mweiser@sacbee.com
Published Monday, Jun. 22, 2009

The American River once hosted thousands of steelhead migrating upstream from the ocean in three separate runs. Today it's down to just two runs of a few hundred fish.
The Sacramento was the only river in western North America with four salmon runs. They numbered in the millions – so numerous that American Indians and settlers could catch a salmon dinner with their bare hands. Now one run is gone, and two are endangered. The fourth could join them soon.
Restoring a fragment of that spectacle to the Central Valley is the goal of rules proposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The service wants, among other things, restoration of winter- and spring-run salmon above Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River, and steelhead above Folsom Dam on the American River.
Combined, the fish transit order is considered the biggest of its kind in U.S. history.
Making it happen presents huge financial and engineering challenges. Costs could exceed $1 billion at a minimum – more than 10 times the original construction cost of both dams.
"It's pretty substantial, the amount of work that's required," said Mike Chotkowski, regional environmental officer at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dams. "We still haven't even determined whether it's feasible."
The fisheries service says that without restoring access upstream, it's likely the three fish species will go extinct. Climate change means it will be harder to maintain cold-water habitat below the dams, so they must have access to better habitat.
"The fish are at that jeopardy point where it's important for us to take immediate steps," said Howard Brown, Sacramento River basin chief for the fisheries service.
The rules proposed this month, called a biological opinion, were developed in response to a lawsuit brought by environmental groups. Federal Judge Oliver Wanger agreed with their claim that prior rules, which had no fish passage requirement, did not prevent extinction.
The ruling raised anxiety among California water managers. Thirty agencies sued last week, alleging that the fisheries service didn't follow procedure in adopting the rules.
Other experts argue there are cheaper ways to rescue the salmon populations.
Among them is the volunteer group Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead. It has worked quietly over the past year to remove small obstructions on Auburn Ravine, a little-known tributary of the Sacramento River.
The natural ravine flows with spring water and sewage treatment outflows starting in Auburn.
Accounts as recent as the 1960s show that the ravine once hosted robust fish runs, said John Rabe, a member of the group's board.
Four adult salmon were observed in the ravine last winter. The group expects hundreds next winter and plans a salmon festival in Lincoln to welcome them back.
Rabe said 600 small creeks between Modesto and Redding also could be restored – at far less cost than fixing the big dams.
"Don't waste time and money on the dams. Spend it on the creeks," he said. "That would open literally thousands of miles of spawning, which would make a huge, huge difference."
The federal rules don't specify how salmon and steelhead should be moved around the dams. Instead they require studies, starting in December, to find the best solution that can be in place by 2020.
By March 2012, water agencies must begin moving fish around the dams on a trial basis. This will probably be done by loading fish into trucks.
Experts say moving fish around Folsom and Shasta dams is a job as big as the dams themselves. Shasta, completed in 1945, stands 602 feet high. Folsom was finished in 1956 and soars to 340 feet tall.
They were built without any means to pass fish upstream, and each has a smaller dam downstream to regulate flows: Nimbus on the American, Keswick on the Sacramento.
Distance and elevation required to move fish upstream may eliminate the option of a traditional fish ladder at both dams, said Alex Haro, a research ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey fish laboratory in Turners Falls, Mass.
Fish might not be able to cover the distances up and around the dams in a single day. As night falls, if fish are partway up a ladder, their instinct is to stop and rest, so they give up and turn around.
An alternative is a fish lift – essentially an elevator to raise fish straight up the face of the dam in a container. But like a fish ladder, it has limitations. One is that the fish then are released in a stagnant reservoir, without flows to guide them to spawning habitat.
Because of this, trucking and hauling fish could become the permanent solution.
In short, salmon and steelhead blocked from their historic habitat for decades instead could be driven home like commuters on a bus.
Fishery managers typically don't like truck-and-haul operations because fish survival in the past has been poor: Roughly half of the fish sometimes die from stress, oxygen loss or high temperatures.
But Kozmo Bates, a fish passage expert in Olympia, Wash., said survival is typically better than 90 percent in modern trap-and-haul operations.
"There's a certain protocol that makes it safe for the fish," he said. "I can't say it's 100 percent, but in new, contemporary facilities I've rarely heard of any problems with the fish, and when there are problems they get fixed quickly."
Sounds easy, but it is wrong to assume trucking fish is a cheap fix, experts said.
One reason: The collection facility at the base of the dam is essentially the same whether it serves a fish ladder or a trucking operation.
The fish must be directed from the river below the dam into a confined space. It's against their nature to do that, so they must be tricked with precise flows and temperatures, and a perfectly designed containment space.
This comes with a cost to water supplies. Dam operators must give up 3 percent to 5 percent of the water stored in the reservoir to create flows for fish passage through the containment structure, Haro said.
Also, juvenile fish have to be moved back below the dam after they've spawned. This requires a different collection system above the dam, one that ensures young salmon or steelhead don't get lost in the massive reservoir or eaten by predators such as bass.
One example of a modern downstream passage structure was built at Baker Lake in Washington state in 2008. It consists of nets spanning the reservoir near the dam, which direct fish into channels, and then mobile tanks mounted on floating barges.
Tanks are hoisted onto trucks, which deliver fish to ponds below the dam, where they acclimate to downstream conditions for a day or two before being released.
Bates estimates both upstream and downstream passage for truck-and-haul systems could cost $500 million each for Shasta and Folsom.
That's conservative, because each lake may need multiple downstream collection facilities, since each has multiple tributaries feeding the lake that may hold spawning fish.
"You have high dams, you've got predators in the reservoirs, you've got reservoirs that fluctuate greatly, and you have big rivers, too," Bates said. "You have four things there, and each one quadruples whatever price you start with."
The new rules, however, do provide something of an escape clause.
If a panel of water agencies and fish experts decides fish passage around the dams isn't feasible, salmon and steelhead must be restored elsewhere. That would turn the focus back to the Central Valley's many neglected creeks.
That's what John Rabe and the Auburn Ravine group are working on – a solution he said is "more realistic and a lot less expensive."
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________________________________________
Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264.

The Salmon Crisis is a Crisis Only If People Do Nothing

2009-09-13T19:52:00.000-07:00

Essay on Salmon for the Sacbee, April 28, 2008

Re: A Fisherman’s View of the salmon crisis by Dave Bitts, April 28, 2008

The pressure on all waterways in the Sacramento River drainage has been unrelenting and unabated. Born in Ophir and growing up on the Auburn Ravine, I have seen the pressure on this one stream continue for over sixty years. I want to use this one Ravine to speak to the pressure that all our waterways are under and try to understand why the salmon are currently in such peril.

Mr. Bitts says rightly that “we have abused our rivers to the point that the fish are on the verge of vanishing”. The Auburn Ravine was polluted first by gold miners during the Gold Rush and for years by the affluent of the city of Auburn, improperly treated, being dumped directly into the Ravine. Finally, the State of California fined the city and forced it to clean up it affluent. Frequently, the stench was so strong for us people living on the banks of the Ravine that at times we were forced to leave our homes. Conditions improved but pollution spills continue to occur.

In order to meet water needs of commercial and agricultural consumers, fifty years ago Federal Energy Regimenting Commission (FERC)’s primary concern was providing power; the concerns of aquatic life in the streams were of secondary importance. Twelve man-made barriers were constructed on the Auburn Ravine and are still in use today. Salmon cannot pass these barriers to reach spawning grounds. The Auburn Ravine’s salmon and steelhead runs were stopped completely, preventing the fishes from spawning. The salmon had to look for other waterways, in which to reproduce.

Then the federal government started to build the Auburn Dam on the American River near Auburn. A tunnel was drilled from the dam sight through the mountain to the Auburn Ravine in Ophir, transporting water to the Auburn Ravine. The Ravine’s riverbed was bulldozed to enhance water flow, destroying countless aquatic life forms and their habitat such as pond turtles, pacific lamprey eels, muskrats, sculpin and frogs to name only a fraction. The temperature of American River water was not the same as the water in the Auburn Ravine stressing its aquatic life forms. The focus was on providing water and creating power not on preserving native flora and fauna. The Auburn Dam was stopped by the damage to the Auburn Ravine remains.

No one seems to know what the exact cause of the salmon crisis so many causes are listed. The main cause can all too neatly be attributed to ocean conditions because they cannot be measured or controlled easily, and no one or no one condition can be held accountable for the impending extinction so nothing logically can be done about it because no one agrees on the cause. Not knowing the cause is much too neat and too easy an attribution. Salmon have evolved over eons to survive the vagaries of ocean conditions and have successfully done so. What salmon have not evolved to survive is the damming of their rivers, the diversion of the river water and the seasonal shutoffs of water flow by irrigation districts to maintain canals. When streams are blocked and water is taken away from the creek during the fall, when agricultural usage is lowest, that is specifically the time when Fall Run Chinook Salmon are coming up the streams to spawn, then the mystery of the impending extinction of the salmon is obvious. If salmon do not have water to spawn in, the salmon cycle is doomed. Lacking adequate water when they need it is a death sentence for salmon.

But the good news is the salmon are much diminished in number but are not yet extinct. Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead (SARSAS) is just one citizen led, volunteer, grassroots organization, attempting to return salmon and steelhead to one creek, the Auburn Ravine, by making all twelve man-made barriers passable to fishes. California Department of Fish and Game, Placer Legacy, members of the Placer County Board of Supervisors and Auburn City Council, Nevada Irrigation District and others are working with SARSAS, helping to make the Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead to the Auburn Ravine.

For the next four years FERC is listening to public input before it re-licenses the water companies for the next fifty years. The public has the opportunity to speak up for salmon, but connecting with FERC will not be easy. Now is the time to speak up for salmon because water policy will be formulated by 2012 for the next fifty years.

As long as salmon still swim in our rivers and stream, people have time to save the salmon. People, working with government, not government alone, will save the salmon if they are to be saved. But, time is running out quickly. 796 4-29-08

Another View: Oregon, California salmon

April 1, 2008
The (Eugene) Register-Guard, March 26, 2008
Times are hard for industries all across America, but they may be toughest for salmon fishermen on the Oregon and California coasts.

For three consecutive years, dismal salmon returns on the Klamath River have resulted in disastrous seasons for West Coast fishermen and the communities that rely on the business they create for small ports.

The coming year could be the worst of all — the first complete shutdown of both the commercial and sport seasons ever on the West Coast.

A closure order could come as early as this weekend, when the Pacific Fishery Management Council meets in Sacramento. The council is weighing three options, ranging from a bare-bones season to a total ban. Fishermen are expecting the worst and for good reason.

While the Klamath River runs have improved, returns on the Sacramento River have collapsed. Only 90,000 Chinook returned to spawn last year, a 90 percent decline from just five years ago.

