Sacramento Valley water suppliers–as part of the ongoing effort to creatively manage water for various beneficial purposes—have stepped up these past several weeks in concert with state and federal agencies to provide nourishment and improved habitat for Delta Smelt in the Yolo Bypass. These agencies gathered earlier today at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area to provide a report on the implementation of the Delta Smelt Resiliency Strategy.
State, federal and local water district officials partnered this summer to send water through a wetland and tidal slough corridor of the Sacramento River system and into the Delta where it created a phytoplankton bloom, the critical base of the food web for smelt. The plan was developed based on observations by agency scientists in the fall of 2011 and 2012 following larger-than-normal agricultural drainage flows from the Yolo Bypass. These flows produced an unusual plankton bloom in the Rio Vista area of the lower Sacramento River. Scientists theorized that this production of plankton could be generated in other years if the conditions in the Yolo Bypass could be repeated. Food web impacts are thought to be one of the major factors responsible for the decline of Delta smelt.
These same water suppliers are also working with state and federal agencies and conservation partners to implement the Sacramento Valley Salmon Recovery Program and they will soon be serving fall water to ricelands and refuges for birds and other terrestrial species. These new actions are part of a larger effort underway throughout the Sacramento Valley, based on this new science, to spread water across the region to serve multiple benefits: increased food production for fish and other aquatic species in bypasses and related areas; important habitat and food for birds along the Pacific Flyway; and groundwater recharge that will be important for groundwater sustainability and preparing for future dry years.
These actions help carry out the Governor’s direction and the California Natural Resources Agency’s Delta Smelt Resiliency Strategy. The full news release is shown below and is available below:
