The California Legislature was the first in the country to
protect rare plants and animals through passage of the California
Endangered Species Act (CESA) in 1970, Congress followed suit in
1973 by passing the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The federal ESA aims to, “protect and recover imperiled species
and the ecosystems upon which they depend.”
The state ESA states that, “all native species of fishes,
amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, invertebrates, and plants,
and their habitats, threatened with extinction and those
experiencing a significant decline which, if not halted, would
lead to a threatened or endangered designation, will be protected
or preserved.”
Imperiled species are defined as follows: “Endangered” if it is
in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion
of its range and “threatened” if it is likely to become an
endangered species within the foreseeable future.”
If you think about the pollution your car causes, chances are
you’re not thinking about the tires. And probably even less
about a faraway creek, where a Coho Salmon is dying. But
researchers at the University of Washington and elsewhere
… say as the rubber wears away from car tires during
everyday driving, it spreads tiny micro particles, including a
destructive chemical called 6PPD. … Now, with
information gathered in part by the [San Francisco Estuary]
Institute, the State of California is stepping in, laying the
groundwork for potential regulations to curb the toxic tire
pollution.
Today, there are hundreds of hatcheries in the Northwest run by
federal, state and tribal governments … The fish they send to
the Pacific Ocean have allowed restaurants and grocery seafood
counters to offer “wild-caught” Chinook salmon even as the fish
became endangered. The hatcheries were supposed to stop the
decline of salmon. They haven’t. The numbers of each of the six
salmon species native to the Columbia basin have dropped to a
fraction of what they once were, and 13 distinct populations
are now considered threatened or endangered.
Tribes and environmental groups are challenging how the state
manages water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a
major source for much of California, arguing the deterioration
of the aquatic ecosystem has links to the state’s troubled
legacy of racism and oppression of Native people. A group of
activists and Indigenous leaders is demanding that the state
review and update the water quality plan for the Delta and San
Francisco Bay, where fish species are suffering, algae blooms
have worsened and climate change is adding to the
stresses.
The fish need the water, the farmers and ranchers need the
water, and the fish win. Because coho salmon are on the
Endangered Species List in the region, and the Scott and Shasta
Rivers are important to their survival. The State of California
put emergency rules in place governing groundwater around those
rivers, and the people in agriculture take exception. We hear
the environmental side of the issue in this interview. Craig
Tucker, Natural Resources Policy Advocate for the Karuk Tribe,
lays out the importance of the water for the fish …
After nearly two years of a collaborative effort led by the
Delta Stewardship Council’s Delta Science Program, the wait is
finally over. We’re excited and proud to present the final
2022-2026 SAA for the Delta. … Scientists, managers, and
those with a stake in the Delta were invited to participate in
two public workshops, four online surveys, and four review
periods and were engaged in various collaborative venues. The
collaborative process was a critical component of this SAA and
built on the success of the 2017-2021 SAA, which guided over
$35 million from the Council and its partners for
management-relevant research.
This blog is a short introduction to a lesser known federal
bill that is one of the most significant pieces of fish and
wildlife legislation in decades. In Spring of 2021, Rep. Debbie
Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) introduced
the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. During July 2021, a
separate adaptation of the act was also introduced in the
Senate (S.2372) by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Sen. Roy
Blunt (R-MO). At its core, the bipartisan bill seeks to provide
$1.39B in annual funding for state and tribal fish and wildlife
agencies to protect and conserve declining species.
A Trump era decision has further imperiled endangered fish
species in the Trinity River, and commercial fishermen and
local tribes are demanding the federal government take action.
This week, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations and its sister organization Institute for
Fisheries Research sent the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation a 60-day
notice of their intention to sue the federal agency for
violating the Endangered Species Act. The amount of water the
bureau is diverting from the Trinity River to the Central
Valley Project has decimated the river’s salmon populations
…
After decades of negotiation, the largest dam-removal project
in U.S. history is expected to begin in California’s far north
next year. The first of four aging dams on the Klamath River,
the 250-mile waterway that originates in southern Oregon’s
towering Cascades and empties along the rugged Northern
California coast, is on track to come down in fall 2023. Two
others nearby and one across the state line will follow.
