An ecosystem includes all of the living organisms (plants,
animals and microbes) in a given area, interacting with each
other, and also with their non-living environments (air, water
and soil).
Ecosystems are dynamic and are impacted by disturbances such as a
drought, an extraordinarily freezing winter, and pests.
Longer-term disturbances include climate change effects.
Ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services upon which
people depend. Ecosystem management emphasizes managing natural
resources at the level of the ecosystem itself and not just
managing individual species.
The California Legislature was the first in the country to
protect rare plants and animals through passage of the California
Endangered Species Act in 1970. Congress followed suit in 1973 by
passing the federal Endangered Species Act.
At the April meeting of the California Water Commission, as
part of their continuing work on examining the state’s role in
financing conveyance projects that could help meet needs in a
changing climate, the Commissioners heard from a panel of
speakers about state policy considerations for conveyance and
the cross-cutting issues of flood-managed aquifer recharge
(flood-MAR), green infrastructure, collaborative partnerships
and governance, and innovation. … Michael George, Delta
Watermaster, … pointed out that it’s physically,
ecologically, and economically impossible to squeeze water out
of the Delta for export.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a landmark water protection bill
Wednesday to ensure clean water in nearly 800 Arizona streams,
lakes and rivers that are critical for everyday use. The
legislation will preserve water quality, list protected Arizona
waters and develop management practices that will protect the
waterways.
It’s that time of drought again. During one of the driest years
on record, once again curtailing water deliveries to local
farms, Fresno-area lawmakers wasted little time trotting out
one of their favorite falsehoods. That every year, including
the parched ones like 2021, California “wastes” millions of
gallons of water by “flushing it to the ocean.” Central San
Joaquin Valley residents have heard this declaration so often
and for so long, from the mouths of politicians and parroted on
talk radio, that many of us believe it’s true.
Just a short drive south of Palm Springs, you’ll find
California’s largest lake. The drive along the circumference of
the Salton Sea reveals surprising, majestic views unlike
anything you’d expect to find in the desert. But for its
impressive sights and size, the Salton Sea is not a household
name, least of all in the very state it’s found. These days, if
you travel along the increasingly shrinking shorelines, you’ll
see suffering communities dotted with abandoned homes and lined
with silent streets.
In a hotter climate, dirt is a hot commodity. With sea levels
expected to rise 3 to 6 feet by the end of the century, coastal
communities are moving fast to construct major shoreline
projects to protect themselves. As the size of these projects
expands, the primary building materials — dirt and mud — are
getting scarce. … [Parts of San Francisco Bay
were] once used for industrial salt making, and giant
evaporation ponds were built here more than a century ago. Now,
its marsh habitat is being restored as part of the Eden
Landing Ecological Reserve. The old salt pond levees still
stand between the bay and hundreds of thousands of people on
the shoreline. But waves and weather have eaten away at them.
Hear directly from a range of experts offering a variety of
perspectives on our May 20 virtual Lower Colorado River Tour as
they put into context the 20-plus year drought on what is the
most contested and meticulously managed river in the United
States. Among the experts featured are farmers, tribal
representatives, and managers from wildlife agencies, water
districts, the Bureau of Reclamation and others who will
discuss drought impacts, habitat projects, farming and
restoration efforts at the Salton Sea.
On Monday May 3rd, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations (PCFFA), the West Coast’s largest trade
organization of small-scale commercial fishermen and women,
signed on to a letter asking Representative Katie Porter (D –
Ca 45th) in her capacity as Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on
Government Operations and Chair of the Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations, to open an investigation into
Reclamation’s manipulation of government cost accounting
standards and its own longstanding criteria for allocating
costs owed by Central Valley Project water and power
contractors (Contractors).
More than a decade of collaboration between public agencies
yields tremendous benefit to Orange County’s water supply
following approvals by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps)
associated with the Chief of Engineer’s Report for the Prado
Basin Ecosystem Restoration and Water Conservation Feasibility
Study. For the Orange County Water District, this critical
action increases water storage and habitat restoration behind
Prado Dam.
The federal government is strictly curtailing irrigation this
year in an attempt to protect endangered fish important to
Indigenous tribes. Farmers say this will make it all but
impossible to farm, while tribal groups say the plan doesn’t go
far enough to save their fisheries. In mid-April, a farming
region in southern Oregon began to release water from the
Klamath River into its irrigation canals. … [A]ccording to
the federal government, it was an illegal maneuver that could
further jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species
and food sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries
in the region.
Conservationists in California and across the West are deeply
skeptical of hydropower, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s
a long history of government agencies damming spectacular
canyons, choking off rivers, obliterating fish populations and
cutting off access to Indigenous peoples. … But despite the
environmental damage they’ve done, many dams also generate
electricity that is free of planet-warming carbon emissions.
Tearing down dams can revitalize ecosystems, but it can also
contribute to a climate crisis that is making rivers around the
world drier in some cases, more prone to flooding in others,
and in many cases hotter and more polluted.
-Written by Sammy Roth, a Los Angeles Times staff
writer.
California’s drought is forcing hatcheries to truck young
salmon to the San Francisco Bay because the fish would
otherwise likely die trying to swim on their own
downstream to the Pacific Ocean. The Coleman National Fish
Hatchery along Battle Creek in Shasta County plans to drive
about 950,000 fall chinook salmon smolts in May to increase
their chances of survival.
In many American communities, rivers irrigate the farms that
feed families, quench people’s thirst—rivers are the source of
more than two-thirds of the drinking water in the U.S.—sustain
wildlife habitat, and provide an economic boost for
communities. Yet only a very small portion of those waterways
are protected from threats ranging from pollution to damming,
which would wreck the water’s natural flow.
… California’s Regional Water Quality Control Boards
have authority to designate ONRWs but to date have done so for
only two bodies of water: Lake Tahoe and Mono Lake. However,
the state did initiate an analysis of the Smith River as
an ONRW but has not completed the effort. The Smith is a
Pacific salmon stronghold.
Melting snow and flowing irrigation ditches mean spring has
finally arrived at the base of Grand Mesa in western
Colorado. Harts Basin Ranch, a 3,400-acre expanse of
hayfields and pasture just south of Cedaredge, in Delta County,
is coming back to life with the return of water. … The
ranch has the No. 1 priority water right — meaning the oldest,
which comes with the ability to use the creek’s water first —
dating to 1881. … [The ranch's owners] have been
accused of water speculation — which means buying up the ranch
just for its senior water rights and hoarding them for a future
profit.
Many miles of streams and rivers in the United States and
elsewhere are polluted by toxic metals in acidic runoff
draining from abandoned mining sites, and major investments
have been made to clean up acid mine drainage at some sites. A
new study based on long-term monitoring data from four sites in
the western United States shows that cleanup efforts can allow
affected streams to recover to near natural conditions within
10 to 15 years after the start of abatement work. The four
mining-impacted watersheds—located in mountain mining regions
of California, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana—were all designated
as Superfund sites …
In our latest effort to ensure that our water management and
farming practices both protect and enhance environmental
benefits in our area, Garden Highway Mutual Water Company
(Garden Highway) recently completed a project to screen its
diversion on the Feather River. This project allows us to
protect Chinook salmon and other fish species from entrainment
while diverting water year-round to irrigate crops and to
provide Pacific Flyway habitat during the fall and winter
months. The project was a cooperative effort between Garden
Highway, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau
of Reclamation U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Family
Water Alliance.
Phase 3C of the Lower Clear Creek Floodway Rehabilitation
Project has been completed, attracting fish and wildlife to new
habitats and people to new recreation opportunities. This phase
concludes the extensive and decades-long effort to restore more
than 2 miles of stream channel on Bureau of Land Management
property below Whiskeytown Dam. It was led by the Clear Creek
Technical Team, which includes BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, Yurok Tribe and other federal,
tribal, state, local agencies and stakeholders.
At the Water Education Foundation, we focus on telling the
complex story of water in California and the West because of
its critical role in sustaining our lives, growing our food and
nourishing our environment. As a nonprofit we rely on the
generosity of people who value what we do – enhancing
public understanding of our most important natural
resource and catalyzing critical conversations to inform
collaborative decision-making.
Donate here to help us keep doing what we do, and
join us for a virtual open house at 4:30 p.m. today.
California’s current drought is already off to a strong start,
with some major challenges already looming just two years in.
Compared to the drought of 2012‒16, the normally wetter
Sacramento and North Coast regions have been hit much harder
than the rest of the state. Beyond the local challenges this
poses, drought in the Sacramento region is already having
statewide implications, given its key role in supplying water
to farms and cities further south.
The Fish and Wildlife Service said today it will deny federal
protections to three salamander species that environmentalists
fear could be put in danger by a proposed California dam
project. Pressed by a lawsuit to make a decision, the federal
agency concluded the Shasta salamander, Samwel Shasta
salamander and Wintu Shasta salamander don’t need to be listed
under the Endangered Species Act even if plans proceed to
expand the Shasta Dam by raising it.
A familiar scene has returned to California: drought. Two
counties are currently under emergency declarations, and the
rest of the state could follow. It was only four years ago when
a winter of torrential rain finally wrestled the state out of
its last major drought, which had dragged on for five years and
left thousands of domestic wells coughing up dust. That
drinking-water crisis made national headlines and helped shine
a light on another long-simmering water crisis in California:
More than 300 communities have chronically unsafe drinking
water containing contaminants that can come with serious health
consequences, including cancer.
Experts say a statewide drought declaration … could bring
significant consequences for the regulatory structure governing
California’s complicated water-delivery system. Many farmers
believe an emergency order could loosen environmental
regulations and free up water supplies for them. Environmental
groups fear the very same thing – that more of California’s
dwindling water supply could be directed to farming at the
expense of fish and wildlife.
A federal judge’s decision rebuffed environmental groups’
effort to increase water flow from California’s Twitchell Dam,
stating that wildlife conservation was not among the dam’s
authorized purposes and that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
(Bureau) had no authority to modify the water releases for
conservation purposes. U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr.
sided with defendants in San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper v.
Santa Maria Valley Water Conservation District, rejecting
plaintiffs’ claim that by failing to release enough water to
benefit protected steelhead trout, the Bureau and local water
district were in violation of the ESA.
Regenerative farming practices integrate the entire ecosystem —
building upon the relationships of the natural world — to
simultaneously produce healthier, more abundant crops and
restore the Earth’s natural resources. … And
restoring soil health and fertility produces more abundant,
nutrient-dense crops that better resist pests and disease. It
increases soil’s ability to filter and store water, reduce
erosion and sequester carbon. And it builds a diversity and
abundance of microbes that drive every function of soil.
