Prospect Slough

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deltabighat

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What does anyone know about the draining of the island up on Prospect Slough. I hang out up that way a bunch and saw just a snippet of information in our paper. Lots of fish killed when they repaired the levy and pumped out the island I guess. Is that the island, which is now a lake or was a lake, that was just west of the Sacramento Deep Water Channel? I would appreciate news.

DBH
 
California levee repair blamed for killing thousands of game fish
By JULIET WILLIAMS - Associated Press Writer
Last Updated 5:06 pm PST Monday, November 26, 2007
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SACRAMENTO -- State and federal officials on Monday said they were investigating the death of thousands of game fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta after a federal agency drained the water around a protected island during a levee repair.
Masses of fish could be seen floating in shallow water on Prospect Island, a 1,253-acre plot next to Sacramento's Deep Water Ship Channel that is administered by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The bureau on Monday halted drainage of the remaining water behind the levee and started removing the fish carcasses, spokesman Jeff McCracken said. He said the agency would begin adding oxygen to the water in hopes of saving some of the remaining fish.
"When we realized how many fish were there, we quit pumping," he said. "By then, we certainly, apparently, had passed the point of causing some fish loss."
The bureau had no estimate on the number of fish killed. Bob McDarif, owner of Cliff's Marina near the delta town of Freeport, estimated the number in the tens of thousands.
"It's like a disaster out there," he said.
The California Department of Fish and Game launched its own investigation Monday, focusing on how and why the fish died.
Although the fish deaths were on federal land, the striped bass, salmon, carp, bluegill and other game fish are considered public trust assets for the state. The results will be sent to state Attorney General Jerry Brown.
The levee under repair is around Prospect Island, which sits along the shipping channel about 20 miles southwest of Sacramento. The channel is the same stretch of water that served as a conduit for a pair of humpback whales that made an unlikely journey inland from San Francisco Bay last spring.
In a project that began in early October, the Bureau of Reclamation plugged two breaks in the 15-foot-high levee and repaired about 600 additional feet. The breaches occurred in January 2006.
Pumping the remaining water from behind the levee was the final step.
McCracken said the bureau received clearance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to proceed with the repairs. Fisheries officials determined heavy vegetation would make it too hard to salvage the fish, but the contractor was advised to start pumping during the lowest tide of the month, which he did, McCracken said.
"To put nets or do things, they told us it wasn't plausible," he said. "We did instruct the contractor ... to move as many fish out of the way as possible."
The Fish and Wildlife Service studied the potential effects of the drainage project on the delta smelt, which is protected under the California Endangered Species Act. That study showed the levee repair was likely to have no effect on the fish.
State Fish and Game officials said they were notified about the die-off last Wednesday and were not involved in the levee project.
"We wish they would've consulted with us beforehand," department spokesman Steve Martarano said. "We could have maybe given them some ideas on things to do."
That could have included using sport fishing groups to help reduce the fish population before the water was drained or immediately rescue some fish. It also could have meant employing special water pumps that are less harmful to fish, he said.
McDarif, the marina operator, was first to sound the alarm about the stranded fish and said he has been frustrated by the slow response.
He recruited more than 100 volunteers to try to move the dying fish to the river, but he said his efforts were thwarted by federal officials.
"If I saw some fish dying now, I would go and take them out and move them to the river," he said. "The thing is, there's all these politics, and there's no time for politics."
The Bureau of Reclamation bought the island about 12 years ago as part of a planned Army Corps of Engineers program to restore fisheries and wildlife in the delta. Funding stalled, however, and the area was never developed.
The bureau had planned to sell the property this winter.
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DBH, the old Prospect Island was cut in half many years ago to dig the Sacramento Shipping Channel. That section west of the shipping channel is called West Prospect Island now and is mostly under water. West Prospect was contoured for habitat purposes and flooded along with most of Liberty Island several years ago. According to the articles I've seen, the kill happened on East Prospect.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printed...4178550.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

East Prospect Island was purchased for fish and wildlife restoration. The Calfed idea was a flooded East Prospect Island full of tule islands and open to tides on both sides for breeding fish and wildlife. Now the Feds want to back out, drain the island and sell it to a private party? It looks like DWR was already paid their part to do the project. CF&G was supposed to administer the refuge. Maybe dead fish aren't the only thing that stinks in this deal.

http://www.coastalamerica.gov/text/regions/sw/prospect.html

I like this old map. It must be 40 years old but it clearly shows you the old tracts. It's way out of date: Liberty Island is flooded now, for starters.