… The native flora and fauna in the region are bound to
prosper as algae-infested reservoirs at the dams are emptied,
the flow of the river quickens and cools, and river passage
swings wide open.
The Clear Lake hitch is one of 13 species endemic to
California’s largest, oldest and now most toxic lake. Known
as chi to local tribes, the hitch teeter on the edge
of extinction, a fate to which their cousins, two other
formerly endemic lake species — the thicktail chub (last seen
in 1938) and the Clear Lake splittail (last seen in the
1970s) — have already succumbed. Clear Lake hitch are
vanishing because of our unabated appetites for fossil fuels,
sportfishing, irrigation water and wine.
In a stopgap measure to help struggling spring- and winter-run
Chinook salmon spawn in the face of rising water temperatures
and lower water levels due to climate change, state and federal
wildlife officials in Northern California have begun trucking
adult fish to cooler waters. The spring- and winter-run salmon
are genetically different, with the seasonal labels marking
when adult fish travel from the Pacific Ocean back to the
Sacramento River to spawn. The spring-run Chinook, listed
as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, are being moved
from traps at the base of Keswick Dam to Clear Creek in the
Sacramento River.
In a sophisticated chemical analysis published Tuesday in
Environmental Science & Technology, the team found that
DDT-related chemicals were seven times more abundant in coastal
condors than condors that fed farther inland. Looking at the
birds’ coastal food sources, researchers found that dolphin and
sea lion carcasses that washed ashore in Southern California
were also seven times more contaminated with DDT than the
marine mammals they analyzed along the Gulf of California in
Mexico.
Rare traits and behaviors within a population often get less
attention, but might sometimes be the perfect ingredient to
ensure the survival of a species in the face of threats like
climate change. A recent article published in the journal
Nature revealed the surprising success of a rare life-history
strategy for threatened spring-run Chinook salmon. Juveniles
that spent the summer in cool, high-elevation habitat and
migrated in the fall rather than the spring were found to be
crucial to the success of the population, especially in years
experiencing stressful environmental conditions.
On a cool day in late April, a small crowd gathers around a
truck-mounted water tank at Lakeside Farms, on the southeastern
shore of Upper Klamath Lake…. All eyes are focused on the
tank’s outlet, where U.S. Fish and Wildlife Science fish
biologist Jane Spangler stands poised with a net. Her
colleague, science coordinator Christie Nichols, opens the
valve. Water gushes out; within seconds, a stream of tiny fish
pours into the net…. Nichols and Spangler are here to stock
the pond with over 1,000 young C’waam and Koptu — Lost River
and shortnose suckers, two endangered species that inhabit
Upper Klamath Lake and that are at the heart of the area’s
water conflicts. It’s the first time that hatchery-raised
suckers have been released on private land.
[A crowd has gathered] to stock the pond with over 1,000 young
C’waam and Koptu—Lost River and shortnose suckers, two
endangered species that inhabit Upper Klamath Lake and that are
at the heart of the area’s water conflicts. … The pond
is part of an innovative restoration project at Lakeside Farms,
which is just north of Klamath Falls. … Altogether, it’s a
hopeful demonstration of cooperation in a region that has seen
bitter fights between tribes, farmers, and wildlife advocates
over who gets water.
A decade ago, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway wrote the seminal
book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured
the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.
Oreskes and Conway documented how scientists paid by the
tobacco industry sowed doubt about the links between smoking
and lung cancer, and how the same strategy has been used with
climate change, acid rain, the ozone hole, and asbestos.
Similar tactics have been used to sow doubt about the causes of
the collapse of native fish populations in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and its watersheds.
