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.”
Restoration flows will begin tomorrow, April 16, on the Trinity
River to help improve conditions after another critically dry
water year. A flow schedule based on the expected amount of
water available to support salmon restoration efforts on the
Trinity River is brought forward by the Trinity Management
Council each year. This week’s two-day schedule is slated to
increase daily average flows from 300 cubic feet per second to
1,300 cubic feet per second.
The California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) today
launched California Nature to engage
Californians in advancing the State’s commitment to conserving
30 percent of lands and coastal waters by 2030 (30×30) and
enlisting nature-based solutions to combat climate change. The
website and a new online questionnaire are aimed at gathering
input from a broad cross-section of Californians.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation delivered a gut-punch to Klamath
Project irrigators Wednesday, announcing a historically low
water allocation as the basin struggles with extreme drought.
Farms and ranches in the Project will receive an initial
allocation of just 33,000 acre-feet — the lowest total since
the shutdown of 2001 and barely 8% of historical demand. That
is dramatically lower than the bureau’s original estimate of
130,000 acre-feet based on hydrological conditions at the
beginning of March.
Shasta Dam, which rises over 600 feet, flooded much of our
tribe’s homeland and inundated dozens of our sacred sites. It
stopped our salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. And by
holding back water when it is needed by the river, Shasta Dam
has driven our salmon to the brink of extinction. That threat
continues in the proposal to raise Shasta Dam. That project
would flood more of our sacred sites and further harm salmon.
The Trump administration made that project their top priority
water infrastructure project in the nation.
-Written by Caleen Sisk, the spiritual leader of the
Winnemem Wintu Tribe.
Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project
that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they
will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst
drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance
the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and
endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of
several tribes. Oregon’s governor said the prolonged drought in
the region has the “full attention of our offices,” and she is
working with congressional delegates, the White House and
federal agencies to find relief for those affected.
On Wednesday, March 3rd, the Northern California Water
Association (NCWA) Board of Directors officially adopted our
2021 Priorities. The water leaders in this region look forward
to working with our many partners in 2021 to cultivate a shared
vision for a vibrant way of life in the Sacramento River Basin.
We will continue to re-imagine our water system in the
Sacramento River Basin as we also work to harmonize our water
priorities with state, federal, and other regions’ priorities
to advance our collective goal of ensuring greater water and
climate resilience throughout California for our communities,
the economy, and the environment.
Advocates, such as the Colorado Water Trust, a nonprofit that
spearheaded the new approach, say the tools can be used as
templates across other river basins, where older water rights
are already spoken for. … Across Colorado nearly 40,000
miles of streams flow year-round and, as a result, have the
potential to receive protection under the state’s Instream Flow
Program.
The San Joaquin Valley’s quest for groundwater sustainability
will result in large amounts of irrigated agricultural lands
being retired. A new book explores how some of these lands
could be restored to natural areas that bring multiple
benefits. We talked to Scott Butterfield, a senior scientist at
The Nature Conservancy and one of the book’s editors, about
this vision.
How many salmon populate the Lower Putah Creek? What are the
demographics of these fish? In what ways can their habitat be
preserved so the lower creek remains healthy? Researchers at
the University of California, Davis are researching these
questions, and the Solano County Water Agency (SCWA) has given
them another year of funding to continue their research as part
of the Lower Putah Creek Salmon Study through the rest of the
2021-22 fiscal year.
CITIZENS for a SUSTAINABLE HUMBOLDT (CSH) and the NORTHCOAST
ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER (NEC) have filed a lawsuit in the Humboldt
County Superior Court, with claims under the California
Environmental Quality, the State Planning and Zoning Law, and
other laws, challenging the environmental review and permits
approved by the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is looking into whether a
previously unexplored vitamin deficiency could play a role in
the decline of sucker species in the Klamath Basin. Thiamine,
also known as vitamin B1, is essential for all vertebrates. It
helps enzymes break down sugars, produce energy and create
genetic material. In fish, it plays a significant role in early
growth and development.
