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.
On Thursday, September 28, approximately fifteen gallons of
hydraulic oil leaked into Indian Creek Reservoir and the
reservoir is closed for recreational use. Indian Creek
Reservoir is a freshwater reservoir in Alpine County operated
by the South Tahoe Public Utility District. Fresh water is
released out of the reservoir through a dam into Indian Creek.
The valve on the dam was tested on Wednesday, September 27 as
part of an annual dam inspection. Operational issues were noted
during the inspection. On the morning of Thursday, September
28, crews were working to fix the valve on the dam by adding
hydraulic oil into the lines.
Microplastics have been found in the deepest recesses of the
ocean, atop Mount Everest, in fresh Antarctic snow, in our
blood and lungs and now, for the first time, in the
clouds. In a study published in Environmental
Chemistry Letters, researchers in Japan found
microplastics in mists that shrouded the peaks of Mount
Oyama and Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest
mountain. Researchers analyzed samples collected between
heights of 1,300 to 3,776 metres altitude and found nine
different types of polymers and one type of rubber, ranging in
size from 7.1 to 94.6 micrometres. They hypothesized that
the high-altitude microplastics could influence cloud formation
and possibly modify the climate.
One of the many things I learned by doing during my summer
internship with California Trout was how to remove fish from
construction sites. Why remove fish? Sometimes, during
construction, crews must remove water from a creek, a process
known as dewatering, to be able to work in it. To ensure fish
are not harmed during this process, they are relocated to
another part of the stream. I was excited to pitch in to this
process but had no idea what to expect as I drove out to the
Scott River project site … where CalTrout planned to
replace a culvert and concrete spillway with a run-of-river
bridge. The restoration project aims to open up the cold water
of the tributary to juvenile coho salmon, a fish native to
Northern California and threatened by agriculture, dam
infrastructure, and rising temperatures.
With the Bay-Delta watershed in the throes of an
ecological crisis, California’s water regulators Thursday
unveiled several controversial options for managing the
heart of the state’s water supply. … Several of the
strategies the [Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan] evaluates
would set minimum amounts of water to remain in rivers and
streams, which could ultimately require water suppliers and
other water users to cut back on how much they divert for
people and farms. Another approach assessed is a
controversial pact that Gov. Gavin Newsom reached last
March with major water suppliers, who volunteered to surrender
some water and help restore habitat in the watershed.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has
announced the availability of up to $2 million in grant funding
for non-lethal beaver damage management (PDF)(opens in new
tab), in support of ecosystem restoration and protection under
the Nature-Based Solutions Initiative and CDFW’s beaver
restoration and human-wildlife conflict program objectives. The
North American beaver’s critically important role as an
ecosystem engineer and keystone species, particularly as
climate change, drought and wildfires increase in severity, has
gained rapidly growing recognition in recent years. Because
they are crucial to restoring and maintaining healthy
ecosystems and their functions, CDFW has implemented new
measures to maintain healthy beaver populations in suitable
habitat throughout California.
Here in the Santa Clarita Valley, we are fortunate to enjoy a
high quality of life. We pride ourselves on having created a
wonderful place to live, work and raise a family, which can be
attributed in part to maintaining a reliable supply of
high-quality water. … At SCV Water, we serve over
one-quarter of a million customers throughout the valley, and
up to 50% of our water supply each year is imported from the
State Water Project, which is owned and operated by the
California Department of Water Resources. … [I]f the Delta
Conveyance Project had been operational during the rain events
of January 2023, the improved SWP could have transported an
additional 228,000 acre-feet of water while still meeting
fishery and water quality requirements. -Written by Matt Stone, general manager of SCV
Water
Today, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) urges people to
avoid physical contact with water at Castaic Lake in Los
Angeles County until further notice due to the presence of
blue-green algae. People should also avoid eating fish or
shellfish from the lake. This week’s lab results show an
increase in toxin levels. A danger advisory was put in place
today, and remains in effect for the entire Castaic Lake,
except Castaic Lagoon, until further notice. It is advised for
people and pets to stay out of the water and avoid contact with
algal scum in the water or on shore. Boating is allowed, but
water-contact recreation and sporting activities are not
considered safe due to potential adverse health effects. For
latest conditions and danger advisory information, go
to Harmful Algal Bloom website.
For years, the politically-connected Westlands Water District
has fought to raise Shasta Dam. This debate has been renewed by
House Resolution 215, introduced by California Central Valley
Congressman David Valadao (R-Hanford), which would override a
California law that blocks the dam raise. That project would
harm salmon, California’s fishing economy and Indigenous
Americans. This is a big deal for the fishing community.
California’s salmon fishery is closed this year for only the
third time in history. … This closure was caused by the
mismanagement of Central Valley rivers during a drought. Low
spring flows, caused by storing too much water for summer
agricultural deliveries, is a major cause of the fishing
shutdown. Raising Shasta Dam would represent another blow to
the survival of salmon runs and fishing jobs. -Written by Scott Artis, executive director of the
Golden State Salmon Association.
The largest dam removal in U.S. history, the deconstruction of
the Klamath Dam is slated to begin this summer. The project
includes four dams along the Klamath River with the first and
smallest dam, Copco #2, scheduled for removal first. As each of
the dams are torn down, scientists and consultants will keep a
close eye on the state of the Klamath River downstream to
assess the impact of undamming the river. Shawn Hinz, managing
partner and environmental toxicologist with Gravity Consulting,
has been involved with the Klamath Dam project for over a
decade.
[T[o strike oil in America, you need water. Plenty of
it. Today, the insatiable search for oil and gas has
become the latest threat to the country’s endangered aquifers,
a critical national resource that is already being drained
at alarming rates by industrial farming and cities in
search of drinking water. The amount of water consumed by
the oil industry, revealed in a New York Times investigation,
has soared to record levels. … And now, fracking companies
are the ones scrambling for water. A 2016 Ceres
report found that nearly 60 percent of the 110,000 wells
fracked between 2011 and 2016 were in regions with high or
extremely high water stress, including basins in Texas,
Colorado, Oklahoma, and California.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced the discovery of an
invasive crayfish species in Lake Granby. The rusty crayfish,
named for reddish spots on its shell, hasn’t been seen in the
state in over a decade. The agency is on high alert because of
Lake Granby’s proximity to the Colorado River, and is now
focused on stopping the crayfish from spreading
further. … Walters said the invaders eat small
fish, insects and fish eggs, which disrupts the aquatic food
web. They can also eat plants on the bottom of the reservoir,
which serve as critical habitat for fish spawning and food for
native wildlife.
… The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal
OES) continues to work with state and local partners on
monitoring Tulare Lake and surrounding waterways that still
haven’t receded to pre-storm levels. Throughout the
response period, Cal OES and local partners provided
resources to aid residents affected by flooding in Fresno,
Kern, Kings and Tulare counties. … Following months
of coordinated efforts to combat flooding, Tulare Lake has
significantly shrunk in size.
Potent winter storms, summer heat, and tropical storm Hilary
have bred a surge of invasive, day-biting Aedes mosquitoes in
California, spawning in some regions the first reported human
cases of West Nile virus in years. The statewide rise has
brought 153 West Nile reports so far, more than double last
year’s, according to the California Department of Public
Health.
Lyndon Johnson signed the bill that established the Redwood
National Park in California 55 years ago. It was a long time
coming, with proposals blocked in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s by an
industry that was beavering through the most valuable
timberlands on the planet. When the National Park Service
recommended a park again in 1964, bipartisan support in the
Senate, a nod from President Johnson and, I believe, the trees’
own power to inspire eventually got a deal through Congress.
Kevin Swift, owner of Swift Water Design, has dedicated his
career to restoring meadows in the Sierra Nevada — specifically
one a few miles above Shaver Lake called the Lower Grouse
Meadow, which was severely affected by the 2020 Creek Fire. …
Swift and his team managed to restore this meadow by building
small dams along a stream — replicating what animals would have
done. To make dams, he says, think: “dirt lasagna.”
In her groundbreaking book Water Always Wins: Thriving in an
Age of Drought and Deluge, environmental journalist and
National Geographic Explorer Erica Gies observes, “If water
were a category in a game of rock, paper, scissors, water would
beat them all every time.” At a time when drought, fire
and flood threaten countless lives, Gies talks to water experts
who are using cutting-edge science and traditional knowledge to
show how our relationship to water must change if we want to
survive. She takes the reader inside water projects ranging
from the marshlands of Iraq to the highlands of Peru, as well
as nearer to home in B.C. and California, uncovering a
breathtaking complexity we ignore at our peril. The result is a
riveting and engaging book that does for water what Suzanne
Simard has done for trees.
In 1883, two years after he created Hotel Del Monte, railroad
baron Charles Crocker facilitated the construction, near
Cachagua, of the so-called Chinese Dam – the Carmel River’s
first – which aimed to provide 400 acre-feet of water annually
to his hotel. … There is a plan in the works, years in the
making, though not yet quite near the finish line: the Rancho
Cañada Floodplain Restoration Project. The project calls
for widening and restoring the riverbed and banks where the
river flows through a 40-acre, mile-long stretch of Palo Corona
Regional Park through the section that was reclaimed from part
of the Rancho Cañada Golf Course in a purchase facilitated by
the Trust for Public Land, Trout Unlimited the Santa Lucia
Conservancy and the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District.
Sept. 24 is World Rivers Day, first celebrated in 2005
following a declaration by the U.N. General Assembly that
2005-2015 would be the “Water for Life” decade. … Concern
about abuse and neglect of rivers has led to an international
movement to recognize rivers as living entities with
fundamental rights, entitled to legal guardians. … The
ability of America’s public health system to detect the
emergence and spread of diseases, or to mount timely responses
to them, is hampered by the lack of a national data system.
Post-pandemic, it’s one of the major priorities of public
health officials to change this.
The Los Cerritos Wetlands Authority was recently awarded a
$31,852,000 grant from the California Coastal Conservancy that
will fund ongoing restoration efforts. According to wetland
ecology expert Christine Whitcraft of California State
University, Long Beach, restoring coastal wetland ecosystems is
a crucial step in protecting the endangered wildlife that calls
places like Los Cerritos home.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the
discovery of an invasive species in Lake Tahoe. According to a
CDFW release, divers monitoring the lake for aquatic invasive
species detected New Zealand Mud Snails (Potamopyrgus
antipodarum) off Lake Tahoe’s South Shore. … They were
believed to have been introduced to western rives through
shipments of live sportfish, but subsequent spread is likely
due to recreational activities, CDFW officials said.
The Brake Pad Legislative Report, recently released by The
Department of Toxic Substances Control and the State Water
Resources Control Board, documents widespread compliance with
the 2010 California Motor Vehicle Brake Friction Material Law
(Brake Pad Law) and a subsequent reduction in aquatic
pollution. The Brake Pad Law limits the amount of copper and
other toxic substances allowed in brake pads in order to reduce
the amount of these substances entering California’s streams,
rivers, lakes, and marine environment. Copper is toxic to many
aquatic organisms, and vehicle brake pads are a major source of
copper pollution in urban runoff. As of 2021, more than 60
percent of brake pads on the market are copper-free, which
corresponds to an estimated 28 percent decrease in copper
entering urban runoff.
The water supply for the southern half of inland Mendocino
County is dependent on water from the Russian River. The West
Fork begins on Tomki Road in Redwood Valley. … For well over
100 years, the water flows of the Russian River have been
supplemented from water diverted from the Eel River via the
Potter Valley Project (PVP). … All of that is about to
drastically change, and possibly end, as Pacific Gas and
Electric, who owns the PVP, has abandoned their license to
operate the project and are moving forward with
decommissioning.