Research in Seattle-area creeks has discovered tire bits
shedding lethal amounts of a little-known, salmon-killing
chemical called 6PPD-quinone. … In December 2020, 27
coauthors published an article in the journal Science
identifying 6PPD-quinone as the coho killer. Within weeks, the
U.S Tire Manufacturers Association asked California officials
to treat tires with 6PPD as a priority under the state’s
toxic-chemical laws. Coho salmon is an endangered species in
California. The California rule, once finalized, would give
manufacturers of tires sold there 180 days to assess any known
or potential alternatives to 6PPD in tire rubber.
Two species of endangered sucker fish could face extinction
this year because the federal government let farmers take
irrigation water from Upper Klamath Lake instead of leaving
enough water in the lake for the fish born this year to
survive, the Klamath Tribes claim. … Last year, the fight
over the region’s water risked a standoff between extremist
farmers who threatened to take control of the irrigation system
the government had shut off in an effort to prevent the
extinction of two species of endangered sucker fish sacred to
the Klamath Tribes: the c’waam, or Lost River sucker and koptu,
or shortnose sucker.
Every year before the opening day of fishing season, the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife goes on a fishing
trip of their own in Lassen County’s Eagle Lake. Except on this
trip, they don’t use fishing poles or bait. Instead, they
use an electric generator and probes that pump around 48 volts
of electricity into the water. … Biologist Paul Divine and
his team are actually helping to keep one specific kind of fish
from going extinct … Eagle Lake Trout
Anza-Borrego park has recently come under fire by Jorgensen,
longtime volunteers and others for allegedly neglecting its
guzzler systems, which for decades helped the federally
endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep rebound from the brink of
extinction. It’s the latest salvo in a fight over
whether, and to what extent, the park should prop up one
species threatened by climate change. New management has raised
concerns about the cost and possible futility of such
endeavors.
What if you had just enough water to spare to make a
life-or-death difference for vulnerable coho salmon or a
steelhead trout stranded in a drought-stricken stream? Federal
and state fish and wildlife officials hope there may be grape
growers or other landowners in key areas of the lower Russian
River watershed who might be willing to share some of their
water to support endangered coho and threatened steelhead. It
doesn’t take much.
Rivers in California’s Central Valley like to go their own way:
they expand, contract, meander and regenerate soil in the
process. The historic movement of rivers is what made Central
Valley soil so fertile. Naturally flowing rivers recharge and
save water for people and nature, providing habitat for many
species including four distinct runs of chinook salmon.
Before the early 20th century, the Sacramento River had one of
the biggest salmon runs in North America …
At California’s second biggest freshwater lake, the latest
fallout of drought is gruesome: dead fish in nearby stream beds
that have run dry. Some of the foot-long, silvery Clear Lake
hitch have been decapitated by racoons and other varmints,
which have had easy pickings of the beached minnow. The
grim sightings by Lake County and tribal crews surveying the
lake have prompted a rescue effort over the past week to save
hitch, a threatened species found only in this region.
California water regulators hosted a public forum on Wednesday
to collect comments about re-adopting drought emergency
regulations for Siskiyou County’s Scott and Shasta River
watersheds. … In response [to current drought conditions],
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
is requesting the re-adoption of a 12-month drought
emergency regulation to protect salmon, steelhead and
other native fish.
How the Devil’s Hole pupfish has survived for centuries in a
spa-like cistern cloistered by a barren rock mountain in Death
Valley National Park remains a biological mystery. The world’s
rarest, most inbred fish clings to existence in the smallest
geographic range of any vertebrate: the shallow end of an
oxygen-deprived pool 10 feet wide, 70 feet long and more than
500 feet deep. In early 2013, its numbers plunged to 35, and
biologists feared the species long regarded as a symbol of the
desert conservation movement would be gone within a year.
The [Tejon Ranch] company’s proposals promise a reprieve from
California’s existential crisis about its way of life,
suggesting that the environmental consequences of the state’s
notorious sprawl can be reformed with rooftop solar panels,
induction cooktops, electric cars, and careful bookkeeping.