Legislation that would gradually phase out fracking and other
extraction methods that account for most of California’s
petroleum production faces its first big test in Sacramento on
Tuesday. The nine-member Senate Natural Resources and Water
Committee is set to vote on a proposal, Senate Bill 467, that
would bar new permits for hydraulic fracturing, cyclic
steaming, steam flooding and water flooding. The legislation
would begin taking effect in 2023 and also prohibit renewing
existing permits for fracking and the other targeted methods,
which a committee bill analysis says accounts for an estimated
80% to 95% of the state’s oil production.
The Suisun Marsh — known as the largest swath of contiguous
wetlands on the West Coast and a haven for thousands of
migrating waterfowl — has become the Bay Area’s latest
battleground between fossil fuel producers and
environmentalists hellbent on fighting climate change. A
Brentwood company, Sunset Exploration Inc., announced in
January it wants to explore for natural gas by drilling a
section of the 116,000-acre marshland about 9 miles southwest
of Suisun City in an area known as Hunter’s Point, according to
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
One of the worst droughts in memory in a massive agricultural
region straddling the California-Oregon border could mean steep
cuts to irrigation water for hundreds of farmers this summer to
sustain endangered fish species critical to local tribes. The
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water allocations in
the federally owned Klamath Project, is expected to announce
this week how the season’s water will be divvied up after
delaying the decision a month.
The little-known Joint Powers Authority charged with getting
the embattled Delta tunnel across its finish line recently
changed executive directors, marking an exit for Kathryn
Mallon, who had stirred controversy for her exorbitant pay and
alleged pressuring of a citizens advisory committee to work
through the most dangerous part of the
pandemic. Meanwhile, as California Governor Gavin Newsom
begins campaigning against the effort to remove him from
office, he’s soliciting huge donations from the same
south-state barons of agriculture who have promoted the
environmentally fraught tunnel concept for years.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced today that this year’s
restoration flow schedule for the Trinity River will begin on
April 16. Each year, the Trinity Management Council advances a
flow schedule based on the expected amount of water available
to support salmon restoration efforts on the Trinity River. Due
to lack of precipitation and snowpack in the Trinity Mountains
this winter, the flow schedule for 2021 is scaled to a
critically dry water year. Critically dry is one of five water
year types used by the Trinity River Restoration Program to
decide how much reservoir water will be released in support of
the program’s goals to improve habitat for anadromous fish—fish
that migrate to fresh water from salt water to spawn—like
salmon and steelhead.
The Marin County Superior Court last
Friday ruled that the county in Northern California
failed to adequately protect coho salmon and their habitat in
the San Geronimo Valley. Marin County originally planned to
adopt a streamside conservation ordinance to preserve
vegetation, maintain water quality and prevent erosion in 2007
when it last updated its countywide plan. But 12 years later,
the measure has still not materialized, in violation of the
California Environmental Quality Act. The lawsuit was
brought by the Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (SPAWN)
and Center for Biological Diversity.
Another legal challenge has been launched against a project by
downtown-based water infrastructure company Cadiz Inc. to pump
and transport water from its desert aquifer to connect with
existing water conveyance systems. This latest lawsuit was
filed March 23 against the Bureau of Land Management by the
Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Sierra
Club. It asks the federal court to overturn a December BLM
decision to approve the conversion of an idle oil and gas
pipeline to carry water from Cadiz’s desert aquifer. Cadiz is
not a direct party to the lawsuit but would be impacted by a
decision resulting from the suit. The filing marks the third
decade in which Cadiz’ water transfer plan has faced legal
challenges from environmental groups.
With a salmonella outbreak in eight states already under
investigation by the Centers for Disease Control, officials are
watching in California for another disease that impacts
waterfowl. Botulism killed thousands of waterfowl and other
birds last year on two national wildlife refuges near the
border of California and Oregon. Some estimates were as high as
60,000 dead birds. The Lower Klamath Basin and Tule Lake
national wildlife refuges were among the first created more
than 100 years ago. Millions of waterfowl and shore birds,
along with songbirds, migrated along the Pacific Flyway into
the two refuges and beyond. Today, between severe
restrictions on water flowing into and out of the refuges
and a crippling drought that shows no sign of letting up,
the refuge marshes are going dry.
