Fishing News
New water plan hurts fish, Delta, activists say
Environmentalists say the Bush administration's new plan for managing water in California's Central Valley would sharply cut the amount set aside to boost salmon runs and to improve the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The policy implements a court ruling that the Bureau of Reclamation errs in how it measures water used for environmental purposes, the Interior Department says.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger of Fresno came in a lawsuit filed by the Westlands Water District, a large irrigation district on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. The judge agreed with Westlands that the government was being too generous to fish at the expense of farmers.
Water from the federal Delta Mendota Canal supplies residents of the city of Tracy and is used by a variety of irrigation districts in the Tracy area.
"It's protective of the environment and it's fairer to the water users," Westlands spokesman Tupper Hull said of the court ruling.
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