… During the years of litigation surrounding FivePoint
Valencia, environmentalists scored a few rare wins. The
development had to reduce its footprint to protect the Santa
Clara River’s floodplain. It had to conserve land to protect
the unarmored threespine stickleback—an endangered fish that
lives in the river—and the San Fernando Valley spineflower, a
rare plant.
Lake County’s drought conditions led this week to the need to
rescue hundreds of threatened native fish. Lake County Water
Resources staff and the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, working alongside of Robinson Rancheria and
Habematolel Pomo tribal members, leapt to the rescue on
Thursday when it was reported that there were Clear Lake hitch
in an isolated pool in Adobe Creek near Soda Bay in Lakeport.
The hitch, a large minnow found only in Clear Lake and its
tributaries, has been a culturally important fish for the Pomo
tribes, which considered it a staple food.
A plan to release an additional 500,000 acre-feet of water from
Flaming Gorge reservoir is welcome news to biologists
conducting research to recover four species of endangered fish
in the Colorado River Basin. … The extra water set to
come out of Flaming Gorge reservoir in Wyoming during the next
12 months is part of a 2022 Drought Response Operations Plan
agreed on last week by the Upper Basin states — Colorado,
Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. The water is intended to help
prop up low levels at Lake Powell.
The science and data are clear. Southern California steelhead
are on the brink of extinction. Southern steelhead populations
have been decimated at the southern end of their native range,
plummeting from tens of thousands to a few hundred remaining
adults due to habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation from
urbanization. On April 21, an important milestone was achieved
to prevent the irreversible loss of this iconic Southern
California fish species. The California Fish and Game
Commission unanimously voted that the state ESA listing of
Southern steelhead may be warranted.
Critically endangered adult salmon are again swimming above a
century-old dam in this remote corner of far Northern
California in the shadow of the Mount Lassen volcano. But this
isn’t a habitat-restoration success story — at least not yet.
For the past two weeks, state and federal fisheries managers
have begun hauling the winter-run Chinook nearly 50 miles by
truck from the dangerously warming Sacramento River to a
stretch of the north fork of Battle Creek and releasing them, a
handful at a time, into the creek’s icy waters.
Congressman Jared Huffman introduced a new bill this week that
aims to give land back to the Yurok Tribe. HR7581, known as the
Yurok Lands Act, would expand the Yurok reservation boundaries
and give the tribe more than 1,229 additional acres of U.S.
Forest Service land. … By reclaiming land, the Tribe
hopes to help keep local forests and salmon populations
healthy.
In addition to sufficient flows of cold water, chinook salmon
migrating in the Sacramento River depend on having sufficient
gravel in the riverbed to support spawning. In response to that
need, Reclamation and its partners — U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, Sacramento River Settlement
Contractors, Reclamation District 108, and the
Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District – recently completed
placing 20,000 tons of spawning gravel on the west bank of the
Sacramento River below Keswick Dam.
The Klamath Basin provides a cautionary tale for Oregon about
the need to plan more intentionally and sustainably with its
shrinking water supply. Though the state and its watersheds
aren’t newcomers to drought, research suggests that climate
change is magnifying the impacts of the region’s natural wet
and dry cycles…. Oregon’s next governor will inherit a
state whose ecosystems, economy and communities are enduring
their driest period in 1,200 years.
The state of California has released the final version of its
Pathways to 30×30 report. Here are five things to know about
the terrestrial conservation elements of this landmark
effort: 1. Freshwater Conservation The Pathways
document is explicit about the critical need to expand
protection of California’s rivers, streams, wetlands, and other
freshwater resources …
In this new series, our Communications Associate, Kara
Glenwright, sits down for conversations with the women on our
Conservation and Policy/Legal teams. Follow along as these
women share their own stories and experiences as women in
conservation and science at CalTrout.
