From Litigation to Collaboration: How Environmentalists and Water Agencies Went From Fighting Over Fish to Helping Them
'A decade ago, California fish advocates and water suppliers seldom crossed paths except as entrenched opponents in a court of law. Worse, both sides often drew opposite conclusions from the same science on how the state’s massive water delivery projects affect Delta smelt, salmon, and other species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Finally, in 2013, a judge decided he’d had enough.
“The courts got tired of hearing differing interpretations of the science,” says Samuel Luoma, a University of California, Davis research ecologist who has worked in the Bay-Delta for decades. “The judge said, ‘You guys need to start talking to each other―don’t argue it out in front of me!’”
The resulting court order sparked the Collaborative Science and Adaptive Management Program (CSAMP), a surprisingly little known effort considering that it literally brings top people from environmental nonprofits, water agencies, and state and federal fish and wildlife agencies to the same table. Program participants have undertaken the difficult task of finding science-based common ground for safeguarding both fish and the water supply. The former are increasingly imperiled and the latter is increasingly uncertain, as California restricts groundwater pumping and as climate change intensifies drought.'