ShareThisThe big, tasty and hard-fighting striped bass is a top prize for fishermen in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.For everybody else who depends on the Delta's limited water, the racy chrome fish has become a flash point in California's next water war.Farmers in arid Kern County last week sued the state for protecting the striper as a sport fish. They allege the nonnative striper has been allowed to damage the Delta, preying on endangered native fish, including salmon and the ghostly Delta smelt. Several water law experts say the case may stand as the first blast in what's expected to be a protracted battle over California's most precious resource.The new lawsuit shows that this war's front has moved beyond the traditional realm of environmentalists versus government. Rhetoric has also hardened between interest groups that have spent the past 10 years trying to cooperate on water issues."They're executioners," Roger Mammon said, bluntly labeling water exporters.Mammon is a board member of the West Delta Chapter of the California Striped Bass Association. "They don't care about the Delta except that it's water and money in their pocket. I think they're full of it."Anglers call the striped bass innocent. Yes, it's a predator, but they say it successfully coexisted historically with salmon and smelt, and all thrived.Instead, they blame water exporters for a bottomless thirst that has pumped Delta water to millions of homes and farm fields at a record pace over the past seven years.The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the largest estuary on the West Coast. It naturally collects about two-thirds of the state's runoff and funnels it to the sea via San Francisco Bay, along the way providing vital habitat for an array of fish and other wildlife.But it's also the hub of California's complex water distribution system. The 740,000-acre estuary is the diversion point for state and federal water projects serving 25 million people and more than 2 million acres of rich farmland. Those diversions, at separate pumping facilities near Tracy, reverse natural water flows, alter habitat and kill millions of fish each year.A recent truce in California's water wars began in 1994 with creation of the CalFed Bay-Delta Program. This collaboration between government agencies, water consumers and environmentalists sought to protect the Delta and improve water deliveries.But CalFed did not have the money and authority to meet all its goals and is now being reformulated, leaving most participants feeling shortchanged.Since 2001, water exports from the Delta have neared record levels while numerous fish populations sank."A number of folks feel, for whatever reason, they are reduced to pursuing litigation as the last available option to vindicate their interests," said Richard Frank, director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center at the University of California Berkeley.The truce may have ended last August, when a federal judge in Fresno ordered Delta water exports reduced to protect the smelt. That case was brought by environmental groups.Contact Matt Weiser at mweiser(at)sacbee.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
Striped bass becomes flash point in Calif. water war
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