In appreciation of the critical role the Sacramento-San Joaquin
River Delta plays in California’s economy and environment,
Senator Bill Dodd, D-Napa, is recognizing the last week of
September as Delta Week. “The Delta is a cherished watershed
and the very lifeblood of California’s water system,” Dodd said
in a news release. … Dodd’s Senate Concurrent Resolution 119
established Delta Week, which this year kicks off Sunday. As
part of the annual tradition, it will be preceded on Saturday
by Coastal Cleanup Day, which offers Californians a chance to
participate in local waterway cleanup events.
Hollywood icon Leonardo DiCaprio urged his fans to sign a
petition asking Utah’s political leaders to protect and restore
the Great Salt Lake. In an Instagram post on Monday, DiCaprio
posted a photo of a receding Great Salt Lake shoreline, sharing
with his over 61 million followers the dangers a disappearing
lake poses. … DiCaprio shared his support for the group
of conservation organizations that filed a lawsuit against
the State of Utah over alleged “failures” to protect the
lake. The lawsuit claims Utah’s diversion of water upstream is
preventing necessary water from reaching the lake, depleting
water levels.
This time next year, a series of massive dams that block off
the Klamath River will no longer exist. The soil and rocks
originally dug and transported from a nearby mountain in the
1950s will be returned to their home and the river will run
freely again. The Iron Gate Dam, which opened in 1964 as
the last of four dams that, at nearly 200 feet tall each,
regulated the flow of the river and time releases for the local
water supply in Northern California, is now part of the world’s
largest dam removal and river restoration project. Iron Gate is
scheduled to be the final stop for decommissioning crews.
As part of the Floodplain Forward Coalition, there are
significant efforts to re-imagine and better use our system of
flood control levees and bypasses, the farmlands in the
historic floodplain, and oxbows and other features within the
river to benefit salmon, birds, and agriculture while ensuring
the flood protection system functions well when needed. By
reactivating Sacramento River floodplains and allowing bypasses
to connect to the river more frequently and for longer
durations, the Sacramento Valley can better mimic historical
flood patterns and reintegrate natural wetland productivity
into the river ecosystem needed to promote salmon recovery
while simultaneously improving flood protection and enhancing
water security.
Outbreaks of harmful algal blooms have wreaked havoc on
California river ecosystems for years. The toxic algae — a neon
green layer of muck that floats atop water — thrives in warm,
stagnant conditions brought on by drought. Presence of
this algae can make life difficult for other plants and fish in
the river, and even cause concerns for humans that accidentally
ingest or possibly breathe the area around it. But this year
was different. Faster, colder river waters led to fewer
outbreaks of the harmful algae throughout the state.
A South Lake Tahoe man is suing the California Tahoe
Conservancy (CTC) after his home was filled with water for 80
days this past winter. Damian Sowers, a lifelong local who
lives on El Dorado Avenue, can now only visit the home his
parents built 60 years ago. The house was filled with 16″ of
water that came in from the Upper Truckee River during the
heavy 2022-23 winter. The CTC started a restoration project in
the Upper Truckee River Marsh in 2020 to correct old grazing
and farming methods that straightened the river to have a drier
meadow. The two-year-long project brought back water to the
meadow, creating a healthier environment. Sowers said he
believes in the project and is a proponent of the restoration,
but he says the way it was done with check dams was
ill-conceived and the project’s floodplain alterations were
miscalculated by more than an order of magnitude.
The Great Salt Lake is one of the most unique water bodies in
the West. It’s the largest lake in the U.S. with no outlet to
the sea. Water only leaves through evaporation, so salt enters
and never leaves. Its tributaries, which include the Bear,
Weber and Jordan rivers, have scoured rocks and
mountains, depositing them in the lake as minerals and salts
over millennia. Those salty waters help critters like brine
flies and brine shrimp thrive, which in turn support millions
of migrating birds. A dazzling array of species fly in each
year, including ibis, stilts, egrets, phalaropes, gulls, swans,
pelicans, plovers and avocets. The lake also supports
multi-million dollar industries. -Written by columnist Leia Larsen.
An irrigation district in the Klamath Project can no longer
divert water from the Klamath River under a state-issued water
right without approval from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a
federal judge has determined. Reclamation sued the Klamath
Drainage District in July 2022 for taking water from the river
despite curtailments intended to protect endangered fish. The
2022 irrigation season was severely hampered in the project
following several consecutive years of drought. Reclamation
allotted just 62,000 acre-feet of water from Upper Klamath Lake
for irrigators, about 14% of full demand, including zero water
for districts with junior rights.
For decades, water has been siphoned from springs in the San
Bernardino Mountains and piped downhill to be bottled and sold
as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water. After a years-long
fight over the bottled water operation in the San Bernardino
National Forest, California water regulators ruled Tuesday that
the company must stop taking millions of gallons through its
pipelines. The State Water Resources Control Board voted
unanimously to order the company BlueTriton Brands to “cease
and desist” taking much of the water it has been piping from
tunnels and boreholes in the mountains near San Bernardino.
Environmentalists, who have campaigned for years against
bottling water from the forest, praised the decision.
For two decades, researchers worked to solve a mystery in West
Coast streams. Why, when it rained, were large numbers of
spawning coho salmon dying? As part of an effort to find out,
scientists placed fish in water that contained particles of new
and old tires. The salmon died, and the researchers then began
testing the hundreds of chemicals that had leached into the
water. A 2020 paper revealed the cause of mortality: a chemical
called 6PPD that is added to tires to prevent their cracking
and degradation. When 6PPD, which occurs in tire dust, is
exposed to ground-level ozone, it’s transformed into multiple
other chemicals, including 6PPD-quinone, or 6PPD-q. The
compound is acutely toxic to four of 11 tested fish species,
including coho salmon.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife found an invasive species in Lake
Granby. Multiple rusty crayfish were found at Lake Granby
during routine aquatic sampling on August 17th. According to
CPW, rusty crayfish have been found west of the continental
divide before, but this is the first time they have been found
in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Crayfish are not native west
of the Continental Divide. Lake Granby feeds into the Colorado
River and having the invasive crayfish in there can pose a
threat to the river’s ecosystem.
As new sources of renewable energy grow, there has been a
large-scale effort to remove dams that generate hydroelectric
power across the country. There are more than 90,000 dams
across the country, but only 6% of them are used to generate
electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration. Most are used for irrigation, recreation
and drinking. As we move toward a greener future, it
might seem contradictory that officials are advocating for
their removal, but the numbers show while they may be good for
energy, they’re not great for the environment or those whose
cultures rely on it. There’s a symbiotic relationship that
exists along the Klamath River in Northern California. The
Pacific Ocean feeds its existence and, in turn, the river feeds
those who call its shores home.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) will
reopen the Shasta Valley Wildlife Area in Siskiyou County to
limited waterfowl hunting this season after a complete closure
the past two seasons. Although many parts of California
received record rainfall and snowpack during the winter and
spring of 2022-23, northeastern California remained
comparatively dry. As a result, only dry field hunting will be
allowed for waterfowl hunting this season at the Shasta Valley
Wildlife Area. The Northeastern Zone waterfowl season runs from
Oct. 7, 2023, through Jan. 17, 2024. Hunting at the Shasta
Valley Wildlife Area will be allowed on Wednesdays, Saturdays
and Sundays throughout the season.
Avid hiker Alyssa Johnston was exploring a trail in the High
Sierra when something in the distance caught her eye. She
approached the bright colors and realized they were Mylar
balloons — and did not belong in the wilderness. Mylar
balloons, which have a metallic coating and are filled with
helium, have become a concern for biologists and nature lovers,
disrupting the enjoyment of outdoor spaces and posing harm to
wildlife. Their ability to travel long distances in the air
means they are polluting extremely remote areas, although
responsible balloon shops are working to educate customers on
safe disposal. Johnston has pulled balloons out of lakes
numerous times. Often, she said, “they’ll just disintegrate and
I’m just trying to pick up all the little pieces because it’s
this beautiful, pristine lake and then now you have this ‘Happy
Birthday’ balloon.”
California is among the states that will share in more than $1
billion in federal funding to help plant trees in an effort to
mitigate extreme heat and combat climate change, officials
announced last week. The Golden State will receive about $103
million in grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Forest Service … for tree planting and maintenance, urban
canopy improvements and other green efforts. The funding comes
from President Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act and
marks the act’s largest investment to date in urban and
community forests, officials said. … “This grant funding
will help more cities and towns plant and maintain trees, which
in turn will filter out pollution, reduce energy consumption,
lower temperatures and provide more Californians access to
green spaces in their communities,” read a statement from U.S.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) about the program.
As the nation faces a future of increasing flooding, drought
and wildfires, millions of 60-pound rodents stand by, ready to
assist. Beavers can transform parched fields into verdant
wetlands and widen rivers and streams in ways that not only
slow surging floodwater, but store it for times of drought. …
Emily Fairfax, an assistant professor of physical geography at
the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities … who
spoke earlier this week at the first-ever Midwest Beaver
Summit, is part of a broader “beaver restoration” movement that
has gained ground in recent years with ecologists in Colorado
using simplified human-made beaver dams to encourage the
animals to recolonize waterways, and California passing a new
law encouraging nonlethal approaches to human-beaver conflicts.
During the winter of 2022, Utah lawmakers on Capitol
Hill boarded a pair of Black Hawk helicopters to tour
something bleak: the sprawling exposed lakebed, drying mud
flats and the water that remained at the Great Salt Lake, which
had reached an all-time low. It inspired them to
act. The following months saw a flurry of water
conservation bills and millions of dollars dedicated to
reversing the lake’s decline, including a $40 million
trust. The Great Salt Lake sunk to a record low in the fall of
2022, and another round of water reforms followed. Then
came a record-busting amount of snowpack in 2023 that many
Utahns hoped would buy some time and stave off the lake’s
collapse.
Jesus Campanero Jr. was a teenager when he noticed there was
something in the water. He once found a rash all over his body
after a swim in nearby Clear Lake, the largest freshwater lake
in California. During summertime, an unbearable smell would
waft through the air. Then, in 2017, came the headlines, after
hundreds of fish washed up dead on the shore. “That’s when it
really started to click in my head that there’s a real issue
here,” says Campanero, now a tribal council member for the
Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians of California, whose
ancestors have called the lake home for thousands of years. The
culprit? Harmful algal blooms (HABs).
We are living in the Anthropocene, an era being defined by
global mass extinctions caused by humanity. While on-going and
impending extinctions of birds and other terrestrial
vertebrates gain the most attention, the situation with
freshwater fishes (and other freshwater organisms) is as bad or
worse, partly because many freshwater extinctions are nearly
invisible events, hidden by murky waters (Moyle and Leidy
2023). The extinction threat is especially high for obligatory
freshwater fishes including many species endemic to California
(Moyle and Leidy 2023). The ultimate cause is competition
between people and fish for clean water.
In an eight-mile swath of a damaged creek in unincorporated
Santa Clarita, the connections between humans, nature, water
supplies and survival of a rare fish are frayed by climate
change. … The project recently received a $12 million
grant to kickstart planning and design. The money was granted
to Public Works last week by the California Wildlife
Conservation Board. Construction is expected to begin in late
2024, according to Public Works. … The project has many
interrelated objectives: flood control, habitat restoration,
and returning safe, reliable water flow into the downstream
wells of homeowners who have been cut off from their water
source.