The beaver does more to shape its environment than nearly any
other animal on Earth. They can cause incredible amounts of
destruction to infrastructure; downing power lines, and
blocking and rerouting waterways. But their dam-building also
can improve water quality, reduce flood risk, and create the
conditions for complex wetland habitats to form —providing
refuge for wildlife and storing carbon in the process.
California is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet,
and the San Diego region is one of the most diverse in
California, but we are losing our biodiversity at an alarming
rate. The coming summer months and dry conditions are going to
further hurt that richness of life here. Conserving our water
resources directly and indirectly benefits our wildlife and is
consistent with the overall conservation ethic in San Diego,
which is why we need to prepare in case drought conditions
worsen.
-Written by Chuck Bonham, director of the CA Department of
Fish and Wildlife.
California could get 600,000 new acres of federally protected
wilderness under legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate
recently. The designation would ensure the lands remain free of
development, vehicles and commercial activity. … It
would also designate more than 583 miles of river — including
45 miles of San Gabriel River tributaries, as well as Little
Rock Creek — as “wild and scenic rivers,” a protection that
prohibits dams or new mining.
Seven years ago, after the fish died, Sarah Ryan decided she
couldn’t wait any longer for help. California at the time
was in the depths of its worst drought in the last millennium
and its ecosystems were gasping. For Ryan, the fish kill in
Clear Lake, the state’s second largest and the centerpiece of
Lake County, was the last straw. Ryan is the environmental
director for Big Valley Rancheria, a territory of the Big
Valley Band of Pomo Indians that sits on the ancient
lake’s western shore. She and others raised alarms for several
years about increasingly dire blooms of toxic
cyanobacteria.
A little more than a week ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that
not only would California effectively ban hydraulic fracturing,
or fracking, by 2024, but the state also would work to phase
out oil extraction entirely by 2045. … It was — like the
governor’s promise last year that the state would ban the sale
of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — a sweeping pronouncement
meant to show urgency in addressing climate change while the
state he leads struggles with many of its most dire effects.
But meeting those goals requires complex regulatory
maneuvering.
According to reports collected by Cal DFW, a low amount of Coho
Salmon, age 0+ and 1+, have been trapped this spring while
exiting the Shasta River Basin and Scott
River. … Felice Pace, the Water Chair of the North
Group Redwood Chapter Sierra Club, says … the Shasta and
Scott Rivers should be top producers of Klamath River Coho
Salmon, but links that poor regulated irrigation is preventing
the salmon to reach the best spawning grounds and is killing
juvenile Coho Salmon before they can move out of the Klamath
River.
Wild horses and donkeys are often considered a problem in the
American West, but new research suggests their penchant for
digging wells with their hooves offers benefits to the
ecosystems they inhabit, reports Douglas Main for National
Geographic. The study, published this week in the journal
Science, shows that when wild or feral horses and donkeys dig
wells, they increase the availability of water for other
species living in the parched desert landscape. These wells can
be up to six feet deep and provide access to groundwater to
species including badgers, mountain lions, deer and birds.
On the way out the door, the Trump administration committed
many environmental and financial scandals. One can cost
low-income water users while lining the pockets of one of
California’s largest and most powerful water districts. The
focus of one scandal was the failure of the Trump
administration to collect required fish and wildlife mitigation
costs set out in the Central Valley Project Improvement Act.
Passed by Congress in 1992, it established new financing
rules. -Written by Caty Wagner, the Southern California
Water Organizer for Sierra Club California, and Brandon
Dawson, the acting director of Sierra Club California.
Stop eating meat. Build interstate pipelines. Turn sea water
into drinking water. When our letter writers start making these
suggestions in earnest, that’s how I know we’re beginning to
feel the effects of another drought in California.
-Written and compiled by Paul Thornton, the Los Angeles
Times’ letters editor.
Ever since I started working on Colorado River issues, I have
wanted to travel through the iconic landscape of the Grand
Canyon by boat. I was skeptical of my chances given the highly
coveted and limited number of permits, but this spring I was
lucky enough to be invited on a private trip. For 21 days, we
traveled through this remote stretch where the canyon walls
tower up to 4,000 feet above the river in some places. We
celebrated on the downstream side of big rapids and scrambled
up forgotten side canyons. We spied great blue herons and
merganser ducks on the river’s edge. We saw very few other
people.
With the Colorado River’s largest reservoir just 38% full and
declining toward the threshold of a first-ever shortage,
Arizona water officials convened an online meeting this week to
outline how the state will deal with water cutbacks, saying the
reductions will be “painful” but plans are in place to lessen
the blow for affected farmers next year. Lake Mead’s decline is
expected to trigger substantial reductions in water deliveries
in 2022 for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. The largest of those
cuts will affect Arizona, slashing its Colorado River supplies
by 512,000 acre-feet, about a fifth of its total entitlement.
As demand for electric vehicles heats up, there’s concern about
a shortage of the key minerals needed to make them. The Biden
administration has called for boosting domestic production of
such minerals, including lithium for the lithium-ion batteries
used in electric vehicles. And that has many hoping for big
business in a desolate spot of California’s Imperial Valley. A
few miles from the shores of California’s Salton Sea, a
construction crew is at work on the future site of Hell’s
Kitchen Lithium and Power. It’s a geothermal facility, meaning
it uses Earth’s natural heat to create electricity.
As we rapidly enter another drought, long-standing questions on
ecological impacts of increased temperatures, reduced water
levels and flows re-emerge. This reality recently reminded me
of some of my own previous work looking at growth rate
variations of largemouth bass in response to droughts in the
southeastern USA (Rypel et al. 2009). Results from this work
may be useful/interesting for biologists and managers in
California considering similar questions.
Little is said about the role of Lake Pillsbury in our
regional water system or the critical water it provides
to fill Lake Mendocino. If anything, its importance
to understated or not referenced at all in most media
articles. Without Lake Pillsbury at the Eel River
headwaters to control downstream flows, both the Eel and
Russian Rivers and surrounding aquifers will intermittently dry
up. … A strong movement is afoot to remove Scott Dam and
eliminate Lake Pillsbury… -Written by Frank Lynch & Carol Cinquini, Directors of
the Lake Pillsbury Alliance.
British journalist James Bartholomew is widely credited with
creating the phrase “virtue signaling” to describe positioning
oneself on the popular side of an issue without actually doing
anything about it. Politicians are particularly prone to
uttering words or making token efforts on difficult issues to
stave off criticism about their failure to act meaningfully.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is California’s champion virtue-signaler as
he faces a recall election later this year. … There’s no
better example than Newsom’s ever-shifting attitude toward
hydraulic fracturing to increase petroleum production. -Written by Dan Walters
Gold Rush communities celebrate their mining past but are
largely unaware of the lasting impacts of that era. For more
than 100 years public and private investors have purchased and
developed land for public uses seemingly unaware of the
presence and implications of the physical and chemical hazards
found on abandoned mine lands (AMLs). As a result, residents of
the Sierra Nevada’s Gold Country – the state’s headwaters – are
living on top of and surrounded by abandoned mines. The toxic
metals discharged by legacy mines continue to flow down river
and deposit into the San Francisco Bay Delta …
Join us May 6 for our annual open
house where you can test your water trivia knowledge, win
prizes and meet the people behind our programs that foster a
deeper understanding of California’s most precious natural
resource – water. The Foundation’s open house will be held next
Thursday via Zoom from 4:30–5:30 p.m.
A dam that for decades prohibited coho salmon from reaching its
spawning habitat in the Santa Cruz Mountains will be taken down
starting this summer after building materials company Cemex and
the Sempervirens Fund reached an agreement, the environmental
group announced Wednesday. The dam, which is located on Mill
Creek, is on the 8,532-acre San Vicente Redwoods property,
which was formerly owned by Cemex.
Poseidon Water won a key approval Thursday in its long quest to
build a seawater desalination plant on the Orange County
coastline. But the permit from the Santa Ana Regional Quality
Control Board does not ensure that the $1-billion ocean
desalter will rise on the grounds of an old power plant in
Huntington Beach. Poseidon still needs a construction permit
from the California Coastal Commission and, most critically, a
binding deal with a public agency to buy 50 million gallons a
day of purified seawater.
California officials will again truck millions of young salmon
raised at fish hatcheries in the Central Valley agricultural
region to the Pacific Ocean because projected river conditions
show that the waterways the fish use to travel downstream will
be historically low and warm due to increasing drought.
Officials said the massive trucking operation is aimed at
ensuring “the highest level of survival for the young salmon on
their hazardous journey to the Pacific Ocean.”
A lack of wet weather is taking a toll on the state’s water
supply. Chris Orrock, a spokesperson for the California
Department of Water Resources … said while drought-like
conditions are very common for the state, this year is worse
than normal, especially considering back-to-back dry winters
with little snow and rain. It is so dry, in fact, that DWR
canceled Thursday’s snow survey at Phillips Station because
there was not enough snow on the ground.
Disagreement over restoring the Ballona Wetlands still remains
high. Walter Lamb, president of the Ballona Wetlands Land
Trust, recently held a webinar to discuss why the current
restoration plans are inadequate. The Land Trust disagrees with
the assertions of organizations such as Friends of Ballona
Wetlands, as they aren’t supported by available facts. Lamb
based his talking points around Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive
order made on October 7, 2020, of protecting biodiversity and
an announcement phasing out fossil fuels from September 23,
2020.
A North County water district representing irrigated
agriculture near Shandon is asking the state for allocations of
Lake Nacimiento and Santa Margarita Lake water, which it
proposes to pipe into the nearby Paso Robles Groundwater Basin.
While pitched as a potential solution to the Paso basin’s
overdraft, the proposal is already getting blowback from two
county supervisors.
While most irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin are enduring a
spring without surface water, canals in Klamath Drainage
District have been flowing since the middle of April. And KDD
says no laws were broken to make deliveries to its customers.
KDD opened the Ady and North canals on April 15, diverting
water from the Klamath River to serve its patrons. The Bureau
of Reclamation, whose operations plan for 2021 emphasized that
no water deliveries be made to the Klamath Project prior to May
15, sent a letter to KDD asking them to immediately cease the
diversions.
The frequency of natural disasters has soared in recent
decades. Total damage topped $210 billion worldwide in 2020.
