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Delta Report Flawed Auditors allege Fisheries Service violated procedure

Published in the Stockton Record on 07/14/05

Audit: Delta report flawed
Auditors allege Fisheries Service violated procedure

DANA NICHOLS - Record Staff Writer
Published Thursday, Jul 14, 2005

The National Marine Fisheries Service violated agency procedures when it crafted a report that said pumping more water out of the San Joaquin Delta would not hurt endangered salmon and steelhead, according to a Commerce Department Audit released Wednesday.

The audit said the Fisheries Service started work on its study before obtaining necessary information from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which wanted to pump more water to farms and cities south of Stockton. It also said the agency bypassed administrators and attorneys who normally review and check the quality of the science used in such reports.

The bureau used the report, issued in October, to justify the renewal of 200 water contracts with farms and cities south of Stockton. The report also helped the bureau justify a plan to increase water exports from the Delta.

The report was released a few months before state and federal biologists sounded an alarm over recent, catastrophic declines in Delta fish species, including the endangered Delta smelt.

Now biologists are trying to determine what is killing the fish. But environmentalists, Delta farmers and some politicians say it is already clear that sending half or more of the Delta's water south each year is killing the estuary.

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, on Wednesday called for the 25- to 40-year-long water contracts to be thrown out and renegotiated and for the Fisheries Service to redo the study.

"We are in the middle of the process of repairing the Delta because we misjudged the impacts of exports on the Delta," Miller said. "They've got to go back and redo this process."

Miller aimed his harshest criticism at James Lecky, then assistant regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service in California.

According the report, Lecky was the one who stepped in to take the report away from the regional coordinator expected to review its scientific accuracy. Lecky has since been promoted to senior adviser for intergovermental programs for the agency in Washington.

"It calls into question his judgment that he went along with this process, and was he promoted by the fact that he did this," Miller said.

Spokesmen for both the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Bureau of Reclamation declined to comment on the audit or its findings.

"We haven't seen it, so we can't comment on it," said Jim Milbury, a regional spokesman for the Fisheries Service.

Bureau spokesman Jeffrey McCracken said an earlier audit of the same report by the inspector general of the Department of the Interior found that the whole process was "appropriate and commonplace."

Bill Jennings of the Stockton-based environmental watchdog group DeltaKeeper said that forcing a proper review of the environmental dangers of water exports could ultimately mean a reduction in them.

"If we get a scientifically based scientific opinion, it will clearly show that the proposed increase in water exports will push endangered species over the brink of extinction," Jennings said.

Jennings said he now frequently sees cases where the work of front-line biologists is changed by higher-level administrators in order to allow actions that will hurt endangered species.

The Delta smelt, for example, made headlines in December, when court records revealed that Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Julie MacDonald tried to change scientific recommendations related to the fish.

Auditors looked at the biological opinion on Delta water exports because Miller and 18 other members of Congress in October demanded an investigation of allegations that Fisheries Service administrators were meddling with scientific findings.

"This is a case where they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar," Jennings said. "This is why Central Valley fisheries have been brought to the brink of extinction."

Contact reporter Dana Nichols at 209 546-8295 or dnichols@recordnet.com

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