Groups Ask Decision on Delta Smelt : Wildlife: Deadline has passed for U.S. to decide if fish is an endangered species. Environmentalists say they will sue if action is delayed further.

SAN FRANCISCO —  Nine environmentalist and scientific groups demanded on Thursday that the U.S. Interior Department decide whether to declare the delta smelt an endangered species, and threatened to sue if the decision is delayed further.

In the letter to the Interior Department, lawyer Michael Sherwood of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund pointed out that the deadline for making the decision came and went two weeks ago.

Sherwood’s letter cited “intense pressure” being directed at the Interior Department, and noted in an interview that state officials involved in pumping water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta traveled to Washington to express their concerns that protecting the delta smelt could disrupt the State Water Project.

“The (U.S. Fish and Wildlife) Service must resist any such pressure; legally it can only consider whether the delta smelt is, as a matter of biological fact, endangered,” he wrote in the letter.

Sherwood said the apparent pressure being applied by state and local water officials from California on the Interior Department was “the only explanation” for the delay.

“Maybe that’s a coincidence and maybe it isn’t,” he said of the visits to Washington. “But we thought it was time to put them on notice that they were violating the law.”

The Endangered Species Act requires that any suit over delays in making a decision be preceded by a formal notice. The letter served as that 60-day notice.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been considering the fate of the delta smelt for more than a year. The deadline for making a recommendation on whether to protect it under the Endangered Species Act was June 29. The Interior Department said a decision would be made within three weeks.

“Fish are dying, and the governor’s water program will kill a few more thousand,” Bill Davoren of the Bay Institute said, explaining why his group was among those that authorized the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund letter.

Other groups include the Sierra Club, Save San Francisco Bay Assn., the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Sacramento River Preservation Trust, Friends of the River, Golden Gate Audubon Society, the Northern California Council of Fly Fishers and the American Fisheries Society, which filed the original petition asking that the delta smelt be protected.

The delta smelt grows to about 3 inches and spends its entire yearlong life in the delta. Its population, which numbered more than 2 million a decade ago, now is estimated at about 200,000.

Some scientists and environmentalists who advocate that it be protected believe that water diversions have caused its decline. A determination that it faces extinction could force reductions in the amount of water that is shipped to farms and cities in California.

In an interview, state Resources Secretary Douglas P. Wheeler acknowledged he met with a deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service last week, and said representatives of the State Water Contractors Assn. met with Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr.

Wheeler said the Wilson Administration does not oppose the listing, but wanted to ensure that federal officials knew about the potential effect on the State Water Project. Wheeler said California officials want a hand in helping the fish recover, while ensuring that water continues to flow from the delta.