With climate change, the costs attributed to coastal storms
will increase dramatically. At the same time, coastal habitats
such as wetlands and reefs are being lost rapidly. Some 20% of
the world’s mangroves were lost over the last four decades.
More than half of the Great Barrier Reef was degraded by
bleaching in 2020 alone. In California, we have lost more than
90% of our coastal marshes. -Written by Michael W. Beck, a research professor in
the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.
This weekend’s rain in Northern California, while welcome, did
little to address the dry conditions across our state. As the
state’s recent dismal snow survey showed, we are in for tough
times ahead. Less snow means lower reservoirs, less water in
our rivers and streams, and more groundwater pumping. And that
spells trouble, particularly for disadvantaged communities and
sensitive ecosystems, which have historically borne the brunt
of California drought in consequences like dry wells and salmon
die-offs.
Attorneys for the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District
filed a complaint with state regulators Tuesday asking that
California American Water Co. be forced to purchase water from
the expansion of a recycling project because Cal Am is failing
to meet a deadline for its part in increasing the local water
supply, according to language in the complaint. Any decision by
regulators is important because it will affect the ability of
the Monterey Peninsula to generate an alternative water source.
Cal Am in 2009 was hit with a state cease-and-desist order to
stop over-pumping from the Carmel River basin.
With the dry year facing California, there is increased
awareness about water quality issues and particularly harmful
algal blooms. The Natural Resources Agency in its Report To The
Legislature on The 2012–2016 Drought provided that “the
drought’s most visible water quality impact was harmful algal
blooms (HABs), which were reported more frequently during the
2012–2016 drought than during prior droughts.”
Does CEQA prevent a Regional Water Quality Control Board from
issuing its own permit under state water quality law? In Santa
Clara Valley Water District v. San Francisco Bay Regional Water
Quality Control Board (2020) 59 Cal.App.5th 199, the First
Appellate District answered “no,” holding that CEQA does not
bar a regional board from imposing additional requirements on a
flood control project, even after the project’s final
environmental impact report (FEIR) was certified.
The US Forest Service is taking public comments on a proposed
exploratory mining operation near the headwaters of Hot Creek
in the Eastern Sierra that could lead to harmful open pit
mining near this fishery. We need your help to stop it. This
project is problematic and disastrous in many ways: KORE
Mining wants to drill around Hot Creek for gold with no plan or
guarantee that gold exists in that area. Dredging,
excavation, and hydraulic mining will cause dramatic
stream degradation. The proposal for the exploratory operation
provides no information on how much water is needed, the depth
of drilling, or the negative impact on the wildlife and the
environment.
The West Coast’s most important estuary is dying, and Gov.
Gavin Newsom has hastened its demise. As he took office two
years ago, Newsom promised to generate voluntary agreements
among farmers, environmentalists and government officials on
the rules for allocating water that flows through the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. … [C]onditions in the delta
have grown so dire that in March the National Marine Fisheries
Service estimated that high water temperatures could kill 90%
of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River
this year.
-Written by Jacques Leslie.
Amid the extreme aridity of the vast Colorado Desert of eastern
San Diego County, a ribbon of greenery allows life to thrive.
The Sentenac Cienega area inside Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
is more than 100 miles southeast of Irvine. It contains a
desert wetland, which is part of the San Felipe Creek watershed
that is fed by nearby mountains and ultimately flows into the
Salton Sea. But the wetland is sick from invasive, non-native
plants, and its water levels are dangerously low. Researchers
from UCI are trying to figure out why.
Millions of young salmon raised at fish hatcheries in the
Central Valley will be trucked to San Francisco Bay and other
coastal sites for release, because the rivers they’d normally
travel to get to the ocean are drying up, state and federal
officials said Wednesday. The ambitious trucking program, a
response to the state’s escalating drought, is intended to
maximize survival of the hatchery fish that prop up
California’s fall-run of chinook — the mainstay of the state’s
commercial and recreational salmon industries. Officials in
charge of the five major inland hatcheries that rear the fish
say convoys of tanker trucks are the only way to ensure the
3-inch smolts make it to sea.
In mid-April, a farming region in southern Oregon began to
release water from the Klamath River into its irrigation
canals. According to the local water authority, this was a
standard move to jumpstart the farming season during one of the
driest seasons in recent memory. But according to the federal
government, it was an illegal maneuver that could further
jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species and food
sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries in the
region.
Predicting the effects of forest fuel treatments is difficult
and uncertain — it is unclear whether the treatments are more
helpful to forest health or streamflow. According to new
research by disturbance ecohydrologist Ryan Bart and his
colleagues at the Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI), the
answer is both, though not at the same time. Fuel
treatments for forest management include prescribed burns, tree
thinning and pruning, for example, each of which are done to
reduce fire risk and severity.
Today’s commentary breaks my heart. Why? Because
Restore the Delta is focused on water quality issues, flood
control issues, future planning, and training the next
generation of local water experts – for that is where hope
exists. We are focused on the future because in some ways
we have become very cynical about any positive meaningful
change to Delta management presently — from the lack of care at
the highest levels of government, to local pockets of Delta
communities that will not acknowledge the deterioration of the
estuary before their eyes.
-Written by Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, who serves on
the Executive Committee at Large for Restore the
Delta.
Monterey One Water officials on Monday moved closer to its goal
of providing additional water for the Monterey Peninsula when
it unanimously approved a key environmental report for its
expansion project. The 10 members of the board of Monterey One
Water all voted to approve an environmental document called a
supplemental environmental impact report, or SEIR, that
advances closer to the expansion of its regional treatment
plant. … Monday’s action allows Monterey One to move
closer to expanding its treatment facility — Pure Water
Monterey — to increase the amount of treated water reintroduced
to groundwater and consequently dramatically increase the
Peninsula’s supply.
No one will forget the intense challenges that 2020 brought us,
from record-breaking hurricanes and wildfires to a global
pandemic that devastated our economy and public health. As
Congress and the Biden administration look to help our country
rebuild and recover from these compounding crises, investing in
nature presents an opportunity to deliver multiple benefits for
communities, birds, and other wildlife. Audubon presents a new
suite of policy recommendations for making our communities and
wildlife more resilient to climate change, by putting our
wetlands, barrier islands, and other ecosystems to work.
Deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains, hidden by dense patches of
conifer and far from any paved road, a century-old, abandoned
dam whose purpose remains lost to history is quietly choking a
small, yet important waterway. But not for long. The unnamed,
30-foot-wide dam on Mill Creek, home to one of the southernmost
runs of endangered coho salmon, will be toppled this summer.
The demolition is part of a broader effort to both open up
passage for struggling fish along the Central Coast and restore
a cherished forest known as San Vicente Redwoods.
The competing needs of different protected fish species are
pitting the Klamath Tribes against the federal government in a
court battle with legal implications for Oregon irrigators. The
Klamath Tribes are seeking an injunction to scale back how much
water the federal government can release from Upper Klamath
Lake to the detriment of endangered sucker species that inhabit
it. … The bureau has prioritized flows in the Klamath
river to benefit threatened coho salmon, jeopardizing the
survival of the suckers by allowing the lake to fall below
levels needed to sustain them…
The Bureau of Reclamation, NOAA Fisheries, and U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service announced their plan today for pulse flow
releases from Whiskeytown Dam into Clear Creek in May. Pulse
flows are rapid increases and decreases in dam-released flows
occurring over a short time. The release of water aims to
advance recovery of threatened Central Valley spring-run
Chinook salmon by attracting adult salmon to move upstream to
take advantage of cooler summer water temperatures and improved
habitat. Flow releases for the pulse will begin on May 7 and
reach a peak of 900 cubic feet per second May 8 to 11.
On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) unveiled a new
initiative to ban new and future permits for hydraulic fracking
beginning in 2024. The ban is part of California’s effort to
move away from oil extraction to source fuel, focusing on
developing renewable sources such as wind and solar. Fracking,
or hydraulic fracturing, is the sourcing of oil from deep
subterranean rocks, using a high-pressured water mixture
drilled into the earth that releases natural gas and oil.
While a decades-long battle over one major dam and river
diversion in northern Colorado appeared to end last week,
environmental groups signaled another fight will go on longer
as they filed an appeal meant to undermine Denver Water’s Gross
Dam expansion. The environmental coalition Monday asked
the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to review a dismissal of
their case by a federal district court and order a trial on the
merits of their claims about the dangers of adding 131 feet to
the height of Gross Reservoir Dam. They argue federal review
agencies neglected species-protection laws and other guidelines
when handing Denver Water a permit for Gross.
The California State Water Resources Control Board Friday urged
people and their pets to avoid the water in the Salton Sea due
to a toxic algae outbreak. Officials said that patches of toxic
cyanobacteria have been discovered at numerous sites in the
sea, and a dog recently died after swimming in the water.
“Cyanobacteria harmful algal blooms can affect the skin, liver
and nervous system of people and of dogs and livestock,” the
state water board said. As a precaution, visitors were urged
not to swim in the water, or let their pets enter the water, or
eat algal mats scattered about the shore line.
Along the Oregon-California border, the Klamath River Basin is
a crucial water source for Indigenous tribes, endangered
species, and farmers. This year, though, there is simply not
enough to go around. The Western US is enduring another
major drought, and the Klamath River Basin is at a historic
low. This resulted in different groups being forced to compete
and make their case for why water, now precious and scarce,
should be diverted to their needs. It’s a stark reminder of the
tough, no-win decisions that citizens will continue to face
amid the worsening climate crisis.
Throughout California’s history, rivers have been diverted,
rerouted and contained by concrete. While these actions have
brought agriculture and communities to arid land, and reduced
large-scale flooding, it has also eliminated some of the
natural benefits provided by untamed rivers. Today, efforts are
underway to restore some of the natural riparian areas to the
benefit of both humans and wildlife.
On Earth Day, the California Coastal Commission conditionally
approved a general management plan for a 28,700-acre federally
owned park in the San Francisco Bay Area — a plan vehemently
opposed by conservationists because it calls for killing native
tule elk in an area where thousands of acres of federal land
are leased to small dairy and cattle beef farmers.
… Last year, an estimated one-third of one the
tule elk herds died due to malnutrition, likely
exacerbated by drought conditions which decimated the animals’
foraging habitat at Point Reyes.
Humboldt State University’s Native American Studies Department
and Save California Salmon recently launched a spring webinar
series, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” a look at how
tribes’ traditional fisheries and fire management practices
could address environmental crises. As California prepares for
yet another year of drought, Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy,
department chair of Native American Studies at HSU, said local
tribes are concerned about the health of rivers.
The Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) has approved
approximately $33.5 million in grants to help enhance flows in
streams throughout California. A total of 30 stream flow
enhancement projects were approved for funding at its April 22
meeting. The approved projects will provide or lead to a direct
and measurable enhancement of the amount, timing and/or quality
of water in streams for anadromous fish or special status,
threatened, endangered or at-risk species, or to provide
resilience to climate change.
Both proponents and opponents of the controversial Poseidon
Water desalination plant in Huntington Beach made their voices
heard Friday in an all-day virtual meeting that continued well
into the night. In the end, however, a decision by the Santa
Ana Regional Water Board on whether to permit Poseidon’s
$1.4-billion project will have to wait until at least [this]
week. Another meeting is scheduled for Thursday, with a third
meeting on May 13, as necessary.
Gov. Gavin Newsom directed the state Friday to stop issuing
permits for the oil extraction method known as fracking by
January 2024 and to draw up plans to end all fossil-fuel
drilling in California by 2045 — the most sweeping declaration
of its kind in the nation. … Eliminating all extraction would
have far-reaching consequences in California, the nation’s
seventh-largest producer of crude oil… [Fracking
has] long been a controversial method because of what
climate activists see as unacceptable dangers, including the
possibility that it can contaminate groundwater.
California water officials on Friday issued a draft order
telling Nestlé to ”cease and desist” taking much of
the millions of gallons of water it pipes out of the San
Bernardino National Forest to sell as Arrowhead brand bottled
water. The order, which must be approved by the
California Water Resources Control Board, caps years of
regulatory probes and a public outcry over the company’s
water pipeline in the San Bernardino Mountains, where opponents
argue that siphoning away water harms spring-fed Strawberry
Creek and the wildlife that depends on it.
The water level of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir,
has dropped more than 130 feet since the beginning of 2000,
when the lake’s surface lapped at the spillway gates on Hoover
Dam. Twenty-one years later, with the Colorado River
consistently yielding less water as the climate has grown
warmer and drier, the reservoir near Las Vegas sits at just 39%
of capacity. … The river’s reservoirs are shrinking as
the Southwest endures an especially severe bout of dryness
within a two-decade drought intensified by climate
change, one of the driest periods in centuries that shows no
sign of letting up.
Questions have been raised over California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s
political maneuvers to push a controversial seawater
desalination plant proposed for the Huntington Beach
coastline. Critics say their concerns about the actual
need for the project and its potential environmental effects
remain. The company pushing it, Poseidon Water, remains
steadfast in its intent to build a plant that would suck in 100
million gallons of seawater daily and make half of it
drinkable….[The Regional Water Quality Control] board’s next
hearing is scheduled for [Friday] April 23. If the board
approves the permits, the project then goes for a final say
from the state Coastal Commission.
The Los Angeles River spans nearly 51 miles — running from
Canoga Park to Long Beach. [T]he river changed in the 1930s
after a series of catastrophic floods hit the region and the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers channelized the entire length of
the river — encasing it in concrete — and turning it into a
flood control channel. … [Marissa Christiansen, president of
the Friends of the Los Angeles River, hopes] to bring the
river back to its roots. And, for Earth Week, FOLAR is planning
a huge cleanup. From June to July, the group is asking for help
cleaning up 100 tons of trash from the waterway.
An unseasonably dry March and lack of sufficient water supplies
have foiled a proposed water release by the Oakdale and South
San Joaquin Irrigation Districts that would have boosted
Stanislaus River flows beginning this past week for the benefit
of out-migrating salmon, and also supplied water to farms and
communities in the San Joaquin Valley most vulnerable to
extreme drought conditions. The plan would have sent up to
100,000 acre-feet of water down the river between April 15 and
May 15 in what are known as “pulse flows” to help young salmon
navigate their way toward the Delta and, eventually, out to
sea.
A former member of a Marina water advocacy group filed a motion
with state regulators requesting a change in a water decision
under the pretense of still being a member of the group,
officials with the group say. In a letter emailed to the
California Public Utilities Commission on Monday, Liesbeth
Visscher, the chairwoman of Citizens for Just Water, and Lisa
Berkley, one of the early members of the advocacy group,
informed the commission that a request to change a CPUC
decision, called a Petition for Modification, filed by
Margaret-Anne Coppernoll under the guise of being a current
member of the group was never authorized by the organization.
In fact, Coppernoll hasn’t been a member of the group since
2017 …
Lake Tahoe is known for its mesmerizing clear, blue water.
But there are multiple threats to the lake that may
someday change the color and worse, downgrade the quality
of the water. Some of the most difficult of these threats to
address are invasive species, specifically two types of
aquatic plants that are not native and are moving from an area
of the lake known as the Tahoe Keys into Lake Tahoe
itself. The plants are Eurasian watermilfoil and
curly-leaf pondweed.
A complex Front Range dam-building project that includes
transferring water from the Colorado River will move forward
this summer after Northern Water agreed to a settlement putting
$15 million in trust for waterway improvements in Grand
County. Environmental opponents begrudgingly accepted the
mediated settlement of their lawsuit against Northern Water’s
Windy Gap Firming Project, which involves a menu of waterworks
construction including Chimney Hollow dam near Loveland and
rerouting the Colorado River around Windy Gap Dam near Granby.
Join us May 6 for a
virtual open house where you can test your water
trivia knowledge, win prizes and meet the people behind our
programs that foster a deeper understanding of California’s
most precious natural resource – water. The Foundation’s open
house runs from 4:30–5:30 p.m., when you will be able to bounce
among chatrooms to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and
join a fast and fun trivia contest hosted by our Programs
Director Nick Gray.
A new technique using dissolved noble gas tracers sheds light
on how water moves through an aquifer, with implications for
water resources and their vulnerability to climate change.
… These changes, in addition to other strains including
increasing population pressure and contamination from past and
present industry and agriculture, will affect the flow of
rivers, water quality, and groundwater storage.
Work resumed on the lower Yuba River earlier this month on a
$12 million project designed to enhance the river’s ecosystem
by increasing available juvenile salmon habitat to improve the
natural production of Chinook salmon and Central Valley
steelhead — both of which are listed as threatened under the
Endangered Species Act.
A committee for the Monterey One Water Board has recommended
final certification of an environmental report crucial to the
expansion of Pure Water Monterey, signaling increased momentum
for the recycled water project. The five-member Recycled
Water Committee of the Monterey One Water Board of Directors
voted 4-0-1 on April 15 to recommend the board of directors
certify the completed supplemental environmental impact report,
or SEIR, needed for the expansion.
The nearly 12,000-acre Oroville Wildlife Area (OWA) in Butte
County is a popular stopping place on the Pacific Flyway for
migrating and native birds. After the Oroville Dam was
completed in 1968, the Department of Water Resources (DWR)
contracted with the then California Department of Fish and Game
to operate the Oroville Wildlife Area for the preservation of
fish and wildlife habitat. The OWA also includes DWR’s
Thermalito Afterbay reservoir, a prime habitat for migrating
waterfowl as well as several different Endangered Species.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has appointed Virginia Madueño
to serve as a member of the Delta Stewardship Council (Council)
effective April 14, 2021. The compensation for this position is
$50,497.
The dry year and reduced flows in the Sacramento River System
are challenging the ability for water resources managers to
serve water for cities and rural communities, farms, wildlife
refuges, fish and recreation. Part of the challenge has been
the inordinate focus on temperature management in the upper
part of the river below Shasta Lake. As we have all seen
countless times before, a focus on one species or in this case
one aspect (temperature) of water management is not a path
forward for the long-term, successful recovery of salmon…
A federal court has ruled that Best Best & Krieger LLP client
City of Santa Maria and others are correctly not releasing more
water from a dam above the City, as doing so would be in
conflict with the dam’s Congressional purpose. … The
lawsuit claims the defendants are violating the Endangered
Species Act by not releasing enough water from Twitchell Dam on
the Cuyama River, thereby not providing sufficient water for
federal law-protected Southern California Steelhead trout to
spawn.
Following a temporary delay in Colorado federal court, the
Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR)
will now take effect in Colorado on April 23, 2021. Under
the NWPR, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
Army Corps of Engineers will no longer require permits for
operations affecting certain categories of streams and wetland
areas previously subject to the Clean Water Act.
Floodwaters are not what most people consider a blessing. But
they could help remedy California’s increasingly parched
groundwater systems, according to a new Stanford-led study.
The research, published in Science Advances, develops
a framework to calculate future floodwater volumes under a
changing climate and identifies areas where investments in
California’s aging water infrastructure could amplify
groundwater recharge.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday declared a drought emergency for
Sonoma and Mendocino counties, but resisted calls to issue a
statewide proclamation — at least for now. Newsom’s emergency
order primarily affects communities and water districts in the
Russian River watershed, which includes the cities of Santa
Rosa, Ukiah and Sebastopol. Some 360,000 people live in the
area.
Visit key infrastructure and environmental restoration
sites along the lower Colorado River during our online
tour May 20 of the iconic river as it weaves through the
Lower Basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona. Our
Lower Colorado
River Tour starts at Hoover Dam near Las Vegas and
stops at major agricultural regions, tourist
destinations and key wildlife areas such as the Salton Sea
and a wildlife refuge in Yuma, Ariz. resulting from a
tribal-city partnership.
[A] study, titled “Freshwater Salinization Syndrome on a
Continental Scale,” found at least a third of U.S. streams and
rivers have become saltier over the last 25 years. On December
3, freshwater scientist John Olson of California State
University, Monterey Bay, conducted a modeling study that
validated these results, indicating that the future looks briny
as well. The study is titled “Predicting Combined Effects of
Land Use and Climate Change On River and Stream Salinity.”
Salinization levels will likely increase by at least 50% in
half of U.S. streams by 2100 if salt use persists at its
current pace, according to Olson’s party.
If the San Diego-Tijuana region were a human body, it’d have
the stomach flu: Bad stuff is coming out of both ends. But
instead of tackling the complicated source of the infection,
the border towns are fighting over where to put a Band-Aid. Six
miles from the U.S.-Mexico border lie three giant ponds full of
really old poo that regularly flush into the Pacific Ocean and
flow north along the Southern California coast during summer
tourist season.
