Ojai Valley News Blog

The plan, released in draft form in July after six years of study, does not estimate the costs of restoring the Southern California steelhead trout nor list in an order of importance the steps needed to accomplish that goal, Casitas officials said.

“There are some real key critical flaws,” general manager Steve Wickstrum told Casitas directors Wednesday. “Yes, there should be a recovery plan. The question is whether what’s been developed needs to be studied even further. The (fisheries service) needs to focus on where they can get more bang for the buck.”

A central recommendation of the new plan is to remove barriers that keep the southern steelhead — classified as endangered in 1997 — from migrating to the ocean as juveniles and returning up southland rivers as adults to spawn.

The number of adult southern steelhead has declined to about 500 today from an estimated 32,000 to 46,000 before construction of dams and barriers on rivers from Santa Maria to the Mexican border, the report says.

But even those historic estimates have been challenged as far too high by critics who say earlier steelhead counts were flawed and that adult steelhead are easily mistaken for rainbow trout, their close cousin.

Casitas officials, who manage the Casitas Dam and reservoir, the Ojai Valley’s chief source of water, seemed most concerned about a mention in the report of removing Casitas Dam, which is seen as an impediment to restoring the steelhead’s natural migration.

Rather than concentrating on more viable, less costly solutions that do not destroy a water supply for humans, federal officials mention removing dams and other barriers to steelhead migration as a primary objective, Wickstrum said.

“They just attack impediments, impediments,” he said.

The Casitas letter to federal officials says that it is just one of many water agencies that “share common concerns regarding the plan and its proposed recovery actions.

“Casitas concurs with the need for further research to fill the gaps in data and suggests doing so before making decisions to move forward on measures that will have severe impacts to water supplies and the human populations,” says the Casitas letter.

Casitas supports “development of a recovery plan with realistic measures and identifiable goals,” the letter says. “The current plan has reached as far as one can to propose turning the clock back to pre-dam conditions, which would have significant impacts to the environment, public health and safety and socio-economics of Southern California. The plan should be improved to consider the real cost of its proposed measures and alternatives which may lead to recovery goals.”

Those recovery measures should be “effective and efficient,” the letter says.

And it notes that previous efforts on the Ventura River, especially Casitas’ construction of a $9-million fish ladder at Robles Diversion Dam near Ojai, have seen some success. Several adult steelhead have migrated up the ladder toward potential spawning grounds.

Casitas officials noted, however, that the greatest step toward re-establishing a stable steelhead population in the Ventura River watershed would be removal of the Matilija Dam, about two miles upstream from the Robles fish ladder.

Federal and state officials have agreed, and committed to spend more than $100 million to tear down the obsolete, silt-filled dam. But complications about what to do with the silt have slowed that process to a crawl, and now threaten to kill it because of costs that have escalated to at least $155 million.

“If Matilija Dam is removed that might go a long way to restoring the Ventura River watershed,” Wickstrum said in an interview.

Yet, even as the Casitas board voted unanimously to send its letter, two board members with backgrounds in environmental protection applauded the new plan as a step in the right direction, if flawed.

“I have concerns about the tone of the (Casitas) response to the Steelhead Recovery Plan,” said Director Richard Handley, who is also a land manager with the Nature Conservancy. “While I’m not in favor of such measures as taking down Casitas Dam in order to promote recovery, I think we must recognize that steelhead are an important indicator of the balance that is needed to sustain the life-giving properties of our river systems.

“Restoring and maintaining a river system that supports a healthy population of steelhead,” Handley wrote in an e-mail on Thursday, “will help achieve the delicate balance that is needed to insure survival of a multitude of other species within the watershed.”

Director Russ Baggerly, in a personal letter to the Marine Fisheries Service, also called the plan “an excellent guide for local agencies and non-governmental agencies to utilize for a long time to come.”

But Baggerly reflected overall Casitas concerns by saying that “many significant gaps in science still remain” in the recovery plan, and cautioning against its use by federal regulators in issuing permits until the plan is final and complete.

“It is clearly presented in an incomplete form,” Baggerly wrote.

And he recommended, much as the full board, that restoration efforts be listed in priority order.

“Actions are just listed and not prioritized,” he said in an interview. “And some of the recovery actions would be very disruptive to 23 million people.”

On the other hand, Baggerly said, removal of Matilija Dam would be a huge step forward and would not negatively affect many people.

The Steelhead Recovery Plan itself acknowledges that the draft plan is a beginning, a non-binding guideline without regulatory status. And it says that its costs have not yet been determined.

“An implementation schedule describing time frames and costs associated with individual recovery actions is under development,” the plan says. “Estimating total cost to recovery is much more challenging, if not impossible to estimate for a variety of reasons.

“Nonetheless,” the plan says, “the criteria and recovery actions identified in this recovery plan provide a comprehensive road map for recovery and are consistent with many ongoing activities intended to protect and/or restore ecosystem functions in Southern California watersheds.”

To read the draft recovery plan click here.