Call it a win for the little species, though all kinds of
endangered animals and plants stand to benefit. A sweeping
legal settlement approved this week has put the Environmental
Protection Agency on a binding path to do something it has
barely done before, by its own acknowledgment: Adequately
consider the effects on imperiled species when it evaluates
pesticides and take steps to protect them. … In the same
area as crop-damaging insects, there may be threatened
bumblebees and butterflies; among unwanted weeds, endangered
plants. At the same time, pesticides help farmers produce
enough food to meet the demands of a growing population.
… Aquatic species like salmon and mussels do, too, as
they are particularly vulnerable to pesticides that contaminate
nearby water …
Central Valley water districts subject to a state plan that
diverts flows from the San Joaquin River tributaries downstream
for fish are working to achieve a more holistic approach for
the fishery through voluntary agreements, while also
challenging the state’s flows-only approach in court. Central
to the issue is a plan adopted in 2018 by the California State
Water Resources Control Board that requires affected water
users to leave unimpaired flows of 30% to 50% in three San
Joaquin tributaries—the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers.
The work is the first phase of the state’s water quality
control plan update for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento–San
Joaquin Delta, known as the Bay-Delta plan.
The estuaries, rivers and forests of California’s North Coast
are known worldwide for their beauty, importance to
conservation and recreational value. But a long history of
human activity has dramatically altered these delicate
ecosystems, threatening the plants, animals and human
communities that rely on them. The impacts of a changing
climate have only made matters worse. But now, we have the
unique opportunity to address these problems and rapidly
protect and restore these ecosystems in the next ten years.
… Born in North Coast rivers, salmonids like coho are
keystone species in California’s vast coastal ecosystem. But a
century of unsustainable land management practices and
overfishing have decimated their numbers.
It was the largest algal bloom on record and it took place in
June off the California coast. The planktonic algae made the
water look green while producing a toxin. Seals, sea lions and
dolphins eat fish that have eaten these algae, therefore
hundreds died as a result. … Using satellite data, Gierach
and other scientists created new ways to study the changes in
the ocean. … Satellites can even measure color and
temperature changes. A lot of the increase in algal bloom is
caused by what we dump into the ocean, runoff, fertilizer and
climate change.
Wildlife biologists in Utah are trying to bolster the state’s
population of roundtail chub, a fish endemic to the Colorado
River system. The fish is listed as a sensitive species in Utah
due to habitat loss and competition with invasive species.
About 30 round tailed chub were released recently into the Old
City Park pond in Moab as part of a statewide project to boost
the native fish population. Tyler Arnold, a wildlife biologist
with the Division of Wildlife Resources in Utah, says
roundtail, like many of our native species in the Colorado
River system, have been on the decline.
Meghan Holst studies the broadnose sevengill shark, so she was
naturally concerned when record-setting rain this year altered
the shark’s nursery grounds in San Francisco Bay. But the
species appears to have withstood the challenge, based on
initial observations from a recent outing on the water by
Holst, a 31-year-old doctoral student in conservation ecology
at the University of California, Davis. Next, perhaps,
will come California Fish and Game Commission protections for
the sharks in San Francisco Bay, which she considers a nursing
and pupping ground for a species believed to be in decline.
Research like hers can help support such a
designation. San Francisco Bay is one of the world’s only
known year-round nurseries for the species, Holst said, making
the habitat critical to monitor.
The 2024 legislative session is likely to see lawmakers trying
to figure out how to protect Colorado wetlands following a
recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that applied a more
stringent test on what should be considered one. A panel of
legislators last month heard pleas from municipal and state
officials to come up with a policy to continue to protect the
state’s wetlands in light of Sackett v. Environmental
Protection Agency, a case that redefined the terms by which a
body of water can get protection under the Environmental
Protection Agency’s “Waters of the United States” rule.
Pothole Thumb Meadow, a 5.65-acre groundwater-supported wetland
located at the westernmost end of Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite,
is undergoing restoration efforts. Yosemite’s wilderness
restoration team took action during the fall of 2022 to address
a significant issue—a large gully that had been impacting the
meadow’s health. The origins of this gully date back to the
late 1800s and can be attributed to various human activities,
including non-native sheep grazing, ditching, road building,
horseback riding, and camping. Initially, a small nick point
formed, and as water flowed over it, it gained speed, eroding
the soil. Over time, continuous erosion caused the nick point
to migrate upstream, resulting in a gully that is now up to 5
feet deep and 15 feet wide.
Scientists and veterinarians are racing to prevent a wildlife
disaster from getting worse in Tulare Lake, where hundreds of
birds are dying from avian botulism in its stagnant
waters. The lake that reemerged in the San Joaquin Valley
during winter flooding, which was partly brought on
by snowmelt, after decades of dormancy has become a warm
and stagnant breeding ground for toxins that cause paralysis
and death. It’s common for avian botulism to strike water fowl
when temperatures rise in summer and fall. But in 1983, the
last time Tulare Lake emerged to such a large size after
winter flooding, the disease killed more than 30,000 birds.
A mosquito breed known for carrying yellow fever and other
diseases has been spotted in portions of the San Joaquin
Valley. Last week, the San Joaquin County Mosquito and Vector
Control District said high numbers of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes
have shown up in traps around South Stockton, Manteca, Escalon
and Ripon. The mosquitoes have also popped up in Butte and
Glenn counties this summer. Like the majority of other
mosquitoes that live here, Aedes aegypti are not native to the
state. They’re also relatively new to California, having first
shown up in traps in 2011, according to the state’s Department
of Public Health.
Researchers have found a way to predict whether or not a forest
will survive based on drought conditions – information that can
help forest managers deal with climate change. The researchers
from the University of California Davis looked at a drought
that caused the loss of tens of millions of trees in the Sierra
Nevada forest from 2012 to 2015. In the early years, the trees
were doing fine, despite drought conditions. But by 2015, 80%
of them were essentially dead.
A popular federal effort to protect threatened Western fish is
in murky waters as stakeholders await Congressional action on
reauthorization. The Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish
Recovery Program has for 30 years sought to restore four
species that once thrived in the river: the razorback sucker,
Colorado pikeminnow, bonytail and humpback chub. A sister
effort, the San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation
Program, works to restore the same fish in the Four Corners
region. The species are imperiled by human-wrought habitat
disruption, like dams, and preyed upon and out-competed by
introduced species like rainbow and brown trout.
The lithium bonanza continues at the largest saline system
in the West, but a new company says it can harvest the mineral
in a way that doesn’t contribute to ecological
collapse. Waterleaf Resources, a subsidiary of
California-based Lilac Solutions, wants to siphon an
astounding 225,000 acre-feet from Utah’s Great Salt Lake,
asserting it will pump all the water back after removing its
lithium. The company uses an ion exchange technology that
washes brine through bead structures which absorb the lithium
minerals and flush out the rest of the water and its remaining
minerals.
On Thursday, August 10, Butte Creek turned orange. The culprit:
a failed PG&E canal that caused orange sediment to flood
the creek potentially creating deadly conditions for native
fish currently inhabiting the watershed including threatened
spring-run Chinook salmon. Salmon are a keystone species, and
their health is intricately connected with the rest of the
ecosystem. Native fish across California are consistently
vulnerable to safe and responsible operation of hydroelectric
infrastructure such as dams and canals. In some cases, basins
like Butte Creek are managed by water-moving infrastructure,
guiding flows from the nearby Feather River watershed to Butte
Creek.
In California’s north coast, the Eel River winds its way
through hills with shady slopes carpeted in lush ferns and
towering redwoods and sunny ridges covered in brushy chaparral.
The South Fork Eel River has been the site of extensive
research by UC Berkeley professor Dr. Mary Power that has
upended the traditional paradigm in ecology that trophic
subsidies from forested watersheds shape river food webs, but
subsidies from rivers are unimportant to forests. During
spring, floating mats of bright green algae grow on top of the
water in the river. Aquatic insects like caddisflies and
mayflies lay their eggs inside these mats, which provide
nutritious food and protection from predators to their young
when they hatch.
A relatively simple, inexpensive method of filtering urban
stormwater runoff dramatically boosted survival of newly
hatched coho salmon in an experimental study, according to a
press release from Washington State University (WSU). The
findings, published in the journal Science of the Total
Environment, are consistent with previous research on adult and
juvenile coho that found exposure to untreated roadway runoff
that typically winds up in waterways during storms resulted in
mortality of 60% or more. For the coho hatchlings in this
study, mortality from runoff exposure was even higher at 87%.
When the stormwater was run through a biofiltration method —
essentially layers of mulch, compost, sand and gravel — nearly
all the coho hatchlings survived, though many of resulting fish
had smaller eyes and body sizes than a control group.
A magistrate judge in Oregon sided with the Klamath Tribes on
Monday in finding that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation violated
the Endangered Species Act by misallocating limited water
supplies from the Upper Klamath Lake, harming endangered sucker
fish and other aquatic wildlife. In the 52-page findings and
recommendation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarke found the
central question is whether the federal government broke the
law by allocating water for irrigation when it knew it could
not comply with its Endangered Species Act obligations to
endangered sucker fish in the Upper Klamath Lake, a freshwater
reservoir in the southern Oregon portion of the Klamath Basin.
While out enjoying an afternoon on one of Lake Tahoe’s sandy
beaches over the past few years, you might have noticed large
mats of decomposing algae washing up or floating nearby. The
lake’s famed blue waters are facing another threat while the
battles of climate change and invasive species wage on — and
it’s all very much connected. Nearshore algae blooms are
a burgeoning ecological threat to Tahoe. Not only do they
impact the experience for beachgoers, but they also degrade
water quality and, in some cases, pose a threat of
toxicity. Over the last 50 years, the rate of algal
growth has increased sixfold, according to U.C. Davis Tahoe
Environmental Research Center’s 2022 State of the Lake
Report.
Burning Man is a spectacle every year. But this year’s
event garnered international attention when nearly 70,000
attendees were trapped in the desert following a storm that
created exceptionally muddy conditions, rendering travel on the
Black Rock Playa — the ancient lakebed where the event is held
— virtually impossible. … But Burning Man creates an
unnatural situation on the playa, especially during periods of
rain. The normal cycle — rainfall, standing water and
evaporation and infiltration — was interrupted by thousands of
festival attendees walking, riding and driving across the
playa. … This year’s event likely caused changes that
will take a long time to restore, and it could change the way
the playa absorbs rain in the future.
In the 1980s, the Great Salt Lake in Utah covered an area
larger than Rhode Island. Now it has shrunk to less than half
that size. Without major changes in local water use, it’s
possible that it could dry up completely before the end of this
decade. “Right now, the Great Salt Lake is on life support,”
says Ben Abbott, an ecosystem ecologist at Brigham Young
University. The ecosystem could collapse even before the water
disappears. As the lake shrinks, the water is getting saltier,
making it harder for the brine shrimp that live there to
survive—and meaning that the 10 million birds that migrate
through the area may soon have nothing to eat. The shrinking
coastline means that former islands are now connected to land,
and wildlife face new predators; this year, pelicans that used
to raise young on one former island were forced to abandon it.
Grand Canyon National Park will get more than a quarter-million
dollars to remove invasive species and protect native species
of fish in the Colorado River. The funds come from the
Inflation Reduction Act and are part of a nationwide effort to
restore natural habitats and address climate change impacts.
Lake Powell, a key Colorado River reservoir, dropped to
historically low levels last year due to climate change and
drought. This created viable breeding conditions and easier
passage through Glen Canyon Dam for high-risk invasive species
like smallmouth bass and green sunfish.
The Morris Graves Museum of Art, at 636 F St., Eureka, will
hold a closing celebration of Becky Evans’ Installation “30,000
Salmon” on Sept. 17 from 2 to 4 p.m. Museum-goers will hear a
dozen poems about rivers and dams, water and power, spawning
and dying, salmon and community, and half a century of life
upriver and downriver and on Humboldt Bay by Jerry Martien.