A new proposal to drill for natural gas in the East Bay has
environmentalists up in arms, and not just because it’s a
polluting fossil fuel. It’s the location that has people really
upset. That’s because it’s in the Suisun Marsh, the largest
marshland on the West Coast, a highly protected natural habitat
for migratory birds, fish and wildlife. … A dozen
environmental and community groups have submitted a letter
opposing a plan by Brentwood-based Sunset Explorations to build
an acre pad on private property in the marsh and drill an
exploratory gas well there.
We’ve come a long way on stewardship of San Francisco Bay since
1955, when the local head of the Army Corps of
Engineers enthusiastically told The Chronicle, “We’ve been
nibbling at bay tidelands for a long time, but before long we
can attack acres and acres, building new land.”
Unfortunately, we haven’t come far enough. It’s good to have
moved past the idea that shallow waters exist only to be
filled. But if we want to nurture the marshes and mudflats that
remain while restoring former wetlands — steps that can help
protect our shorelines from climate change — then all branches
of government need to work together, and soon.
The state and federal agencies tasked with protecting our fish,
wildlife, and natural resources are once again scrambling to
avoid wiping out this year’s cohort of chinook salmon that
spawn below Shasta Dam. If this sounds familiar, it is because
this scenario is a repeat of attempts to “manage” Shasta
operations in 2014 and 2015, which resulted in over 75% of the
eggs and fry of endangered winter run chinook salmon being
destroyed in both of those years, solely from the lack of
sufficient cold water being released from Shasta Dam …
More than 20 years ago, aquatic ecologist Michael Bogan
interned with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in
Bishop, east of the Sierra Nevadas. It was 1998, a wet year for
California, and the idea of studying water in the desert lodged
in his brain. Desert streams are approachable subjects,
especially compared to, say, a massive and murky system like
the Mississippi River, says Bogan, now a professor at the
University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources and the
Environment: … For Bogan, studying those small systems over
the past two decades has meant witnessing their decline.
A California federal judge rejected environmental groups’ suit
aimed at securing more water releases from a dam near Santa
Maria for protected trout’s benefit, deciding that species
conservation was not among the purposes Congress included in
the project’s authorization.
Last Tuesday, American Rivers released its annual America’s
Most Endangered Rivers list for 2021. Because of a Trump-era
proposal to raise Shasta Dam, the group named northern
California’s McCloud River as the nation’s 7th most threatened
river. Over the past century, California has engineered the
structure of water capture and distribution in the state.
… During the Trump administration, then Secretary of the
Interior David Bernhardt advanced plans to increase the height
of Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet and to expand Shasta Lake by more
than 200 billion gallons.
The Klamath River Basin is in a dire situation this
year. The plan curtails irrigation diversions to less than
10% of demand while failing to meet the biological needs of
salmon and other fisheries downstream. … Reclamation also
announced $15 million in immediate aid to the Klamath Project
through the Klamath Project Drought Relief Agency, an
additional $3 million in technical assistance to Tribes for
ecosystem activities in the basin, as well as funding for
groundwater monitoring in the basin.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will begin releasing warmer
water from the upper layers of the Shasta Reservoir directly
into the Sacramento River to maintain flows, while saving
colder water for the winter-run Chinook salmon migration.
The Yurok Tribe has long faced state and federal policies meant
to eliminate its land base. Before American colonization and
conquest, the tribal territory stretched along what is now the
Northern California coast and inland within the Klamath River
watershed. The gold rush in the 1840s drew white
settlers West, where they killed tens of thousands of
Native people through forced displacement, enslavement, and
disease. In the 20th century, the Yurok continued to be denied
access to their land and water, leading to decades of
legal battles over fishing rights.
Suisun Marsh is central to the health of the San Francisco
Estuary. Not only is it a huge (470 km2) tidal marsh in
the center the northern estuary (Figure 1), but it is an
extremely important nursery area for species such as splittail,
striped bass, longfin smelt, and, formerly, delta smelt. Since
January 1980, a team from The University of California, Davis,
in partnership with the California Department of Water
Resources (DWR), has systematically monitored the marsh’s fish
populations. The team had been sampling the fish and
invertebrates every month with trawls and beach seines, with a
nearly unbroken record. Then Covid-19 restrictions settled
in…
The Colorado River’s biggest reservoirs are likely to drop to
historically low levels later this year, prompting mandatory
conservation by some of the river’s heaviest users. The latest
Bureau of Reclamation reservoir projections, which take into
account river flows in a given year, show a likelihood that
Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada stateline will dip below the
critical threshold of 1,075 feet in elevation in May and remain
below that level for the foreseeable future. A first-ever
official shortage declaration from the Department of the
Interior is almost certain later this year.
Reclamation announced today that spring-time operations at
Shasta Dam will adjust to benefit endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon in the Sacramento River during this critically dry water
year. … No additional water from Shasta Reservoir will be
released during this temporary adjustment—only the withdrawal
elevation and timing of water releases will change.
After a year hiatus because of COVID-19, the H2O Hackathon
returned to San Joaquin County on Saturday
with middle school, high school and college students
tackling a virtual challenge to help solve California’s water
problems. … The challenge for this year’s event was to
protect the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary from harmful algal
blooms, bacteria that live in freshwater, estuarine and marine
environments that grow out of control and
produce toxic or harmful effects on people,
fish, shellfish, marine mammals and birds.
San Diegans will undoubtedly head to the ocean this weekend as
temperatures warm — but not in Imperial Beach. Sewage spilling
over from Tijuana forced officials on Friday to completely
close the city’s shoreline yet again. The move comes less than
a week after Baja officials said repairs were completed to a
broken water pump in the Tijuana River, which had allowed tens
of millions of gallons of sewage-tainted water to escape
capture starting in late March.
In what one board member called a hearing that isn’t going to
be topped, the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District
Hearing Board voted 4-0 to issue an order of abatement against
the Imperial Irrigation District over the Red Hill Bay project
site at the Salton Sea. … The Red Hill Bay project
is aimed at creating hundreds of acres of shallow marine
wetlands to provide aquatic bird habitat and reduce airborne
dust from playa exposed due to a shrinking Salton Sea.
The Richardson’s Bay Regional Agency is exploring a plan that
would create a designated anchoring zone to protect eelgrass
beds. Rebecca Schwartz Lesberg, a biologist with Coastal Policy
Solutions consulting firm, presented a draft eelgrass
protection and management plan to the agency board on April 8.
Schwartz Lesberg said the plan would not change the 72-hour
anchor limit. It would create a designated anchoring zone in
deeper water, closer to Belvedere and the mouth of Richardson
Bay, where eelgrass does not grow.
The Yurok Tribe said it’s sounding the alarm as culturally
invaluable salmon edge closer to extinction. The Yurok also
said it is canceling its commercial fishery for the fifth time
this year. Tribal officials said past water management
decisions and climate change have put Klamath river salmon
stocks at risk. The tribe said it’s gravely concerned about the
rapidly declining salmon stocks in the Klamath River
Basin … Tribal officials said [Reclamation's] plan
provides bare-minimum flows for imperiled Klamath salmon and
sucker fish populations.
The Eel River runs through Lake, Mendocino, and Trinity
counties before reaching the Pacific Ocean in southern Humboldt
County. Its name was given by Josiah Gregg in 1850 as he was
exploring and looking for land to settle. Coming upon a group
of Indigenous Wiyot fishermen, he traded a frying pan for some
Pacific lampreys, which he mistook for eels.
After years of neglect, numerous measures to make sure much
needed and overdue repairs of the Friant-Kern Canal are fully
funded continue to be introduced. Congressman Jim Costa and
Senator Dianne Feinstein were the latest to introduce
legislation on Thursday that would help fund repairs for the
Friant-Kern Canal. Along with Congressman Josh Harder they
introduced a bill that has bipartisan support, the Canal
Conveyance Restoration Act that would provide more than $800
million for repairs to three San Joaquin Valley canals,
including the Friant-Kern Canal, along with restoring salmon
runs in the San Joaquin River.
No country is immune from water scarcity issues — not even the
world’s wealthiest country, the United States. The southwestern
states, in particular, have faced frequent and ongoing droughts
over the past two decades, and traditional water supplies are
failing. … Our existing water supplies must go
further, and the technology exists to make this happen — by
turning wastewater into drinking water.
The successful Bakersfield children’s book series “Indy, Oh
Indy” has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund its sixth
upcoming book, titled “The Mighty Kern River.” The book was
inspired by a larger effort from the grassroots group Bring
Back the Kern to raise awareness about Bakersfield’s mostly dry
river and efforts to revive a more regular flow of water
through town.
It’s a growing threat that sneaks in with the tide. Sea levels
here in the Bay Area are expected to rise by a foot or more
over the next several decades, potentially overwhelming levees
and seawalls around the Bay. But now an environmental group
says one of the most powerful weapons we have to fight back, is
being literally, thrown away. … [T]ons of sediment that are
dredged out of the Bay every year and barged out sea, or dumped
in deep water … could be the perfect solution to bolster the
wetlands that surround the Bay.
Restoration flows will begin tomorrow, April 16, on the Trinity
River to help improve conditions after another critically dry
water year. A flow schedule based on the expected amount of
water available to support salmon restoration efforts on the
Trinity River is brought forward by the Trinity Management
Council each year. This week’s two-day schedule is slated to
increase daily average flows from 300 cubic feet per second to
1,300 cubic feet per second.
As the latest evidence of extended drought and extreme wildfire
danger confirms, California’s climate is changing quickly. Its
policy on burning planet-warming fuels — not so much. A
state Senate bill to ban hydraulic fracturing and otherwise
restrict oil and gas extraction died in its first committee
Tuesday, with Gov. Gavin Newsom and three Democratic lawmakers
withholding support.
The City of San Diego’s Public Utilities Department has
completed the 2020 Watershed Sanitary Survey, which evaluates
any potential water quality issues at the source and will be
used as a basis for future watershed management and planning
efforts. A watershed is an area of land that drains water into
a specific body of water. Everything that is on the land,
whether a natural feature or a human activity, is part of the
watershed.
Monterey County must rescind all approvals of California
American Water’s proposed desalination project, per an order
from a Monterey County Superior Court judge who earlier this
year found the county violated the California Environmental
Quality Act by approving the project without identifying a
water source. The ruling was handed down April 3 by Judge Lydia
Villarreal, who on Jan. 21 granted in part—and denied in part—a
writ requested by the Marina Coast Water District regarding the
2019 approvals of the desal plant component of Cal Am’s
Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project.
A final decision on the pending Irrigated Lands Regulatory
Program known as Ag Order 4.0 is expected by Friday, April 16.
