BYRON, Calif. — It's 2 p.m. and time again to rescue fish at the Tracy Fish Collection Facility.
The plant sits amid tomato fields on a back channel of the San Francisco Bay Delta. Every two hours each day of the year, workers at the plant scoop fish of all sizes and varieties from the water. They've been doing it for the last 50 years.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday March 29, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 Metro Desk 1 inches; 62 words Type of Material: Correction
Mitten crabs -- An article in the California section March 22 about the Tracy Fish Collection Facility erroneously stated that mitten crabs had vanished from the San Francisco bay delta. Although the number of mitten crabs has fallen in recent years, the invasive species is still in the Bay Delta, and some experts are concerned that the crab population could explode again.
If the fish weren't scooped up, they would probably be sucked into the giant pumps downstream that pull water from the delta into the Delta Mendota Canal. Once "entrained" in the pumps, they would be ground to bits.
The canal diverts water to farms in the San Joaquin Valley. Its pumps create a current strong enough to reroute migrating fish. Without the collection plant, entire species might be sucked into extinction.
To prevent this, the fish are flushed into giant vats inside a corrugated-metal building.
Crane-operated buckets lift the fish from the vats onto the plant's floor. There, workers reach inside the buckets and grab the fish. They are identified, counted, measured and flung into another tank.
Sitting on a nearby shelf are dozens of jars, each containing a dead fish of a different species. They are meant to help workers identify the fish they pull out of the buckets all day long.
"I used to fish," said Richard Tegtmeier, a 14-year veteran of the plant, as he tossed a fat catfish that had probably seen better days. "Don't like to anymore."
The fish are eventually loaded into a water truck, which three times a day takes a load of them to a distant point in the delta and dumps them back into the water. Most of the fish survive the ride and, water officials hope, stay clear of the pumps in the future.
"Crude is probably the wrong word for it," but the facility "is crude," said Jeff McCracken, a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokesman. "But it's also successful." Six to 7 million fish are saved each year.
The San Francisco Bay Delta is formed by the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Most of the state's fresh water flows into the delta and once made its way from there to the sea. Today, much of the flow is routed south in two aqueducts.
Besides the Delta Mendota Canal, the nearby California Aqueduct transports enough water to supply more than 2 million people in Southern California. The aqueduct has its own fish collection plant.
Environmentalists acknowledge that the plants save fish, although they believe that the delta and its wildlife would be in much better shape if less water were diverted each year.