Projections for 2008 are abysmal — so low that any fishing, even for scientific research, will require an emergency order from U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service.

That’s bad news on any river, but the Sacramento has by far the most important salmon run on the West Coast. By some estimates, the Sacramento supports 90 percent of the ocean fishery off the California coast and 50 percent off the Oregon and Washington coasts.

If the council announces a ban or even a repeat of the severe cutbacks ordered in 2006 the federal government must begin immediately the process of issuing the disaster declaration needed before Congress can approve emergency assistance for the fishing industry.

The governors of California, Oregon and Washington have asked Gutierrez to declare a fishery disaster, as have Sen. Ron Wyden and other members of Oregon’s congressional delegation.

The message should be clear to Gutierrez that there must be no repeat of the 2006 debacle in which the Bush administration took months to declare the salmon season a failure. As a result of that needless delay, some fishing families and businesses are just now getting some of the $60 million in aid that finally was authorized in the summer of 2007.

Gutierrez should pay a visit to ports in Oregon to get a firsthand feel for the extent of the problem. Without assistance, fishermen who barely have managed to hang on by turning to other species, such as tuna and crab, won’t be able to make it through another year.

With no income from salmon, they’ll be unable to cover boat mortgage payments and moorage fees. Businesses that rely on income from fishermen may fail, as will an Oregon Coast where the economy is built on a foundation of salmon.

It’s frustratingly unclear why the traditionally robust run of Sacramento chinook has fallen to such perilously low levels. The most widely held theory is that a shift in ocean conditions has wiped out the salmon’s food supply.

But fish biologists rightly point out that a long chain of interlinked factors are also to blame, including overfishing, pollution, excessive water diversions to farms and cities, an overreliance on hatchery-produced fish, and, perhaps most importantly, the debilitating impact of dams. It’s revealing that the fishery management council plans to review 46 possible causes of the collapse of the Sacramento runs.

The solution to restoring runs on the Sacramento won’t be any less challenging than it is on the Klamath. It will require the combined effort of the fishing industry, farmers, Indian tribes, water-control agencies, utilities and environmentalists to rescue the Sacramento’s dwindling salmon runs.

But the first step must be to help the people who catch salmon for a living and the coastal communities where they live and work.
-- The Associated Press
Delaying Critical Habitat
The Bush Administration often asserts that critical habitat designations are being rushed, and that it quite
reasonably wants to delay them until after recovery plans are complete. Yet only 17% (=33) of the 195 critical
habitats it has been forced to designate occurred prior to a recovery plan. And in 25 of those 33 cases, it was
the Bush administration that was at fault for violating federal guidelines to issue recovery plans within three
years of listing. The Bush Administration is playing a cynical and deadly game by asking to delay critical
habitat until after recovery plans are complete, then refusing to complete the recovery plans.

Wild Salmon or Tri-Tip Dinner SARSAS Dinner at Pescatore Winery, in Newcastle, Ca off Ridge Road

2009-09-13T19:49:00.000-07:00

Wild Salmon or Tri-Tip Dinner

A benefit dinner for SARSAS hosted by Pescatore Winery
Two Evenings on Friday November 6, 2009 or Saturday November 7, 2009
6:00pm
at 7055 Ridge Rd. Newcastle 95658
www.pescatorewines.com
$30. per person

Artists displays, raffle & wine sales all benefiting Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead

For Tickets and Information About This Event Call Scott at 530-878-1566

SARSAS thanks for their sponsorship and donations,
Pescatore Estate Vineyard and Winery, Lincoln Rotary,
LeBellig French Restaurant in Auburn,
ceramic fish artist Christine Kotcher.
Thank you for Salmon and Tri-Tip donations from
Auburn Save-Mart and Auburn Grocery Outlet

STRATEGIC PLAN with PROJECTS, RESPONSIBILITIES/TIMELINES/FUNDING

2009-09-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

OBJECTIVE 1 a: GOALS 1 and 8
Project: Removal of flashboard dams on or before October 15th of each year
Responsibility: Owners of flashboard dams. NOAA and F&G- inspect for
removal and or notice to remove by officer.
Timeline: Annually on or before October 15th
Funding: Cost neutral

OBJECTIVE 1 b: GOALS 1-9
Project: SARSAS board has identified and established working relationships
with major stakeholders.
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: Ongoing
Funding: Cost neutral

OBJECTIVE 1 c: Goals 1-2-4-7-8-9
Project: Work with NID and Placer Legacy in order to develop plans and
funds necessary to retrofit Lincoln gauging station and Hemphill Dam.
Responsibility: Nevada Irrigation District. District will do both retrofits as state funds are released. Originally scheduled for summer 2009 but due to state funding issues, bond monies were not released.
Timeline: Summer 2010
Funding: State bond funds

OBJECTIVE 1 d: Goals 1-2-4-7-8-9
Project: Retrofit Gold Hill Dam with fish ladder ands screens
Responsibility: Nevada Irrigation District
Timeline: Uncertain 2010-2014
Funding: None to date. NID

OBJECTIVE 1 e: Goals 1-4-5-6-8-9
Project: Working with the City of Lincoln, local property owners and
appropriate water agencies, reduce the number of beaver dams on the Auburn Ravine. Remove and relocate beavers as necessary. Work with
citizens groups in order to educate the general public regarding beaver issues and potential solutions.
Responsibility: SARSAS, City of Linclon, water agencies
Funding: Grants, city funds, water agencies, SARSAS fundraising

OBJECTIVE 2: Goals 2-8-9

Projects: 1. Install appropriate screens on all irrigation ditches within the Ravine.
2. Notify all water users who have irrigation ditches of the issues related to
smolt and trout when ditches are not screened.
3. Develop grants that in part will provide funds for screening projects.
4. Provide water users with information that links unscreened ditches to the
Loss of smolt and trout in the Auburn Ravine.
5. Seek funding partners
6. Seek screening enforcement when necessary.
Responsibility: Water agencies, farmers, SARSAS, enforcement agencies.
Timeline: 2010-2012
Funding Sources: Grants, water agencies, water users
Cost: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 3: Goals 1-3-4-5-6-8-9-

Project: Raise $30,000.00 to be used for a feasibility study for fish passage from the
Auburn cataract to the headwaters of the Auburn Ravine.
Responsibility: SARSAS
Timeline: 2009 to September 2011
Funding: SARSAS fundraisers and donations

OBJECTIVE 4: Goals 1-9

Project: Establish a nine member working board and identify coalitions and partners.
Responsibility: SARSAS president and board members
Timeline: June 2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 5: Goals 4-5-6-8-9

Project: Identify the ten highest priority areas in need of streambed and bank restoration
and establish projects, timelines, volunteers and funds necessary to accomplish
restoration projects.
Responsibility: SARSAS, landowners, Placer Legacy, NOAA, Fish & Game
Timeline: August 2011
Funding: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 6 Goals 4-6-9

Projects: 1. Develop power point presentations
2. Develop a video for presentations
3. Develop presentations materials e.g. faq’s

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: June 2009 through September 2010 and beyond as necessary
Funding: $3000.00 to $4,000.00 SARSAS fundraisers and donations

OBJECTIVE 7: Goals 7-8-9

Project: 1. Work with appropriate agencies to determine the source of water and when it
is needed in order to assure sufficient water to support salmon, steelhead and
trout in the Auburn Ravine.
2. Establish meetings with PG&E, PCWA, NID and representatives of the state water board to accomplish the objective.

Responsibility: SARSAS and appropriate agencies
Timeline: August 2009 – April 2010
Funding: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 8: Goals 1-9

As the goals of SARSAS are met, there will be a corresponding increase in the California Pacific Ocean salmonid population.

Project: Meet with fishing industry representatives to demonstrate the SARSAS plan for
restoration as well as its application in other streams feeding the Sacramento
and San Joaquin Rivers in order to gain industry support and Pacific Ocean
salmonid restoration.

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None
Timeline: February 2010

OBJECTIVE 9: Goal 9

Projects: 1. Write grants
2. Establish SARSAS fundraisers
3. Locate donors
4. Seek business sponsors

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None
Timeline: 2008…ongoing

OBJECTIVE 10: Goal 6

Projects: 1. Develop Portfolio
2. Develop brochure 8X11 tri-fold
3. Update power point presentation
4. Develop on line newsletter
5. Post on Facebook, twitter and other internet sites
6. Continue public presentations
7. Develop media information for radio, television and newspapers
8. Develop a video presentation

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: August 2009 through March 2010
Funding: $6,000.00

OBJECTIVE 11: Goals 1-2-4-6-7

Projects: Identify Key agencies 8/08- 10/09
Establish focus meetings 9/09-4/2010

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 12: Goals 6-7-8-9

Projects: 1. Purchase hand held monitoring devices
2. Train volunteers for monitoring
3. Monitor weekly/monthly beginning October 2009
4. Select three locations for monitoring
5. Develop data base for collected information

Responsibility: SARSAS Board and monitoring volunteers
Timeline: 10/2009- 10/2012
Funding: Approximately $1,600.00 for equipment

OBJECTIVE 13: Goal 4

Project: SARSAS president shall meet with each Board member to determine
individual strengths and interests and make board assignments as necessary

Responsibility: SARSAS president
Timeline: 10/2009—11/2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 14: Goals 4-6-8-9

Projects: 1. Establish meetings with at least one key member of the senate and assembly
2. Meet with key leader and accomplish the following:
a. Present SARSAS plan
b. Solicit support for 503 c. legislation {simplify }
c. Gain support for SARSAS plan expansion across the north state
d. Expand support to other legislators
e. Get legislative resolutions from both houses
f. Explore legislation for salmonid restoration

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timelines: September 2009- May 2010
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 15: Goals 1-9

Project: Complete a SWOT and Strategic Plan

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: August 2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 16: Goals 4-6-8-9

Project: Develop a Return of the Salmon Festival in the City of Lincoln

Responsibility: SARSAS Board, City of Lincoln, Chamber of Commerce, Native
American groups, and other interested parties or individuals identified by SARSAS.
Timeline: October 2010
Cost: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 17: Goals 1-9

Project: Reach out to the scientific community to establish factual scientific facts and
information to help guide the SARSAS Board in achieving its mission, goals
and objectives.

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: Ongoing
Funding: Not required

Six Phases of SARSAS Returning Anadromous Fishes to Auburn Ravine

2009-09-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

I. Phase I (Verona to Hwy 193) – Task is to identify barriers, identify and contact owners of barriers for compliance (Don Tanner, NOAA and Mark Jeter, DFG). Educate barrier owners regarding downstream screening of side irrigation ditches (Seek funding for screening). Work with counties, landowners and cities regarding beaver abatement (see Mary Tappel). Work with Placer County Ag Commissioner for beaver removal and get contacts for Sutter and Sacramento counties; ask for training- ask quietly, “Can volunteers be trained in beaver abatement techniques”. If training is possible, we can train volunteers in all three counties.