Producers have anxiously been monitoring the development of the
program from the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control
Board. Stakeholders have repeatedly provided feedback on the
proposal, detailing the challenges it would create within
agriculture. As the adoption deadline quickly approaches,
industry members still have concerns about multiple provisions
of the measure.
Bay Area environmental groups are celebrating a decision by an
affiliate of Cargill to withdraw its appeal of a federal
judge’s finding that Redwood City salt ponds are protected by
the Clean Water Act. While the withdrawal does not mean
development is prohibited it does make it more difficult, as
the federal act requires permits be issued before any dredging
or filling of the salt ponds, a 1,365-acre area adjacent to the
San Francisco Bay filled with tidal pools, marshland and
commercial salt mining operations.
The California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) today
launched California Nature to engage
Californians in advancing the State’s commitment to conserving
30 percent of lands and coastal waters by 2030 (30×30) and
enlisting nature-based solutions to combat climate change. The
website and a new online questionnaire are aimed at gathering
input from a broad cross-section of Californians.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation delivered a gut-punch to Klamath
Project irrigators Wednesday, announcing a historically low
water allocation as the basin struggles with extreme drought.
Farms and ranches in the Project will receive an initial
allocation of just 33,000 acre-feet — the lowest total since
the shutdown of 2001 and barely 8% of historical demand. That
is dramatically lower than the bureau’s original estimate of
130,000 acre-feet based on hydrological conditions at the
beginning of March.
Shasta Dam, which rises over 600 feet, flooded much of our
tribe’s homeland and inundated dozens of our sacred sites. It
stopped our salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. And by
holding back water when it is needed by the river, Shasta Dam
has driven our salmon to the brink of extinction. That threat
continues in the proposal to raise Shasta Dam. That project
would flood more of our sacred sites and further harm salmon.
The Trump administration made that project their top priority
water infrastructure project in the nation.
-Written by Caleen Sisk, the spiritual leader of the
Winnemem Wintu Tribe.
The state plans to inspect three dairy ranches in the Point
Reyes National Seashore after independent water quality tests
conducted in nearby creeks and lagoons earlier this year found
E. coli bacteria concentrations up to 40 times higher than
state health standards. The San Francisco Regional Water
Quality Control Board plans to inspect Kehoe Dairy, McClure
Dairy and R&J McClelland Dairy, which are located near
Kehoe Creek and waterways that flow into Abbotts Lagoon in the
northern region of the national seashore.
Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project
that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they
will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst
drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance
the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and
endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of
several tribes. Oregon’s governor said the prolonged drought in
the region has the “full attention of our offices,” and she is
working with congressional delegates, the White House and
federal agencies to find relief for those affected.
Harmful algal blooms (or HABs) occur when colonies of algae,
under the right conditions, grow out of control and produce
toxic or harmful effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine
mammals, and birds. Every U.S. coastal and Great Lakes state
experiences harmful algal blooms. In California, reports
of harmful algal blooms have increased from 91 in 2016 to 241
in 2019. In 2020, Stockton experienced a severe harmful
algal bloom; it marked the first year that algal blooms spread
into the San Joaquin and Calaveras Rivers so early in the
summer and fall months. Drought and heat are factors that
increase harmful algal blooms …
Tule elk are treasured creatures in California, and for years,
animal rights groups have butted heads with the Point Reyes
National Seashore over its practice of keeping elk fenced away
from nearby cattle ranches. Amid a dry 2020, the groups tried
to bring water to the creatures but were rebuffed by the
National Park Service. Now the federal agency has released a
report indicating that more than one third of the 445 elk
fenced in at Tomales Point died this past winter, bringing the
population down to 293.
Drought-riddled California will spend over $500 million in the
coming months cutting fuel breaks, lighting prescribed burns
and conducting other wildfire prevention tactics under
legislation signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. The Democratic
governor said the $536 million budget deal is the first of many
preventative steps he will authorize with the Golden State
careening toward another expected brutal wildfire season.
On Wednesday, March 3rd, the Northern California Water
Association (NCWA) Board of Directors officially adopted our
2021 Priorities. The water leaders in this region look forward
to working with our many partners in 2021 to cultivate a shared
vision for a vibrant way of life in the Sacramento River Basin.
We will continue to re-imagine our water system in the
Sacramento River Basin as we also work to harmonize our water
priorities with state, federal, and other regions’ priorities
to advance our collective goal of ensuring greater water and
climate resilience throughout California for our communities,
the economy, and the environment.
Advocates, such as the Colorado Water Trust, a nonprofit that
spearheaded the new approach, say the tools can be used as
templates across other river basins, where older water rights
are already spoken for. … Across Colorado nearly 40,000
miles of streams flow year-round and, as a result, have the
potential to receive protection under the state’s Instream Flow
Program.
There’s just one week left to register for our Water 101
Workshop, which offers a primer on the things you need to know
to understand California water. One of our most popular events,
this once-a-year workshop will be held as an engaging online
event on the afternoons of Thursday, April 22 and Friday,
April 23.
The San Joaquin Valley’s quest for groundwater sustainability
will result in large amounts of irrigated agricultural lands
being retired. A new book explores how some of these lands
could be restored to natural areas that bring multiple
benefits. We talked to Scott Butterfield, a senior scientist at
The Nature Conservancy and one of the book’s editors, about
this vision.
How many salmon populate the Lower Putah Creek? What are the
demographics of these fish? In what ways can their habitat be
preserved so the lower creek remains healthy? Researchers at
the University of California, Davis are researching these
questions, and the Solano County Water Agency (SCWA) has given
them another year of funding to continue their research as part
of the Lower Putah Creek Salmon Study through the rest of the
2021-22 fiscal year.
Ballona Wetlands activists and Westside residents are planning
an Earth Day protest, calling on local leaders to shut down the
Playa del Rey oil field and pushing back against what they call
a disguised restoration project meant to restore the gas
company’s infrastructure below the ecological reserve.
While the federal government sees the prospect of raising the
height of Shasta Dam as a way to increase water storage for a
thirsty California, the Winnemem Wintu of Shasta County see it
as a threat to their culture. It was a theme picked up
this week by American Rivers, a conservation group that named
the McCloud River one of America’s 10 most endangered rivers
because of the proposal to raise the height of Shasta Dam.
… Raising the height of the dam would raise the level of
the lake about 20 feet when full. It would also further
inundate about a third of a mile of the McCloud River …
The Colorado River is one of the most highly developed surface
water systems in the world, but demand for the river’s water
continues to exceed supply. University of Arizona geosciences
professor Connie Woodhouse discusses the impact of a warming
climate on the Colorado River. She is the featured speaker for
the annual College of Science lecture series April 15. Connie
Woodhouse spoke with Leslie Tolbert, Regent’s professor emerita
in Neuroscience at the University of Arizona.
For more than 100 years after California’s Gold Rush,
developers and city leaders filled in San Francisco Bay,
shrinking it by one third to build farms, freeways, airports
and subdivisions. All that changed in the 1970s with modern
environmental laws. But now as sea level rise threatens to
cause billions of dollars of flooding in the coming decades,
the bay is going to need to be filled again — but this time in
a different way, according to a new scientific report out
Tuesday.
Tree roots are being blamed for a 98,280-gallon sewage spill in
Sausalito that went unnoticed for two weeks. The overflow
started on March 17 and went undetected because of heavy
vegetation, according to the county.
CITIZENS for a SUSTAINABLE HUMBOLDT (CSH) and the NORTHCOAST
ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER (NEC) have filed a lawsuit in the Humboldt
County Superior Court, with claims under the California
Environmental Quality, the State Planning and Zoning Law, and
other laws, challenging the environmental review and permits
approved by the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is looking into whether a
previously unexplored vitamin deficiency could play a role in
the decline of sucker species in the Klamath Basin. Thiamine,
also known as vitamin B1, is essential for all vertebrates. It
helps enzymes break down sugars, produce energy and create
genetic material. In fish, it plays a significant role in early
growth and development.
With California in the throes of a second year of drought
conditions, the mega-water agency of Southern California served
notice Tuesday that it’s prepared to spend up to $44 million to
buy water from Northern California to shore up its supplies.
The board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, which serves 19 million urban residents, authorized
its staff to begin negotiating deals with water agencies north
of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where supplies are
generally more plentiful.
Protecting the Bay Area from sea level rise may all come down
to mud. That’s the finding of a new report from San Francisco
Estuary Institute that tries to address a two-part problem
related to the looming threat of sea level rise: the lack of
natural sediment coming into the bay and the need to reinforce
its shorelines to protect the region from rising seas. There’s
a fairly straightforward solution, the nonprofit research
organization proposes: Take the sediment that’s dredged from
the bay’s shipping channels and barged out to sea or to deep
parts of the bay — 2½ to 3 million cubic yards of mud a year —
and use it to restore wetlands on the perimeter.
Climate change affects our weather patterns, sea levels,
wildlife populations, and global temperatures, but very few
people understand the ramifications it’s had on the human
population. Believe it or not, our food, water, and air quality
have all been seriously affected by climate change, and as a
result, climate change has affected human health in a number of
dangerous and potentially deadly ways. … [D]roughts cause
wildfires, which are contributing to air quality problems.
We’ve already seen what the immense plumes of smoke created by
wildfires can do to air quality
in California and Australia.
Legislation that would gradually phase out fracking and other
extraction methods that account for most of California’s
petroleum production faces its first big test in Sacramento on
Tuesday. The nine-member Senate Natural Resources and Water
Committee is set to vote on a proposal, Senate Bill 467, that
would bar new permits for hydraulic fracturing, cyclic
steaming, steam flooding and water flooding. The legislation
would begin taking effect in 2023 and also prohibit renewing
existing permits for fracking and the other targeted methods,
which a committee bill analysis says accounts for an estimated
80% to 95% of the state’s oil production.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack designated 50 California
counties as natural disaster areas last month because of the
drought. And, over the weekend, Fresno Congressman Jim Costa
said on KSEE-24’s Sunday Morning Matters program that Gov.
Newsom should declare a statewide emergency because of the
dangerously dry conditions. …Yet, Newsom… last week
rejected a request from a bipartisan coalition of state
lawmakers from the Valley to declare a statewide drought
emergency.
The Patch reports the Fire Department investigation found the
source of the March 23rd brush fire in the Ballona Wetlands
Ecological Reserve to be a homeless encampment in the area of
origin. The fire was accelerated by strong winds. While the
causes of these incidents are always concerning, there is
another important part of the story: an ecological and
historical one. Why did an intense brush fire burn at all in a
wetland? After all, wetlands are supposed to be wet.
