SPRING SIGN UPS FOR * UPPER SACRAMENTO, McCLOUD   &  LOWER SAC * YUBA RIVER * M.F. FEATHER RIVER * KLAMATH * PUTAH CREEK * PYRAMID LAKE * TRUCKEE RIVER * DESCHUTES * SANDY RIVER * CHETCO OREGON

                       MARCH * APRIL * MAY * JUNE  – 530-926-4540

530-918-8879 OUR INTERNATIONAL PHONE THAT RINGS ME ANY WHERE OR EMAIL AT INFO@JACKTROUT.COM

                                           MORE DESTINATIONS TO CHECK OUT

 

                                         

Cuba Tarpon                                                       Belize Permit                               Pyramid Lake Cutthroat

                          

Chetco River Oregon Steelhead      Sandy River Oregon Steelhead       Spain Pyrenees Zebra Trout

                                  

Romania Transylvania Dracula Trout      Brazil Peacock Bass               Argentina Golden Dorado

                                

Yuba River Steelhead                Middle Fork Feather River Trout         Lower Klamath River Steelhead

Need an up to the minute update? Check out our Facebook Page & Videos – JACK TROUT FLY FISHING FACEBOOK PAGE

   

 

 

 

  

   

After lunch more and bigger trout –

I just did my 3rd trip with Jack today, and we always catch a lot of fish, but today was incredible. We fished the Lower Sacramento. There were lots of boats out but none catching fish like us. I caught probably 8-10 big fish. It definitely had nothing to do with me. I’m a very green beginner. Jack has grown up and fished professionally all the rivers in Northern Ca. Jack just knows where the fish are and how to get you fish. He also has great equipment. If you want to catch fish, Jack Trout is your guide.

Bond jitters spread after Westlands Water District

investigation

Geoffrey MohanContact Reporter

Jitters over a federal investigation of Westlands Water District bled over into the proposed delta tunnel project Thursday as a bond rating agency placed a negative watch on a $29.8-million bond helping to fund the controversial water diversion plan.

Fitch Ratings took that cautious step back because Westlands is the sole guarantor of a 2013 bond issued by the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which operates significant portions of the federal water project in the western San Joaquin Valley.

Westlands is one of 29 members of that authority, which controls more than 3 million acre-feet of water in the western San Joaquin Valley and in San Benito and Santa Clara counties.

“They were issued with 100% Westlands backing,” Fitch analyst Teri Wenck said of the water authority bonds. The rating firm has made clear that any change in the financial evaluation of Westlands would affect the rating of bonds issued by the water authority, she added.

The move comes a day after Westlands reached a $125,000 settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over accounting procedures that the SEC said exaggerated the district’s ability to cover its annual debt payments. The district altered its revenue ledgers to meet a threshold for a high bond rating so it would not have to raise rates for some of the wealthiest growers in the state, regulators said.

Westland’s general manager, Thomas W. Birmingham, joked during a 2010 board meeting that the adjustments amounted to “a little Enron accounting,” a reference to the massive fraud that caused the 2001 collapse of that Houston energy and commodities company, according to the SEC.

The penalty was the largest to be levied by the SEC against a municipal bond agency. Birmingham was assessed a separate $50,000 civil penalty, and the district’s former treasurer, L. David Ciapponi, received a $20,000 fine.

But it may cost Westlands much more. Fitch’s negative watch extends to six other Westland bonds amounting to $193.6 million, plus the $29.8-million bond for the tunnel project.

If Fitch takes further action to downgrade the bonds’ underlying AA ratings, it could affect the district’s cost of borrowing as well as the market for the bonds.

The authority and its members have been fighting delta water restrictions aimed at protecting the state’s fisheries, and have pushed for diversion tunnels that would shunt Sacramento River water around the ecologically fragile estuary system.

Critics of the tunnel project don’t believe that growers will be able to shoulder the cost, an argument they say has been bolstered by Westland’s questionable accounting practices.

Westland spokesman Johnny Amaral said the district would have no public comment until it consulted with its bond advisor. An officials for the water authority did not return calls for comment Thursday. On Wednesday, a district statement said the accounting procedures at issue were approved by an independent auditor.

“Westlands, Birmingham and Ciapponi determined that entering into the settlement to fully resolve the matter was in the district’s best interest,” the statement said.

At issue was a “debt service coverage ratio,” a measure of the district’s ability to collect enough revenue to meet or exceed its annual debt obligations. Because of the district’s “extraordinary accounting procedures,” that figure was 10 times higher than it would have been using conventional accounting procedures, the SEC said.