Martien will be accompanied by Becky Evans, Fred Neighbor
(guitar), Gary Richardson (bass) and Mike Labolle (percussion
and trumpet). … Engaging educators, students, community
members and artists, the project culminated in an installation
of 30,000 objects depicting or symbolizing the fish die off on
the Klamath River, which was exhibited at the First Street
Gallery in 2004.
The Environmental Protection Agency agreed Friday to finalize
nationwide standards that will protect U.S. waterways from the
harmful effects of discharges from ships. Under the agreement,
the EPA must release its final standards on vessel discharges
by Sept. 24, 2024. The standards are required by the Clean
Water Act. The agreement is the end result of a lawsuit filed
by the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth
this past February. In their complaint, the groups claimed that
ballast water adversely affects waterways by spreading harmful
zebra mussels, coral diseases and human pathogens. Both groups
were represented by the Stanford Law Clinic.
Heavy rain from Tropical Storm Hilary, storms from Jova and
flooding from monsoon moisture have doctors on high alert in
the Desert Southwest for a disease outbreak that can turn
deadly if not caught. Valley fever, or Coccidioidosis, is a
fungal infection. Humans and pets can get it just by inhaling
dusty air. Fungus spores grow in dirt and soil and become
airborne when wind, construction, digging and earthquakes
disturb the soil. Wind carries the spores to noses and mouths.
The spores thrive in the rain and multiply, according to notes
in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. … This
summer’s heat wave bakes the ground and dries out the
soil. Thunderstorm winds blow the spores around.
Kaiser, California’s largest healthcare provider, has agreed to
a $49 million settlement with the State Attorney General’s
Office and six district attorneys, including in Alameda County,
for illegally dumping hazardous waste, medical waste, and the
protected health information of more than 7,000 patients at
Kaiser facilities statewide, Attorney General Rob Bonta
announced on Friday. … [He said]: “Batteries containing
toxic, corrosive chemicals could leach into the surrounding
environment and pollute the soil and groundwater. Prescription
medications could leach into the water table and affect our
drinking water.” He added that hazardous chemicals could
start a fire that pollutes the air and harms the local
ecosystem.
Tropical Storm Hilary arrived in San Diego on Aug. 20. It
rained all day, dropping at least two inches in most places.
“It was shocking, to be honest with you,” said Southern
California native and garden expert Nan Sterman. “Except for
the six years that I was in university and hanging out
afterward, I have lived my entire life in Southern California,”
Sterman said. “And I have never ever seen a summer rainstorm
like we saw a couple of weeks ago.” All that water, when the
local landscape should be hot and dry, made our plants act
pretty strange. Tipuana trees were blooming a second time.
Native plants like ceanothus were showing new growth when they
should have been dormant. Plant experts saw surprises all over
town.
Bill Leikam was reviewing footage from a wildlife camera he
placed along a Palo Alto creekbed recently when something
unfamiliar scampered across the screen. … Eventually, he
recognized the mysterious creature as a critically important
species that has long been missing from his beloved Baylands —
a mammal that California wildlife officials have hailed as a
“climate hero.” … For decades, developers,
municipalities and farmers focused on beavers as a problem that
required mitigation or removal. Now, the species known
as Castor canadensis is seen as offering myriad
benefits: It can help to mitigate drought and wildfires through
natural water management; it is considered a keystone species
for its ability to foster biodiversity; and it can restore
habitat through its ecosystem engineering.
Today is California Biodiversity Day, which marks the
anniversary of the launch of California Biodiversity
Initiative in 2018 and celebrates our amazing state, the
exceptional biodiversity we have in the Sacramento Valley and
throughout California, and the actions we can work on with our
many partners to ensure biodiversity. In the Sacramento Valley,
our goal is to promote functioning ecosystems and sustainable
water supplies by preserving, sustaining, and promoting our
communities and working agricultural landscapes that support
ecosystem function and provide landscape-scale habitat benefits
for fish, bird, and wildlife populations.
The Feather River Recreation and Parks District is inviting the
public to make a difference in the community by joining in the
annual Feather River Clean Up Day. … Volunteers along
with staff from FRRPD and Department of Water Resources will be
tasked with picking up trash and removing invasive plants along
the river trail from Riverbend Park to the Feather River Nature
Center and Native Plant Park. … The week prior to the
event FRRPD staff and members of the Butte County Housing
Navigation Center will be notifying homeless camped along the
river and in the parks that the clean up will be happening and
providing resources to them for relocation. The day of the
event, FRRPD staff and members of the Butte County Sheriff’s
Department will be removing homeless camps in the remote areas
of Riverbend Park.
Historic amounts of federal money are flowing into the Bay Area
and California thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
(BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). How does your
organization or agency apply for some of it? … For
federal agencies without BIL and IRA announcement pages, we
recommend signing up for their newsletters—like “California
News Bytes” from the Bureau of Land Management—to help bring
possible opportunities to your inbox. Check the bureau or
agency websites that fall under the Department of the Interior,
such as the National Parks Service (BIL page, IRA page)
and the Bureau of Reclamation (BIL funding opportunities here,
and WaterSMART grants, a special program dedicated to
irrigation or water supply, can be found here), and Bureau
of Indian Affairs (BIL page).
Agencies restoring the Taylor and Tallac marsh areas have
completed the installation of bottom barriers to remove 17
acres of invasive plants as part of the comprehensive
restoration of one of the last natural wetlands in the Lake
Tahoe Basin, the USDA Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin
Management Unit and Tahoe Regional Planning Agency announced
today. The collaborative project that began in December 2021 is
one of the largest aquatic invasive species control projects
ever undertaken in the Tahoe Basin.
In late August 2023, the EPA removed federal protections for
most of the wetlands in the country to comply with a recent
Supreme Court ruling that reduced the power of the Clean Water
Act. The Los Cerritos Wetlands is in the middle of a sweeping
renovation project, done in partnership with the Los Cerritos
Wetlands Authority, Tidal Influence and the Aquarium of the
Pacific. Volunteers meet for a few hours on the first Saturday
of every month to pull weeds, break up cement, add mulch and
plant plants. Cassandra Davis, the volunteer services manager
at Aquarium of the Pacific, said wetlands play a crucial role
in protecting local flora and fauna, filtering water and most
importantly, wetlands help clean the air.
“The Owens Valley is nothing but a resource colony,” Kathy
Jefferson Bancroft, tribal historic preservation officer for
the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Reservation, told me. …
Bancroft’s office is a site of an historic struggle for
historic preservation and not the only site or the only
struggle against DWP in this valley. The largest, most unifying
fight in the valley community has been to force DWP to reduce
the amount of alkali dust from the dry Owens Lake, which, 20
years ago produced the worst air pollution in America. An
unintended consequence of the campaign to make DWP comply with
the state and federal Clean Air acts has been the arrival of
increasing numbers of shorebirds in the reborn Owens Lake.
Goats and sheep have proved their worth in devouring grasses
and other potentially flammable vegetation, all without
traditional mowing’s noise, pollution and, on hot days, risk of
igniting fires. In 2021, Cal Fire awarded more than $10 million
in grants for wildfire mitigation projects involving grazing.
North Bay residents likely have seen animals grazing on public
lands. Sonoma County Regional Parks use sheep and goats
seasonally for vegetation management at Helen Putnam, Laguna de
Santa Rosa Trail, Foothill, Cloverdale, Gualala and Maxwell
parks. Cows deploy at Taylor Mountain, Crane Creek, North
Sonoma Mountain and Tolay Lake parks. The parks agency notes
that properly conducted and monitored grazing benefits the
ecosystem by reducing invasive plant species, fertilizing the
soil and making grassland more permeable for recharging
groundwater, as well as reducing the risk of wildfire.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will not curtail water to the
Klamath Project in Southern Oregon and Northern California,
despite an earlier warning to irrigators that cutbacks might be
necessary to satisfy protections for endangered fish.
… The reversal is “due to improved hydrology in the
Klamath Basin over the last two weeks; opportunities for Upper
Klamath Lake water conservation this fall and winter; and
coordination with tribal partners and water users,” according
to officials.
On Wednesday, Stockton East Water District and the California
Department of Water Resources (DWR) joined local and federal
officials to highlight a $12.2 million project that will
support groundwater recharge, water quality and habitat
restoration project along the Calaveras River. … The
event was held at the Bellota Weir Modification Project site on
the Calaveras River. Funded by DWR’s Urban Community
Drought Relief Program, the project will make conveyance
improvements and install a modern fish screen at the Stockton
East Water District’s Bellota municipal diversion intake on the
Calaveras River. The conveyance improvements would double the
amount of groundwater recharge per year and improve water
reliability and quality for the city of Stockton’s drinking
water. Additionally, the fish screen and new fishways will
restore fish habitats along the Calaveras River and allow safe
passage through the river for the threatened Central Valley
Steelhead and Chinook Salmon.
Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit to save the Great
Salt Lake as its water continues receding and its lakebed blows
dust. The case uses a legal concept that recently stifled plans
to turn Utah Lake into a private island development and, years
ago, stopped a salty lake from getting sucked dry in
California. A complaint filed in 3rd District Court on
Wednesday invokes the public trust doctrine, claiming the Utah
Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has failed in its duty to
protect the largest saline ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere
for the benefit of its residents. While lawmakers and resource
managers have taken steps in recent years to bolster the
imperiled Great Salt Lake and the unique ecology it supports,
they must take more drastic steps to reduce Utahns’
overconsumption of water, the suit argues.
Friends of the River (FOR) and the California Sportfishing
Protection Alliance (CSPA), along with a coalition of tribes
and environmental organizations, on August 31 submitted a
protest against the water rights application and petitions of
the Sites Project Authority for the proposed Sites Reservoir.
FOR and CSPA, two of California’s oldest and most
respected water conservation organizations, said this protest
is part of a legally required process to ensure public concerns
are addressed when granting water rights in California.
Once eyed for thousands of homes, the recently restored Dutch
Slough tidal marsh in east Contra Costa County is already
flourishing as a new habitat for fish and wildlife, a living
laboratory for scientists and one of the world’s strongest
sinks for absorbing and storing carbon long-term. Led by the
state Department of Water Resources, the ambitious $73 million
project to restore 1,187 acres of freshwater Delta tidal
wetlands near Oakley – one of the largest such projects in the
state – is a little more than half finished. When it is
completed, the scientists are hoping it will become a model for
future restoration projects, climate change defenses and
scientific research. … That’s important, because many
scientists believe that capturing and storing carbon dioxide is
one of the more cost-effective ways to combat global warming.
On August 24th, the River Arc Project, a collaborative project
aimed at enhancing regional water supply and bolstering
wildlife resilience, received a substantial $5.1 million grant
from the Wildlife Conservation Board. This funding will help
maintain the current streamflow on the Lower American River, a
designated Wild & Scenic River, by strategically shifting water
supply diversions to the much larger Sacramento River. This
project is led by the Placer County Water Agency in partnership
with the City of Sacramento, Sacramento County Water Agency,
and the California American Water Company.
Melodie Meyer is associate general counsel for the Yurok Tribe
in Northern California—one of the few California tribes whose
members still reside on a portion of their ancestral lands. The
Yurok reservation borders a 44-mile stretch of the Klamath
River; we asked Ms. Meyer to tell us more about efforts to
protect the watershed. The Tribe’s water programs center
around managing water quality—ensuring that the tributaries
that drain into the Klamath are healthy and not polluted. The
environmental department’s water division has staff dedicated
to dealing with permitting for the water programs, as well as a
water quality control plan and a water pollution control
ordinance.