The Suisun Marsh — known as the largest swath of contiguous
wetlands on the West Coast and a haven for thousands of
migrating waterfowl — has become the Bay Area’s latest
battleground between fossil fuel producers and
environmentalists hellbent on fighting climate change. A
Brentwood company, Sunset Exploration Inc., announced in
January it wants to explore for natural gas by drilling a
section of the 116,000-acre marshland about 9 miles southwest
of Suisun City in an area known as Hunter’s Point, according to
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Dozens of people gathered at Point Reyes National Seashore
Saturday to protest after the deaths of more than 100 rare tule
elk. Last week, the National Park Service announced 152 elk in
a fenced preserve died in 2020 because of overpopulation and
drought conditions. The drought has reduced the amount of water
in the area, leading to limited access and malnutrition.
The government of Mexico is on the verge of legalizing cannabis
for industrial, medical, and recreational purposes, legislation
that would make Mexico only the third country to legalize all
aspects of cannabis production and all types of the plant’s
use. … Water theft in California is alleged to be
frequently associated with legal and illegal cultivation of
cannabis. It equally pervades legal and illegal cannabis
cultivation in Oregon and Colorado.
-Written by Vanda Felbob-Brown.
Join us in early May for a virtual open house and happy
hour event to meet our staff, learn how we pivoted last year
amid the coronavirus pandemic and find out what we have planned
for later this year to foster understanding of California’s
most precious natural resource – water. During the May 6 open
house from 4:30 to 6 p.m., you will be able to enter
chatrooms and speak to our executive director and staff about
our water tours, conferences, maps, publications and training
programs for teachers and up-and-coming community leaders
involved in water. You’ll also be able to learn more about how
you can support our work.
One of the worst droughts in memory in a massive agricultural
region straddling the California-Oregon border could mean steep
cuts to irrigation water for hundreds of farmers this summer to
sustain endangered fish species critical to local tribes. The
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water allocations in
the federally owned Klamath Project, is expected to announce
this week how the season’s water will be divvied up after
delaying the decision a month.
Nancy L. Vogel of Sacramento has been appointed Deputy
Secretary for Water at the California Natural Resources Agency,
where she has been Director of the Governor’s Water Portfolio
Program since 2019 and was Deputy Secretary of Communications
from 2015 to 2017.
The little-known Joint Powers Authority charged with getting
the embattled Delta tunnel across its finish line recently
changed executive directors, marking an exit for Kathryn
Mallon, who had stirred controversy for her exorbitant pay and
alleged pressuring of a citizens advisory committee to work
through the most dangerous part of the
pandemic. Meanwhile, as California Governor Gavin Newsom
begins campaigning against the effort to remove him from
office, he’s soliciting huge donations from the same
south-state barons of agriculture who have promoted the
environmentally fraught tunnel concept for years.
[S]ome scientists [are] saying the region is on the precipice
of permanent drought. That’s because in 2000, the
Western U.S. entered the beginning of what scientists call
a megadrought — the second worst in 1,200 years —
triggered by a combination of a natural dry cycle and
human-caused climate change. In the past 20 years,
the two worst stretches of drought came in 2003 and 2013 — but
what is happening right now appears to be the beginning stages
of something even more severe. And as we head into the summer
dry season, the stage is set for an escalation of extreme dry
conditions, with widespread water restrictions expected and yet
another dangerous fire season ahead.
California’s shrinking Salton Sea is getting a closer look
scientifically with the state, local air districts, and
community groups examining air, water, and even dust from the
parched shoreline where water was once plentiful. The increased
scrutiny comes as the state has continuously failed to meet
dust suppression and habitat goals set in a 2017 management
plan to restore nearly 30,000 acres of the state’s largest body
of water by 2028. The sea spans Imperial and Riverside counties
near the Mexican border, where disadvantaged communities
breathe some of the nation’s worst air and suffer from high
asthma rates. Chronic nosebleeds are also common.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced today that this year’s
restoration flow schedule for the Trinity River will begin on
April 16. Each year, the Trinity Management Council advances a
flow schedule based on the expected amount of water available
to support salmon restoration efforts on the Trinity River. Due
to lack of precipitation and snowpack in the Trinity Mountains
this winter, the flow schedule for 2021 is scaled to a
critically dry water year. Critically dry is one of five water
year types used by the Trinity River Restoration Program to
decide how much reservoir water will be released in support of
the program’s goals to improve habitat for anadromous fish—fish
that migrate to fresh water from salt water to spawn—like
salmon and steelhead.
The California State Water Resources Control Board (the State
Board) will use $4.4 million of a U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) grant to fund projects in seven counties around
the state. EPA’s Nonpoint Source Program grant assists the
State Board in implementing programs to address pollution
caused by runoff moving over the ground, known as nonpoint
source pollution. The Marin Resource Conservation District was
awarded over $700,000 by the State Board for its Conserving Our
Watersheds Program. This project helps ranchers within the
Point Reyes National Seashore prevent nitrogen, phosphorus,
sediment, and bacteria from livestock operations from running
off into Tomales Bay. Tomales Bay supports oyster production
and recreational activities including kayaking and fishing.
In the North Bay, parts of the region are classified under
moderate to extreme drought conditions. The National Park
Service says 152 tule elks have died from these drought
conditions, and the situation is causing controversy over their
habitat. … The National Park Service announced a declining
population in 2020 due to lack of food caused by drought-like
conditions.
The Marin County Superior Court last
Friday ruled that the county in Northern California
failed to adequately protect coho salmon and their habitat in
the San Geronimo Valley. Marin County originally planned to
adopt a streamside conservation ordinance to preserve
vegetation, maintain water quality and prevent erosion in 2007
when it last updated its countywide plan. But 12 years later,
the measure has still not materialized, in violation of the
California Environmental Quality Act. The lawsuit was
brought by the Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (SPAWN)
and Center for Biological Diversity.
It’s nothing less than an invasion. Interlopers are coming
into California by land, by sea…and by FedEx. That’s what
happened with the European green crab, a voracious
cannibal that stowed away in packages of worms sent by
overnight delivery to commercial fisherman in California.
Unknown to anyone, the tiny crustaceans were concealed in
seaweed that wrapped the cargo and were freed into the Pacific
when fishermen tossed it overboard. … California spends
$3 million a year attempting to eradicate nutria, a large,
homely, orange-toothed rodent that destroys wetlands and bores
holes into levees. Another $3 million a year goes to educating
boaters about quagga mussels, which hitch rides on hulls and
cling to equipment in the state’s vast water transport
system. And, for the last 20 years, authorities have
spent more than $34 million to manage Atlantic cordgrass in the
San Francisco Bay-Delta.
The chamise plants that blanket California’s shrubby chaparral
should have grown new sprouts by now, flowering after winter
rains before baking in the arid summer heat. They are highly
flammable and abundant in wildland areas — and, for that
reason, a bellwether to wildfire researchers. This month, a San
Jose State University team analyzing moisture levels was
shocked at what it found at study sites in the Santa Cruz
Mountains. At two locations researchers found no new growth to
cut from the shrubs. It’s an ominous sign of just how dry the
vegetation is around California, where boundless numbers of
plants and trees have been starved of life-sustaining water
thanks to an entire winter of paltry precipitation. Those dry
plants are fuel for wildfires, and they’re primed to burn
explosively.
Another legal challenge has been launched against a project by
downtown-based water infrastructure company Cadiz Inc. to pump
and transport water from its desert aquifer to connect with
existing water conveyance systems. This latest lawsuit was
filed March 23 against the Bureau of Land Management by the
Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Sierra
Club. It asks the federal court to overturn a December BLM
decision to approve the conversion of an idle oil and gas
pipeline to carry water from Cadiz’s desert aquifer. Cadiz is
not a direct party to the lawsuit but would be impacted by a
decision resulting from the suit. The filing marks the third
decade in which Cadiz’ water transfer plan has faced legal
challenges from environmental groups.
A desert city built on a reputation for excess and indulgence
wants to become a model for restraint and conservation with a
first-in-the-nation policy banning grass that nobody walks on.
Las Vegas-area water officials have spent two decades trying to
get people to replace thirsty greenery with desert plants, and
now they’re asking the Nevada Legislature to outlaw roughly 40%
of the turf that’s left. The Southern Nevada Water Authority
estimates there are almost 8 square miles (21 square
kilometers) of “nonfunctional turf” in the metro area — grass
that no one ever walks on or otherwise uses in street medians,
housing developments and office parks.
With a salmonella outbreak in eight states already under
investigation by the Centers for Disease Control, officials are
watching in California for another disease that impacts
waterfowl. Botulism killed thousands of waterfowl and other
birds last year on two national wildlife refuges near the
border of California and Oregon. Some estimates were as high as
60,000 dead birds. The Lower Klamath Basin and Tule Lake
national wildlife refuges were among the first created more
than 100 years ago. Millions of waterfowl and shore birds,
along with songbirds, migrated along the Pacific Flyway into
the two refuges and beyond. Today, between severe
restrictions on water flowing into and out of the refuges
and a crippling drought that shows no sign of letting up,
the refuge marshes are going dry.
April 7 is International Beaver Day and the San Luis Obispo
Beaver Brigade is celebrating this year by participating in the
first free, virtual California Beaver Summit. Beavers are
native to California. San Luis Obispo County has populations in
the Salinas River and Arroyo Grande Creek. Beavers also live in
the Arroyo Seco River in Monterey County and in the Santa Ynez
River in Santa Barbara County. Audrey Taub is the founder of
the SLO Beaver Brigade, a beaver advocacy group that is
participating in the California Beaver Summit April 7 and April
9. The purpose of the summit is to educate the public about the
benefits beavers bring to the environment.
On April 6, 2021, the State Water Resources Control Board
(State Board) approved the application of the State Wetland
Definition and Procedures for Discharges of Dredged or Fill
Material to Waters of the State (Procedures) as a water quality
control policy, carefully avoiding the scope of a recent court
order. This resolution will allow the Board to directly
apply the water Procedures to waters of the State as an
exercise of its policy-making authority rather than the water
quality control planning process.
A tiny silver fish few people in the Bay Area have heard of
could be a new symbol of the state’s continuing battle over
water resources. San Francisco Baykeeper sued the Biden
administration on Thursday to list the local population of
longfin smelt as an endangered species. The environmental
group’s legal action comes nine years after the federal
government first declared that the fish warranted that status.
