As steelhead lurch toward extinction, Sonoma County enters an era of environmental reckoning. A river ecosystem report. But while the federal government has promised to unleash more than mere sound bites upon the county if it fails to solve its watershed conundrums, developmental forces remain poised to push the region's environmental envelope until it bursts with bleak irony. You've got the Sonoma County Water Agency pursuing an EIR process for nearly a doubling of their water appropriations from the Russian River at the same time they're spending millions of dollars on piecemeal restoration projects.
Restoration is certainly an issue, but nature has tremendous recuperative powers.
For now, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the California Department of Fish and Game will be closely monitoring how Sonoma County responds to the challenge of reversing steelhead decline and resurrecting watershed viability. To simply try to go out and use regulations to protect steelhead resources hasn't worked in the past and really won't work in the future. Caught in the intensified crossfire over the steelhead and its habitats are county agencies, municipalities, dairy farmers, winegrowers, and development interests. Virtually no one is without a stake in the issue, and all stand to be impacted by the recent listing. The question is not just what those impacts will be, but how they will transpire and to what degree they can be mitigated.