Angry Poodle Bites Steelhead

[ Excerpted from Nick Welsh's Angry Poodle column in the SB INDEPENDENT, 3/17/2005 ]:

... Times have gotten sufficiently grim that all but the bravest of us seek solace in nostalgia for things we never knew. The good news is that such escapism need not be futile; it can actually be productive. In this regard, two of my pet projects are coming to a boil simultaneously. The first involves recent efforts to bring baseball back to downtown S.B. and convert Pershing Park into a ballpark fit for the Santa Barbara Foresters, our habitually successful pseudo-minor league team. The second involves efforts to remove the steelhead trout from its precarious perch on the brink of extinction and restore this amazing fish to its rightful place up and down the Santa Ynez River. At first blush, these two seem unrelated. But both call to mind a time of less frenzied lifestyles, when people could actually breathe rather than gasp. They also suggest a moment when Santa Barbara was still a real functioning community, back before a coterie of bored billionaires began pricing all the millionaires out of town.

Admittedly, I was not here in the Good-Ole Daze when Santa Barbara’s Laguna Ball Park — located at Ortega and Laguna streets — hosted minor league teams affiliated with the Dodgers and the Mets. But in a previous incarnation, I lived in a city that had a minor league team, and saw firsthand how the ballpark served as a big outdoor living room for the whole town to get together and visit. I also wasn’t here when the steelhead trout so choked the Santa Ynez River that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers could tap dance from bank to bank on their glistening backs without so much as splashing their shoes. All that ended about 50 years ago, when former News-Press owner, publisher, and all-around political boss T.M. Storke — displaying both political muscle and finesse — persuaded Congress to fund construction of the Bradbury Dam, a k a Lake Cachuma. (At the time, the feds had a strict policy against bankrolling new municipal water supplies, but somehow Storke managed to sidestep that.) The fact is, without the water provided by Lake Cachuma, 90 percent of us could not live here today. But also thanks to Lake Cachuma, more than 90 percent of the steelhead that once called the Santa Ynez home have been effectively wiped out. That’s because the dam blocks the fish from swimming to their traditional spawning grounds many miles upstream. Likewise, the dam stops the trout from making their essential journey out into the ocean and back again. Simple justice dictates we save the fish. They were here first. Beyond that, you can’t help but be in awe of any creature that’s managed to survive the South Coast’s lethal rhythm of fiery droughts and flash floods for the past umpteen million years. To eradicate such a being just for the pleasure of washing our cars and watering plants never intended for the Southern California landscape strikes me as criminally crass.

With that in mind, I was heartened by the striking victory the steelhead won in the halls of the Santa Barbara City Council last Tuesday. The issue was a sleeper. The council was being asked by its water-supply planners to sign a letter to the feds opposing any efforts, real or imagined, to declare any portion of the Santa Ynez watershed above Lake Cachuma as “critical habitat” necessary for the recovery of the steelhead. The feds are involved because the steelhead has been officially declared an endangered species. The water planners were understandably nervous. Such a designation could cost them water, money, or both. In years past, the council would have rubberstamped a letter like this in a heartbeat. But not now. A gaggle of ticked-off fish-huggers showed up to voice their displeasure. Access to the upstream habitat is essential to the steelhead recovery, they argued. These are the sort of people who bandy about words like “heterozygosity” and “haplotype” when they get mad, so they need to be taken seriously. Leading the charge on their behalf were City Council members Das Williams and Helene Schneider. Williams turned the tide when he produced what appeared to be a smoking gun. He all but accused the water planners of intentional deception for failing to include in their report — which cost City Hall $12,000 by the way — a brand-new study showing that the steelhead upstream from Cachuma were genetically wild and pure. That’s significant because the water planners had been arguing that the upstream fish were a mushy mix of domesticated stock fish and predators not worthy of any protection or consideration. Williams’ revelation caught the water planners totally flat-footed, and the rout was on. The planners protested that this new study had just been released and could not have been included in their report. They have a point, but the fish-huggers insist the new info merely confirms data that’s been out for years and that water providers need to abandon their argument that upstream fish are not genetically fit for protection once and for all. At the end of the day, the council wound up doing exactly the opposite of what their water planners had requested. They mailed out a letter saying they supported the designation of critical habitat if that’s what it took to bring the steelhead back. Ultimately, this was but a tiny victory for the steelhead. In the long run, any effort to save them will be snared in litigation with a half-life exceeding that of plutonium. By then, we’ll all be dead.

In the meantime, my plan for the fish — and for baseball — is as simple as it is brilliant. First, build the new ballpark and bring the Foresters downtown. Then, change their name to the Steelheads. It’s macho, it’s cool, and you can actually shout it. No offense folks, but as a name, “Foresters” just doesn’t cut it. Because the team is so good — it’s gotten to the playoffs 11 years in a row — people will actually show up at their games and cheer them on. And by extension — however anthropocentrically incorrect — people will learn to care about the endangered steelhead. Maybe that way, they won’t squawk about paying a little extra — or using a little less — to give this amazing fish a hand. Like I said, I’m a genius. So in the meantime, don’t bug me. I’ve got other fish to fry.

— Nick Welsh

[ SB Independent online edition:
angry poodle ]