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IN THIS ISSUE – “Many of the New Laws Are Stupid.” Former Gov. Jerry Brown
BACK TO BUSINESS IN THE STATE CAPITOL
- Budget Surplus & Unfinished Business Greet Legislators’ Return to Capitol
- 1,000 New Laws? “Absurd” – Legislature Should Focus on Quality, Not Quantity
- State Revenues Continue Growth
- “Plagued With Idealism”: Former Mayor & Assembly Speaker Willie Brown’s Harsh Words for Next Gen Leaders
FIRE & WATER
- Judge Stops $1-Billion Resort Development in Wildfire Area
- Wildfires Increase Year-Round Air Pollution in West, New Research Finds
- Drought & Massive Salmon Die-Off Imperil Water for Cities & Farms
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique service.
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FOR THE WEEK ENDING JAN. 7, 2022
Budget Surplus & Unfinished Business Greet Legislators’ Return to Capitol
Associated Press
California lawmakers are flush with money and unfinished business from last year as they returned to the state Capitol this week, but they head into an election year rife with uncertainty due to the redrawing of legislative districts after the 2020 census.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said he anticipates another “historic” budget surplus months after he approved a record spending plan that topped a quarter-trillion dollars including a $75 billion surplus. Legislative analysts predict the state will have another $31 billion surplus for the fiscal year starting July 1.
Newsom, a Democrat, promised that the proposed budget he must present by Jan. 10 will seek more money to deter a recent surge in large scale smash-and-grab robberies, $100 million to clean up areas associated with homeless encampments, and funding for dyslexia programs after the governor wrote a children’s book based on his own struggles.
Democrats who control the Legislature have their own priorities, with Senate leader Toni Atkins promising to spend the wealth on “those who need it most — the middle class and families struggling to get by.” That includes on affordable housing, essential workers, schools and colleges and protecting the climate, senators said.
Assembly budget chairman Phil Ting set similar priorities but does not expect the Legislature to immediately allocate billions of dollars this year as it did last year to address the coronavirus pandemic and in anticipation of a severe wildfire season.
“It’s interesting the economy continues to do well (but) people don’t feel it,” Ting said. “And so I think we have to get a sense of exactly where the pain points are, and what the best ways to help them out.”
Lawmakers face a Jan. 31 deadline to advance bills held over from last year that never cleared their house of origin.
But many of the higher profile leftovers at least passed their initial chamber, giving their proponents more time to seek consensus.
They include a bill to overhaul California’s cash bail system, after voters in 2020 blocked a more sweeping effort to end cash bail; measures to decriminalize some psychedelic drugs and give opioid users a place to inject drugs while supervised; and a ban on turning immigrants who complete their criminal sentences over to federal authorities for possible deportation.
Lawmakers last year passed a bill to end the crime of loitering for the purpose of prostitution, but Sen. Scott Wiener took the unusual step of withholding it from Newsom until early this year.
Meanwhile, lawmakers may consider several measures designed to encourage people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, a volatile issue that drew more than a thousand people to the Capitol in September to protest vaccine mandates.
A bill initially floated last year by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks would have required all workers to either receive the coronavirus vaccine or submit to weekly testing. A business-backed bill by Assemblyman Evan Low would protect employers who require their workers to be vaccinated.
And Sen. Richard Pan, a pediatrician and leading vaccine advocate, suggested he might seek to limit medical and personal belief exemptions in pending regulations requiring K-12 students in public and private schools to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to attend classes in-person.
Democratic lawmakers also expect to propose constitutional amendments that would make future efforts to recall the governor and other officials more difficult.
More action on climate change is expected, with Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon among lawmakers saying California is falling behind as a world leader with goals that fail to recognize that global warming is happening more swiftly than many had imagined.
For instance, seven Democratic lawmakers said they learned from last fall’s United Nations climate conference that “the world is surpassing California on climate change education.”
So they introduced legislation requiring that climate change be taught as part of the K-12 science curriculum, following the lead of Italy, New Zealand and New Jersey.
Legislators also are attuned as always to dominant headlines.
