On Monday, the California State Water Resources Control Board scheduled a public hearing to consider setting minimum water flows for Scott River, a Klamath River tributary in Siskiyou County.
The groups that petitioned the board last month, including the Karuk Tribe and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, say that setting minimum flows in the Scott River is critical for restoring the state’s salmon fishery.
California’s salmon fishery was closed this year after abysmally low counts of juvenile salmon. Most of the coho salmon left in the Klamath use the Scott River at some point in their life cycle, said Craig Tucker, a natural resource consultant for the Karuk Tribe.
“The physical characteristics of the Scott are such that coho salmon love this place. It’s a low gradient meandering stream, fed by a lot of groundwater,” he said.
The coho salmon are listed under the Endangered Species Act and salmon along with other threatened native fish use the river to spawn.
But every year, parts of the Scott River go dry. Tucker said this is because farmers grow multiple cuttings of alfalfa regardless of drought conditions.
“When everyone else is tightening their belts during droughts, hay prices skyrocket because it’s become such a precious commodity. So these guys are benefiting from droughts in a way that no one else is, and they’ve become disaster capitalists by employing these groundwater extraction methods,” said Tucker. He said tribal members who depend on fish for culture or sustenance, there is a long ways from it being fair and balanced between agricultural use and fishing use.
Tucker said that a critical piece of putting the salmon fishery back together is restoring flows to key tributaries of the Klamath River, like the Scott River.
He said state regulation is necessary because it’s not realistic to sue the many individual irrigators pulling the groundwater.
“The Water Board is going to come up with a process where they’ll have hearings, have public input, assign technical staff to write reviews, and then the Water Board will have to decide whether or not to adopt our proposal,” said Tucker.
The public hearing is set for Aug 15 at the Water Board’s regularly scheduled meeting, and written comments must be submitted before noon on July 20.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a temporary drought emergency on the Scott River in 2022, but the groups involved in the effort would like to see the declaration made permanent.
A May press release noted that if the proposal were to be adopted, it would be the first permanent year-round streamflow regulation established in this manner.
“We just feel very strongly that we need restoration plus some regulation to ensure adequate flow in the stream,” said Tucker.
Restoration work is also underway. Simultaneously on the Scott River, the Yurok Fisheries Department, Yurok Tribe Construction Corporation and the Karuk Tribe are working on a $7 million restoration project to address leftover tailings from mid-1900 mining projects that are blocking fish from going into a tributary, Sugar Creek. A Yurok Tribe news release states the tailings result in a dry streambed in the summer.
A memorandum of understanding was signed June 15 between the Yurok Tribe, CalTrout and Farmers Ditch Company, a company that provides water to 1,028 acres of farmland adjacent to the Scott River. The compact is to improve on-farm water use efficiency.
“I hope this work will one day serve as a model that can be duplicated from the Klamath River’s headwaters to the coast,” said Yurok Vice Chairman Frankie Myers in a prepared statement.
Sage Alexander can be reached at 707-441-0504.