Once an important source of food for marine mammals, birds and
chinook salmon, the local population of the longfin smelt has
dropped by 99.9% since the 1980s. Scientists and
environmentalists say that reduction is a direct result of too
much water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system being
diverted to farms and other water users rather than flowing
through the bay to the Pacific.
In June 2017, the California Regional Water Quality Control
Board and the Central Valley Region adopted a Basin Plan
Amendment for the Sacramento River and San Joaquin River Basins
for the control of pyrethroid pesticide discharges. The
amendment establishes controls for pyrethroid discharges,
including prohibition of discharges of pyrethroid pesticides
above certain concentrations, total maximum daily loads (TMDLs)
for pyrethroid pesticides, recommendations for agency
regulation of pyrethroids and potential monitoring
requirements. Synthetic pyrethroids are the most common forms
of commercially available urban pesticides for ants, termites
and flying insects…
California remains far behind its targets for addressing
exposed playa around the Salton Sea, according to data released
in the 2021 Salton Sea Management Program annual report.
But state officials expressed optimism in a public
workshop that they are finally beginning to catch up to those
goals. The state was supposed to implement dust suppression
projects or build wetlands habitat across 3,500 acres of
exposed playa by the end of 2020 to tamp down dust that’s
imbued with a century’s worth of salts, pesticides and other
agricultural runoff.
Our Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project has just
been updated to reflect the latest developments affecting
California’s largest surface water delivery system. The 24-page
guide explores the history of the Central Valley Project, from
its roots as a state water project that stalled amid the Great
Depression to its development as a federal project that
stretches from Shasta Dam in far Northern California to
Bakersfield in the southern San Joaquin Valley.
If you skip a rock across the surface of the Great Salt Lake,
it will skim and ricochet across the far-reaching, glassy face
for what seems like a mile. It’s as if the waters were never
introduced to the laws of gravity. Or if they were, it didn’t
matter. The lake’s salinity — and in turn, its density — has
increased since the mid-1800s. Today, the tourmaline-colored
water in the north arm is eight times saltier than the ocean.
Rocks, those daring enough to swim and reflections of flushed
sunsets are held at the surface of the water — suspended and
unable to be lost. But in a cruel illustration of irony, we are
losing those waters. As historian Dale Morgan put it in 1947,
“It is a lake of paradoxes.” Today, the Great Salt Lake’s
volume has dropped nearly 50%. The largest saline lake in the
Western Hemisphere is drying up.
A year ago, when stay-at-home orders were a newly disorienting
fact of life, I started taking long walks through my
neighborhood on L.A.’s Westside. Wandering south from Palms
into Culver City, I realized I live near a huge concrete
channel — a creek, trapped in place — with a bike path along
the water, and a view of oil pumpjacks rising and falling atop
the Baldwin Hills. There were beautiful murals, too, showing a
healthy, thriving waterway. They were hashtagged
#KnowYourWatershed. And the more I admired them, the more I
realized that I did not, in fact, know my watershed, despite
growing up not far from here. -Written by Sammy Roth, a Los Angeles Times staff
writer.
Scientists have been predicting for years that the Colorado
River would continue to deplete due to global warming and
increased water demands, but according to new studies it’s
looking worse than they thought. That worries rancher Marsha
Daughenbaugh, 68, of Steamboat Springs, who relies on the water
from the Colorado River to grow feed for her cattle.
… Recent reports show that the river’s water flows were
down 20% in 2000 and by 2050 that number is estimated to more
than double.
South Bay officials are beginning to run out of patience over
the continued cross-border flow of sewage-tainted water. The
pollution warning signs have been up most of 2021 on the sand
in Imperial Beach. Last Friday, the pollution flowed north to
Coronado, forcing beach closures there. Imperial Beach’s top
officials are fed up.
California’s hottest commodity could become even more scarce as
state and federal officials announce water cutbacks on the
brink of another drought. Now, state legislators are banding
together to ask Governor Newsom to declare a state of emergency
amid what they call a water crisis. … [State Senator Andreas]
Borgeas authored a letter alongside the Assembly agriculture
committee chair and several other state lawmakers to send to
the governor. This comes after the California Department of
Water Resources announced a 5% allocation to farmers and
growers in late March.
State water pollution officials have hit the city of Sunnyvale
with $187,000 penalty after the city’s wastewater treatment
plant spilled more than a quarter million gallons of partially
treated sewage into San Francisco Bay last summer. The spill
occurred on July 29 when a 36-inch welded steel pipeline
ruptured, releasing 292,600 gallons — the equivalent of about
12 backyard swimming pools — of partially treated sewage that
had not been disinfected into channels that flow into the bay
near Moffett Field. … The spill was one of the two largest
illegal discharges from a Bay Area sewage treatment plant into
San Francisco Bay over the past six years …
In the first episode in the Delta Conveyance Team Spotlight
video series, [DWR] spoke with the project’s Executive
Director Tony Meyers about his long and eventful career in
engineering, including work on some of DWR’s most ambitious and
significant infrastructure projects. In this excerpt, he
reflects on the appeal of large-scale engineering projects and
speaks about the importance of the Delta Conveyance Project in
protecting the security of California’s water supply.
OID and SSJID … have invested considerable money into
improving salmon habitat on the Stanislaus River and as well as
conservation measures aimed at reducing growers’ use of water —
have proposed pushing the spring pulse flow from an anticipated
1,400 cfs at Vernalis to almost 3,000 cfs. … The SSJID and OID
have also worked with the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water
Authority and State Water Contractors that may get only 5
percent of the water they need from the Bureau this year to
purchase the [water] by diverting it once it enters the
Delta.
Rainstorms grew more erratic and droughts much longer across
most of the U.S. West over the past half-century as climate
change warmed the planet, according to a sweeping government
study released Tuesday that concludes the situation is
worsening. The most dramatic changes were recorded in the
desert Southwest, where the average dry period between
rainstorms grew from about 30 days in the 1970s to 45 days
between storms now, said Joel Biederman, a research hydrologist
with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Southwest Watershed
Research Center in Tucson, Arizona.
As we begin spring in the Sacramento Valley, the region
illuminates – we see the brown landscape turn verdant, and the
Valley bustles with activity as people share the hope of a new
year and collectively cultivate a shared vision in the region
for a vibrant way of life. With the dry year in Northern
California, the water resource managers are working overtime to
carefully manage our precious water systems including rivers,
streams, reservoirs and diversions to serve multiple benefits.
To effectively do this, water resources must be managed in an
efficient manner, with the same block of water often used to
achieve several beneficial uses as it moves through the
region’s waterways.
Robert (Bob) Anderson’s nomination as Solicitor of the
Department of the Interior was formally transmitted by the
White House to the United States Senate today. Bob
has served as Interior’s Principal Deputy Solicitor
since January 20, 2021. … For 20 years, Bob was a
law professor at the University of Washington and directed its
Native American Law Center. He has been the Oneida Indian
Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School for the
past twelve years. He is a co-author and editor of the leading
federal Indian Law treatise, Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian
Law, and is a co-author of a leading textbook on American
Indian Law. He has extensive expertise and has published many
articles in the fields of natural resources law, water law, and
American Indian law.
For the second time in less than a year, state health officials
plan to ask lawmakers to fast-track permitting authority over
hundreds of miles of streams left unprotected after a 2020
Trump Administration rollback of federal Clean Water Act rules.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s move
comes just weeks after a federal court denied Colorado’s effort
to prevent the new federal rules from taking effect.
The State Water Board on Tuesday approved an update to dredge
and fill procedures for wetlands considered waters of the
state. According to staff, the new resolution simply reflects a
recent court decision that the board cannot centralize all of
its water plans and policies under one regulatory umbrella. For
water interests, however, the resolution raised significant
concerns and could create conflicts with regulations that
directly impact agriculture. Valerie Kincaid, an attorney
representing a coalition of valley water agencies, contended
the new resolution fails to comply with the judgement and
threatens to compromise the board’s integrity.
The slide gates at the bottom of the Temperature Control Device
(TCD) on the inside face of Shasta Dam (Figure 1) allow deeper,
colder water in the reservoir to be drawn into the power plant
intake penstocks and released to the river below. Use of the
slide gates allows more colder water to be released for salmon
in the river below in summer and fall in years when reservoir
levels are low and the cold-water-pool is limited. In 2014 and
2015, NMFS and the Bureau of Reclamation learned that when the
reservoir level is low and the slide gates are opened to access
cold water, some warmer surface water is also drawn downward
into the slide gate openings.
The dams that are built in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River
Watershed protect thousands of people and billions of dollar’s
worth of agriculture but they are far too old and far too many
of them need repair. Some unnecessary dams are drying rivers
and putting business in front of the environment.
For seven days in mid-March 2021, the Bureau of Reclamation
substantially increased Folsom Lake storage releases. Roughly,
the releases tripled in volume (Figure 1). The release of over
20,000 acre-feet of water is significant for a year in which
Folsom storage is not much better than it was in the worst year
on record – 1977 (Figure 2).1 With the release in mid-March,
the lake level dropped 3 feet. Yes, there was rain in the
forecast and a decent snowpack, but certainly no flood
concerns. So why? The reason was to meet state water quality
requirements for Delta outflow. Delta outflow increased from
7,000 cfs to 12,000 cfs for a few days (Figure 3).
Governor Gavin Newsom frequently says California is a leader in
sustainability and the transition away from fossil fuels. The
governor has also issued an executive order to fight climate
change in response to the deadly wildfires that ravaged our
state last year. Despite these public statements and official
efforts, it’s puzzling that his administration has been
promoting the climate-wrecking Poseidon desalination plant in
Huntington Beach as an infrastructure to source additional
water for California. There are plenty of things we can do to
ensure that Southern Californians have enough water to
thrive….
-Written by Alejandro Sobrera, the Orange County Hub
Coordinator for the Sunrise Movement, a youth led effort to
bring about a just transition to a greener
world.
Colorado’s water supply is under threat from climate change and
population growth. Limiting outdoor use is an increasingly
popular approach to conserving water, yet to implement
effective conservation policies, utilities managers need a
better understanding of local outdoor water consumption.
… [Colorado State University’s Melissa McHale] said
trees can provide long-term benefits even if they need to be
watered directly when they are first planted. … The
research team found that residential properties with a higher
ratio of vegetation cover to lot size tended toward less water
consumption.