Democratic Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin is promising legislation making it easer for district attorneys to prosecute organized retail thefts that cross county lines, responding to the recent mass smash-and-grab thefts in California and elsewhere.
Ting and fellow Democratic Assemblyman Mike Gipson promise legislation responding to Newsom’s call for a Texas-style law that would allow individuals to sue manufactures of illegal ghost guns and assault weapons.
Democratic Sen. Mike McGuire wants to spend more than $200 million to hire more than 1,100 new wildland firefighters.
And lawmakers may decide to pay for people from other states to come to California for abortions if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, following the recommendations of a panel formed by Newsom that includes Senate leader Atkins.
Legislature Should Focus on Quality, Not Quantity
Editorial from LA Times
California lawmakers kick off a new legislative year in Sacramento today, and with it will come a mountain of new bills. If this year turns out like most, they’ll wind up introducing roughly 2,500 pieces of legislation. About half will get sent to the governor, and he’ll sign 80% to 90% into law. By this time next year, California could easily have 1,000 new laws on the books.
That’s absurd.
The Legislature deserves credit for enacting many nation-leading policies over the years that make life better for Californians. Among them: A $15 minimum wage that kicks in this week for workers at large companies. A paid family leave system that allows people eight weeks to bond with a baby or care for a sick family member. An ambitious goal to slash greenhouse gas emissions that’s helped spur a wave of innovation in clean technology.
But too often, the legislative sausage-making machine in Sacramento values quantity over quality. Lawmakers and staffers can get bogged down with minutia: Whether bots are grabbing too many online camping reservations in state parks. Whether liquor companies should be allowed to give away promotional patio umbrellas. Whether it should be a crime to post false or misleading ads selling cats and dogs.
Those bills were (mercifully) vetoed, but think about how much work it took lawmakers and their staff to get to that point — meeting with advocates, writing bill analyses, holding committee hearings, drafting amendments, casting floor votes, presenting the ideas to the governor.
Then there are the bills the Legislature passes to fix or undo flawed bills they approved the year before.
After passing a law in 2013 that banned restaurant workers and bartenders from touching food with their bare hands, lawmakers reversed course the next year and repealed it. The same year, they also passed legislation allowing the donation of homemade beer and wine to nonprofits for fundraising events, but apparently excluded the very organizations that promote home brewing and home winemaking. It took another law to allow donations of homemade beer to an event supporting the home brewers’ association.
“Many of the laws are stupid,” former Gov. Jerry Brown said in an interview days before leaving office in early 2019. “But in order to get along with the Legislature, you’ve got to sign bills that aren’t needed. … It’s part of the comity between the executive and legislative branches and being effective.”
Brown, it’s worth noting, signed 17,809 bills into law during his 16 years as governor.
Though Democrats have controlled the Capitol for the last decade, the problem is bipartisan. The governor who signed the most bills in any single year since the Senate Office of Research started tracking them in 1967? Ronald Reagan, who, in 1971 signed 1,821 bills into law.
The legislative deluge is so enormous that even Gov. Gavin Newsom’s own attorney apparently didn’t realize the governor had signed a bill in 2019 that allows the target of a recall election to have their party listed alongside their name on the ballot. When the governor filed his official response to the recall petition, his attorney did not include his party affiliation — a mistake that led to a judge prohibiting Newsom from being listed as a Democrat on the recall ballot.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
The pandemic disrupted the normal pace of activity at the Capitol, with lawmakers passing just 428 bills in 2020. The number nearly doubled last year but didn’t reach the usual huge load because legislative leaders limited how many bills could advance. That forced lawmakers to prioritize, and the result was good.
In 2021, the Legislature passed significant bills meant to spur more housing construction, take badges from bad cops and provide health insurance to undocumented immigrants age 50 and older — all measures that had stalled in the past. As the state grappled with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers approved billions of dollars to help schools and small-business owners. They passed a plan for California to phase in preschool to all 4-year-olds — something Democrats in Washington are trying to do with President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, but so far have been unable to pass.