II. Phase II ( Highway 193 to Gold Hill Diversion Dam) – Identify and mitigate Hemphill DD, beaver dams and other obstructions. Plan for screening at Hemphill DD. Begin development of plans for stream restoration from Verona to Moore Rd.

III. Phase III (Gold Hill DD to Ophir Tunnel Outflow) – Identify and mitigate barriers, plan for fish ladders and screening at GHDD –work with Ron Nelson (NID) and Placer Legacy. Develop a plan for fish passage on the Ophir Cataract – Begin building landowner coalition. SARSAS develops calendar timeline and steps necessary to improve fish passage – Develop formalized SARSAS working partnerships with coalition members mutually developing roles and responsibilities for improving fish passage. Set reporting dates for each group to present to a SARSAS DOMES meeting. Continue development of stream restoration from Verona to Moore Road. Develop workshop for Auburn Ravine landowner to help them become better informed stewards of their land.

Phase IV (Ophir Tunnel Outflow to Wise Powerhouse ) Begin to develop planning with PG&E/PCWA/NID seeking additional water supply. Work with agencies to help improve Auburn Waste Water Treatment Plant outflow ( see Eco-Logic re advice) – Establish SARSAS water quality testing immediately below AWWTP and water temperature including four/five sites from GHDD to town of Verona – contact Ron Otto and Friends of the Auburn Ravine and develop a working relationship to piggybank onto their studies and agencies currently doing water monitoring on his property – contact Jim and Mary Kleinbach, who have volunteered access to their land, for water quality and temperature studies. Continue development of stream restoration from Verona to Moore Road.

Phase V. Wise Powerhouse to Auburn School Park/Ashford Park—City of Auburn/
Civil Solutions—Feasibility studies for reach #5 Seek funding for this reach in order to secure fish passage. Seek additional year round waters for reach #5 in order to assure fish passage for salmon and steelhead into the City of Auburn. Participate in fish tagging of current steel head in the Auburn Ravine from Highway 193 to Ophir tunnel outflow.
Begin stream restoration projects in various Auburn Ravine localities. Continue monitoring fish passage from highway 193 bridge to the Ophir tunnel outflow.
Finalize coalition development. Begin the process of reconfiguration of Auburn Ravine for salmon spawning at both the Ashford Park and the enhancement of the Auburn School Park fish way. (Janice Forbes) Jack to meet with Janice Forbes and ask for her plan for the best development of the fish way for spawning in both parks.

Phase VI. Maintenance Plan for the Auburn Ravine
Within this phase the assumption is that there are now successful spawning runs of both salmon and steelhead. It is therefore imperative that a long term maintenance plan is developed in order to continue a healthy eco system along the entire Auburn Ravine. The plan should include agencies, stakeholder groups and non-governmental groups and other organizations and individuals for input into this long range plan.

Tentative Agenda for September 28, 2009 - Monday 10-11:00 a.m SARSAS Meeting 175 Fulweiler Avenue, Auburn, CA 95603 (The Domes) Jack at 530 888 0281

2009-09-13T19:40:00.002-07:00

I. Self- introductions
II. SARSAS Philosophy – We believe by working together many people and agencies at
the same table we can make progress working collaboratively to make AR navigable
for anadromous fishes
III. Update of Information for SARSAS from Attendees
A) Placer Legacy – Loren/Edmund - Update HH/LGSDam Retrofits/timeline
B) Jennifer Perreira for Robert Weygandt, Placer BOS – Update on County Waste
Water Plans
C) Mike Harrison, Ecologic – Update on Auburn Waste Water Treatment Plant
D CABY – Katie Burdick – Western Plan County Streams Planning
E) Don Tanner, NOAA/Mark Jeter, DFG - AR Oversight
F) John Williams, American Civil Constructors – LOSC President, Update
G) Gary Hengst, General Manager, LWWTP, - Update of Operations
H) William Morebeck – Placer Co Ag Board
I) Reports from Water Districts, Councilmen, Supervisors
IV. Old Business
A. Stan Nader – Contacting Legislators
B. Scott Johnson – Constant Contact
C. Bill Jacobsen/Ty Gorre – Calling Back the Salmon Progress for Lincoln Salmon
Festival
D. John Rabe – Possible Stream Restoration Projects/RWB Tour of AR
E. Cathie DuChene – Completing SARSAS portfolio
F. Arry Murphey-Frank – Connecting with Obama Administration
G. John Rabe/Bill Christner, Ecorp –
V. Updates from SARSAS Members
A. Jack – State of SARSAS – Meeting with Ron Nelson
B. Kathie Harris – Auburn Chamber of Commerce
C. Greg Nelson – Wine Tasting/Pescatori Winery Dinner
E. Gary Mapa/Charity/Arry/Cathie DuChene - Roster updates and website,
Communications
F. John Rabe/Cathie DuChene – SARSAS Folder/Brochure
G. Stan Nader –Salmon Festival in
Lincoln/Connecting with State legislators
H) Cathie DuChene – Grant Writing Updates
I. Arry Murphey-Frank – Connecting with State/Feds
VI. Other Announcements
VII. New Business/Agenda Items for Next Meeting?
VIII. Meetings are Fourth Monday of each month – Next Meeting is, Monday, October
26, 2009, 10-11 a. m. Entire meeting is devoted to Four Water Districts --Kevin
Goishi, PGE, Ron Nelson, NID,Andy Fecko, PCWA and Brad Arnold, SSIR have
been invited to update their operations and tell us how SARSAS can help them.

SARSAS STRATEGIC PLAN

2009-09-13T19:40:00.001-07:00

Part I. Strategic Plan

VISION STATEMENT: Restore Salmon and Steelhead to the Auburn Ravine

MISSION: It is the mission of the SARSAS Board to work in a collaborative MANNER with all individuals, groups and government organizations in order to restore salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine

Goals:
1. To RETROFIT FOR FISH PASSAGE all barriers impeding salmon and steelhead migration within the Auburn Ravine
2. To install screens on all downstream irrigation pumps and ditches
3. To study the feasibility of fish passage from the Auburn Ravine Cataract to the headwaters of the Auburn Ravine
4. To develop a strong support coalition through collaborative efforts
5. To restore stream bed and banks along the Auburn Ravine
6. To develop educational and marketing programs for the public at large regarding the development and maintenance of a healthy Auburn Ravine
7. To provide water necessary to support a healthy salmonid population
8. To assist in efforts increasing a healthy salmon population in the Pacific Ocean
9. To locate funds necessary to accomplish the goals of SARSAS

Objectives:
1.a By October of 2008 identify and provide an action plan for the RETROFITTING FOR FISH PASSAGE of each flashboard dam by October 15th of each year.
1b. By June 1st, 2009 establish the core group of individuals and groups or entities that will assist in the planning, implementation and completion of the restoration of salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine
1c. By August of 2010 reTROFIT FOR FISH PASSAGE the NID gauging station and the NID Hemphill Dam
1d. Develop an action plan during 2010 with the assistance of NID that will provide the planning, funding and resources necessary to provide fish passage at the Gold Hill Dam
1e. During the fall and winter of 2009/2010 develop a plan to mitigate fish passage issues caused by beaver within the Auburn Ravine

2. By September of 2010 implement a fish screening installation on all side ditches along the Auburn Ravine thus preventing the diversion of Smolt from the Auburn Ravine on their journey to the Sacramento River AND EVENTUALLY THE PACIFIC OCEAN
3. By September of 2010 provide $30,000.00 for a fish passage feasibility study inclusive of the area from the Auburn Cataract to the headwaters of the Auburn Ravine
4. During 2008 and culminating by June of 2009, identify and select a SARSAS
Board of Directors and identify coalition individuals, governmental bodies, and

other groups who will support and work to achieve the mission, goals and objectives of the SARSAS Strategic Plan.

5. Develop a plan addressing the streambed and bank restoration needs of the Auburn Ravine. Planning to be completed by August of 2011

6. During the period from January 2009 to September 2010 the SARSAS Board will develop and implement community outreach education programs for the general public. These programs will focus upon the SARSAS mission, goals and objectives.

7. By April 2010, the SARSAS Board will identify a source(s) of water sufficient to support salmonids in the Auburn Ravine. The SARSAS Board will establish meetings with Nevada Irrigation District, Placer County Water District, Pacific Gas and Electric and the State Water Board to NEGOTIATE necessary water during the fall of 2009.

8. During the entire life of the SARSAS organization, the goals and objectives will center primarily upon the restoration of salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine with secondary goals and objectives assisting in the restoration of healthy salmonid populations within the California Pacific Ocean boundaries.

9. During the period from January 2009 through June 2011, the SARSAS Board
will seek and locate funds necessary to support the goals and objectives of the
organization through various fund raising efforts, individual donations, business
sponsors and grants.

10. The SARSAS Board will develop and implement a marketing plan beginning in
The fall of 2009 to be completed by March of 2010. The plan shall include the development of a brochure, multiple power point presentations, a folder, an online newsletter, the use of Twitter, Facebook and other viable online sources, public presentations, newspaper articles, television news and other public forums.

11. During the period August 2009 through December 2009, the SARSAS Board will develop and implement a plan to assure the involvement of key agencies IN THE SARSAS MISSION. Agencies will be identified and focus meetings will be established with the agencies and the SARSAS Board in order to develop quality long term relationships focused upon the SARSAS mission.

12. SARSAS shall develop and implement a plan for monitoring water flow (CFS),
water temperature, water quality to include PH testing and organic material in
order to assure quality spawning conditions for all fishes. Monitoring locations
shall be determined, and at least three sites will be established. Monitoring to
begin during the winter and spring of 2009/2010.

13. The president of SARSAS shall establish a meeting with each individual
SARSAS Board member in order to determine each board members’ strengths
and desires, then develop plans with each member to assist in making SARSAS assignments specific to the SARSAS mission and strategic plan.
Timeline to span October 2009 through November 2009 with periodic updates.

14. During 2009/2010, SARSAS will develop and nurture working relationships
with key state legislators and the Governor in order to secure the support for legislation and support for the SARSAS Plan in order to secure an ongoing commitment for restoration of Salmon and steelhead in California’s streams
and IN the Pacific ocean bordering the state.

15. Complete a SWOT, and Strategic Plan by August of 2009

16. The SARSAS Board will work with representatives of the City of Lincoln,
native American groups, interested service organizations, business sponsors
and other interested parties in order to hold a SARSAS Salmon Festival WITH A CALLING BACK THE SALMON CEREMONY in the City of Lincoln in October of 2010.

