70-year-old scheme could be the future

What if the best way to preserve the Sacramento River salmon had already been proposed 70 years ago, but nobody paid any attention?

The collapse in recent years of the Sacramento River fisheries has lent new urgency and ambition to restoration efforts, pushing federal biologists to propose, among other rescue plans, a multimillion-dollar trap-and-truck operation to promote spawning in the rivers above Lake Shasta.

There might be a way - anything's possible - but on its face the whole notion of fish passage around Shasta Dam is crazy. Trucking salmon has a long history on the Columbia River, where it's been an expensive flop. The estimated cost for trucking around Shasta is $100 million, and that's just a down payment for the first five years. We'd never shake the bill for the chinook's round-trip tickets around the lake. As for a permanent, self-sustaining fish ladder, it would stretch for miles and could easily cost a billion dollars - if it could work at all.

While we're discussing crackpot ideas, though, here's another one for the world to consider: Heed the original advice biologists offered in 1940 when they were asked how to salvage Sacramento River salmon runs that were about to lose nearly half of their spawning gravel to Shasta Dam's concrete wall.

In the Interior Department's "Special Scientific Report No. 10" - commissioned as an afterthought once Shasta Dam was designed, put out to bid and ready to build - a federal team surveyed the rivers and creeks above and below the dam site for ideas on how to avoid destroying fish runs.

They concluded that the single best plan was an elaborate scheme to pipe water 40 miles from the McCloud River - thought to have the best water - to the headwaters of Stillwater Creek near Mountain Gate. The creek naturally dries up in the late summer and fall, but turning it into a steady, year-round waterway - the biologists suggested 150 cubic feet per second - would create 24 new miles of prime spawning habitat.

The main drawback? The price. The Stillwater plan would have cost, they estimated, more than $4.25 million to build - which was prohibitive back in the day but now seems laughably cheap. Adjusting for the intervening decades' inflation, we'd be talking $65 million - real money but still less than many fish-preservation projects in the region, and less than the bus around Shasta Dam.

What's more, the pipe to the McCloud River, which accounted for nearly half the cost, would probably be overkill. The scientists back then figured the salmon wouldn't thrive in reservoir water, but today they happily spawn just below Keswick Dam in cold water out of Lake Shasta.

On the other hand, Redding's suburban growth has encroached on a creek that, 70 years ago, was described as remote and relatively untouched. All manner of human hurdles could block the plan today.

Even so, the Stillwater plan would create an artificial habitat for the fish that, in the long run, might not need more than a little water to maintain. Is it re-engineering a whole watershed? Yes, but it's still a lot more natural and sustainable than an annual convoy of tanker trucks to Lakehead. It's a crazy idea, but the government is treating a lot of crazy ideas with the utmost seriousness these days.

Maybe those old-timers knew what they were talking about.