Questions and Answers on the Long-Term Operation of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project

What changes does the Reclamation and DWR’s proposed action include and how do they benefit salmon?

Shasta Framework - This framework re-envisioned how Shasta Reservoir could be operated to meet multiple management goals including increased drought resilience for both water storage and winter-run Chinook salmon populations. It's a keystone component of this consultation, based on research from the Public Policy Institute of California on lessons learned in Victoria, Australia for managing water for the environment during drought. This should serve as a model for how to improve the resilience of water systems in the face of climate change.

Winter Run Action Plan - The Winter-run Action Plan, WRAP, reinvigorates a commitment to winter-run conservation partnerships through six high-priority actions to improve the viability of the species. The actions include thiamine treatment, reintroduction to the McCloud River, modernization of the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery, improvements to the Shasta Temperature Control Device, habitat restoration, and Early Life Stage Survival Science. 

Adaptive Management Program - The Reclamation and DWR’s proposed action includes a structured adaptive management program that takes into account new science. 

New Delta Loss Thresholds - In addition to the existing seasonal loss thresholds that limit how many ESA-listed fish can be taken at the pumps in the Delta to avoid population-level impacts, the project now also incorporates weekly loss thresholds that will help protect life history structure and diversity of fish populations.

What is the Shasta Framework and what does it do?

Shasta Reservoir is the largest reservoir in the State of California and provides agricultural and municipal water supplies, water required for the survival of salmon and other species, and flood protections.

As climate change has intensified the frequency and severity of droughts, inflow to the Reservoir has reduced. That makes it increasingly difficult to meet the multiple demands that are placed on Shasta Reservoir.

The Shasta Framework is a first-of-its-kind approach for managing the State’s largest reservoir with a framework that anticipates drought rather than responding after the fact. This will provide greater certainty of a stable water for water users and fish species.

The Shasta Framework recognizes that multi-year drought conditions have the greatest impact on reservoir storage levels and fish populations. It also shows that protecting storage in dry years can improve both storage and conditions for fish.

A key principle of the Shasta Framework is that drought conditions affect fish protections, inextricably linking the two. The basic approach is to manage Shasta Reservoir and take actions that will support reservoir storage, especially cold water, if the following year is dry.

The Shasta Framework is built around an objectives-based framework adopted after a multi-year drought event in Victoria, Australia. This seeks to enhance aquatic resources when conditions are wet to very wet, recover resources when hydrologic conditions are moderately limited, maintain conditions during dry periods, and protect conditions when hydrologic and system conditions are stressed during droughts. We refer to these step-wise goals of enhancing, recovering, maintaining, and protecting water resources as Victorian Objectives.

What is the Winter-run Action Plan and what does it accomplish? 

The Winter-run Action Plan (WRAP) is a multi-party plan to improve the status and viability of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon over the next ten years.

The WRAP prioritizes and supports the implementation of six actions, including addressing thiamine deficiency, reintroduction to the McCloud River, early life stage survival science, improvements to the Temperature Control Device at Shasta Dam, modernization of the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery, habitat restoration.

The WRAP establishes policy-level coordination and processes to track plan goals, priorities, funding, resource needs, milestones, and deliverables.

What are the benefits for spring-run Chinook salmon? How will this protect them from continuing severe declines?

The Reclamation and DWR’s proposed action and the biological opinion include actions that protect spring-run Chinook salmon from their spawning grounds in tributaries, down the Sacramento River and through the Delta. A central benefit is consistent pulse flows that help juvenile spring Chinook migrate downriver in spring when the river would naturally have higher flows from spring runoff. The higher flows speed their migration and increase survival.

CVP tributaries all have pulse flows built into spring operations that will improve juvenile survival on their way to the Pacific Ocean. The NOAA Fisheries biological opinion requires operators, to the extent possible, to coordinate and align pulse flows from the different tributaries.

Clear Creek operations include temperature management plans to provide the holding, spawning, and rearing temperatures that spring-run need.

In the Delta, a new spring-run hatchery surrogate program will help inform Old and Middle River Management. The surrogate program will release hatchery smolts at different locations in the Central Valley and follow them as indicators of how conditions affect the distribution and timing of natural populations. If state and federal pumping exceeds loss triggers, agencies will adjust OMR flows to reduce spring-run salvage. 

The proposed action includes the development of a Juvenile Production Estimate (JPE) and salvage and loss triggers so that loss levels at the state and federal pumping facilities can be scaled to population size. A JPE allows salvage limits that are based on population size; so when populations are high, more fish may be salvaged and when populations are low, salvage rates or lower. Scaling the salvage and loss levels to population sizes helps minimize project impacts, especially when populations are low and risks to species viability are high.