During the Sept. 9 Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation attempted to explain the reason behind endangered steelhead deaths in Hilton Creek.
Michael Jackson, area manager for a portion of Southern California that includes Santa Barbara County, presented supervisors with an update on Lake Cachuma and water releases for steelhead, water rights holders, and Cachuma Project Member Units—South County water agencies that pull water out of the lake.
More than 350 steelhead died in 2013 and 2014 because of issues the Bureau had with a pumping system that’s supposed to keep water flowing into Hilton Creek.
“We had various failures of the pumping systems and other failures that were going on that we couldn’t quite control,” Jackson told supervisors.
The pumping system was a stopgap measure designed to kick in if lake levels got too low to gravity feed water into the creek. The constant water flow is a requirement of a biological opinion written by the National Marine Fisheries Service because steelhead are listed as an endangered species. The pumps failed several times in 2013 and 2014, entirely killing flow to the creek, which caused fish to die.
Jackson told supervisors that Reclamation wasn’t able to completely diagnose the issues because the biological opinion didn’t allow the Bureau to turn off both pumps.
“It’s kind of like trying to change a tire while the car is rolling,” he said.
But the Bureau was able to diagnose and fix all the pumping system issues in May and June, and was awarded a contract on Sept. 3 to install an emergency backup system just in case pumping issues pop up again.
Jackson also mentioned that if the lake drops below 30,000 acre feet—it’s currently sitting at 60,000 acre feet—the Bureau can make some changes to the flow out of Lake Cachuma into Hilton Creek.
What those changes will be aren’t penciled out yet.
“We’ve been working with the member units and water rights holders on a proposed scenario that we think will protect all interests,” Jackson said.
This article appears in Sep 11-18, 2014.