Despite working through a pandemic that forced changes to many routines at the state Capitol, California lawmakers proved they could be productive and efficient in 2021, even finishing the last night of session before 9 p.m. Normally, the chaotic final push stretches past midnight.
Unfortunately, legislative leaders intend to lift the cap they imposed during the pandemic and go back to the bad old days of jockeying thousands of bills. The bill limit was necessary to get through the unanticipated upheaval of the last two years, Senate leader Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said in interviews with a Times editorial writer, but lawmakers didn’t like it.
“Bills are — to a large extent — the widget that we produce as a Legislature,” Rendon (D-Lakewood) said. “Members come to Sacramento to work on bills.”
And they should. But we urge lawmakers to prioritize crafting impactful bills that will meaningfully improve our state, and resist the urge to rack up lots of goodies for favored lobbyists or interest groups. California has major problems that should be tackled first.
Let’s start with the rise in homelessness and the shortage of affordable housing. Too many good proposals have been stymied by conflicts between labor unions and developers. Get to work on a compromise and pass legislation to help make it faster, cheaper and easier to build homes in California, particularly affordable ones.
Environmental pollution is another problem legislators can work on. From oil spills to lead contamination, we need better laws to ensure that companies aren’t allowed to pollute communities or abandon their cleanup responsibilities if they do. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of cleaning up the Exide battery plant in Vernon that exposed neighbors to brain-damaging lead and cancer-causing arsenic. But we are, because of flaws in California’s bankruptcy law. Lawmakers can fix that.
Rendon said he’s concerned that California is not on track to meet its 2030 emissions reduction goal and that he wants to prioritize climate action. Good.
Atkins said she wants the Senate to focus on overseeing money the state’s already spending. “There’s nothing worse than coming home to your community and saying, ‘We contributed $12 billion for housing and homelessness,’ and yet, the problem is persistent,” Atkins (D-San Diego) said. Also good. That’s an important way for the Legislature to exercise its power.
Voters want a government that works well and solves problems. We don’t need a thousand new laws every year — just a relatively few good ones.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-01-03/editorial-hey-california-lawmakers-less-is-more
State Revenues Continue Growth
State Dept. of Finance
California personal income increased by 3.4 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2021, following a 4.5 percent increase in the second quarter of 2021. U.S. personal income growth accelerated to 5.2 percent year-over- year in the third quarter, up from 1.6 percent in the second quarter. For both California and the nation, personal income growth was driven by total wages and salaries (up 12.6 percent and 11.2 percent year-over-year, respectively) while transfer receipts continued to decline.
Jobs & Housing
- California’s unemployment rate fell 0.4 percentage point, decreasing to 6.9 percent in November,
with civilian employment increasing by 80,000. Civilian unemployment decreased by 62,000 and the labor force grew by 18,000. After adding 45,700 nonfarm jobs in November 2021, California has recovered 69.6 percent of the 2.7 million jobs lost in March and April 2020. Eight sectors added jobs: professional and business services (18,800), educational and health services (9,500), leisure and hospitality (6,900), government (5,300), other services (3,200), trade, transportation, and utilities (2,100), manufacturing (1,000), and financial activities (900). Construction (-1,700), information (-200), and mining and logging (-100) lost jobs. - California permitted 128,000 units (69,000 multi-family units and 59,000 single-family units) on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) basis in October 2021. This was up 14.9 percent from September 2021 and up 26.8 percent from October 2020. In the first ten months of 2021, California permits averaged 121,000 units, up from 102,000 units in the same period in 2020 and 110,000 units in the same period in 2019.
- The statewide median price of existing single-family homes decreased to $782,480 in November 2021, the second month below $800,000 since March 2021. This was down 2 percent from October 2021 but up 11.9 percent from November 2020. Sales of existing single-family homes in California totaled 454,450 units (SAAR) in November 2021, up 4.7 percent from October 2021 but down 10.7 percent from November 2020.
Taxes & Revenue
Preliminary General Fund agency cash receipts for the first five months of the 2021-22 fiscal year were $13.378 billion above the 2021-22 Budget Act forecast of $53.408 billion. Cash receipts for the month of November were $2.183 billion above the forecast of $10.835 billion. Preliminary General Fund agency cash receipts for the entire 2020-21 fiscal year were $4.783 billion above the 2021-22 Budget Act forecast of $201.775 billion, or 2.4 percent above forecast.