That calculation obscured expenses incurred because of water cutbacks prompted by the state’s drought and allowed the district to avoid raising rates for its clients, which include some of the biggest agricultural companies in the state, according to regulators. Westland received only 10% of its contracted allotment from the Central Valley Project in 2009, and 45% in 2010.

A public agency governed by landowners within its borders, Westlands had operating revenue of more than $120 million in 2014. It contracts with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for taxpayer-subsidized irrigation supplies, which it sells to growers.

geoffrey.mohan@latimes.com

 

From: Tom Stokely <tstokely@att.net>

Subject: [env-trinity] Chronicle: Deal set to raze 4 dams on Klamath

Date: April 6, 2016 at 6:24:43 AM PDT

To: Env-trinity <env-trinity@velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us>

Reply-To: Tom Stokely <tstokely@att.net>

Deal set to raze 4 dams on Klamath

Biggest river renewal project in U.S. history

BY CAROLYN LOCHHEAD

Jeff Barnard / Associated Press 2009

The Iron Gate Dam spans the Klamath River near Hornbrook (Siskiyou County). Iron Gate and two other dams to be demolished are in California; the fourth, J.C. Boyle Dam, is just north, in Oregon.

Todd Trumbull / The Chronicle

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and California officials are expected to announce a landmark agreement Wednesday to tear down four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, bypassing Congress to restore a major salmon fishery on the Oregon border.

The dam removals would set in motion the largest river restoration in U.S. history and signal an end to one of the most contentious water fights in years. Since 2001, the Klamath basin has seen farmer bucket brigades, clashes with American Indian tribes, commercial fishery shutdowns and the largest fish die-off ever on the West Coast.

A high-profile news conference to announce the deal is set for Wednesday at the Yurok Reservation in Klamath (Del Norte County), with Gov. Jerry Brown joining Oregon Gov. Kate Brown; Interior Secretary Sally Jewell; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency Administrator Kathryn Sullivan; and Stefan Bird, chief executive of Pacific Power, a division of PacifiCorp, which owns the dams.

States work with feds

“The two states and Secretary Jewell decided this is too important a place to too many people to walk away from trying to solve these tough problems,” said California Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham.

“We more or less locked ourselves up and we produced the details” of the dam removal after outlining the deal two months ago, Bonham said.

State officials decided to move forward on a 2010 pact among the warring Klamath basin parties. That pact called for dismantling the dams but required congressional approval. Republicans, especially Californians opposed to dam removals in general, refused to consider legislation and let the pact expire in December.

The parties now intend to bypass Congress by using a dam delicensing process at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency that oversees hydroelectric power. The plan calls for removing the four dams by 2020, the same time-line set by the original pact.

“What we believe we’ve found here is a way to go forward that doesn’t require approval from Congress,” said Bob Gravely, spokesman for PacifiCorp.

The company will pay the first $200 million of the cost of removing the J.C. Boyle, Iron Gate, and Copco 1 and 2 dams. Estimates of the full job run as high as $450 million.

Brown has proposed setting aside $250 million to finish the job, which the Legislature would have to approve. No federal funds will be used.

Less cost, less risk

Keeping the dams could cost as much as removing them. They block about half the Klamath River basin, so relicensing them would require fish ladders and other major capital improvements. Costs for modernization are estimated at about $400 million.

“Having them removed and replacing the power will cost less and lead to less risk than proceeding with relicensing under known terms and conditions,” Gravely said.

The dams were commissioned in the 1940s and ’50s for hydroelectric power, not to store water or prevent floods. Two of the dams created large reservoirs, used for recreation and lined in some places with private homes.

Pacific Power’s 600,000 affected customers have been paying a dam removal surcharge of up to 2 percent of their electricity bills, Gravely said, with about half the cost, $100 million, now set aside.

Brian Johnson of Trout Unlimited, a sport fishing and environmental group involved in the negotiations, said that the dams have blocked half the watershed of the Klamath and that removing them will “open up close to 500 miles of steelhead habitat and about 420 miles for salmon.”

Dams disrupt river ecologies, blocking salmon migrations to upstream spawning habitat and preventing the deposition of sediment downstream that nurtures coastlines.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also has to approve the delicensing plan in a public process at which opponents, mainly farming interests and dam removal opponents, are expected to object.

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, whose district includes some of the basin, said that the new deal will not include assurances of water to basin farmers, but that “I think (the farmers) are going to be fine.”

Bypasses Congress

“The essence of the deal is a private dam owner who wants to get rid of these zombie dams that don’t provide a lot of hydropower and have huge environmental liabilities, and can be part of a transformative river restoration,” Huffman said. “None of this requires any approval or authority or appropriation from Congress.”

Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com