For the first time in half a century, ocean-going fish will
soon be able to migrate up Alameda Creek to spawn, now that a
second fish ladder has been completed in the lower portion of
the creek in Fremont. Alameda County Water District and Alameda
County Flood Control District officials on Monday celebrated
the completion of the fish ladder, which was finished earlier
this month, according to Sharene Gonzales, a water district
spokesperson. The ladder, which consists of a series of
steadily elevating pools, allows migratory fish such as Chinook
salmon and threatened steelhead trout to get around human-made
barriers in the lower creek …
Nine people were arrested by state wildlife police on suspicion
of poaching, selling animals on the black market and other
offenses after a sprawling investigation by the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, the agency said. Eight men
were arrested on suspicion of poaching white sturgeon from
Sacramento Valley waterways, the department said last week. A
ninth man was arrested on suspicion of selling Dungeness crab
and red abalone on the black market.
Rather than planning for droughts and ensuring that minimum
water quality objectives are achieved in critically dry years,
the proposed voluntary agreement appears to be a “plan to fail”
to protect the Delta in future droughts. Droughts are a
fact of life in California, even as climate change is making
them worse. The Governor’s Water Resilience Portfolio
recognizes the need to improve drought preparedness, requiring
that the State to be able to protect fish and wildlife during a
six year drought …
No one was surprised by Thursday’s letter granting PG&E an
annual license to run the Potter Valley Project until April of
next year. And, while a last-minute mystery application did
provide a few moments of titillating speculation, the enigmatic
Antonio Manfredini failed to generate any real suspense. The
50-year license to operate the Potter Valley Project, which
diverts water from the Eel River into the east branch of the
Russian River to Lake Mendocino by way of a tunnel, a pair of
dams and reservoirs, and a small hydropower plant, expired on
April 14.
Northern California farmers use pumped river water during
freezing spring nights to coat the growing grapes with a
protective layer of ice, and without this protection there
could be significant losses to crops. That water, however,
comes from the homes of the hook-mouthed coho salmon and
the threatened steelhead trout. Once plentiful, the coho salmon
is now a protected species under threat (via NOAA Fisheries).
Salmon-Safe seeks to protect important species in California
and beyond, while still supporting the many brewery and winery
industries that need water to thrive.
Emily Tianshi has loved coming to Torrey Pines State Preserve
since she was young. The beach and preserve is one of the
very few places where its namesake grows. As a curious middle
schooler with an interest in biology, she became fascinated
with the rarely studied tree. “Because the pine is so rare,
nobody had studied its mechanisms before,” she says. “I would
observe that the Torrey Pine needles are able to condense water
from the marine layer that comes through the State Park and use
that to water itself in the midst of drought.”
The Sacramento River Settlement Contractors are currently
implementing another project on the Sacramento River just
downstream from Keswick Reservoir that will contribute to the
habitat targets established by the recently signed Voluntary
Agreements Memorandum of Understanding. The 2022 Keswick Gravel
Injection Project will provide much needed spawning habitat in
the upper Sacramento River for endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon.
A leading U.S. environmental conservation group has released
its annual list of the country’s most endangered rivers. The
Colorado River tops the list, but states across the nation must
address polluted, dry, and unhealthy rivers, according to the
list and accompanying report published today by American
Rivers.
The 100-year-old Potter Valley Project consists of two dams
along Northern California’s Eel River. The upstream Scott Dam
blocks salmon and steelhead from reaching prime spawning
grounds, according to Alicia Hamann, the director of Friends of
Eel River. Both fish are threatened under the Endangered
Species Act. Friends of the Eel River are one of a handful of
environmental groups planning to sue PG&E to seek
protections for these dwindling fish populations.
A Native American tribe in Oregon said Tuesday it is assessing
its legal options after learning the U.S. government plans to
release water from a federally operated reservoir to downstream
farmers along the Oregon-California border amid a historic
drought. Even limited irrigation for the farmers who use
Klamath River water on about 300 square miles of crops puts two
critically endangered fish species in peril of extinction
because the water withdrawals come at the height of spawning
season, The Klamath Tribes said.