17. The SARSAS Board shall strive to focus upon scientific data in order to meet
its mission. To that end, SARSAS shall reach out to the scientific community
in order to secure knowledge and information relevant to its goals, objectives
and Strategic Plan.

II. SARSAS STRATEGIC PLAN -- PROJECTS, RESPONSIBILITIES/TIMELINES/FUNDING

OBJECTIVE 1 a: GOALS 1 and 8
Project: Removal of flashboard dams on or before October 15th of each year
Responsibility: Owners of flashboard dams. NOAA and F&G- inspect for
removal and or notice to remove by officer.
Timeline: Annually on or before October 15th
Funding: Cost neutral

OBJECTIVE 1 b: GOALS 1-9
Project: SARSAS board has identified and established working relationships
with major stakeholders.
Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: Ongoing
Funding: Cost neutral

OBJECTIVE 1 c: Goals 1-2-4-7-8-9
Project: Work with NID and Placer Legacy in order to develop plans and
funds necessary to retrofit Lincoln gauging station and Hemphill Dam.
Responsibility: Nevada Irrigation District. District will do both retrofits as state funds are released. Originally scheduled for summer 2009 but due to state funding issues, bond monies were not released.
Timeline: Summer 2010
Funding: State bond funds

OBJECTIVE 1 d: Goals 1-2-4-7-8-9
Project: Retrofit Gold Hill Dam with fish ladder ands screens
Responsibility: Nevada Irrigation District
Timeline: Uncertain 2010-2014
Funding: None to date. NID

OBJECTIVE 1 e: Goals 1-4-5-6-8-9
Project: Working with the City of Lincoln, local property owners and
appropriate water agencies, reduce the number of beaver dams on the Auburn Ravine. Remove and relocate beavers as necessary. Work with
citizens groups in order to educate the general public regarding beaver issues and potential solutions.
Responsibility: SARSAS, City of Linclon, water agencies
Funding: Grants, city funds, water agencies, SARSAS fundraising

OBJECTIVE 2: Goals 2-8-9

Projects: 1. Install appropriate screens on all irrigation ditches within the Ravine.
2. Notify all water users who have irrigation ditches of the issues related to
smolt and trout when ditches are not screened.
3. Develop grants that in part will provide funds for screening projects.
4. Provide water users with information that links unscreened ditches to the
Loss of smolt and trout in the Auburn Ravine.
5. Seek funding partners
6. Seek screening enforcement when necessary.
Responsibility: Water agencies, farmers, SARSAS, enforcement agencies.
Timeline: 2010-2012
Funding Sources: Grants, water agencies, water users
Cost: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 3: Goals 1-3-4-5-6-8-9-

Project: Raise $30,000.00 to be used for a feasibility study for fish passage from the
Auburn cataract to the headwaters of the Auburn Ravine.
Responsibility: SARSAS
Timeline: 2009 to September 2011
Funding: SARSAS fundraisers and donations

OBJECTIVE 4: Goals 1-9

Project: Establish a nine member working board and identify coalitions and partners.
Responsibility: SARSAS president and board members
Timeline: June 2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 5: Goals 4-5-6-8-9

Project: Identify the ten highest priority areas in need of streambed and bank restoration
and establish projects, timelines, volunteers and funds necessary to accomplish
restoration projects.
Responsibility: SARSAS, landowners, Placer Legacy, NOAA, Fish & Game
Timeline: August 2011
Funding: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 6 Goals 4-6-9

Projects: 1. Develop power point presentations
2. Develop a video for presentations
3. Develop presentations materials e.g. faq’s

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: June 2009 through September 2010 and beyond as necessary
Funding: $3000.00 to $4,000.00 SARSAS fundraisers and donations

OBJECTIVE 7: Goals 7-8-9

Project: 1. Work with appropriate agencies to determine the source of water and when it
is needed in order to assure sufficient water to support salmon, steelhead and
trout in the Auburn Ravine.
2. Establish meetings with PG&E, PCWA, NID and representatives of the state water board to accomplish the objective.

Responsibility: SARSAS and appropriate agencies
Timeline: August 2009 – April 2010
Funding: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 8: Goals 1-9

As the goals of SARSAS are met, there will be a corresponding increase in the California Pacific Ocean salmonid population.

Project: Meet with fishing industry representatives to demonstrate the SARSAS plan for
restoration as well as its application in other streams feeding the Sacramento
and San Joaquin Rivers in order to gain industry support and Pacific Ocean
salmonid restoration.

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None
Timeline: February 2010

OBJECTIVE 9: Goal 9

Projects: 1. Write grants
2. Establish SARSAS fundraisers
3. Locate donors
4. Seek business sponsors

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None
Timeline: 2008…ongoing

OBJECTIVE 10: Goal 6

Projects: 1. Develop Portfolio
2. Develop brochure 8X11 tri-fold
3. Update power point presentation
4. Develop on line newsletter
5. Post on Facebook, twitter and other internet sites
6. Continue public presentations
7. Develop media information for radio, television and newspapers
8. Develop a video presentation

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: August 2009 through March 2010
Funding: $6,000.00

OBJECTIVE 11: Goals 1-2-4-6-7

Projects: Identify Key agencies 8/08- 10/09
Establish focus meetings 9/09-4/2010

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 12: Goals 6-7-8-9

Projects: 1. Purchase hand held monitoring devices
2. Train volunteers for monitoring
3. Monitor weekly/monthly beginning October 2009
4. Select three locations for monitoring
5. Develop data base for collected information

Responsibility: SARSAS Board and monitoring volunteers
Timeline: 10/2009- 10/2012
Funding: Approximately $1,600.00 for equipment

OBJECTIVE 13: Goal 4

Project: SARSAS president shall meet with each Board member to determine
individual strengths and interests and make board assignments as necessary

Responsibility: SARSAS president
Timeline: 10/2009—11/2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 14: Goals 4-6-8-9

Projects: 1. Establish meetings with at least one key member of the senate and assembly
2. Meet with key leader and accomplish the following:
a. Present SARSAS plan
b. Solicit support for 503 c. legislation {simplify }
c. Gain support for SARSAS plan expansion across the north state
d. Expand support to other legislators
e. Get legislative resolutions from both houses
f. Explore legislation for salmonid restoration

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timelines: September 2009- May 2010
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 15: Goals 1-9

Project: Complete a SWOT and Strategic Plan

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: August 2009
Funding: None

OBJECTIVE 16: Goals 4-6-8-9

Project: Develop a Return of the Salmon Festival in the City of Lincoln

Responsibility: SARSAS Board, City of Lincoln, Chamber of Commerce, Native
American groups, and other interested parties or individuals identified by SARSAS.
Timeline: October 2010
Cost: To be determined

OBJECTIVE 17: Goals 1-9

Project: Reach out to the scientific community to establish factual scientific facts and
information to help guide the SARSAS Board in achieving its mission, goals
and objectives.

Responsibility: SARSAS Board
Timeline: Ongoing
Funding: Not required

SARSAS (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead) Action Plan

2009-09-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

Mission Statement: to return salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine
Organization: SARSAS is an independent, nonprofit, non-governmental organization, whose goal is to work collaboratively and cooperatively to modify the
thirteen man-made barriers on the Auburn Ravine and the six or more beaver dams, making them passable for fishes.
Vision: This undertaking will take much time, effort, coordination and money, but it will have a permanent, lasting effect on the quality of the lives of those in this area and on the participants who will achieve something unique. We have an opportunity to create something no other town in California has: an anadromous fish run with salmon spawning in the center of the city.
Collaborative Technique: SARSAS is working with volunteers, students, local businesses, government agencies and other Non-Government Organizations and donations of money, time and in-kind services to achieve its goal of returning salmon and steelhead with them ultimately spawning in Auburn School Park Preserve in the center of Auburn. SARSAS is currently working with several individuals and agencies to realize its goal.
Locally, we are working with Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt and Loren Clark and Edmund Sullivan from Placer Legacy and the California Department of Fish and Game, NOAA, Auburn City Council and many others. We have been given stream access by property owners along the AR for volunteers to do fish studies. Placer Legacy and NID are modifying the Hemphill Dam and the Lincoln Gaging Station with work to be complete by summer of 2009. Ron Nelson, NID General Manager, plans to continue working with SARSAS to retrofit the Gold Hill Dam when these two are finished.
Operations: SARSAS plans to accept donations of cash and work and professional expertise and to work outside the usual channels of large financial grants. SARSAS has the ability to accept grant money as well as apply for grants through such non- profits as CABY (COSUMNES, AMERICAN, BEAR AND YUBA) and AmericanRivers.org, which already have monies available for grants to work on several of the barriers describe in Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek Eco-System Resources Plan. (http://www.placer.ca.gov/Departments/CommunityDevelopment/Planning/PlacerLegacy/AuburnRavine.aspx).
Model: The greatest stream/fish restoration ever is Fossil Creek in Arizona. All facets of the community worked together. SARSAS intends to make the Restoration of the Auburn Ravine the model for the State of California. In California our model is Butte Creek.

Philosophy: Actions achieve goals but actions are preceded by a dream: Robert F. Kennedy said, “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’" Together we can make SARSAS the model fish restoration IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA AND ENJOY ALL THE REWARDS AND THE ACCLAIM ATTENDANT THEREWITH.
Comments and questions as well as donations made out to SARSAS can be directed to: SARSAS, P.O. Box 4269, Auburn, CA 95604, or call 530 888 0281, jlsanchez39@gmail.com, www.sarsas.org and click on Blog.