When this prior fiscal year-end amount is combined with the current fiscal year-to-date total, preliminary General Fund agency cash receipts are $18.161 billion above the 2021-22 Budget Act forecast.
Personal income tax cash receipts to the General Fund for the first five months of the fiscal year were $9.434 billion above the forecast of $35.786 billion. Cash receipts for November were $1.452 billion above the forecast of $6.576 billion. Withholding receipts were $1.609 billion above the forecast of $6.259 billion.
Other cash receipts were $328 million above the forecast of $972 million. Refunds issued in November were $459 million above the expected $537 million. Proposition 63 requires that 1.76 percent of total monthly personal income tax collections be transferred to the Mental Health Services Fund (MHSF). The amount transferred to the MHSF in November was $26 million higher than the forecast of $118 million.
Sales and use tax cash receipts for the first five months of the fiscal year were $1.396 billion above the forecast of $11.359 billion. Cash receipts for November were $331 million above the month’s forecast of $3.295 billion. November cash receipts include a portion of the final payment for third quarter taxable sales.
Corporation tax cash receipts for the first five months of the fiscal year were $1.849 billion above the forecast of $3.331 billion. Cash receipts for November were $298 million above the month’s forecast of $85 million. Estimated payments were $131 million above the forecast of $155 million, and other payments were
$85 million above the $231 million forecast. Total refunds for the month were $82 million lower than the forecast of $301 million.
NY Times
| For perspective on this difficult time for San Francisco, I sat down with Willie Brown, the mayor from 1996 to 2004 and a longtime Democratic Party power broker. We discussed the state of emergency that Breed announced before Christmas and San Francisco’s outsize role in state and national politics. |
| That role is one reason the city so often comes under the microscope. Brown pointed out that if something were to happen to President Biden, the two next in line for the presidency are San Franciscans: Vice President Kamala Harris and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. |
| But he had harsh words for the next generation of San Francisco’s leaders and a less-than-uplifting view of the challenges the city is facing. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation. |
| Where do you come down on the question of whether San Francisco is suffering from a crisis of street conditions and crime and whether, as Mayor Breed says, it has become a lot worse? |
| San Francisco is plagued with idealism. We really do want to care for everybody that can’t care for themselves. Whether they are addicted, whether they are emotionally challenged by any means or whether they are financially challenged. We’ve always wanted to make San Francisco a place where you could be comfortable. But that’s created a problem. Because suddenly the people enjoying the comfort are the people who have decided they can define how they can enjoy the comfort. And that might be an intrusion on the people who are paying for it — the taxpayers. |
| How do you rate the street conditions today in San Francisco compared with when you were mayor? |
| The drugs today are dramatically different from the drugs of my time. You did not have nonprofit organizations giving tents to homeless people. And you didn’t have the same volume of homeless people. So you could use the sidewalks, whether you were in the Tenderloin or in Pacific Heights. |
| Mayor Breed was blunt in describing the city. She spoke about “mass looting” and of the city’s “nasty streets” strewn with trash, urine and feces. Do you agree with her assessment? |
| Totally and completely accurate. And descriptive. And believable. She wasn’t trying to be political. I think she was describing what she saw. Very bold. It’s grandmotherish. |
| Will the state of emergency in the Tenderloin work? |
| Only if she can get the rest of the city to buy in. The city unfortunately is not run by the mayor. We are now plagued with the politics of districts that have no interest in anything except their little turf. |
| You have often spoken about how much lies beyond a city’s control. |
| If you go back to 1997, I scheduled a homeless summit. I canceled it just before I was to do it because I concluded that there was no possible way for any one single city or county to solve the homeless problem. I am still of that opinion. They can address it, they can impact it, but they can’t solve it. It is too rooted in poverty and mental health. |
| San Francisco has played an outsize role in California politics. The state’s leaders have come from San Francisco in disproportionate numbers. Do you see San Francisco keeping this role? |
| No, I do not. We have no bench. We have not attempted to build a roster of new, talented people. |
| Do I hear you saying that San Francisco is no longer at the vanguard of liberal ideas for the country? |
| No, we still have all kinds of people with ideas. But we have nobody on the bench capable of implementing them. |
| What do you see in this new year for the city of San Francisco that gives you hope? |
| The action that the mayor took would be one example of what would cause me to alter my view about whether or not there is hope. I’m a total optimist for California, not just San Francisco. There is a tremendous amount of real talent in California. |
Judge Stops $1-Billion Resort Development in Wildfire Area
Sacramento Bee
Development of a $1 billion resort and housing project in one of the state’s most wildfire-prone communities has been placed on hold after a judge ruled developers didn’t adequately plan for what might happen when a wildfire erupts and thousands of people have to run for their lives.
