Federal judge: Russian River dam releases are violating Endangered Species Act

A federal judge ruled Monday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has violated the Endangered Species Act by disturbing salmon populations through flood-control releases from Coyote Valley Dam into the Russian River.

Those releases, which relieve pressure upstream from the 66-year-old dam during rainy months, kick up sediment from the bottom of Lake Mendocino, a reservoir that serves as critical water storage for Sonoma County.

The sediment increases turbidity in the river that harms and harasses coho and chinook salmon and steelhead trout in violation of the Endangered Species Act’s mandate to protect the imperiled species, U.S. District Court of Northern California Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley ruled.

Corley ruled on a lawsuit brought by Sean White, who has spent much of his career involved in the Russian River in one way or another, serving as general manager of the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District before moving in 2015 to direct sewage and water services for the city of Ukiah.

White brought the lawsuit as a private citizen. The Endangered Species Act, one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws, allows for citizens to sue governments, businesses or individuals they believe to be violating the act.

“Today’s ruling from the Northern District confirms there has been complete institutional failure in protecting endangered species from the effects of Coyote Valley Dam — essentially reducing our beautiful river to a dirty, muddy mess,“ White said in a news release Monday.

Corely found that the Corps’ own data concurred with White’s tests, which he largely conducted on his own, to indicate there was no factual dispute that the releases were increasing turbidity that harmed salmon and steelhead in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

“Judge Corley’s decision is a great example of how our legal institutions is supposed to work by simply declaring what the facts and the law are,” White’s attorney, Phil Williams told The Press Democrat.

North Coast Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, also cheered Corely’s ruling.

Huffman has been advocating for years for the Corps to study raising Coyote Valley Dam to increase Lake Mendocino’s water storage capacity and redesign its outflows to reduce turbidity.

“I was surprised, frankly, that its been allowed to happen for so long,“ Huffman said of the river-clouding releases. ”It’s just undeniable and its really significant.“

The court order comes roughly two months after Huffman touted a $500,000 federal appropriation for a study on raising the dam. Coupled with the judge’s ruling, the two developments are a powerful step toward a major dam project.

That infrastructure project “would fix the water quality problem,” Huffman said, “and we now have a court ruling telling them they have to fix (that problem).”

In brief answers to Press Democrat questions, Army Corps of Engineers San Francisco District counsel Merry Goodenough said the lawsuit would not have long-term impacts on the agency’s plan for the dam.

While Corley ruled against the Corps of Engineers, she did not order them to stop releases. With the wet season now mostly in the rear view mirror, the judge said in her ruling that issuing an immediate injunction was unnecessary, as dam operators were shifting from flood control to water supply operations, which are managed by the Sonoma Water, the county agency and the region’s dominant drinking water supplier.

Sonoma Water is not a party to the lawsuit, Assistant General Manager Brad Sherwood said in a statement to The Press Democrat, and the claim does not involve the agency’s water supply operations.

Meanwhile, the Corps is already engaged in drafting a new plan to manage releases in a way that mitigates impacts to the salmon. In his lawsuit, White contended, and Corley agreed, that the Corps has violated a biological opinion issued in 2008 by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which oversees imperiled salmon stocks.

That opinion, a guiding document for river managers, found the dam was “a major contributor to sustained turbidity in the Russian River,” and included a directive to the Corps to draft a plan minimizing turbidity by 2014.

The biological opinion expired in September 2023 and the federal agencies have not yet replaced it with an updated version.

“Had the 2008 Biological Opinion not expired in September of 2023, we would have had a different result,“ the Corp’s Goodenough wrote in her response to The Press Democrat.

Instead of issuing an immediate injunction that would order the federal government to alter its flood release plans, the judge said she would take the matter back up in August, and look to see if the Corps had taken steps toward crafting a new management plan for making the releases in a manner that might better protect the fish.

Until then, “there is no reason … to step into the shoes of the expert agencies to prematurely determine what is the best dam operation practice,” for the fish, Corley wrote.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, White told The Press Democrat he began testing turbidity at different points of the Russian River — below Coyote Valley Dam, above it and at different tributary points — out of his growing frustration over what he believed were damaging dam releases. The Corps had documented for years that its releases were increasing turbidity to a point that would harm imperiled salmonid populations, he said, but had not acted.

“That’s what’s most bothersome of this entire endeavor,“ he said. ”Nobody held them accountable for fixing it.”

He conducted the tests on his own time and paid for analysis out of his own pocket, he said, to build a case that the dam releases were violating the Endangered Species Act.

Environmentalists and water managers have long known the placement of the dam’s outlet meant that sediment from Lake Mendocino’s bottom was being released into the Russian River. But many considered it a flaw in the dam’s antiquated design that couldn’t be rectified without a major reconstruction project.

“The way the dam was built it was designed to scour out sediment as it accumulates around that outlet and send that downriver,“ Don McEnhill, director of environmental group Russian Riverkeeper, told The Press Democrat Tuesday.

“The only way that can be fixed truly is by changing the outlet structure,” he said. Any federal judge would be reluctant to issue an order that could interfere with the Corps’ flood control management efforts, McEnhill noted, which protect Ukiah and other inhabited areas.

McEnhill said Russian Riverkeeper has also advocated for a dam-raising project.

White and his attorney however say the Corps could protect salmon and steelhead runs sooner, including by limiting the duration of their releases to mimic the natural turbidity in high flows that fish are adapted to.

After a strong rainstorm, the river naturally clouds through sediment runoff, White said, but clears itself out with time. Turbidity from Coyote Valley Dam releases last significantly longer than those natural cycles, he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on X (Twitter) @AndrewGraham88