Judge orders U.S. to revise salmon safeguards

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-water-salmon-20110921,0,81605.story?track=rss

A judge ordered a federal agency Tuesday to rewrite protections for migrating salmon that have reduced water shipments from Northern California, concluding that some of the pumping curbs were based on "equivocal or bad science."

But in a mixed ruling, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger also said that the National Marine Fisheries Service was justified in finding that government water operations that export supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta jeopardize dwindling populations of chinook salmon and several other fish on the endangered species list.

Jurist also rules that a federal agency was justified in finding that exporting water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta jeopardizes endangered species.