The Lake County judge’s ruling on the Guenoc Valley Resort could have sweeping ramifications for housing and business developments across a state where fires are growing in severity and local officials are under intense pressure to approve new building projects during a housing crisis.
The ruling, under California’s powerful environmental law, also represents a major victory for environmentalists opposed to new housing and business projects in areas with extreme wildfire risks.
“The court recognized that Lake County failed in one of its most important jobs, to consider how a dangerous development in the direct path of fire can increase risks to surrounding communities,” said Peter Broderick, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
In this case, the environmentalists had a powerful legal ally. The California Attorney General’s Office joined the Center for Biological Diversity in the environmental group’s lawsuit challenging the posh Lake County resort.
Lake County Judge J. David Markham agreed with environmentalists and the state that Lake County planners signed off on the development’s environmental documents without accounting for what would happen when a fast-moving fire erupts and the resort’s workers and guests all try to leave the area at the same time.
“A significant number of wildfire related deaths in California occur during attempts to evacuate,” the judge wrote. Markham said developers had done a good job of attempting to reduce fire risks.
That said, they hadn’t fully accounted for serious problems that could arise if a wildfire broke out. A portion of the project’s 16,000 acres burned in 2020, the worst wildfire season in modern California history. Markham wrote that the resort could bring up to 4,070 new people to the sparsely populated area of Lake County, where the roads could be overwhelmed during a wildfire.
California Wildfires newsletter Get the Bee’s latest coverage on wildfires in our state.
“These people will likely compete with residents in the surrounding area for safe evacuation routes,” Markham wrote. “The additional people competing for the same limited routes can cause congestion and delay in evacuation, resulting in increased wildfire related deaths. This is undoubtedly a situation where the Project, by bringing a significant number of people into the area, may significantly exacerbate existing environmental hazards; specifically, wildfires and their associated risks.”
Officials with Lotusland Development Holdings, the group building the Guenoc project, said they were reviewing the ruling. “We remain committed to working alongside the Lake County community and fire safety experts to ensure this project is built in the right way to improve wildfire detection, prevention and response throughout the region,” Chris Meredith, a partner in the Lotusland project, said in a written statement.
Moke Simon, the Lake County supervisor whose district includes the project site, said the ruling was “deeply disappointing.
“The investments proposed, including adding housing supply and even a fire station and helipad, offered the potential for lasting regional economic benefits. If the ultimate result of this decision is the project not moving forward, that will be a tremendous loss,” he said in a statement released by the county.
Lotusland’s chief executive, Alex Xu, told The Sacramento Bee last spring that the project would carve out “fire breaks” on the landscape, install high-definition warning cameras and take other safety measures.
The first building to go up on the premises would be a fire station. “I completely understand and respect the concerns about fire safety,” he said at the time. “If we weren’t confident in our ability to defend and prevent fires, or major wildfire events, we as business people wouldn’t be committing (to) this kind of investment.”
Lake County is one of the poorest in the state, and officials say the resort will be a major economic driver. Located just over the line from Napa County, Guenoc Valley would bring luxury resort villas and upscale housing, along with a polo field designed by an internationally known polo star who counts Prince Harry as one of his friends. The project site would include vineyards and is part of an old country estate owned by Lillie Langtry, a famous British actress of the late 1800s.