The SARSAS Plan for Save Salmon and Steelhead in California and the Pacific Marine Fishery

2009-09-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

The Urgency of Saving the Salmon

Jack L.Sanchez
Volunteer Coordinator/President/Founder

The people of California are overwhelmingly frustrated because they have justifiably lost confidence in government and large corporations because they are self-serving at the expense of the people, the environment, other living things and the planet. We must now rely almost exclusively upon individuals and group initiative in order to take charge of our own destiny. What does this dilemma mean for the people of California? What it means really is a New Manifest Destiny for Californians. Therefore let’s focus on one piece of the big puzzle: the restoration of salmon in California.
When salmon can no longer survive on this planet, can
humanity be far behind?
But a solution is possible. Yes, the people of California, volunteering together can save salmon and steelhead. People must ask themselves whether or not salmon and steelhead have any time left on
the planet without the help of the people.
The Golden Age of Salmon and Steelhead is likely long past, but the people working together can ensure at least their continued
existence. California salmon were thought to be extinct as
early as 1865 as a result of sediment that choked the
streams from hydraulic mining and clear cut logging. The salmon of California are now once again in danger for many reasons:
global warming, pollution, poisons, man-made drugs,
lack of fish passage and an overall degradation of spawning
beds. Part of the solution is not to argue for years but to open up California streams as soon as possible for salmon spawning. The SARSAS Plan (see www.sarsas.org), formulated for the Auburn Ravine, is the
simplest way to save salmon and should be implemented on all
streams within our state immediately. If every stream were
to have a volunteer group working to do what SARSAS is doing
with the Auburn Ravine, that is, to return salmon and
steelhead to its entire length and secure fish passage,
adequate water and spawning beds, then salmon can once again
thrive in significant numbers.
The line from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it,
they will come” can be paraphrased and applied to all
salmon: “If you clear it, they will come.” SARSAS and other volunteer groups with the assistance of the governor, legislators and the federal Water Czar can encourage and help other groups do with
other streams what SARSAS is accomplishing with the Auburn
Ravine.
Will the governor and the legislators help? SARSAS
urges the Governor’s staff, both houses of California government and
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as well as his water Czar,
David Hayes, to help. The governor and legislators can provide incentives to encourage other organizations to take ownership of particular streams and make them suitable for salmon passage. They could help streamline the 501c3 process and perhaps add small incentives to volunteer groups once they have a strong strategic plan in place. Salmon are at considerable risk and the governor and legislators have the ability to connect each group to the right agencies in a quick and efficient manner to fast track volunteer groups’ efforts toward salmon restoration.
The SARSAS Plan for the Auburn Ravine can serve as a model for other organizations to work on other streams. It is a simple but
effective plan easily adaptable by any group. Additionally,
some SARSAS board members are available to assist other groups in implementing the SARSAS plan. Imagine the impact of a thousand salmon in the Auburn Ravine and then multiply that by several hundred streams or perhaps all 738 streams that enter the San Joaquin, Sacramento and American River watersheds. Salmon and steelhead numbers certainly will and can thrive in this environment. If only three percent of the smolt return to each of these streams, the
result will be tremendous. “Clear it (stream) and they will come.”
PART II
When SARSAS became an all-volunteer 501c3, public benefit corporation with officers and a nine-person Board of Directors, it was able to more seriously work on the Auburn Ravine to identify the barriers to salmon and work collaboratively to retrofit them. SARSAS then set about creating a working network of state, local and federal agencies, county supervisors, city councilmen, other non-governmental organizations, landowners and individuals, all meeting once a month under the auspices of Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt. The group works collaboratively, cooperatively, to reach its goals as smoothly and as quickly as possible. Additionally, SARSAS recently acquired the volunteer services of a grant writer and is now applying for funding.
Is the task completed? Of course not, but, in a short period of time with many individuals and groups on board, SARSAS will reach its goals, missions and ultimately, the restoration of salmon and steelhead at a very low cost. Are there problems with the SARSAS Plan? Perhaps, and if there are, they are very minor. Is this explanation an over-simplification of a very complex problem? Not at all. Even if the SARSAS Plan is partially successful, salmon and steelhead will have one more river to spawn within, and new life will abound. An alternate plan to truck salmon above and around dams is feasible and SARSAS wholeheartedly supports it, but it is very expensive. Our plan costs thousands of dollars, the alternative, billions of dollars. Both can help the salmon, but at what cost in
time and real dollars?
What can you do to assist SARSAS? First and foremost, you can contact the governor, legislators, federal
officials and local entities and ask them to grasp and support the SARSAS Plan. Then, please contact Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and California Water Czar David Hayes and ask them to work with SARSAS.
Let them know that the SARSAS Plan will provide successful outcomes for salmon and steelhead and, if adopted for a significant number of streams in central and northern California, the plan can
assist in the restoration of the Pacific commercial fishery.
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful outcome … being both a benefit to mankind and to the fish at the same time? Since many tributaries to the
Sacramento/San Joaquin Rivers are blocked by minor diversion
dams, salmon cannot currently spawn in numbers large enough
to prevent a decrease in their number.
Using the SARSAS Plan as a model for saving salmon in the Auburn Ravine may be enough to begin the restoration of the Pacific Coast
Salmon Fishery and put thousands of unemployed fisherman back into their boats, free sport fisherman to follow their passion and help Californians feel good about themselves because they did something to help themselves, their children, and the fishes
SARSAS needs your help, political will and public support to finish its work on the Auburn Ravine and to provide assistance to others who may wish to develop their streams.
Please contact us at www.sarsas.org. Volunteers, concentrating and uniting their efforts, can work quickly enough to revive our salmon population toward health and well being.
In the final analysis, “all things merge into one and a river runs through it. We are ALL HAUNTED BY WATER”(and the salmon in it). The SARSAS Plan allows people to do something about the destiny of salmon, and thereby do something about their own destinies.
Again, when salmon can’t make it in our world, neither can
people.

Pictures of SARSAS Volunteers Working on Auburn Ravine

2009-01-22T21:15:00.000-08:00

Wine Tasting for SARSAS at Courthouse Coffee, 1425 Lincoln Way, Auburn, Friday, February 13, 6-8pm

2009-01-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

Press Release: For Immediate Release
Benefit Wine Tasting for SARSAS
Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead Inc.
Friday, February 13, 2009, 6-8 P. M.

Courthouse Coffee
1425 Lincoln Way, Auburn, CA 95603

Donation $10.00
No need to RSVP – Please just show up!

Live Music and Redwood Creek wines
Plus Artist Nelva Richardson of www.paintingwithwine.com

For more information please contact
SARSAS via Jack Sanchez at 530-888-0281 or jlsanchez39@gmail.com

Courthouse Coffee via owner Linda Lareau 530-889-1373 or
linda@courthouse-coffee.com

Additional information about SARSAS www.sarsas.org

SARSAS is an independent, registered nonprofit, non-governmental organization, whose
goal is to work collaboratively and cooperatively to modify the twelve man-made barriers on
the Auburn Ravine, making them passable for fishes.

This undertaking will take much time, effort, coordination and money, but it will have a
permanent, lasting effect on the quality of the lives of those in this area and on the
participants who will achieve something unique. We have an opportunity to create
something no other town in California has: an anadromous fish run with salmon spawning in
the center of the city.
SARSAS (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead) Inc.

Mission Statement: to return salmon and steelhead to the entire length of
the Auburn Ravine

Jack L. Sanchez Volunteer Coordinator P.O. Box 4269 Auburn, CA 95604 530-888-0281
www.sarsas.org

SARSAS Update, January 21, 2009

2009-01-22T20:57:00.000-08:00

Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead (SARSAS, INC.)
Update for January 21, 2009
Jack L. Sanchez
SARSAS, Inc., Volunteer Coordinator

Much progress is being made to achieve the goal of returning salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine. Starting at the west end near the mouth of the AR, South Sutter Water Agency , with General Manager Brad Arnold, providing a tour for SARSAS members of his three diversion dams – the Coppin, Davis, and Tom Glenn –, which showed all three flashboard dams are in compliance with anadromous fish passage. Flashboards are removed during the Chinook Salmon Run October to January of each year. The AR flows through these three diversion dams and then into the Eastside Canal, which in turn flows into the 4 mile long Cross Canal that empties into the Sacramento River at the town of Verona.

Moving upstream the next man-made barrier is the Lincoln Ranch Duck Club Diversion Dam, which is also in compliance with anadromous fish passage. The next two dams moving upstream are the Aitken Ranch and Moore Dams, which are passable for fishes but still need to be fully compliant. The Nelson Lane Diversion Dam is fully passable for anadromous fishes. Five of the lower seven man-made barriers are completely suitable for fish passage during the Fall Chinook Salmon Run.

Farther upstream the next two man-made barriers are the Lincoln Gaging Station and the Hemphill Dam. The LGS is located one half mile west of the Highway 65 Bridge on the AR. The HD is located approximately one mile upstream from the Highway 193 Bridge. Both of these barriers are owned and operated by the Nevada Irrigation District (NID). Funding and design are currently completed and work is underway to retrofit both barriers for fish passage with the work projected to be completed this summer. Ron Nelson, NID General Manager, has indicated that as soon as work on these two dams is completed, his attention will be focused on retrofitting the last remaining, and biggest dam on the Auburn Ravine, the Gold Hill Dam.

This summer fishes will be able to reach the Gold Hill Diversion Dam in Newcastle and when it is retrofitted, fish will have free, unobstructed passage to the Wise Powerhouse, one mile west of Auburn.

SARSAS, Inc., working with many state and national agencies, community governmental agencies and water districts, has made much progress but much remains to be done. The last phase of getting fish to Auburn is the restoration of stream bed and banks, fish habitat and riparian improvement, and water augmentation to the mile stretch of the AR between Wise Powerhouse and the city of Auburn.

SARSAS, Inc., is now a fully documented 501C3, public benefit non-profit corporation. SARSAS, Inc., is an all volunteer organization so all funds and in kind donations go to its goal of getting anadromous fishes to Auburn. It is totally free of administrative costs.

The next SARSAS benefit is the Wine Tasting and Music at Courthouse Coffee, 1425 Lincoln Way, in Auburn on Friday, February 13, 2009. Hours are 6-8 pm with a $10 donation. Call 530 888 0281. RSVP is unnecessary; just come to the event.

Tax Exempt # for SARSAS, Inc., is 80-229168. Donations and volunteer pledges of skills, equipment and time may be sent to:

SARSAS, Inc.
PO Box 4269
Auburn, Ca 95602
Upon receipt SARSAS, Inc., will provide the donor the necessary tax deductible document.

SARSAS Update October 9, 2008

2008-10-25T03:37:00.000-07:00

Subject: SARSAS Update
Date: Thursday, October 9, 2008, 8:00 PM
Hello SARSAS Supporters,

Sarsas is now a 501C3, non-profit, tax exempt organization so those of you who have volunteered to donate money may do so. We received our status from the California Secretary of State and must file with the IRS to obtain our tax exempt number to give to donors for their ability to deduct their donations to SARSAS.

We have a very knowledgeable SARSAS Steering Committee in place and are working in several areas to get anadromous fishes into the entire length of the Auburn Ravine. To update yourself on SARSAS, you can check out our Blog:
http://www.auburnjournal.com/detail.html?sub_id=83086.

We have a monthly SARSAS meeting (fourth Monday of each month) with Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt in which we meet with representatives of Placer Legacy, PG&E, Placer County Water Agency, Nevada Irrigation District, CABY, Auburn City Council, CaDFG, and other interested parties to keep our focus on getting salmon back into the Auburn Ravine. The most recent CaDFG fish count indicates the Auburn Ravine averages 7,000 trout per mile, making in one of the richest fisheries in California.

Last week I toured Butte Creek near Chico to view the most successful creek restoration project in the state. Six thousand spring run salmon were spawning, and I thought I was standing on the banks of a creek in Alaska such as Ketchikan Creek, watching the females using their tails to dig holes in the gravel to lay their eggs with the male fertilizing them. This creek is a foreshadowing of what the Auburn Ravine will be.

