14d

• Board Meeting Date: 9/17/2008
• Description: Director's Report - CWCB Director
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

basin ($1.6M); Solano Irrigation District - $300,000 to line currently unlined canal sections ($901,500);
and West Basin Municipal Water District - $300,000 to help install evapo-transpiration (ET) irrigation
controllers for urban land-scapes one acre or greater in size (total cost $899,198).
Other grants include: the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District in Colorado - $296,724 to install a
telemetry data collection system and gauges to improve water flow measurements ($847,784); Roza
Irrigation District in Washington - $300,000 to replace some eight miles of laterals with PVC pipe and
add weirs with flow meters ($1.2M); Preston Whitney Irrigation Company in Idaho - $300,000 to replace
earthen canals with high-pressure plastic irrigation pipe, convert 200 acres from flood irrigation to
sprinklers and install inline master meters at each reservoir and McCrometer propeller-type meters at
points of delivery ($2.1M); Navajo Agricultural Products Industry in New Mexico - $300,000 to create a
canal gate operating system to reduce canal spills and improve irrigation efficiency ($1.1M); Swalley
Irrigation District in Oregon - $300,000 to pipe 1.9 miles of open canals with seven 7 cubic-feet per
second dedicated to instream flows in the Deschutes River ($ l .5M); Oregon's Three Sisters Irrigation
District - $300,000 to replace canals and ditches with pipes to eliminate excessive seepage losses
($700,000); and the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District in Utah - $300,000 to install a new
diversion structure on the Middle Fork of Dry Creek and connect it to an existing raw water supply
pipeline (total cost $880,154).
Three water districts in Texas received grants: Brownsville Irrigation District - $300,000 to pipe 1,800
linear feet of earthen canal, install two vertical gate structures and install three transducers to measure
water levels in storage reservoirs ($602,048); Cameron County Irrigation District No. 2 - $262,923 to
install ten Rubicon standard flume gate structures and remote flow measurement and control features
($534,843); and City of McAllen Public Utility - $300,000 to insta116,000 linear feet of underground
pipeline and a magnetic meter at the intake side to remotely monitor the amount of water received from
the water supplier (total cost $2,604,000). For more information on Water 2025, please visit
http:llwww.usbr.govlwater2025. (Source: Western States Water Council News Release, Issue No. 1789,
August 29, 2008
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT: On July 8, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (Service) decision not to list the westslope cutthroat trout
(Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi) as a threatened species. The historic range of westslope cutthroat trout
(WCT) includes parts of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Fishermen and several
environmental groups (plaintiffs) argued that hybridization has so imperiled the WCT's existence that it
should be protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The court held that while new data might
require a future listing of the subspecies as threatened, the agency engaged in reasoned decisionmaking
based upon the best available science.
Plaintiffs argued that hybridization jeopardizes the WCT as a subspecies and endangers its ability to
survive harsh conditions. Gene introgression, defined as the "entry or introduction of a gene from one
gene complex into another," occurs when species hybridize. When assessing the risk of introgression to
WCT, the Service adopted the following rule: "For populations for which molecular genetic data may be
the only data available, populations with less than 20 percent introgression will be considered WCT under
the [ESA], whereas populations with more than 20 percent introgression will generally be excluded from
the WCT subspecies." The Service settled on the 20% threshold after reviewing the scientific evidence
and concluded that a natural population of WCT with less than a 20% introgression level is most likely
morphologically indistinguishable from populations of WCT with no hybrid ancestry. While
acknowledging "hybridization remains the greatest threat" to WCT, the Service decided that the risk did
not yet warrant listing.
Plaintiffs challenged the Service's decision under the Administrative Procedure Act, claiming that the
agency's decision to include hybridized fish in the population estimate was arbitrary and capricious.