The level of water being consumed in California has had a devastating effect on local wildlife, according to a new report, which calls for city and farm water supplies to be cut in order to conserve fish.  According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, which produced the report, several varieties of fish including salmon and trout have been made almost extinct since the advent of pipelines and dams that have caused some rivers to dry up completely.

Mirroring the events of 2007 and 2008, the prospect of a third drought in California is forecast.  Combined with the effects of climate change and the fact that more people living in California than in any other US state, this drought could make the salmon population unsustainable, the NMFS said.

Recycling and Conservation Methods

To improve the situation, it urged in its report for up to seven per cent less water to be diverted from principal water supplies to farms and cities, adding that the reductions could be offset through implementing recycling and conservation methods.  Water agencies, however, highlighted how it wasn’t necessarily that easy.

The wider discussion going on in California at the minute is focusing on whether water conservation can really help California, or if, actually, more canals and dams need to be constructed. 

Salmon in California

The issue over salmon in California comes hot on the heels of a previous ruling concerning the Delta Smelt – a fish native to the Sacramento Delta.  Here, a designated amount of water (over 350,000 acre feet) was earmarked for the Smelt, in order to protect its numbers.

“It's a difficult task to make sure a species doesn't go extinct, and sometimes that is at some societal cost”, the Salmon report’s principal writer, Maria Rea, explained. 

However, as far as the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was concerned, the ruling favoured fish over people/ economy.

“The piling on of one federal court decision after another in a species-by-species approach is killing our economy and undermining the integrity of the Endangered Species Act”, Schwarzenegger stated.

The plan for the salmon involves using dams to effectively stockpile water as a way of guaranteeing that the fish can spawn.  It also sees limits placed on water diversions and calls for methods to relocate traditional spawning areas away from dams. 

In the opinion of  the National Resources Defence Council, the ruling represented positive progress.  It added that the water diversion reductions being advocated could be achieved, and that they were compulsory even without taking the salmon into account.

“We can reduce our reliance on the Delta now, invest in alternative water supplies we are going to need in the future anyway and save this ecosystem and the 150-year-old salmon fishery, or we can wait a few years... in which case it might be too late”, Kate Poole, an attorney at the council, stated.