We are working with the Dry Creek Conservancy to coordinate a fish count on the Ravine sometime in December 2008.

Auburn Ravine has twelve man-made barriers blocking the salmon and steelhead from reaching Auburn, in whose Auburn School Park Preserve we hope the salmon will ultimately be able to spawn, in the center of Auburn, Ca. Four of the barriers are major barriers: the Lincoln Gaging Station, located a mile downstream from the city of Lincoln; the Hemphill Dam, two miles upstream from Lincoln, the Lincoln Ranch Duck Club Dam, a mile above Locust Rd several miles downstream from Lincoln; and the Gold Hill Diversion Dam, one mile upstream from Gold Hill Road.

Here is the good news. Placer Legacy working with CABY and NID has funded and are doing the design work to retrofit the Lincoln Gaging Station and the Hemphill Dam, making them both passable for salmon and steelhead, probably within a year.
We just learned this week that the CaDFG working with NOAA were able to get the Lincoln Ranch Duck Club Dam completely removed, opening up another ten mile reach of the Auburn Ravine. Removal of this barrier is our Big News. The next barrier to be addressed will be the Gold Hill Diversion Dam.

Once salmon reach the Wise Powerhouse one mile downstream from Auburn, the real work begins because this reach needs additional water and major habitat restoration.

All things are possible. First, comes the dream, then the strategy.

Thanks for all your support and interest.

Jack L. Sanchez SARSAS (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead)
Volunteer Coordinator
3675 Larkin Lane, Auburn, CA 95602 530-888-0281

Another SARSAS Blog

2008-05-25T21:23:00.001-07:00

http://www.auburnjournal.com/detail.html?sub_id=83086
Copy and paste into google.

SARSAS ACTION PLAN

2008-05-02T07:51:00.001-07:00

SARSAS (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead)
Action Plan

Mission Statement: to return salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine

Organization: SARSAS is an independent, nonprofit, non-governmental organization, whose goal is to work collaboratively and cooperatively to modify the twelve man-made barriers on the Auburn Ravine and the six or more beaver dams, making them passable for fishes.

Vision: This undertaking will take much time, effort, coordination and money, but it will have a permanent, lasting effect on the quality of the lives of those in this area and on the participants who will achieve something unique. We have an opportunity to create something no other town in California has: an anadromous fish run with salmon spawning in the center of the city.

Collaborative Technique: SARSAS is working with volunteers, students, local businesses, government agencies and other Non-Government Organizations and donations of money, time and in-kind services to achieve its goal of returning salmon and steelhead with them ultimately spawning in Auburn School Park Preserve in the center of Auburn. SARSAS is currently working with several individuals and agencies to realize its goal.
Locally, we are working with Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt and Loren Clark and Edmund Sullivan from Placer Legacy and the California Department of Fish and Game, Auburn City Council. We have been given stream access by property owners along the AR for volunteers to do fish studies. Placer Legacy is working with Nevada Irrigation District to modify the Hemphill Dam below Gold Hill. Ron Nelson, NID General Manager, plans to continue working with SARSAS to modify other dams and gaging stations. Granite Bay Fly Casters places fish tanks in schools.
SARSAS is committed to working collaboratively and cooperatively with all people and agencies to return the salmon and steelhead to the Auburn Ravine and to keep the water flowing for residential and commerical use.
Operations: SARSAS plans to accept donations of cash and work and professional expertise and to work outside the usual channels of large financial grants. SARSAS has the ability to accept grant money as well as apply for grants through such non- profits as CABY (COSUMNES, AMERICAN, BEAR AND YUBA) and AmericanRivers.org, which already have monies available for grants to work on several of the barriers describe in Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek Eco-System Resources Plan. (http://www.placer.ca.gov/Departments/CommunityDevelopment/Planning/PlacerLegacy/AuburnRavine.aspx).

Model: The greatest stream/fish restoration ever is Fossil Creek in Arizona. All facets of the community worked together. SARSAS intends to make the Restoration of the Auburn Ravine the model for the State of California.

Philosophy: Actions achieve goals but actions are preceded by a dream: Robert F. Kennedy said, “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’" Together we can make SARSAS the model fish restoration IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA AND ENJOY ALL THE TRIUMPH AND THE ACCLAIM ATTENDANT THEREWITH.

Comments and questions as well as donations made out to SARSAS can be directed to: Jack L. Sanchez, 3675 Larkin Lane, Auburn, CA 95602,530 888 0281,alcamus39@hotmail

Saving the Salmon One Stream at a Time

2008-05-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

Re: A Fisherman’s View of the salmon crisis by Dave Bitts, April 28, 2008, SacBee

“And I only am escaped alone to tell thee,” says Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, after averting another fishing crisis. Someone must have Ishmael's courage to see things straight on and speak truth to power.

David Bitts rightly says the pressure on all waterways in the Sacramento River drainage has been unrelenting and unabated. I know first hand the pressure on one stream on which I grew up, the Auburn Ravine, which has continued unabated for over sixty years. I want to use the Auburn Ravine to speak to the pressures that all our waterways are under and try to understand why the salmon are currently in such peril.

Mr. Bitts says rightly that “we have abused our rivers to the point that the fish are on the verge of vanishing”. The Auburn Ravine was polluted for years by the affluent of the city of Auburn, improperly treated, being dumped directly into the Ravine. Finally, the State of California fined the city and forced it to clean up itS affluent. The stench was so strong from the polluted Ravine that people living on it were forced to leave their homes. Water quality was improved when the State of California began fining Auburn for non-compliance with its water quality standards. Conditions improved but pollutions spills continue.

Then the Feds started to build the Auburn Dam on the American River near Auburn. A tunnel was drilled from the dam sight through the mountain to the Auburn Ravine in Ophir. The Ravine bed was bulldozed supposedly to improve water flow, destroying countless aquatic life forms and their habitat such as pond turtles, pacific lamprey eels, muskrats, sculpin and frogs to name only a fraction. The Chinook salmon were blocked long ago from coming up the Ravine to Auburn.
Noone seems to pinpoint a cause so many causes are listed. As Mr. Bitts states the main cause can all too neatly be attributed to ocean conditions that cannot be measured or controlled and no one or no one condition can be held accountable for the impending extinction so nothing logically can be done about it because no one agrees on the cause. Not knowing the cause is much too neat and too easy an attribution.

Salmon have evolved over eons to survive the vagaries of ocean conditions and have successfully done so. What salmon have not evolved to survive is the damming of their rivers, the diversion of the river water and the seasonal shutoffs of water flow by irrigation districts to maintain canals.

When streams are blocked and water is taken away from the creeks during the fall, when agricultural usage is lowest, that is specifically the time when Fall Run Chinook Salmon are coming up the stream to spawn, then the mystery of the impending salmon extinction is obvious and easily explainable: salmon are deprived of stream passage, water quality and, finally, of water, the world they live in.

If salmon do not have water to spawn in, the salmon cycle is doomed. Not having adequate water when they need it is a death sentence for salmon. Blocking stream passage with barriers is another death sentence.
Everyone wants to help but no one individual or person is starting the process to help.

Man has put salmon on life support; man must now start supporting the life of salmon. Job is telling us to start now to save the salmon.

Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead (SARSAS) is a good organization to contact alcamus39@hotmail.com to start helping the salmon on one small ravine in the Sacramento River Drainage. SARSAS’s goal is to provide a navigable passage for anadromous fishes on the entire fifty mile length of the Auburn Ravine so salmon may spawn in the center of Auburn.

SOURCES FOR ABOVE ARTICLE

View: Oregon, California salmon
LC
April 1, 2008
The (Eugene) Register-Guard, March 26, 2008
Times are hard for industries all across America, but they may be toughest for salmon fishermen on the Oregon and California coasts.

For three consecutive years, dismal salmon returns on the Klamath River have resulted in disastrous seasons for West Coast fishermen and the communities that rely on the business they create for small ports.

The coming year could be the worst of all — the first complete shutdown of both the commercial and sport seasons ever on the West Coast.

A closure order could come as early as this weekend, when the Pacific Fishery Management Council meets in Sacramento. The council is weighing three options, ranging from a bare-bones season to a total ban. Fishermen are expecting the worst and for good reason.

While the Klamath River runs have improved, returns on the Sacramento River have collapsed. Only 90,000 Chinook returned to spawn last year, a 90 percent decline from just five years ago.

Projections for 2008 are abysmal — so low that any fishing, even for scientific research, will require an emergency order from U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service.

That’s bad news on any river, but the Sacramento has by far the most important salmon run on the West Coast. By some estimates, the Sacramento supports 90 percent of the ocean fishery off the California coast and 50 percent off the Oregon and Washington coasts.

If the council announces a ban or even a repeat of the severe cutbacks ordered in 2006 the federal government must begin immediately the process of issuing the disaster declaration needed before Congress can approve emergency assistance for the fishing industry.

The governors of California, Oregon and Washington have asked Gutierrez to declare a fishery disaster, as have Sen. Ron Wyden and other members of Oregon’s congressional delegation.

The message should be clear to Gutierrez that there must be no repeat of the 2006 debacle in which the Bush administration took months to declare the salmon season a failure. As a result of that needless delay, some fishing families and businesses are just now getting some of the $60 million in aid that finally was authorized in the summer of 2007.

Gutierrez should pay a visit to ports in Oregon to get a firsthand feel for the extent of the problem. Without assistance, fishermen who barely have managed to hang on by turning to other species, such as tuna and crab, won’t be able to make it through another year.

With no income from salmon, they’ll be unable to cover boat mortgage payments and moorage fees. Businesses that rely on income from fishermen may fail, as will an Oregon Coast where the economy is built on a foundation of salmon.

It’s frustratingly unclear why the traditionally robust run of Sacramento Chinook has fallen to such perilously low levels. The most widely held theory is that a shift in ocean conditions has wiped out the salmon’s food supply.

But fish biologists rightly point out that a long chain of interlinked factors are also to blame, including overfishing, pollution, excessive water diversions to farms and cities, an overreliance on hatchery-produced fish, and, perhaps most importantly, the debilitating impact of dams. It’s revealing that the fishery management council plans to review 46 possible causes of the collapse of the Sacramento runs.

The solution to restoring runs on the Sacramento won’t be any less challenging than it is on the Klamath. It will require the combined effort of the fishing industry, farmers, Indian tribes, water-control agencies, utilities and environmentalists to rescue the Sacramento’s dwindling salmon runs.