Members of the Klamath Tribal community gathered Friday morning
in the parking lot next to the headgates to protest the Bureau
of Reclamation’s decision to release water from the lake in
apparent violation of Endangered Species Act requirements for
the fish the tribe calls C’waam and Koptu (Lost River and
shortnose suckers), and to call for solutions to the basin’s
decades-long water crisis.
Growing up in a Northern Californian fishing town, Nate
Mantua’s family owned a business connected to the local salmon
fishing industry. When one of the worst El Niño events ever
recorded hit the West Coast in 1982 and 1983, the salmon
fishery his family relied on suffered. Nate would go on to
study how to predict El Niño events in graduate school, years
later. Now he works to understand the impacts of climate
change. Nate leads a team of salmon ecologists, biologists,
freshwater and ocean experts at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest
Fisheries Science Center.
A coalition of fishery groups has formally notified PG&E
that it plans to file suit under the Endangered Species Act,
alleging the continued injury to once abundant federally
protected salmon and steelhead trout as a result of operations
at the utility’s aging Potter Valley powerhouse. The legal
maneuver is part of an effort to expedite removal of Scott and
Cape Horn dams, which pose a threat to vulnerable fish species
in the Eel River and block access to hundreds of miles of prime
habitat upstream.
Entering a third year of drought, the once-vast Tule Lake, a
vestige of the area’s volcanic past and today a federally
protected wetland, is shriveling up. Its floor is mostly
cracked mud and tumbleweed. By summer, the lake is expected to
run completely dry, a historic first for the region’s signature
landmark and the latest chapter in a broader, escalating water
war.
The Colorado River is the epicenter of the nation’s water and
climate crisis, according to an annual report from
the conservation group American Rivers that ranked the waterway
the country’s most endangered. … More than 20 years of
record-breaking climate change-driven drought has
brought the river and reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead to
record lows. Last month, Lake Powell dropped below a
critical threshold of 3,525 feet for the first time — a
number the states and federal government have worked to
avoid to keep enough water in the reservoir for continued
hydropower production.
It’s the proverbial star of the show at Joshua Tree National
Park, and while Joshua Trees look peculiar, with ragged
scraggly limbs, they’re actually quite special. … But
[Dr. Cameron Barrows at UC Riverside] said Joshua Trees
are starting to disappear due to climate change.
… Barrows said due to climate change, many have stopped
reproducing.
The Yurok Tribe and Redwood National Park and State Parks will
soon release the first four California condors to take flight
in the heart of the bird’s former range since 1892.
… Comprised of biologists and technicians from the Yurok
Tribe and Redwood National and State Parks, the Northern
California Condor Restoration Program will collaboratively
manage the flock from a newly constructed condor release and
management facility near the Klamath River.
Despite being the largest estuary on the West Coast and
supporting both a highly diverse ecosystem and a multi-billion
dollar economy, the San Francisco Bay Estuary was not getting
its fair share of federal funding for restoration, according to
local lawmakers and environmental organizations. That changed
this year after Congress and President Joe Biden approved more
than $50 million in funding to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency for projects to restore lost wetlands,
improve water quality, address pollution and bolster sea-level
rise defenses throughout San Francisco Bay.
In a legal victory for the Center for Biological Diversity, the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed today to again consider
Endangered Species Act protections for the Clear Lake hitch.
This large minnow is found only in Northern California’s Clear
Lake. In 2020 the agency wrongly denied the hitch protection
despite severe declines in spawning fish and a near complete
loss of tributary spawning habitat due to drought and water
withdrawal.
In the vast labyrinth of the West
Coast’s largest freshwater tidal estuary, one native fish species
has never been so rare. Once uncountably numerous, the Delta
smelt was placed on state and federal endangered species lists in
1993, stopped appearing in most annual sampling surveys in 2016,
and is now, for all practical purposes, extinct in the wild. At
least, it was.
