Federal officials have chided East Bay Municipal Utility District environmental-document authors for not addressing the Mokelumne River's Chinook salmon run in the agency's long-term water-supply proposals.

EBMUD is close to publishing a final version of a document called a Programmatic Environmental Impact Report on various ways to handle long-term water demands in the East Bay area. One way includes building new, taller dams on the Mokelumne at Pardee and Camanche reservoirs. While new dams aren't currently proposed, they are being evaluated as to effectiveness and necessity for long-term water supply to the East Bay area. The fates of salmon, steelhead and sturgeon and the surrounding collapse of the ecology in the Sacramento River Delta are growing socio-political issues in California.

"The Mokelumne River historically supported a robust spring-run Chinook salmon population," wrote area supervisor Maria Rea of the National Marine Fisheries Service May 4 to EBMUD officials, commenting on a draft version of the PEIR document. "Pardee and Camanche dams now preclude spring-run Chinook salmon from accessing their historic holding, spawning and rearing habitats."

The Chinook is a threatened species. Rea made similar comments to EBMUD about the Central Valley steelhead trout, also threatened.

"It is unclear how fisheries were considered during the weighing process for the various water portfolios considered by EBMUD and its constituents," Rea wrote. "NMFS recommends that EBMUD reevaluate the various portfolios within the context of Central Valley salmonid recovery and choose a portfolio that meets the water needs of EBMUD customers while improving salmonid habitat conditions."

The "programmatic" environmental document doesn't address any specific project proposed by EBMUD, and so criticisms from the NMFS are premature concerning threatened-species habitat, said Alex Coate, director of water and natural resources at the water agency.

"We're not building anything," Coate said. "We're just looking for a road map."

The final PEIR document will be published Oct. 1, and EBMUD directors will review it Oct. 13, Coate said.

However, EBMUD should be early in considering the Chinook and the steelhead, said Chris Shutes, water projects director for the nonprofit California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. As the Fisheries Service pointed out to the water agency, the West Coast salmon fishery is "failing," and EBMUD dams are viewed by federal officials as having a part in that failing - because they block access to spawning habitat on the upper Mokelumne.

"There's a lot of habitat above Pardee - good habitat," Shutes said. "I would think somebody will pursue (the issue), unless EBMUD gets religion and decides to take a proactive approach - for example, really look into the fish-passage approach."

Coate said he believed the jury is still out on whether substantial, high-quality spawning habitat exists above Pardee Reservoir.

"At this point, ample habitat exists below the dam," Coate said. "There's a lot of rooms in the hotel, the gravel spawning ground we created."

However, Coate said that at some point a "pass-above" approach to get fish past dams "would need to be considered."