Water Board Asks Scott and Shasta Rivers to Wait 5 More Years. Flows and Salmon Continue to Struggle

The Scott and Shasta Rivers are two of the Klamath Basin's most important salmon strongholds. As flows trickle below minimum standards in the Scott and salmon populations decline below depensation thresholds in the Shasta, the North Coast Water Board is considering another five-year extension of a temporary water-quality program.

Different Rivers, Different Goals

A Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL, is basically a pollution cleanup plan. It identifies what is impairing a river, sets targets for restoring water quality, and divides responsibility among the sources contributing to the problem. 

The Scott River's TMDLs address excessive water temperatures and sediment. Their goals include restoring streamside shade and reducing human-caused sediment from roads, stream crossings, eroding banks, and disturbed land. The Scott also has a newer impairment for excessive plant and algae growth linked to nutrients, low dissolved oxygen, and high pH. Critically low flows are not a separate pollutant allocation in these TMDLs, but they make all of these problems worse: shallow water heats faster, habitat disconnects, and nutrients and other pollution become more concentrated.

The Shasta River's cleanup plan addresses excessively warm water and dangerously low dissolved oxygen. The goals include restoring streamside shade, preventing tailwater from heating the river, and reducing nutrients and organic matter that fuel aquatic-plant growth and consume oxygen. The TMDL also recognizes that Dwinnell Dam and Lake Shasta, surface-water and cold-spring diversions, groundwater conditions, irrigation tailwater, and altered flows all affect river temperature and oxygen. Shasta's cold volcanic springs could provide exceptional salmon habitat, but diverting that cold water while returning warmer, nutrient-rich tailwater changes the conditions salmon need to survive.

What is the Water Board Deciding?

About twenty years ago, the state adopted pollution-cleanup plans for the Scott and Shasta. In 2018, the North Coast Regional Water Board created a temporary program governing agricultural activities that can affect water quality. The Board has been working on stronger, more complete rules that would require enrollment, clearer monitoring, and more consistent accountability.

Those stronger rules are now expected to reach the Board in 2027. Yet the proposal under consideration would allow the old temporary program to remain in place until 2031. We understand the need to keep some protections in place while the new program is completed, but why do we need another 5-year extension?

Millions of dollars have already gone into fencing, planting, irrigation upgrades, fish passage, and habitat restoration. While this work is valuable and many landowners are working hard to do the right thing, the test is whether water quality and salmon habitat are measurably improving.

Flows

For most of August, the Scott River near Fort Jones has been hovering around 6 cubic feet per second. The emergency minimum for August is 30 cubic feet per second. In plain English, the Scott has been running at about one-sixth of the minimum flow intended to protect fish. This means less connected habitat, warmer water, shrinking pools, and fewer places for juvenile salmon to survive. Low flow also makes existing water-quality problems worse because warm tail water, nutrients, and other pollution are less diluted.

Scott River near Fort Jones, July 27-August 25, 2026. The river dropped to about 5-7 cubic feet per second around August 5 and remained there for most of the month. Source: Dreamflows graph using provisional U.S. Geological Survey gage data.

This year the Scott flows fell below the minimum requirement on May 21, triggering unusually early curtailments. The State Water Board’s records do not show an earlier date when curtailments were triggered.

EPIC has also received reports from fisheries crews familiar with rescue work in the watershed that crews have repeatedly had to scramble to relocate juvenile fish stranded as tributaries disconnect. The same individual reported seeing Shackleford Creek dry while nearby irrigation canals were still carrying full water deliveries. This contrast deserves better monitoring and coordination. Crews can move some fish to safer water, but rescue buckets are not a substitute for a functioning river. The young fish struggling through these conditions now are the adults that will return several years from now.

Fish

Coho salmon in both rivers are protected as a threatened species under state and federal law, and freshwater conditions are only one part of their journey. California's monitoring estimated 509 adult and younger returning coho in the Scott in 2025. Only seven coho were counted in the Shasta. Federal recovery criteria call for 6,500 returning spawners in the Scott and 4,700 in the Shasta. The Shasta population is considered at high risk of extinction, while the Scott remains one of the most important wild coho populations in the Klamath Basin.

The long view of the Shasta is sobering. The graph below shows annual coho counts going back to 1978. The older numbers need an important warning label: from 1982 through 2001, sampling ended before November 12 and likely missed much of the run. The more complete modern record is still grim. Shasta coho returns have generally been measured in the tens in recent years, ending with just seven fish counted in 2025.

Shasta River coho salmon counts by year. Source: California Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2025 Shasta River Adult Salmon Studies: Final Report (July 2026).

After nearly twenty years of delays for state cleanup plans for these rivers, the public should be able to see whether the conditions we can control, such as water temperature, dissolved oxygen, sediment, nutrients, tailwater, and streamside shade, are improving before voting whether to delay WDRs for another 5 years.

Take Action:

The North Coast Regional Water Board is expected to adopt the Draft TMDL Conditional Waivers at its October 1-2, 2026 meeting in Siskiyou County with remote participation available. Meeting notices and Public Comment sign-up links will become available closer to the Oct 1 meeting date. 

TALKING POINTS:

• Keep the replacement water-quality rules on a firm public schedule and limit the extension to the shortest time necessary.

• Show the public whether temperature, dissolved oxygen, sediment, nutrients, tailwater, streamside shade, and salmon habitat are measurably improving.

• Address how low flows magnify water-quality problems and disconnect fish habitat.

• Require meaningful monitoring, transparent data, and independent enforcement that protects both the rivers and landowners who comply.

• Make sure the final program accounts for the very different needs of the snowmelt-driven Scott and the spring-fed Shasta.

The Scott and Shasta should be moving measurably toward recovery. The rivers, the salmon, Tribal communities, fishing communities, and downstream ecosystems that depend on them cannot afford another five years of waiting for the regulatory framework to catch up with rapidly deteriorating river conditions.