A tiny silver fish few people in the Bay Area have heard of
could be a new symbol of the state’s continuing battle over
water resources. San Francisco Baykeeper sued the Biden
administration on Thursday to list the local population of
longfin smelt as an endangered species. The environmental
group’s legal action comes nine years after the federal
government first declared that the fish warranted that status.
Once an important source of food for marine mammals, birds and
chinook salmon, the local population of the longfin smelt has
dropped by 99.9% since the 1980s. Scientists and
environmentalists say that reduction is a direct result of too
much water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system being
diverted to farms and other water users rather than flowing
through the bay to the Pacific.
In the first episode in the Delta Conveyance Team Spotlight
video series, [DWR] spoke with the project’s Executive
Director Tony Meyers about his long and eventful career in
engineering, including work on some of DWR’s most ambitious and
significant infrastructure projects. In this excerpt, he
reflects on the appeal of large-scale engineering projects and
speaks about the importance of the Delta Conveyance Project in
protecting the security of California’s water supply.
OID and SSJID … have invested considerable money into
improving salmon habitat on the Stanislaus River and as well as
conservation measures aimed at reducing growers’ use of water —
have proposed pushing the spring pulse flow from an anticipated
1,400 cfs at Vernalis to almost 3,000 cfs. … The SSJID and OID
have also worked with the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water
Authority and State Water Contractors that may get only 5
percent of the water they need from the Bureau this year to
purchase the [water] by diverting it once it enters the
Delta.
The dams that are built in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River
Watershed protect thousands of people and billions of dollar’s
worth of agriculture but they are far too old and far too many
of them need repair. Some unnecessary dams are drying rivers
and putting business in front of the environment.
For seven days in mid-March 2021, the Bureau of Reclamation
substantially increased Folsom Lake storage releases. Roughly,
the releases tripled in volume (Figure 1). The release of over
20,000 acre-feet of water is significant for a year in which
Folsom storage is not much better than it was in the worst year
on record – 1977 (Figure 2).1 With the release in mid-March,
the lake level dropped 3 feet. Yes, there was rain in the
forecast and a decent snowpack, but certainly no flood
concerns. So why? The reason was to meet state water quality
requirements for Delta outflow. Delta outflow increased from
7,000 cfs to 12,000 cfs for a few days (Figure 3).
In anticipation of this week’s Bay-Delta Science Conference, I
thought it would be useful to consider some of what it takes to
understand a complex ecosystem like an estuary and to encourage
everyone working in the San Francisco Estuary – scientists,
policymakers, and local stakeholders – to continue shifting our
ecosystem management focus from the simple to the complex. I’ll
explain why in a moment. Here are four suggestions for
improving ecosystem management in the San Francisco Bay-Delta:
The Elk River is the largest tributary to Humboldt Bay and
provides habitat for three runs of salmon and steelhead. But
after this timber-rich watershed was heavily logged more than
20 years ago, major storms washed soils from clear-cuts into
the river, causing ecological devastation, local flooding, and
contamination of local drinking water supplies. We talked to
Darren Mierau of CalTrout about the Elk River Recovery
Program and the big challenges facing this effort.
Flowing a few inches deep following a recent rain, the Los
Angeles River looks more like a vast flooded interstate highway
rather than any river found in nature. And yet it is the
largest paved waterway in the world, best known as the filming
site for car scenes in movies such as Grease and
Terminator 2. … But now, following decades of public
frustration about the river’s poor condition, the city—in
coordination with the state and federal agencies—has mobilized
to restore the waterway and its habitats. One of the most
prominent pilot projects in the billion-dollar effort is the
Los Angeles River Fish Passage and Habitat Structures Design
Project, which aims to allow fish—especially steelhead—to move
freely through the river once again.