The ruling comes as state policymakers struggle to balance the state’s unrelenting demand for new housing and business opportunities, while also seeing lethal fires destroy entire communities nearly every summer.
In 2020, as some of the worst fires of the season were still burning, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 182, a bill that would have required communities approving new developments in wildfire zones to build evacuation routes and raise fees to clear flammable vegetation.
In his veto message, Newsom said the bill would conflict with the state’s goals of easing its crippling housing shortage. California has been building 100,000 to 120,000 homes a year since 2015, well short of the annual goal of 180,000 set by the state Department of Housing and Community Development. A similar bill failed to get out of legislative committee last summer.
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has suggested the state should discourage new developments in fire-prone areas by withholding state funds for infrastructure “where risk from climate disasters is too high.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article257093052.html#storylink=cpy
Wildfires Increase Year-Round Air Pollution in West, New Research Finds
NY Times
Dangerous levels of two air pollutants, ozone and smoke, are occurring in tandem with increasing frequency over widespread parts of the Western United States where millions of people live, researchers said Wednesday.
The two harmful pollutants are a result of worsening wildfires and extreme heat, and researchers suggest the increase is linked to climate change.
“These trends are congruent with what you would expect with a warming and drying climate,” said Dmitri A. Kalashnikov, a doctoral student at Washington State University Vancouver and the lead author of a study that analyzed summer air pollution data from 2000 to 2020. “We would expect to see more of these kinds of widespread co-occurring air pollution events in the Western U.S.”
Surface-level ozone is a large component of smog, and is produced when vehicle and other emissions react with sunlight, especially on hot summer days. Smoke contains fine soot particles, and much of this kind of pollution, called PM2.5 because it is smaller than 2.5 micrometers, comes from wildfires.
High levels of either pollutant can affect the lungs and cardiovascular system, aggravate chronic diseases like asthma and lead to premature death. “But when they both occur at once, then you’re getting the worst of both worlds,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and another author of the study, which was published in Science Advances.
Dr. Swain said the idea for the research came about through discussions among colleagues. “All of us live in the West and all of us have experienced, along with everyone else, these extreme wildfire smoke episodes in recent years,” he said. And it seemed possible that more days of extreme smoke would coincide with days of high ozone.
“So we really just said, OK, but to what extent is this actually the case?” he said.
The researchers looked at simultaneous occurrences of high levels of both smoke and ozone and linked the geographic extent of these events to the extent of wildfires and extreme hot weather.
Overall, the study found that between 2000 and 2020, millions of people in the Western United States were exposed to more days of combined harmful smoke and ozone pollution each year.
The researchers also found a connection between the pollution and patterns of atmospheric “ridging,” the development of stagnant zones of high-pressure air. These zones, sometimes called heat domes, lead to increasing heat and drying that can cause wildfires to ignite and spread more readily, and can also cause dangerous heat waves. The frequency of these ridging patterns has increased significantly since 2000, according to the new research.
The study analyzed data only through 2020. “But I think 2021 would show up pretty high on some of these metrics, too,” Mr. Kalashnikov said. There were several enormous wildfires in the West last summer that spread smoke across the West, and extreme heat and drought persisted throughout the region.
Colleen Reid, a health geographer at the University of Colorado who has studied the combined effects of wildfire smoke and ozone but was not involved in this research, said the findings showed that the seasonality and extent of PM2.5 pollution in the West is changing and now overlapping more with high-ozone days.
“What has been happening a lot lately is that we’ve been having really bad air quality as well as extreme heat,” she said.
Dr. Reid said the study also highlights how heat has to be taken into account when it comes to helping the public cope with air pollution, because the recommended public health measures for extreme heat and extreme air pollution can be completely opposite, especially for those who cannot afford air conditioning.
“When it’s hot, you want to open your windows so that you don’t overheat in your home,” Dr. Reid said. “But when the air quality is bad, you want to close your windows to keep as much of the air pollution out.”
Dr. Swain said that with wildfires, the short-term dangers to individuals and communities usually get the most attention. But this study looks at the longer-term risks to the broader public.
