By WES SANDER

Capital Press

SACRAMENTO -- The Legislature has passed a resolution urging the federal government to prioritize its study of a project that could protect fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta with swiveling gates.

AJR38 -- introduced by Assembly members Anna Caballero, D-Salinas; Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield; and Juan Arambula, I-Fresno -- is in line for the governor's desk following a final Assembly approval.

The Two-Gates Fish Protection Project involves two temporary, mechanically operated gates intended to help control Delta flows and prevent killing the federally protected smelt.

Planners have said the gates will help keep turbid water, washed into the Delta with rains and spring runoff, upstream and away from the state and federal pumps that send water to cities and irrigators in the Central Valley and Southern California. The endangered Delta smelt have been shown to follow turbid water.

Farmers have blamed their record-low allocations of public water the past two years partly on agency directives and court orders aimed at protecting Delta species, including the smelt.

Caballero says the restrictions have caused the loss of up to 1,150 farm jobs and 21,000 ag-related jobs in the San Joaquin Valley.

Two-Gates was pitched by water interests to the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which then took the lead. But the Bureau earlier this year stalled the project, saying cost estimates had skyrocketed. Backers had earlier pegged it at $29 million, saying user fees and bond revenue could pay for it.

But the Bureau said anticipated costs had risen to $80 million.

Don Glaser, director of the Bureau's Mid-Pacific Region, told water districts in a December letter that "fundamental questions" about the project were forcing the Bureau to take a harder look at a public expenditure of that size.

The Bureau said it was further studying the connection between smelt and turbid water.