It’s really easy to overlook and undervalue wetlands. Some are
small or just don’t look very important. Others are enormous,
and cause flooding issues for homeowners and growers. Some
might even think wetlands are gross, worry about mosquitos and
vector borne illness, or have never experienced what it’s like
to be close to or inside of one. It’s uncommon to see a home or
store positioned on a wetland (usually because it was drained),
so perhaps they can also appear to be taking up valuable real
estate better utilized for ‘human needs’. Naturally, wetlands
require water, which means they compete with humans for the
acre-feet we so often discuss in California water. Yet
according to Constanza et al. 1997, ecosystem services for
wetlands, compared to all other ecosystem types, are the most
valuable on Earth.
A submerged tugboat in the Empire Tract area of San Joaquin
County was leaking fuel and oil into the Delta waterway on
Monday morning, according to the sheriff’s office. The boat was
near Herman and Helen’s Marina, the San Joaquin County
Sheriff’s Office said. The sheriff’s office boating safety
unit went to the scene trying to contain the spill. Outside
agencies — including Environmental Health, Office of Emergency
Services, Fish & Wildlife, Woodbridge Fire Department, and the
U.S. Coast Guard Pollution Response Team — were also contacted
to assist in the spill.
Chemical pesticides are produced synthetically and applied as a
main method for pest removal, especially in agriculture. In
2020, pesticide consumption was 2.66 million metric tons, with
the United States being the largest pesticide-consuming country
worldwide with 407.8 thousand metric tons of pesticides used,
and Brazil coming in second with 377.2 thousand tons consumed.
From 1990 to 2010, the global consumption of pesticides
increased by more than 50%. According to Soloneski et al., more
than 99.9% of pesticides applied to crops worldwide become
toxic residues in the environment, never reaching their
specific targets. These compounds are usually toxic and persist
in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
In 1986, I resigned my position as a news reporter in Sonoma
County to engage as an activist in a subject I’d been covering:
the 1985 junk-bond takeover of the Pacific Lumber Company, in
Humboldt County, by Houston-based Maxxam Corporation. At the
time, Pacific Lumber owned the very last large groves of
ancient redwood forest still standing outside of parks, a
precious inventory of primeval life that Maxxam was now very
busy liquidating. I would try to save this forest. …
Tree-sitting was a last resort. Our Humboldt County Earth
First! group staged many such direct actions in the redwoods,
yet every grove we occupied and otherwise agitated to preserve
got cut down or severely damaged, with the exception of
Headwaters Forest. I had discovered and named 3,000-acre
Headwaters Forest in March 1987, just five months after
quitting my job. That this iconic grove still stands is nothing
short of a miracle. -Written by Greg King, an award-winning
journalist and activist credited with spearheading the
movement to protect Headwaters Forest in Humboldt
County.
West Nile virus infections are on the rise this year in
California after a particularly wet winter led to more mosquito
reproduction, according to health experts. The state had 55
human cases of the virus as of Aug. 25. Five of them were
fatal, according to the California Mosquito-Borne Virus
Surveillance and Response Program. That’s more than double the
24 cases that had occurred in 2022 by late August of that year.
In total in 2022, there were 207 cases and 15 deaths. Among
California’s latest infections, a woman in Orange tested
positive for the West Nile virus this week, becoming the
first human case in Orange County this year, according to the
county Health Care Agency. The Orange resident wasn’t
experiencing any symptoms.
Over the last 150 years, the effects of human activities such
as agriculture, mining, damming, logging, and overfishing have
led to declines in Pacific salmon species. For decades, efforts
have been made to help salmon persist through the challenges
they faced. Now climate change is adding to the suite of
challenges threatening the long-term viability of salmon and
the cultures, traditions and economies of the communities that
depend on them. In the Pacific Northwest, the populations
of many salmon species have declined significantly,
with some protected under the Endangered Species
Act. In Alaska, a place with historically healthy salmon
runs, the decline of some runs has caused tremendous hardship
and concern.
A federal judge agreed with California that the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation can’t claim yet that an amendment to salinity
standards for parts of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta
discriminates against the U.S. government. U.S. District
Judge Jennifer Thurston in Sacramento on
Wednesday dismissed the bureau’s claim under the
federal constitutional intergovernmental immunity doctrine,
which prohibits state or local laws that discriminate against
the U.S. government, because until the amendment is
implemented, it won’t be possible to evaluate whether the
bureau is treated differently than similarly situated parties.
… The problem, according to the federal bureau, was that
the amended plan included revised, and less stringent Southern
Delta salinity objectives, but it didn’t apply these less
stringent objectives to Bureau of Reclamation, which operates
the New Melones Dam and Reservoir on the Stanislaus River.
Water levels at Lake Mohave are expected to drop about 10 feet
in the coming weeks to improve habitat and spawning cycles for
two endangered fish species native to the Colorado River
system. The annual fall drawdown of the reservoir is part of an
ongoing effort by the federal government to restore populations
for the boneytail chub and razorback sucker, the National Park
Service said in a news release. The surface of Lake Mohave will
go from its current elevation of roughly 643 feet above sea
level down to about 633 feet by mid-October. Water levels will
start to tick back up starting in November and return to normal
by mid-January.
The Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) provided a $2.27 million
grant to the 40 Acre Conservation League, California’s only
Black-led conservation group, for the Tahoe Forest Gateway
Leidesdorff Property in Placer County, a cooperative project
with the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. The conservation group
acquired approximately 650 acres of land near the Tahoe Lake
area for the purposes of wildlife-oriented education and
research, wildlife habitat preservation, restoration and
management. The WCB approved approximately $163.5 million in
grants to 37 projects at its Aug. 24, 2023, quarterly meeting
that will help restore and protect fish and wildlife habitat
throughout California. The grants will also provide new and
improved public access, recreation and educational
opportunities.
West Nile virus cases have been increasing in Northern
California. The West Nile virus is the most common and serious
vector-borne disease in the state. There were 29 new West Nile
Virus cases in humans last week, bringing the total for the
year to 55 cases. Those cases have been reported in Glenn,
Lake, Butte, Yolo, El Dorado, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Santa
Clara, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Kings, Tulare, Kern, Los
Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. On Wednesday,
another human case in Roseville became the first this summer in
Placer County. Five people with the virus have died, including
one person in Sacramento County and another person in Yolo
County.
Whether or not Joni Mitchell thinks creeks are paradise, it
became a lot easier to pave them over and put up a parking lot
this year. “So in May, the US Supreme Court limited really the
authority of the EPA, which is the Environmental Protection
Agency, to regulate certain elements of our nation’s waterway,”
Redgie Collins said. Collins is policy director at CalTrout.
Streams, rivers, and wetlands of many forms, across the United
States were dealt a serious blow this summer by the US Supreme
Court in their ruling on the case of Sackett v EPA. “The
federal backstops that were once present were really decimated
by that made decision by the Supreme Court,” Collins said. This
week, the EPA, their hands forced by the ruling, made official,
rollbacks of protections for various “waters of the United
States.”
When we discuss water infrastructure in our industry, our
thoughts naturally gravitate toward its fundamental roles in
growing our food, supplying our homes, and powering industries.
However, within the depths of lakes and the fast-moving
currents of rivers, lies an often-overlooked aspect of water’s
importance – its profound social significance. Beyond its
utilitarian functions, water plays a vital role in fostering
community, recreation, and shared experiences that enrich our
lives in ways that extend far beyond basic necessities. Water
bodies serve as dynamic hubs for social interactions, acting as
gathering places where people come together to swim, boat, and
partake in a diversity of activities that enrich bonds among
friends and families. I am an avid river rafter, and I have
spent many days bobbing down whitewater with friends, old and
new, laughter echoing off rocky shores as we navigate the
waters and create memories.
Oshun O’Rourke waded into the dark green water, splashing
toward a net that her colleagues gently closed around a cluster
of finger-length fish. The Klamath River is wide and still
here, making its final turn north to the coast as it winds
through the Yurok reservation in Humboldt County. About 150
baby chinook salmon, on their long journey to the Pacific, were
resting in cool waters that poured down from the forest.
… For more than a hundred years, dams
have stilled the Klamath’s flows, jeopardizing the salmon
and other fish, and creating ideal conditions for the
parasite to spread. But now these vestiges of an
early 20th-century approach to water and power are
being dismantled: The world’s largest dam removal
project is now underway on the Klamath River.
San Diego researchers have a better idea of why an algal bloom
along the county coastline in the spring of 2020 got so big.
The red tide event in April and May of 2020 was among one of
the largest in years and it created changes in the nearshore
environment that lingered well into the summer. Researchers at
the UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Jacobs
School of Engineering have pinpointed how a specific species of
plankton, a dinoflagellate, fed the bloom.
Amidst the largest remaining contiguous old-growth coastal
redwood forest in the world, just off Highway 101, Bull Creek
trickles by. This modest 41.5 square mile watershed has
incredible potential to support endangered salmonids – but the
conditions in the creek are not yet quite right for fish. Soon,
completion of a restoration project on the Hamilton Reach of
Bull Creek will change this giving existing coho populations in
the South Fork Eel River watershed the chance to migrate
through. Throughout their lifecycles, salmonids need
varied water temperatures. When they are young, they might need
warmer water, and as they grow, they seek out colder
temperatures. They need different summer and winter habitat to
thrive. Ultimately, these fish need habitat year-round that can
fulfill the full spectrum of their lifecycle needs.
… For decades, federal court battles have pitted
environmentalists who want the Clean Water Act to protect more
wetlands against industries seeking regulatory rollbacks.
The high court’s May 25 decision favoring Idaho
landowners Michael and Chantell Sackett curtailed powers of the
Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers to
limit wetlands destruction. It put states at the center of
future fights over wetlands that defend against floods, purify
water and support wildlife, analysts say.“The federal rollbacks
are creating a vacuum. The states are going to have to step in
and fill the void,” said Kim Delfino, president of an
environmental consulting company and the former California
director of Defenders of Wildlife.
The state approved funding for a range of floodplain projects
in the San Joaquin Valley, clearing the way for work to
potentially begin as soon as this week. The state budget
included $40 million for floodplain restoration projects in the
San Joaquin Valley, which would let rivers spread out over
large swaths of undeveloped land to slow the flow and absorb
the water. On August 24, the California Wildlife
Conservation Board voted to spend $21 million of the funding
which will be doled out to six on-the-ground projects and 10
planning projects, all overseen by the nonprofit River
Partners. The rest of the money will be voted on in November at
another board meeting and is proposed for two land
acquisitions.
The coast is for many the epitome of Sonoma County’s natural
beauty beloved for its seaside towns and rugged, wide open
spaces. But seeing the future of the Sonoma coast means
embracing its constant movement. Big proposals like the Bodega
Bay nuclear power plant in the 1960’s, or the Fort Ross pumped
hydro electric facility today easily capture public attention
and spur opposition, but there’s one powerful force that
changes the Sonoma Coast every minute of every day: the ocean.
Six trees were found “poisoned” at a private beach in one
of Tahoe’s most exclusive neighborhoods recently, spurring
an investigation and pointing to the area’s long history of
tree violations. According to the Tahoe Daily
Tribune, the mystery began in July 2022, when Incline Village
General Improvement District staff members found six other
trees at Burnt Cedar Beach that smelled like fuel. The latest
poisonings bring the total of poisoned trees at Burnt Cedar
Beach to 12. Representatives from the Incline Village Parks and
Recreation department told SFGATE that the restricted beach,
which is outfitted with a pool, swimming cove and full-service
bar, is only accessible to residents and their guests.