“Something may not necessarily have a high likelihood of killing you personally in the short term,” he said. “But if you impose that same risk on tens of millions of people over and over again, the societal burden is actually very high.”
Drought & Massive Salmon Die-Off Imperil Water for Cities & Farms
Sacramento Bee
Environmental restrictions aimed at propping up the fish populations could deprive cities and farmers of water deliveries this year.
Amid a brutal heat wave and a worsening drought, California’s wildlife agency made a dire prediction in July: “Nearly all” of an endangered salmon species’ juvenile population was likely to be cooked to death on the Sacramento River in 2021.
It turned out to be true. Only an estimated 2.6% of the winter-run Chinook salmon juvenile population survived the hot, dry summer, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife said.
The fate of the winter-run salmon has profound implications for California’s chronically overtaxed water supplies, even as recent rain and snowpack levels suggest the drought might be easing.
Fishermen and environmentalists say the salmon’s pitiful survival rate, among the lowest on record, is a disaster that should have been prevented – and raises questions about California’s and the Biden Administration’s commitment to the environment. Regulators, however, said the survival figures reflect the severity of one of the worst droughts ever, as well as other factors.
The massive fish kill, unveiled in a New Year’s Eve letter to the federal government, came in spite of warnings that a catastrophe was coming. Last spring the National Marine Fisheries Service said the survival rate could be as low as 12%. Then the Department of Fish and Wildlife said it could be worse, predicting that “nearly all” of the juveniles were at risk. Environmentalists argue the massive fish kill was caused by state and federal mismanagement of the river last spring.
The winter-run salmon – which actually spawns in the heat of summer in a small stretch of the Sacramento River in Redding – has been listed as endangered since 1994 by the federal government.
Because they have just a three-year spawning cycle, environmentalists and regulators fear a single disastrous season could put the salmon on the brink of extinction in the wild. At this point, the winter-run is now almost entirely kept alive by workers at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who collect eggs and sperm from a few of the adults that make their way up the base of Shasta Dam to spawn.
After they’re hatched, the young fish are reared in refrigerated holding pens at the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery at the base of the dam. The other two main Central Valley chinook salmon runs — the fall and spring run — haven’t been faring much better, and they, too, are largely propped up by hatcheries, said Peter Moyle, a fisheries scientist at UC Davis. “It’s a difficult time to be a native fish in central California,” Moyle said.
Even in good times, the winter-run struggle to survive. Since 2005, the highest recorded survival rates were 49% in 2011 and 44% in 2017 – two extremely wet years. The 2.6% survival for 2021 is the lowest recorded since 2005, and is even worse than the 4% figure from the depths of the last drought in 2015, according to federal figures.
The winter-run is the most critically endangered of California’s salmon populations. Taxpayers have spent millions of dollars retrofitting Shasta Dam to release more cold water for the fish, and millions more are spent annually monitoring the temperature of the Sacramento River’s waters and the plight of the fish.
The young salmon generally can’t survive when temperatures in the river exceed 56 degrees, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is supposed to preserve a pool of cool water in Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in California, for release into the river in summer and early fall.
But last spring the bureau shipped hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of Shasta’s water to farmers with special water rights, said Doug Obegi, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Obegi said the State Water Resources Control Board, which oversees water rights, should have prevented this early water release. “This is the inevitable consequence of draining the reservoirs primarily for agribusiness,” he said. “When push comes to shove the state does not live up to its legal requirements or its principles.”
But state and federal officials said the fish kill wasn’t simply a matter of temperatures rising on the river. Many of the fish apparently perished because of a deficiency in thiamine, or vitamin B1.
The deficiency was caused, ironically, by an abundance of anchovies in the Pacific, said Michael Milstein, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency that tracks the salmon’s struggles in California’s waters. Adult salmon have been feasting on anchovies, which cause a breakdown in thiamine levels. That was passed along to the juveniles. The deficiency hurts the young salmon’s survival chances.
“They can’t swim right,” he said. “They swim in circles.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article257014527.html#storylink=cpy