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.
This tour guided participants on a virtual journey deep into California’s most crucial water and ecological resource – the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The 720,000-acre network of islands and canals support the state’s two major water systems – the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project. The Delta and the connecting San Francisco Bay form the largest freshwater tidal estuary of its kind on the West coast.
Voluntary agreements in California
have been touted as an innovative and flexible way to improve
environmental conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and the rivers that feed it. The goal is to provide river flows
and habitat for fish while still allowing enough water to be
diverted for farms and cities in a way that satisfies state
regulators.
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.
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:
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.
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.
As vital as the Colorado River is to the United States and
Mexico, so is the ongoing process by which the two countries
develop unique agreements to better manage the river and balance
future competing needs.
The prospect is challenging. The river is over allocated as urban
areas and farmers seek to stretch every drop of their respective
supplies. Since a historic treaty between the two countries was
signed in 1944, the United States and Mexico have periodically
added a series of arrangements to the treaty called minutes that
aim to strengthen the binational ties while addressing important
water supply, water quality and environmental concerns.
Less than 50 miles northeast of Chico, California, begins the
93-mile Butte Creek – a tributary of the Sacramento River. It is named
after Butte County, which was in turn named for the nearby
volcanic plateaus, or “buttes,” and travels through a massive
canyon on its way southwest to the Sacramento Valley.
As a watershed, it drains about 800 square miles, both for
agricultural and residential use. The upper watershed is
dominated by forests, while the lower watershed is primarily
agricultural.
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.
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.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Truckee River Basin, including
the Newlands Project, Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe. Map text
explains the issues surrounding the use of the Truckee-Carson
rivers, Lake Tahoe water quality improvement efforts, fishery
restoration and the effort to reach compromise solutions to many
of these issues.
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 Colorado River provides water to 40 million people and 4
million acres of farmland in a region encompassing some 246,000
square miles in the southwestern United States. The 32-page
Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River covers the history of the
river’s development; negotiations over division of its water; the
items that comprise the Law of the River; and a chronology of
significant Colorado River events.
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.
The federal government passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973,
following earlier legislation. The first, the Endangered
Species Preservation Act of 1966, authorized land acquisition to
conserve select species. The Endangered Species Conservation Act
of 1969 then expanded on the 1966 act, and authorized “the
compilation of a list of animals “threatened with worldwide
extinction” and prohibits their importation without a permit.”
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed issue of Western Water examines science –
the answers it can provide to help guide management decisions in
the Delta and the inherent uncertainty it holds that can make
moving forward such a tenuous task.
This printed issue of Western Water provides an overview of the
idea of a dual conveyance facility, including questions
surrounding its cost, operation and governance
This printed copy of Western Water examines the native salmon and
trout dilemma – the extent of the crisis, its potential impact on
water deliveries and the lengths to which combined efforts can
help restore threatened and endangered species.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the Delta through the
many ongoing activities focusing on it, most notably the Delta
Vision process. Many hours of testimony, research, legal
proceedings, public hearings and discussion have occurred and
will continue as the state seeks the ultimate solution to the
problems tied to the Delta.
In California and the West, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a
critical issue. Development and agricultural interests say the
law should not be used to unjustly block new projects, while
conservationists view the law as a major bulwark against the
destruction of vital habitat. In the water world, municipal and
agricultural interests say there is room to streamline the ESA’s
application to prevent undue interruption of water delivery.
Two events that transformed the West, population growth and the
dominance of agriculture, are inextricable parts of the battles
fought over its most vital resource, water. Throughout the 19th
century, as settlers sought to tame the rugged landscape,
momentum built behind the notion of a comprehensive, federally
financed waterworks plan that would provide the agrarian society
envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. The Reclamation Act of 1902,
which could arguably be described as a progression of the credo,
Manifest Destiny, transformed the West into an economic
powerhouse while putting an exclamation mark to the tide of
American migration.