WARNING: This map is no substitute for a current NOAA Paper Chart and will get you into big misery if used for navigation purposes.

ANOTHER WARNING: The current NOAA Nautical Chart 18662 is the best available for this region but it is not completely reliable for navigation purposes either. 18662 does not show most of the Liberty and West Prospect Islands sections that have been flooded for several years now. I contacted NOAA about this discrepancy this evening.
oldliberty-prospect.jpg


This is the same region from Google Maps. It's the same aerial photograph you can find in Google Earth and shows you a better picture of how much water is there now. The photo is at least a couple of years old. Most of the water in Liberty Is. is very shallow: like a couple of feet and less.
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&t=h&om=0&ll=38.257593,-121.682854&spn=0.126437,0.174065&z=12
 
I love looking at old maps of familiar places! It is fascinating to see how things used to be. Thanks, yzer. I agree that there seems to be something fishy going on, besides the fish kill. None of the agencies who are involved with the delta seem to care about what is best for the delta! I guess they have been bought by developers in the region.

BTW, the best way to get corrections to official NOAA Charts is to notify the CG who will place the information in the "Notice to Mariners". NOAA uses this document to update the charts. But don't hold your breath waiting to see an updated chart!
 
That Cache Slough area is not high on the NOAA priority list because it's away from commercial traffic. It will be a while before NOAA changes anything on 18662. The last edition was issued in April of '05 and the last update was in August of this year.

Citizens and help keep the NOAA charts up to date. I used this form to get right to the source of the chart info. You don't need GPS to get the map coordinates: I got them from Google Earth. File a chart discrepancy report with NOAA right here:

http://ocsdata.ncd.noaa.gov/dr/

I filed a discrep last night. NOAA claims it will get back to me regarding my report. I'll let you know how this works out.
 
Looks like that goes directly to Washington DC. This form should probably not be used if your information is a hazard to mariners. That type of info would still need to go to the local CG.
 
We have a very large map of San Joaquin County from 1870 on the wall at work. It is amazing how much the waterways have changed since then. Disappointment and White Soughs are dead ends that connect to the San Joaquin river, and there are some that don't exist anymore like 21 Mile Slough, which is between 14 Mile and Disappointment on the San Joaquin. I don't have a good way to make an electronic copy of it, or I'd post an image of it - it is pretty interesting.
 
That looks pretty similar to the map at work. There is a map similar to ours but of Sacramento County in the lobby of the Wells Fargo building in downtown Sac. It has the two Mokelumne forks labeled as "east" and "west", which as Hal pointed out in one of his books makes more sense than "north" and "south."
 
In the Sierras east of Jackson, there are three forks of the Moke, north, middle and south. Perhaps the labels in the Delta were attempts to maintain that continuity. Tracing that river from its headwaters all the way to where it joins the San Joaquin, the river runs from east to west.
 
And the figner pointing begins....... I hope they all have learned a lesson here!

"Meeting To Address Delta Fish Deaths; Federal, State Officials To Speak

"RIO VISTA, Calif. -- What happened?

That is the question a state committee wants to answer at a meeting in Rio Vista today after thousands of fish died in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta last month.

Officials estimate thousands of fish were killed on Prospect Island after water was drained as part of a levee repair project. Representatives from the federal Bureau of Reclamation and state Department of Fish and Game will testify.

The Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee will hold the hearing at 9:30 a.m. today at the Rio Vista City Council chambers, located at 1 Main St. in Rio Vista."

http://www.kcra.com/news/14788702/detail.html
 
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