But the first step must be to help the people who catch salmon for a living and the coastal communities where they live and work.
-- The Associated Press
Delaying Critical Habitat
The Bush Administration often asserts that critical habitat designations are being rushed, and that it quite
reasonably wants to delay them until after recovery plans are complete. Yet only 17% (=33) of the 195 critical
habitats it has been forced to designate occurred prior to a recovery plan. And in 25 of those 33 cases, it was
the Bush administration that was at fault for violating federal guidelines to issue recovery plans within three
years of listing. The Bush Administration is playing a cynical and deadly game by asking to delay critical
habitat until after recovery plans are complete, then refusing to complete the recovery plans.

A Fisherman’s View of the Salmon Crisis

2008-04-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

By Dave Bitts

I wanted to become a salmon fisherman the first time I saw boats trolling around Bodega Bay and Fort Bragg as a kid. I have always approached this business with the attitude that we must leave the salmon fishery in good shape for the next generation.

Now, I worry whether we will leave our children and grandchildren any salmon at all. We've abused our rivers to the point that the fish are on the verge of permanently vanishing. Commercial and recreational fishermen, ice houses, fuel docks, boat yards, gear stores and other businesses could disappear along with the salmon.

Faced with a predicted salmon run in the Sacramento River of only half the minimum needed number of spawners, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council closed all commercial and recreational salmon fishing in California and Oregon and imposed significant restrictions in Washington. It's probably the right thing to do in these circumstances, but they took away my livelihood in one fell swoop. I had hoped I would add to my retirement this summer, not deplete it.

California trollers make most of our income from salmon. This is the third dismal salmon season in a row, coming on the heels of two mediocre crab seasons that would normally help offset the loss of salmon income. Many of us won't survive this disaster without significant help – and big changes in the way we treat rivers.

It's easy to fault ocean conditions for the salmon crisis, since we can't control the marine environment and no single entity can be held accountable.

This isn't just about ocean conditions. It's about our poor stewardship of our watersheds. Salmon evolved to deal with fluctuating ocean conditions. They didn't evolve to survive dams and unmitigated water diversions. Sacramento winter-run Chinook salmon had been recovering until 2004, but after the federal government diverted more than half of the river's natural flow in 2005, Sacramento's salmon population began collapsing. Look north to Alaska, which has robust salmon runs and robust commercial, recreational and subsistence fishing. The difference is Alaska's free-flowing rivers aren't overcommitted to quench the insatiable and often wasteful thirst of cities, cotton crops, swimming pools and golf courses.

The Sacramento River system once yielded 2 million Chinook salmon a year. This year, with no fishing, 60,000 adults are expected to return. Wild salmon populations likewise are in dire straits in the Klamath and the Columbia-Snake river systems. The West Coast was once home to the most productive watersheds in the world, with these three river systems producing between 13 million and 19 million salmon a year.

All now suffer from too many dams, unsustainable water diversions and the suppression or politicization of science. Federal judges now are refereeing salmon recovery plans because the Bush administration refuses to follow the law and do the minimum necessary for salmon survival. The result is a West Coast disaster that will cost California's salmon industry $150 million.

Like most fishermen, I'm willing to forgo fishing this season. But for decades, the government's main fish recovery strategy has been to force more restrictions on fishermen, while ignoring flow and water quality issues. This is true in spite of the hundreds of millions that have been spent on restoration projects. The result is fewer salmon and fewer fishermen. We're not addressing the real cause.

We need Congress to immediately investigate the West Coast salmon crisis. Tell your senators and representatives to make sure federal agencies stop suppressing science and start following the law. In addition, West Coast fishermen and the broader economic community that depends upon salmon for its livelihood need immediate disaster relief.

Most of all, tell our leaders: We owe it to our coastal communities, to the hard-working families who have depended upon fishing for 150 years and to everyone who enjoys salmon for dinner, or even just knowing salmon are around, to make our rivers safe for salmon so we all have a future. If we can't learn to coexist with salmon, are any wild creatures safe from us?

About the writer:
Dave Bitts is both board member and secretary of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and Humboldt Fishermen's Marketing Association. A lifelong Californian, he is a salmon troller and crabber in Eureka.

Bringing Home the Salmon

2008-04-27T18:32:00.000-07:00

Bringing Home the Salmon

SARSAS (Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead) has been hard at work making the dream become a reality. Many activities have been accomplished and many more are planned.

First, Dry Creek Conservancy of Roseville decided SARSAS was not a good fit so SARSAS is now in the process of becoming its own 501C3, tax exempt non-profit organization so money and in-kind donation will be tax deductible. The process with take some time, but eventually SARSAS will be an independent non-profit. SARSAS is now licensed to do business in Placer County.

Second, Ron Nelson, General Manager of Nevada Irrigation District (NID) and five of his department heads and NID Board member John Drew, Edmund Sullivan of Placer Legacy, and I traveled to the Lincoln Gaging Station (LGS), the Hemphill Dam (HD) and the biggest dam on the Auburn Ravine, the Gold Hill Diversion Dam (GDD), which is sixty feet wide, fifteen feet high and extends completely across the Ravine. NID and Placer Legacy are currently working, with the funding already in place, to make the Gaging Station and the Hemphill Dam passable for fishes. We discussed how each barrier can be retrofitted. The focus on retrofitting will currently be on the LGS and HD; the Gold Hill Dam will be retrofitted after these two are finished because of the magnitude of the project.

Most of the barriers on the Auburn Ravine are under the jurisdiction of NID, and Ron Nelson shares the dream of making the Ravine passable for fishes. His primary concern is supplying water for commercial and residential consumers, but he also shares our mutual passion to make the Ravine passable for fishes. Without Ron’s support, our task would be an impossibility.

Science teacher Greg Robinson of Placer High with members of the Placer Fly Fishing Club painted Do Not Dump signs on several of the street drains in Auburn to make people aware that what goes into their sewers eventually ends in the Auburn Ravine. Mr. Robinson and his students took part in Mike Holmes and the Auburn City Council’s Healthy Waterways Program. Making people aware of the connection of what they dump into drains and the health of fishes is a very important step in getting fish to Auburn.
Third, Linda Lareau, the Earth Mother of the Auburn Ravine, of Courthouse Coffee has joined with SARSAS in sponsoring a Wine Tasting Gala at Courthouse Coffee, Lincoln Way, from 6 pm to 9 pm on Friday, May 23. Wine tasting is $10 for the evening. Attending is a way everyone can support SARSAS and ask questions and volunteer.
Linda is daily taking volunteer signups at Courthouse Coffee and accepting donations to SARSAS.
Fourth, on May 8, 2008, SARSAS is scheduled for its regular meeting with Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt and Placer Legacy to work on collaborative ways to work with other agencies and non-profits to bring the salmon into Auburn School Park Preserve, where, the plan is, to have them spawn. When that dream is realized, the City of Auburn will be the only city in the state of California to have salmon spawning in the heart of the city.
Last, SARSAS is working with PUHSD Senior Project teachers Anne Duda at Del Oro, Greg Robinson at Placer, Jennifer Scarborough/Susan Teasly at Foresthill High and Kay Fegette at Chana to get the word out to next year’s seniors to possibly do their Senior Projects on a topic related to returning salmon and steelhead to the entire length of the Auburn Ravine.

First the dream, then comes the strategy.

Questions may be directed to Jack and Valerie Sanchez at alcamus39@hotmail.com or 530 888 0281

Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek Environmental Restoration Plan Excerpt

2008-03-23T21:36:00.000-07:00

Fisheries Resources
Protection and restoration of aquatic habitat for anadromous species is one of the primary
goals of the Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek ERP. Six objectives have been identified in
support of this goal (Table 5). Auburn Ravine, Coon Creek, and Doty Ravine provide
habitat of varying quality for Steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and chinook salmon
(Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), which are both special status species. The Draft ERP
identified a number of potential opportunities to enhance the aquatic habitat for these
species. However, additional information about how the species are currently using the
existing habitat, such as extent of migration and the location of active spawning and
rearing areas, is needed to focus habitat enhancement efforts.
This focus is desirable for several reasons. Restoration funds are limited and it is
important that projects undertaken provide a meaningful benefit to the species.
Implementing spawning area enhancements when adults cannot bypass the barriers to
reach spawning areas is probably not the most productive use of resources. In addition,
the complexities of private property ownership and the use of the channels for
conveyance and flood control must also be considered. Private property owners, the
water purveyors, and the local jurisdictions responsible for flood management have
expressed their willingness to participate in aquatic habitat enhancement efforts provided
the proposed projects are executed in a manner that reasonably reflects an understanding
of the actual uses and needs of the species in the local watersheds. For example, prior to
considering redesign of a diversion structure to provide passage, the operator would want
to know that there was a reasonable potential for the adults to even reach the structure.
Therefore, development of this comprehensive strategy has been identified as a first-tier
priority (FR6).
Another first-priority objective to enhance fisheries resources is to better manage the
import and transport of sediment in the creek corridor (FR7). This is considered a first
tier-priority because excess sediment is known to compromise aquatic habitat for many
species, and because some of the mechanisms of sedimentation, such as erosion,
backwatering, and flooding are creating significant other problems in the watersheds.
Four additional objectives have been defined for fisheries resources. These address
removal of barriers to adult migration (FR3), juvenile emigration (FR4) and enhancement
of spawning and rearing habitat (FR1 and FR5). Each of these objectives is important,
and is to some degree dependent on the comprehensive strategy described above for
focus. In reaches where salmonid presence and meaningful habitat restoration
Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek ERP Projects 13 Foothill Associates © 2004
opportunities are already known to exist, such as Coon Creek, the assessment and
removal of adult migration barriers should proceed concurrently with development of the
comprehensive strategy. This objective is thus assigned a first-tier priority. The
remaining three objectives are assigned to the second tier since efforts aimed at the
improvement of spawning and rearing habitat and juvenile emigration are most
meaningful only if barriers to adult migration are addressed.
Table 5 - Fisheries Resources Objectives
ID Objective Priority
FR6 Develop a comprehensive strategy to guide implementation of measures
to enhance salmonid habitat in the watersheds that identifies current and
historical migration timing and extent, determines locations of existing
and potential spawning and rearing habitat, and establishes habitat
restoration/enhancement priorities. Incorporate information developed
for the PCCP in this process.
1
FR7 Implement measures throughout watersheds to reduce excess sediment
and sediment imports. Coordinate with assessment, remediation, and
restoration activities under Water Quality and Plant Community tasks.
1
FR3 Based on the priorities established in the salmonid habitat enhancement
strategy, identify barriers for adult chinook salmon and steelhead trout
migration to spawning areas, such as diversion structures or gauging
stations, in all watersheds excluding Markham Ravine. This assessment
of barriers is already underway on Coon Creek. Develop a
comprehensive strategy for improving passage that considers priority,
flow, infrastructure needs, alternative structures, and ownership by 2009.
1
FR4 Based on the priorities established in the salmonid habitat enhancement
strategy, identify barriers for juvenile chinook salmon and steelhead trout
to the Sacramento River during emigration in all watersheds excluding
Markham Ravine, and develop a comprehensive strategy for improving
passage that considers priority, flow, infrastructure needs, alternative
structures, and ownership by 2009.
2
FR1 Based on the priorities identified in the salmonid habitat enhancement
strategy, select areas in the upper watersheds (excluding Markham
Ravine) that are determined to have good potential for spawning habitat
but where stream channel sediment concentration is excessive. Reduce to
target condition (particles < 6.35 mm in diameter to less than 20% of the
gravel/cobble substrate composition, and particles <0.833 mm in
diameter to less than 10% of the gravel/cobble substrate).
2
FR5 Optimize juvenile salmonid rearing habitat in the upper watersheds where
the potential for fish presence is high as determined by the salmonid
habitat enhancement strategy. Optimal habitat should have approximately
60 percent pool habitat and 40 percent riffle habitat.
2
Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek ERP Projects 14 Foothill Associates © 2004
4.0 TASKS
For each objective, a set of tasks has been identified to support implementation of the
objective. The suggested sequencing for the individual tasks reflects the order in which
the interdependent activities should be implemented. Tasks that are not interdependent
are may be implemented concurrently. Not all objectives and tasks are relevant to each
of the four watersheds considered by the Draft ERP (Auburn Ravine, Coon Creek, Doty
Ravine and Markham Ravine). The AR/CC ERP database identifies which tasks pertain
to which watersheds.
4.1 Public Outreach
PO1