Workers across California are grappling with yet another
climate change-induced threat: a rapidly spreading fungus
that can land its unsuspecting victims with
prolonged flu-like symptoms, or far worse. The culprit is a
soil-dwelling organism called coccidioides, which is now
spreading the disease coccidioidomycosis — known as “Valley
fever” — farther and farther north of its Southwest origins.
Rather than spreading from person to person, Valley
fever results from the direct inhalation of fungal
spores — spores climate change is now allowing to flourish
in new places.
On an unseasonably hot July day, Jerrod Bowman peers into the
water flowing through a box-like passage for endangered fishes,
checking their route is clear. Bowman works as a fish biologist
for the Navajo Nation, based west of Farmington, where the San
Juan River borders the reservation. A small dam here forms a
barrier to the seasonal migration of two rare fish species, the
razorback sucker and the Colorado pikeminnow. On the south side
of the river a narrow, rocky channel leading to a concrete
bypass serves as a passage around the dam. “I’m just trying to
give them the chance to move upstream,” Bowman says.
Historically, Colorado pikeminnows traveled hundreds of miles
through the free-flowing rivers of the Colorado River Basin,
from Wyoming to northern Mexico. Razorback suckers also
migrated seasonally to spawn through a similar range.
What is going on? There have been four West Nile-related deaths
in California this year, including the one confirmed case in
San Bernardino County. Cases are being reported as far north as
Lake County and as far south as Imperial. So far this year 55
people have tested positive — over half were reported just last
week. What can I do? The solution is easy, simple and cheap:
Wear insect repellent. It has the added bonus of fewer itchy
mosquito bites as well as protecting your health. Stop
mosquitoes from laying eggs in or near standing water. Dump any
standing water around your house, such as in flower pots, tires
or buckets to keep mosquitoes from breeding. Check and repair
holes in screens to keep mosquitoes outdoors.
The Environmental Protection Agency and US Army on Tuesday
released a new rule that slashes federally protected water by
more than half, following a Supreme Court decision in May that
rolled back protections for US wetlands. The rule will
invalidate an earlier definition of what constitutes the
so-called waters of the United States, after the Supreme Court
ruled Clean Water Act protections extend only to “wetlands with
a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of
the United States in their own rights.” It could impact up to
63% of US wetlands by acreage and around 1.2 million to 4.9
million miles of ephemeral streams, an EPA spokesperson told
CNN. An ephemeral stream is one that typically only has water
flowing through it during and immediately after rain events.
California is at yet another critical point in its struggle
toward a sustainable water future, and yet we’re still talking
about the wrong solutions. On Wednesday, the water rights
protest period for Sites Reservoir will come to a close. Sites
Reservoir is the latest in a long line of proposed dams
promising to end our cycle of water insecurity. However, Sites
won’t add much to California’s water portfolio, and its harm to
the Sacramento River, Delta ecosystem and communities that rely
on them could be irreversible and ongoing. -Written by Keiko Mertz, the Policy Director for
Friends of the River.
National Park Service biologists planned to close off and
poison a slough connected to the Colorado River upstream of the
Grand Canyon to kill young, non-native bass this weekend, the
agency said. It’s the second time that officials have used
rotenone, a fish-killing agent, as an emergency measure to slow
a mushrooming smallmouth bass invasion from Lake Powell that
threatens native humpback chubs that swim the Colorado farther
downstream. This time they’re seeking hundreds of young bass,
instead of the handful first detected in the slough between
Glen Canyon Dam and Lees Ferry last year.
The Central Valley of California only contains 1% of U.S.
farmland, but generates 8% of the country’s agricultural output
and produces a quarter of the nation’s food. Much of this
astounding production comes from the 8,500 square kilometers of
farmland in the Sacramento River watershed, which covers the
northern portion of the Central Valley. This extensive farmland
means that the watershed is exposed to a significant amount of
compounds commonly used in farming, including pesticides. As
water flows over the land to streams and rivers, it carries
these contaminants along with it, ultimately dumping them in
waterways and floodplains, where they often make their way into
the food web. Consequently, juvenile Chinook salmon
(Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) feeding and rearing within the
watershed can be exposed to these harmful compounds.
Ducks Unlimited and its scientific partners have several
studies planned or underway to study waterfowl and their
habitats in the Pacific Flyway. … The lack of floodplain
habitat for salmon and other migratory fish in the Sacramento
Valley in California has contributed to their decline. As a
result, there are proposals to manage floodplain habitats to
benefit fish. This study, led by a team in Ducks Unlimited’s
Western Region, will determine the effects of floodplain
reactivation for fish on waterfowl and Sacramento Valley
waterfowl hunting.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it will
provide Endangered Species Act protections to four of the six
geographically and genetically distinct population segments
(DPS) of the foothill yellow-legged frog. After reviewing
the best scientific and commercial information available, the
Service determined endangered status for the South Sierra DPS
and South Coast DPS and threatened status for the North Feather
DPS and Central Coast DPS of the foothill yellow-legged frog.
The Service is including a 4(d) rule for the North Feather DPS
and Central Coast DPS that excepts take incidental to habitat
restoration projects and forest fuels management activities
that reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. The Service will
designate critical habitat for the frog at a later date.
A federal appeals court panel Friday halted an exploratory gold
drilling project in the eastern Sierra Nevada that was set to
begin this week. Kore Mining Ltd. planned to drill for gold
near Mammoth Lakes. The project involved 12, 600-foot deep
holes on some 1,900 acres. It would have required vegetation
clearing and less than a mile of temporary access roads. Four
groups — Friends of the Inyo, the Center for Biological
Diversity, the Western Watersheds Project and the Sierra Club —
sued Kore Mining and the U.S. Forest Service in October 2021,
arguing the drilling would impact area groundwater that feeds
into the Owens River and cause the bi-state sage grouse to
abandon its habitat. A federal judge in March sided with the
defendants.
Floodplain restoration, halted by budget cuts, will resume now
that the state reallocated funding. [Last] Friday morning,
Chico-based River Partners announced that the California
Wildlife Conservation Board approved $40 million for projects
in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys… “This level
of Central Valley floodplain investment is historic,” River
Partners President Julie Renter said by email. “It will result
in the transformation of over 4,000 acres, delivering improved
flood safety, groundwater recharge, habitat for salmon and
other imperiled wildlife, outdoor access for park-starved
communities, restoration-related jobs to grow local economies,
and so much more.”
After a century of getting dammed, diverted, moved out of its
channel and, in some places, tapped completely dry, a big
section of the Price River now flows free. The historic rail
and mining town of Helper celebrated the completion of its
river revitalization project this year. It marks the end of a
decade-long effort to rid a seven-mile stretch of old piling
structures impeding the river’s movement, along with concrete,
junk and invasive plants choking the river’s banks. Residents
and visitors can now fish, float and boat unimpeded through
this increasingly popular tourist destination located halfway
between Salt Lake City and Moab.
… Rising salinity, exacerbated by a shrinking freshwater
supply from the chronically drought-plagued Colorado River, has
made the Salton Sea uninhabitable for many aquatic species.
… But recently, the Salton Sea has become a hotbed of
industrial activity filled with promise for the future. Beneath
its shores lie untouched lithium deposits that experts believe
could play a role in the world’s clean energy future. With
the rising demand for lithium during the clean energy
transition, the area—also known as “Lithium Valley”—has become
an attractive location for major energy companies to explore
advanced mining techniques like direct lithium extraction
(DLE).
Today, the bumblebee is among more than 200 endangered species
whose existence is threatened by the nation’s most widely used
insecticides (one classification of pesticides), according to a
recent analysis by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The endangered species range from Attwater’s greater
prairie chicken to the Alabama cave shrimp, from the American
burying beetle to the slackwater darter. And the star cactus
and four-petal pawpaw are among the 160-plus at-risk plants.
The three neonicotinoids — thiamethoxam, clothianidin and
imidacloprid — are applied as seed coatings on some 150 million
acres of crops each year, including corn, soybeans and other
major crops. Neonicotinoids are a group of neurotoxic
insecticides similar to nicotine and used widely on farms and
in urban landscapes.
When the July Fourth crowds cleared out from Tahoe’s beaches
this year, visitors left thousands of pounds of trash behind —
Zephyr Shoals alone had 8,500 pounds of rubbish. The next day,
volunteers flocked to the beaches, picking up broken coolers
and lawn chairs, plastic cups and aluminum cans. But more
rubbish, unseen by the volunteers, hid just beneath the sand.
Across Tahoe’s beaches, scraps like bottle caps, bits of
Styrofoam and cigarette butts remained. … Traditional
methods for rounding up litter in the water and on the
lakeshores are no longer sufficient, according to the League to
Save Lake Tahoe, a nonprofit group dedicated to protecting the
Tahoe Basin. Enter the BEBOT and the PixieDrone, zero-emission
robots designed specifically to clean sandy beaches and the
surfaces of lakes.
Last week, a massive marine heat wave sitting roughly 60 miles
off California’s coast oozed eastward, providing warm water
fuel for Hurricane Hilary and its historic trek north. It was a
worrisome development for researchers who have monitored this
warm mass for nearly a decade — and who are watching a
developing El Niño in the equatorial Pacific. Ever since the
“blob” appeared in the northeastern Pacific at the very end of
2013 — a massive marine heat wave that gripped the West Coast
for nearly two years in heat and drought; disrupting marine
ecosystems up and down the coast — a massive offshore heat wave
has appeared nearly every year (with the exception of 2017 and
2018); expanding in the summer and shrinking in the winter.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced
Wednesday it has completed its release of approximately 23
million fall-run Chinook salmon raised in Central Valley fish
hatcheries. The 23 million salmon raised and released by state
officials this year is a 15% increase from the count in 2022.
This year’s production goals were expanded to try to help
Chinook salmon overcome the consequences of the drought in
which water temperatures rose and water flows fell throughout
the Valley during critical salmon spawning periods, officials
said. Those conditions, coupled with a thiamine deficiency that
affects reproduction, have reduced in-river spawning success
over the past several fall runs.
When you think about sources of planet-heating greenhouse
gases, dams and reservoirs probably aren’t some of the first
things that come to mind. But scientific research has
shown that reservoirs emit significant amounts of methane, a
potent greenhouse gas. It’s produced by decomposing plants and
other organic matter collecting near the bottom of reservoirs.
Methane bubbles up to the surface of reservoirs, and also
passes through dams and bubbles up downstream. Scientists call
these processes ebullition and degassing. …
[Experts] estimated that if [Sites] reservoir is built and
filled, it would annually emit approximately 362,000 metric
tons of emissions, measured as carbon dioxide equivalent.
California’s Sierra Nevada mountain used to have more meadows,
nearly three times as many. That’s according to a report
released earlier this month by the U.S. Forest Service’s
Pacific Southwest Research Station. Researchers used a subset
of artificial intelligence known as machine learning to
identify and map locations of these lost meadows, which have
disappeared over 150 years due to livestock grazing, mining,
road-building and wildfires. … In some instances, the
models expanded into areas where meadows were known to already
exist. Potential new meadows, or previously unrecognized areas,
were also identified and will now be used in the forest
service’s meadow restoration effort.
The state received a significant boost to its efforts with
State Route 37 and San Pablo Bay last week with the infusion of
$155 million in federal funding. The California Transportation
Commission announced on Wednesday it formally allocated the
funds to elevate a key section of State Route 37 to guard
against future flooding on a vital regional corridor connecting
Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties and enhance habitat
connectivity for San Pablo Bay. The $180 million project will
raise the roadway by 30 feet over Novato Creek by 2029 — well
above the projected year 2130 sea-level rise. The $155 million
allocation comes from the federal Infrastructure Investment and
Jobs Act (IIJA) and is lauded by environmental groups and local
leaders who have been calling for investments to support the
long-term viability of state route 37.
