Inspector General Investigating Allegations of Politics Over Delta Species

At a Congressional field hearing today regarding the environmental crisis in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, a Department of Interior official could not tell Congressman Mike Thompson (D-CA) whether scientists at Interior were pressured by the Bush Administration to manipulate science because the matter was currently under investigation.

The Interior official, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Operations Manager for the California/Nevada Office Steve Thompson, said he could not answer Congressman Thompson's question regarding political influence because the Department's Inspector General is currently investigating the potential manipulation of scientific evidence from the Delta. Steve Thompson did say that the investigation involves the former Deputy Assistant Secretary.

“This is exactly the type of situation we are trying to avoid,” said Congressman Thompson. “We learned the hard way how political manipulation can impact an ecosystem on the Klamath River; when politics trumped science and 80,000 salmon were killed, closing down the entire commercial salmon fishing season to California and Oregon last year.”

The San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, also known as the Bay-Delta, is an expansive inland river delta in Northern California. It is formed at the western edge of the Central Valley by the Sacramento River at its confluence with the San Joaquin River just east of where the river enters Suisun Bay. The Bay Delta is the largest estuary on the West Coast, covering 738,000 acres of land interlaced with hundreds of miles of waterways. Much of the land is below sea level and relies on more than 1,000 miles of levees for protection against flooding.

This March, biologists counted only 25 juvenile Delta Smelt; a fish found only in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta and is a keystone species for many other types of fish, including salmon. Extensive evidence demonstrates that over the past two years, the populations of delta smelt have been at record lows. The decline of the Delta Smelt is primarily due to water diversions south of the Delta.

“If there really is an Inspector General's investigation going on, it calls into question the data being used for future Delta management,” said Congressman Thompson. “As a government, we need to work together to fix the Delta's deteriorating levees, recover its endangered species and provide safe drinking water.

Of the original 29 indigenous fish species in the Delta, 12 have either been entirely eliminated or are currently threatened with extinction. Once one of the most common and abundant of the pelagic fishes in the delta, the delta smelt population is estimated to have declined approximately 90 percent in the last 20 years.

The focus of today's hearing was, “Extinction is not a Sustainable Water Policy: The Bay-Delta Crisis and the Implications for California Water Management.”