SARSAS in Auburn Journal 2-20-2008

2008-03-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

Resident has large-scale plans for fish habitat
By Jenna Nielsen, Journal Staff Writer

http://www.auburnjournal.com/detail/77753.html?content_source=&category_id=&search_filter=sarsas&list_type=&order_by=&order_sort=&content_class=1&sub_type=&town_id=6

Though no salmon can be spotted in the Auburn Ravine right now, signs announcing the ravine�s �salmon habitat� can be seen at various locations along the ravine. Auburn resident Jack Sanchez wants to restore salmon to the creek.
Salmon could swim through Auburn Ravine.

And one Auburn resident wants to make sure it happens — in his lifetime.

Jack Sanchez is working with a handful of different organizations throughout the county to launch what he is calling SARSAS — Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead — to modify several man-made barriers currently inhibiting water flow in the creek, and stopping fish.

“This is something that is very doable,” Sanchez said. “There is less than a mile of the ravine that would need to be restored.”

Sanchez’s goal is to get fish to the Wise Powerhouse off Ophir Road to the recently daylight Lincoln Creek at Auburn’s School Park Preserve behind City Hall. But the current water flow is not adequate to support salmon.

“We have the opportunity to create something no other town in California has,” Sanchez said. “An anadromous (swimming upward) fish run with salmon spawning in the center of the city.”

Sanchez has a plan to modify the existing dams to support adequate water flow.

“I am in no way arguing for the removal of any dams,” Sanchez said. “We could simply retrofit them and modify them so that fish can get over it.”

The plan is in the very early, conceptual stages, he said. Sanchez has been talking to officials with Placer County, the City of Auburn, the Nevada Irrigation District, Pacific Gas & Electric Company and the Placer County Water Agency.

Though no salmon can be spotted right now, signs announcing the ravine’s “salmon habitat” can be seen at various locations along the ravine.

Jeanie Esajian, public information officer for the California Bay-Delta Authority, whose name can be found on the signs, said the signs are probably the result of a grant Placer County received in 1997, for its Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek Ecosystem Resources Plan, which aims to improve habitat for anadromous fish including steelhead, spring-run Chinook salmon, fall-run Chinook salmon as well as other native fish species.

Esajian said a large decline in the number of salmon could potentially affect restoration.

“We have recently seen a huge decline in the number of salmon coming from the ocean to spawn,” Esajian said. “No one knows why. It could be conditions in the ocean it could be conditions in the environment, it could be conditions in the Delta. Whatever it is, it could be an uphill battle considering this is a global problem.”

But Sanchez intends to look to the county’s restoration plan as a guideline.

The idea came about when Sanchez and his wife, Valerie, were on a cruise in Alaska three years ago, he said.

“We were on a day trip in Juneau,” Sanchez said. “During a hike, we walked over this bridge and looked down at Juneau creek and it was loaded with salmon, knee deep, swimming on each other’s backs.”

He said he knew at that moment, something like it could be reproduced in Auburn.

“Fish in water just mesmerizes people,” he said. “I saw the staggering beauty and saw how much people like that experience. I know there is potential for that beauty and attraction in Auburn.”

Auburn City Councilman Mike Holmes said he supports Sanchez’s plan, but he isn’t sure yet how the city fits into it.

Restoring fish to the Auburn Ravine would be a good thing not only for the community, but for the fish as well, he said.

“I am not certain what the City of Auburn can do directly,” Holmes said. “I think we need to have some of our staff take a look to see how we are able to help. I’m prepared to lend support for the plan to get fish back into the Auburn Ravine and possibly into the School Park Preserve, but it is going to take a lot of coordination with other agencies to get that done.”

Sanchez said he isn’t sure himself how exactly the city will fit into his plan, but hopes by talking to officials, the details could be worked out.

“I am just soliciting help at this point,” Sanchez said. “I am working on getting all this valuable information.”

Sanchez said he believes residents could see progress on the fish restoration plan in the next couple of years.

“It depends on how organized we get,” he said. “But the time for this has come. And no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come.”

The Journal’s Jenna Nielsen can be reached at jennan@goldcountrymedia.com or comment on this story at auburnjournal.com.

SARSAS Presentation to Auburn City Council

2008-03-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

SARSAS Presentation to Auburn City Council
February 11, 2008

Mayor Nesbitt and Members of the Council:

We applaud all of you for your current Healthy Waterways Campaign. We want to assist in that campaign. We have started an organization called SARSAS (SAVE AUBURN RAVINE SALMON AND STEELHEAD) we want to describe for you. We are here to provide information on SARSAS but are not here to ask you for anything other than your time and verbal support for SARSAS. We will return at another time to ask for help. This talk is strictly informative.

SARSAS’ goal is to return Salmon and Steelhead to the entire course of the Auburn Ravine (AR). SARSAS is a part of the Dry Creek Conservancy, a non-profit, non-governmental organization, and our goal is to modify the twelve man-made barriers on the Auburn Ravine and the six or more beaver dams, making them passable for fishes. This undertaking will take much time, effort, coordination and money, but it will have a permanent, lasting effect on the quality of our lives in this area. We have an opportunity to create something no other town in California has: an anadromous fish run with salmon spawning in the center of the city.

Since I was born in Ophir and spent my childhood exploring the AR, I have an intimate knowledge of the AR. My personal goal is to bring salmon to the center of Auburn so they can spawn in Auburn School Park Preserve, providing another attractive facet to our aleady beautiful town for residents, tourists and sightseers. I first saw the incredible beauty of a city with a salmon stream flowing through its center in Juneau, Alaska, and got the idea to reproduce that beauty in Auburn.

Here are some of our qualifications for this job. For twenty-seven summers I coordinated all Interpretive Programs for the Sierra District of the California Department of Parks and Recreation as a State Park Ranger. At Del Oro High School we won twelve Cross Country and Track and Field Championships in six years of coaching and, as an aside, I coached Sheriff Ed Bonner to the California State Track and Field Championships twice. Valerie and I coached the Del Oro Academic Decathlon Team to three consecutive California Academic Decathlon State Championships, the only competitive high school team in the history of our area to do so. We raised thousands of dollars to support our Academic Decathlon Team and to arrange for American and foreign exchange students to study here and abroad while we were advisors for the international American Field Service. We have had extensive/intensive consensus building experience while Valerie was President and I was a negotiator for our local chapter of the California Teachers Association. We have wide experience fundraising and consensus building.

We are currently working with several individuals and agencies to realize SARSAS’ goal. Locally, we are working with Supervisor Robert Weygandt and Loren Clark and Edmund Sullivan from Placer Legacy to get started. We met with Janice Forbes who is now supporting SARSAS. We have spoken with property owners along the AR such as Alex Ferreira, Julie Briones, David Bergquist, and John Rabe, who has given us access to his property for students to do fish studies. We have contacted Placer Union High School District Superintendent Bart O'Brien, who is helping us establish contacts with teachers to include units in the science curriculum at our local high schools on Aquatic Life and Stream Restoration.

Placer Legacy is working with NID to modify the Hemphill Dam below Gold Hill. Ron Nelson, NID General Manager, plans to continue working with SARSAS to modify other dams and gauging stations.

We plan to create a SARSAS Foundation to collect monies to help make the Auburn Ravine passable, but CABY (COSUMNES, AMERICAN, BEAR AND YUBA) and other organizations such as AmericanRivers.org already have monies available for grants to work on several of the barriers. Placer Legacy has compiled the Auburn Ravine/Coon Creek Eco-System Resources Plan (http://www.placer.ca.gov/Departments/CommunityDevelopment/Planning/PlacerLegacy/AuburnRavine.aspx). We are currently working on a plan to systematically make each barrier in the AR navigable for fish.

The greatest stream/fish restoration ever is Fossil Creek in Arizona. Everyone worked together. We want to make the Restoration of the Auburn Ravine the model for the State of California. Actions achieve goals but actions are preceded by a dream: Robert F. Kennedy said, “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’" We have heard much about sharing the dream. We are asking you folks to share the dream. Together we can make SARSAS the model fish restoration IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA AND ENJOY ALL THE ACCLAIM ATTENDANT THEREWITH. We love state championships.

Our plan will get fishes to the Wise Powerhouse although currently the water flow/habitation in the Auburn Ravine between the Powerhouse and Auburn Park Preserve is not adequate to support salmon. We would like the City Council to think about addressing at some future date the lack of water flow/habitat and consider contacting NID to possibly secure additional water from the Drum-Spaulding waterway, and also the improvement of water quality in that section of the Auburn Ravine, which you are already probably doing with your Healthy Waterways Campaign. I urge you to think of ways to help us get salmon and steelhead from the Wise Powerhouse to the center of Auburn.

We have the knowledge, expertise and financial ability to make this dream a reality if we work collaboratively. We just must commit ourselves to returning salmon and steelhead runs all the way to Auburn. With your Healthy Waterways Campaign, we can improve water quality and water flow to get fishes up the Auburn Ravine. Now is the time to act, and SARSAS is volunteering to lead that action.

Thank you for your time and courtesy. We will be delighted to answer your questions now.

Jack L. Sanchez
SARSAS
3675 Larkin Lane
Auburn, CA 95602
530 888 0281