Mitigating climate change and adapting to a warming planet
requires as many partners as we can muster. This includes
embracing nature as a key ally. Estimates suggest that
nature-based solutions can provide 37% of the mitigation needed
to keep climate warming below two degrees Centigrade. And,
nature, can help us prepare for the changes we are already
experiencing and know are coming. Many people appreciate that
if we plant more trees, they can both cool our cities and
absorb carbon. But, perhaps less well known are the many
benefits that beavers bring to the climate fight. Beavers are
ecological engineers whose ponds store carbon, improve water
quality, create habitat to support biodiversity, and help
reduce climate impacts.
Some people view Napa County’s recent rejection of the proposed
Le Colline vineyard in the Napa Valley watershed as a breath of
fresh air. Others see it as an ill wind. Le Colline was
the first controversial land use decision facing the new-look
Board of Supervisors that took office at the beginning of the
year. On Tuesday, the board, by a 3-2 margin, sided with
environmentalists who objected to clearing forest and shrubland
for a 20.6-acre vineyard. Mike Hackett of Save Napa Valley has
over the years often been disappointed with county land use
decisions. This time, he liked the outcome and sees good things
to come. “I think a majority of the board finally understands
we are in a climate crisis,” said Hackett. “We can no longer be
removing forests in inappropriate locations for
vineyards.”
A wetland restoration project is now underway in the 400-acre
former herding area known as Ackerson Meadow, which was
controversially added to Yosemite National Park in 2016, the
National Park Service announced this week. Ackerson Meadow is
on the west edge of Yosemite, on Evergreen Road in Tuolumne
County, between Highway 120 and the entrance to Hetch Hetchy,
and it borders Stanislaus National Forest land. Ackerson Creek
flows into the South Fork Tuolumne River. Natural subalpine
meadows there used to be magnets for cattle and sheep herders
who sought grazelands when they were outside park
boundaries.
What do nail polish, children’s foam-padded sleeping mats and
tires have in common? Not much at first glance, but all have
been identified as “priority products” under California’s Safer
Consumer Products regulations administered by the California
Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) under the state’s
Green Chemistry law. The Regulation and Its Requirements The
regulation designating motor vehicle tires containing the
chemical N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N’-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine
(6PPD) as a priority product became final on July 3, 2023,
making tires containing 6PPD the seventh priority product
identified under the law.
One of the most famous, though possibly apocryphal, quotes to
come out of the Vietnam War appeared in a Feb. 7, 1968,
Associated Press report. It quoted an unnamed “United States
Major” explaining why U.S. forces leveled the Vietnamese town
of Ben Tre—in one succinct, memorable turn of phrase: “It
became necessary to destroy the town to save it,” the major
reportedly commented. The quote lives on because, real or
not, it seemed to perfectly encapsulate the absurdity of
military logic. … But the quote didn’t apply only to the
military. In fact, it could easily be applied to the
large-scale public improvement project that built much of what
California is today—via a process known as “land reclamation.”
The reclamation projects of the late 19th and early 20th
century turned the so-called swamps of California’s Central
Valley into some of the country’s most fertile
agricultural land—but in the process, destroyed or damaged 90
percent of the wetlands that were the natural habitat for
hundreds of species of birds, mammals, reptiles and
many other kinds of life.
Fears, concerns and legal challenges over a proposed oil train
route along the Colorado River were finally addressed in
federal court last week. Until then, plans for the Uinta Basin
Railway project, which would ferry vast amounts of crude oil
from northeast Utah eastward alongside the Colorado River,
sailed through federal agencies tasked with approving large
transportation projects. But then the U.S. Court of Appeals in
Washington, D.C., successfully challenged the project’s
environmental impact assessments, siding with the railway’s
opponents and striking a blow against what would have been the
largest petroleum corridor in the United States.
In an otherwise warming planet, new research shows that the
ocean off California’s Central Coast may be a thermal refuge
for marine wildlife. Cal Poly associate professor Ryan Walter,
who teaches physics, and fourth-year physics student Michael
Dalsin analyzed temperature data gathered from 1978 through
2020 at a site just north of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
They found that while other areas of the world see sharp rises
in ocean temperatures and more frequent and more intense
heatwaves, the Central Coast hasn’t seen such intense
trends. The region still experiences marine heatwaves and
cold spells brought on by factors such as the ocean-wide
climactic patterns of El Niño and La Niña, but cold current
upwelling brought on by strong local winds helps maintain the
marine ecosystem along the Central Coast, according to a study
by Walter and Dalsin published on July 31.
Salmon fishers across the state are pivoting to stay afloat
after the salmon fishing season was canceled earlier this
year. At dock 47 in San Francisco, the pier looks
different this time of year. More boats are tied up, an unusual
sight for what would be peak salmon season. “It hurts all
the way around,” Matt Juanes told CBS News Bay Area.
… But this year, the salmon fisher of 8 years is
exploring uncharted territory for him. He’s now looking to
catch shrimp and halibut after salmon season was canceled for
repopulation efforts. … The impact goes beyond the
fishermen and their families. California is projected to lose
$460 million from the closure with more than 20,000 jobs
impacted. Officials say the closure was necessary to
sustain the population after years of drought made the state’s
water supply unsustainable for salmon eggs that require cooler
water to survive. But experts say we could see future closures
unless water is reserved for the fish.
When you hear the word “microfiber,” you probably think of the
now-ubiquitous reusable cloths used for cleaning floors, wiping
up spills and polishing countertops. For environmentalists,
however, that word has a much more sinister meaning. It
describes the tiny threads that textiles — clothes, bedding,
towels and, yes, reusable cleaning cloths — shed by the
millions during each spin through the washing machine and which
ultimately end up polluting the environment, particularly
oceans, rivers and lakes. Since most clothing is made with
synthetic materials, such as polyester and acrylic, it means
that most microfibers are also microplastics.
Strange times create strange bedfellows, as long-term water
supply for farms and cities in the Lower Basin aligns with the
best environmental alternative. The best solution for
California, Arizona, and Nevada to achieve water supply
security is to have the Colorado River bypass Glen Canyon Dam,
drain Lake Powell’s water into Lake Mead, and let the Colorado
River flow freely through Grand Canyon. As the comments are
made public in the Post-2026 Colorado River Scoping EIS
(Environmental Impact Statement) process, one thing is for
certain: an alternative examining bypassing water around or
through Glen Canyon Dam must be developed by the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation. The usual suspects — mostly environmental groups —
are calling for either completely decommissioning Glen Canyon
Dam or bypassing the Dam to support the “Fill Mead First”
alternative. -Written by Gary Wockner, a scientist and conservationist
based in Colorado.
California produces millions of tons of hazardous waste every
year – toxic detritus that can leach into groundwater or blow
into the air. It’s waste that can explode, spark fires, eat
through metal containers, destroy ecosystems and sicken people.
It’s dangerous material that we have come to rely on and ignore
– the flammable liquids used to cleanse metal parts before
painting, the lead and acid in old car batteries, even the
shampoos that can kill fish. It all needs to go somewhere. But
over the past four decades, California’s facilities to manage
hazardous waste have dwindled. What’s left is a tattered system
of older sites with a troubling history of safety violations
and polluted soil and groundwater, a CalMatters investigation
has found.
Justices Ron Robie and Stacy Boulware Eurie are spearheading an
effort to educate California’s judiciary about climate change
and water issues. We asked them why they’ve taken on this
task—and what they hope to accomplish. You are leading the
judiciary’s efforts to train judges and justices on water and
climate. What does this entail, and why is it so important?
Justice Robie: I’ve taught classes on the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for about 20 years. Water is a
similar specialized area like CEQA, and more water cases are
being assigned to larger courts. It seemed logical that using
the CEQA model would be good for water.
Avian botulism, a lethal disease for birds, has been found
spreading throughout Tulare Lake. The disease is caused by
bacteria that thrive in shallow, warm waters with decaying
organic matter. The bacteria that causes the disease is
found naturally in wetland soil. But it doesn’t produce the
toxin that causes the disease unless environmental conditions
are right. As temperatures soared in the San Joaquin Valley
over the past few months, Tulare Lake warmed, causing perfect
conditions for the disease to spread. Neighboring
wildlife areas, such as the Kern National Wildlife Refuge,
often have standing, shallow water for bird habitat.
The National Park Service will renew efforts to rid an area of
the Colorado River in northern Arizona of invasive fish by
killing them with a chemical treatment, the agency said Friday.
A substance lethal to fish but approved by federal
environmental regulators called rotenone will be disseminated
starting Aug. 26. It’s the latest tactic in an ongoing struggle
to keep non-native smallmouth bass and green sunfish at bay
below the Glen Canyon Dam and to protect a threatened native
fish, the humpback chub. The treatment will require a weekend
closure of the Colorado River slough, a cobble bar area
surrounding the backwater where the smallmouth bass were found
and a short stretch up and downstream. Chemical substances were
also utilized last year.
The latest phase of a decades-long effort to help restore
California’s largest tract of tidal salt marsh south of San
Francisco Bay is underway this summer, thanks to the efforts of
Ducks Unlimited and its partners at Elkhorn Slough. For
years, Ducks Unlimited has partnered with the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Elkhorn Slough Foundation
on the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve to
restore degraded salt marsh and surrounding habitats.
Meandering seven miles inland from the coast, the Elkhorn
Slough sits at the center of California’s iconic Monterey Bay.
Last century, the mouth of the sinuous waterway was relocated
to create a harbor which resulted in stronger tides washing in
and out of the slough. Instead of shallow salt marshes, the
slough began to function as a bay.
The Yurok Tribe’s annual salmon festival in Klamath,
California, is a little different this year. Yes, there’s a
noisy parade, yes there are dozens of stalls selling T-shirts
and jewelry, yes there are kids wrestling it out in a
traditional stick game and yes there is plenty of
food. But for only the second time in the 59-year history
of the celebration, salmon is not being served. … Salmon
are central to the Yurok, whose territory stretches 40 miles or
so up the Klamath River from this beautiful, rugged coast.
… The Yurok have stopped fishing for salmon, hoping it
will help the devastated population bounce back. Hence, the
lack of salmon to eat at the festival.
One of our favorite aspects to teaching is (occasionally) being
able to really surprise a student. Many of the fun nature facts
folks pick up nowadays come from TV, YouTube, social media, and
other media outlets. But these outlets have an inherent bias:
they focus on the charismatic species. That is, the species
that are big, fluffy, and widely adored. Yet there are so many
fascinating species and ecology in the lesser appreciated
taxonomic groups (not to mention, focusing on charismatic
species leads to inequitable conservation – Rypel et al. 2021).
And often, learning about these overlooked species can really
blow the mind! Today, we’d like to introduce you all to the
fascinating reproductive behavior of freshwater mussels.
Flowers that haven’t been seen in years bloomed across Southern
California this spring after massive winter downpours, creating
not only colorful landscapes but a boon for conservationists
eager to gather desert seeds as an insurance policy against a
hotter and drier future. In the Mojave Desert, seeds from
parish goldeneye and brittlebush are scooped up by staff and
volunteers working to build out seed banks in the hope these
can be used in restoration projects as climate change pressures
desert landscapes. Already this summer, the York Fire burned
across the Mojave National Preserve, charring thousands of
acres in the fragile ecosystem including famed Joshua trees.
Explore the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape while learning about the issues
associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
Biologists have designed a variety
of unique experiments in the past decade to demonstrate the
benefits that floodplains provide for small fish. Tracking
studies have used acoustic tags to show that chinook salmon
smolts with access to inundated fields are more likely than their
river-bound cohorts to reach the Pacific Ocean. This is because
the richness of floodplains offers a vital buffet of nourishment
on which young salmon can capitalize, supercharging their growth
and leading to bigger, stronger smolts.
