Spreck Rosekrans is an Economic Analyst at EDF.

As discussed at Wednesday’s CALFED “Ops” group meeting, state and federal officials are planning to deliver an urgency request to the State Water Resources Control Board to reduce required Delta outflows in February and perhaps beyond. The request will be officially made by the Water Operations Management Team (WOMT), comprised of representatives of fishery and water project agencies. They are expected to cite the extremely low storage volumes in principal State Water Project and Central Valley Project reservoirs, and explain that it is essential to conserve cold water in those reservoirs to protect endangered salmon later in the year.

Salmon require cold water. Fall run chinook spawn in the fall and outmigrate to the ocean in the spring, and are not present in our river system during our warm summer months. Winter run and spring run chinook, on the other hand, are in our rivers in the summer and require cold water. Under pre-dam conditions, they would often spawn at elevations above the large reservoirs. That upstream habitat is no longer available. Since water temperature in the reservoirs increases when storage volumes are low, conserving reservoir storage until later in the year will help these endangered fish.

Increased spring outflow, the best known operational feature of the 1994 Bay-Delta Accord, is correlated with higher abundance of a plethora of Delta fish and other ecological factors. So the WOMT is making the difficult choice to protect salmon at the expense of Delta fish species.

Of course, reducing outflow requirements will allow increased exports to cities and farms that rely on the CVP and SWP for some of their supplies. Unless we get some substantial storms in February and March, water supply for our cities, farms and environment will all suffer this year.