Water is flowing once again
to the Colorado River’s delta in Mexico, a vast region that
was once a natural splendor before the iconic Western river was
dammed and diverted at the turn of the last century, essentially
turning the delta into a desert.
In 2012, the idea emerged that water could be intentionally sent
down the river to inundate the delta floodplain and regenerate
native cottonwood and willow trees, even in an overallocated
river system. Ultimately, dedicated flows of river water were
brokered under cooperative
efforts by the U.S. and Mexican governments.
State work to improve wildlife habitat and tamp down dust at California’s ailing Salton Sea is finally moving forward. Now the sea may be on the verge of getting the vital ingredient needed to supercharge those restoration efforts – money.
The shrinking desert lake has long been a trouble spot beset by rising salinity and unhealthy, lung-irritating dust blowing from its increasingly exposed bed. It shadows discussions of how to address the Colorado River’s two-decade-long drought because of its connection to the system. The lake is a festering health hazard to nearby residents, many of them impoverished, who struggle with elevated asthma risk as dust rises from the sea’s receding shoreline.
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Radically transformed from its ancient origin as a vast tidal-influenced freshwater marsh, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem is in constant flux, influenced by factors within the estuary itself and the massive watersheds that drain though it into the Pacific Ocean.
Lately, however, scientists say the rate of change has kicked into overdrive, fueled in part by climate change, and is limiting the ability of science and Delta water managers to keep up. The rapid pace of upheaval demands a new way of conducting science and managing water in the troubled estuary.
Out of sight and out of mind to most
people, the Salton Sea in California’s far southeast corner has
challenged policymakers and local agencies alike to save the
desert lake from becoming a fetid, hyper-saline water body
inhospitable to wildlife and surrounded by clouds of choking
dust.
The sea’s problems stretch beyond its boundaries in Imperial and
Riverside counties and threaten to undermine multistate
management of the Colorado River. A 2019 Drought Contingency Plan for the
Lower Colorado River Basin was briefly stalled when the Imperial
Irrigation District, holding the river’s largest water
allocation, balked at participating in the plan because, the
district said, it ignored the problems of the Salton Sea.
Deep, throaty cadenced calls —
sounding like an off-key bassoon — echo over the grasslands,
farmers’ fields and wetlands starting in late September of each
year. They mark the annual return of sandhill cranes to the
Cosumnes River Preserve,
46,000 acres located 20 miles south of Sacramento on the edge of
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
High in the headwaters of the Colorado River, around the hamlet of Kremmling, Colorado, generations of families have made ranching and farming a way of life, their hay fields and cattle sustained by the river’s flow. But as more water was pulled from the river and sent over the Continental Divide to meet the needs of Denver and other cities on the Front Range, less was left behind to meet the needs of ranchers and fish.
“What used to be a very large river that inundated the land has really become a trickle,” said Mely Whiting, Colorado counsel for Trout Unlimited. “We estimate that 70 percent of the flow on an annual average goes across the Continental Divide and never comes back.”
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
In the universe of California water, Tim Quinn is a professor emeritus. Quinn has seen — and been a key player in — a lot of major California water issues since he began his water career 40 years ago as a young economist with the Rand Corporation, then later as deputy general manager with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and finally as executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. In December, the 66-year-old will retire from ACWA.
In 1983, a landmark California Supreme Court ruling extended the public trust doctrine to tributary creeks that feed Mono Lake, which is a navigable water body even though the creeks themselves were not. The ruling marked a dramatic shift in water law and forced Los Angeles to cut back its take of water from those creeks in the Eastern Sierra to preserve the lake.
Now, a state appellate court has for the first time extended that same public trust doctrine to groundwater that feeds a navigable river, in this case the Scott River flowing through a picturesque valley of farms and alfalfa in Siskiyou County in the northern reaches of California.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of Oroville Dam spillway
repairs.
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
Water means life for all the Grand Canyon’s inhabitants, including the many varieties of insects that are a foundation of the ecosystem’s food web. But hydropower operations upstream on the Colorado River at Glen Canyon Dam, in Northern Arizona near the Utah border, disrupt the natural pace of insect reproduction as the river rises and falls, sometimes dramatically. Eggs deposited at the river’s edge are often left high and dry and their loss directly affects available food for endangered fish such as the humpback chub.
An hour’s drive north of Sacramento sits a picture-perfect valley hugging the eastern foothills of Northern California’s Coast Range, with golden hills framing grasslands mostly used for cattle grazing.
Back in the late 1800s, pioneer John Sites built his ranch there and a small township, now gone, bore his name. Today, the community of a handful of families and ranchers still maintains a proud heritage.
Farmers in the Central Valley are broiling about California’s plan to increase flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems to help struggling salmon runs avoid extinction. But in one corner of the fertile breadbasket, River Garden Farms is taking part in some extraordinary efforts to provide the embattled fish with refuge from predators and enough food to eat.
And while there is no direct benefit to one farm’s voluntary actions, the belief is what’s good for the fish is good for the farmers.
For more than 100 years, invasive
species have made the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta their home,
disrupting the ecosystem and costing millions of dollars annually
in remediation.
The latest invader is the nutria, a large rodent native to South
America that causes concern because of its propensity to devour
every bit of vegetation in sight and destabilize levees by
burrowing into them. Wildlife officials are trapping the animal
and trying to learn the extent of its infestation.
Deep, throaty cadenced calls —
sounding like an off-key bassoon — echo over the grasslands,
farmers’ fields and wetlands starting in late September of each
year. They mark the annual return of sandhill cranes to the
Cosumnes River Preserve,
46,000 acres located 20 miles south of Sacramento on the edge of
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
As we continue forging ahead in 2018
with our online version of Western Water after 40 years
as a print magazine, we turned our attention to a topic that also
got its start this year: recreational marijuana as a legal use.
State regulators, in the last few years, already had been beefing
up their workforce to tackle the glut in marijuana crops and
combat their impacts to water quality and supply for people, fish
and farming downstream. Thus, even if these impacts were perhaps
unbeknownst to the majority of Californians who approved
Proposition 64 in 2016, we thought it important to see if
anything new had evolved from a water perspective now that
marijuana was legal.
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
Along the banks of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Oakley, about 50 miles southwest
of Sacramento, is a park that harkens back to the days when the
Delta lured Native Americans, Spanish explorers, French fur
trappers, and later farmers to its abundant wildlife and rich
soil.
That historical Delta was an enormous marsh linked to the two
freshwater rivers entering from the north and south, and tidal
flows coming from the San Francisco Bay. After the Gold Rush,
settlers began building levees and farms, changing the landscape
and altering the habitat.
Despite the heat that often
accompanies debates over setting aside water for the environment,
there are instances where California stakeholders have forged
agreements to provide guaranteed water for fish. Here are two
examples cited by the Public Policy Institute of California in
its report arguing for an environmental water right.
Does California need to revamp the way in which water is dedicated to the environment to better protect fish and the ecosystem at large? In the hypersensitive world of California water, where differences over who gets what can result in epic legislative and legal battles, the idea sparks a combination of fear, uncertainty and promise.
Saying that the way California manages water for the environment “isn’t working for anyone,” the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shook things up late last year by proposing a redesigned regulatory system featuring what they described as water ecosystem plans and water budgets with allocations set aside for the environment.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
Estuaries are places where fresh and
salt water mix, usually at the point where a river enters the
ocean. They are the meeting point between riverine environments
and the sea, with a combination of tides, waves, salinity, fresh
water flow and sediment. The constant churning means there are
elevated levels of nutrients, making estuaries highly productive
natural habitats.
Zooplankton, which are floating
aquatic microorganisms too small and weak to swim against
currents, are are important food sources for many fish species in
the Delta such as salmon, sturgeon and Delta smelt.
A tributary is a river or stream
that enters a larger body of water, especially a lake or river.
The receiving water into which a tributary
feeds is called the “mainstem,” and the point where they come
together is referred to as the “confluence.”
With a holding capacity of more than 260 billion gallons, Diamond
Valley Lake is
Southern California’s largest reservoir. It sits about 90
miles southeast of Los Angeles and just west of Hemet in
Riverside County where it was built in 2000. The offstream
reservoir was created by three large dams that connect the surrounding
hills, costing around $1.9 billion and doubling the region’s
water storage capacity.
Headwaters are the source of a
stream or river. They are located at the furthest point from
where the water body empties or merges with
another. Two-thirds of California’s surface water supply
originates in these mountainous and typically forested regions.
In wet years, dry years and every type of water year in between,
the daily intrusion and retreat of salinity in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta is a constant pattern.
The cycle of ebb and flood is the defining nature of an estuary
and prior to its transformation into an agricultural tract in
the mid-19th century, the Delta was a freshwater marsh with
plants, birds, fish and wildlife that thrived on the edge of the
saltwater/freshwater interface.
This 28-page report describes the watersheds of the Sierra Nevada
region and details their importance to California’s overall water
picture. It describes the region’s issues and challenges,
including healthy forests, catastrophic fire, recreational
impacts, climate change, development and land use.
The report also discusses the importance of protecting and
restoring watersheds in order to retain water quality and enhance
quantity. Examples and case studies are included.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
California’s little-known New River has been called one of North
America’s most polluted. A closer look reveals the New River is
full of ironic twists: its pollution has long defied cleanup, yet
even in its degraded condition, the river is important to the
border economies of Mexicali and the Imperial Valley and a
lifeline that helps sustain the fragile Salton Sea ecosystem.
Now, after decades of inertia on its pollution problems, the New
River has emerged as an important test of binational cooperation
on border water issues. These issues were profiled in the 2004
PBS documentary Two Sides of a River.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, features
a map of the San Joaquin River. The map text focuses on the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program, which aims to restore flows
and populations of Chinook salmon to the river below Friant Dam
to its confluence with the Merced River. The text discusses the
history of the program, its goals and ongoing challenges with
implementation.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
A companion to the Truckee River Basin Map poster, this 24×36
inch poster, suitable for framing, explores the Carson River, and
its link to the Truckee River. The map includes Lahontan Dam and
Reservoir, the Carson Sink, and the farming areas in the basin.
Map text discusses the region’s hydrology and geography, the
Newlands Project, land and water use within the basin and
wetlands. Development of the map was funded by a grant from the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region, Lahontan Basin
Area Office.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, explains how
non-native invasive animals can alter the natural ecosystem,
leading to the demise of native animals. “Unwelcome Visitors”
features photos and information on four such species – including
the zerbra mussel – and explains the environmental and economic
threats posed by these species.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Rights Law, recognized as
the most thorough explanation of California water rights law
available to non-lawyers, traces the authority for water flowing
in a stream or reservoir, from a faucet or into an irrigation
ditch through the complex web of California water rights.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
As part of the historic Colorado
River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for
thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below
sea level.
The Pacific Flyway is one of four
major North American migration routes for birds, especially
waterfowl, and extends from Alaska and Canada, through
California, to Mexico and South America. Each year, birds follow
ancestral patterns as they travel the flyway on their annual
north-south migration. Along the way, they need stopover sites
such as wetlands with suitable habitat and food supplies. In
California, 90 percent of historic wetlands have been lost.
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam
in 1964 created Lake Powell. Both are located in north-central
Arizona near the Utah border. Lake Powell acts as a holding tank
for outflow from the Colorado River Upper Basin States: Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The water stored in Lake Powell is used for recreation, power
generation and delivering water to the Lower Basin states of
California, Arizona, and Nevada.