California is at the edge of another protracted drought, just a
few years after one of the worst dry spells in state history
left poor and rural communities without well water, triggered
major water restrictions in cities, forced farmers to idle
their fields, killed millions of trees, and fueled devastating
megafires. … Just four years since the state’s last
drought emergency, experts and advocates say the state isn’t
ready to cope with what could be months and possibly years of
drought to come.
With commercial salmon fishing in California likely headed
toward a shortened season starting in late June, fishermen out
of Half Moon Bay remain worried about what a short season means
during an already down year. … The shortened season will
be set based on an estimated low stock of chinook salmon
derived from statistical modeling. An ocean abundance forecast
of adult salmon estimated the Sacramento River in 2021 to have
around 271,000 salmon, while the Klamath River had around
181,500, both lower than their 10-year averages of 487,600 and
449,000, respectively, Morgenstern said.
The California Department of Justice (DOJ) filed comments with
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) regarding Sunset
Exploration’s proposal to drill for natural gas in the Suisun
Marsh. Located in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, this 88,000-acre
wetland is home to a number of endangered and threatened
species, including California Ridgway’s rail, black rail, and
Chinook salmon – and is just a few short miles from
environmental justice communities in Solano County…. DOJ
urges the Army Corps to fully consider the proposal’s
significant environmental impacts, including harm to these
communities and protected species, as well as increased
greenhouse gas emissions, before deciding whether to grant the
requested permit.
In 2016—after two years of rigorous scientific study by
CalTrout and its partners in the Sierra Meadows Partnership—the
Sierra Meadows Strategy for restoring and protecting our
state’s Sierra Nevada meadows was officially released. A key
piece of CalTrout’s source-waters-to-sea approach to combatting
the effects of drought and climate change, this strategy
developed among a broad coalition of conservation partners aims
to restore and conserve meadows throughout the Sierra Nevada,
protecting a major source of our state’s water supply and
critical habitats to fish and other species.
Water releases designed to benefit the critical outmigration of
juvenile salmon on the Stanislaus River as well as assist farms
and communities along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley
already starting to suffer the effects of two consecutive dry
years is languishing in the federal bureaucracy. Up to
100,000 acre feet is proposed to be released that belongs to
the South San Joaquin and Oakdale irrigation districts that
would provide a critical impulse flow from April 15 to May
15. That water based on measurements at Vernalis south of
Manteca where the Stanislaus River joins the San Joaquin River
would significantly improve the survivability of the threatened
salmon.
In recent years, the Wiyot Tribe in Northern California secured
ownership of its ancestral lands and is working to restore its
marine habitats; the nearby Yurok Tribe fought for the removal
of dams along the Klamath River and has plans to reconnect with
salmon, its traditional food source; and the Quapaw Nation in
Oklahoma has cleaned up contaminated land to make way for
agriculture and cattle businesses.
Emerging technologies will be at the forefront of this summer’s
launch of the ten-year, multi-agency effort to address aquatic
invasive species (AIS) as laid out in The Lake Tahoe Region
Invasive Species Action Agenda. Published in late 2019,
Phase I of the Action Agenda aims to aggressively treat and
control-test mitigation measures of AIS in the Tahoe Keys from
2021-2025. The environmental assessment and control-testing
outcomes from Phase I will then guide the implementation of
Phase II’s reduction and eradication measures from 2026-2030.
Aquatic invasive species offer a complex and unique set of
challenges for experts looking to find the best mitigation
strategy for their Action Agenda.
San Francisco Bay’s life support systems are unravelling
quickly, and a wealth of science indicates that unsustainable
water diversions are driving this estuary’s demise. Yet,
with another drought looming, federal and state water managers
still plan to divert large amounts of water to their
contractors and drain upstream reservoirs this summer.
Meanwhile, the state’s most powerful water districts are
preparing yet another proposal to maintain excessive water
diversions for the long-term. By delaying reforms that the
law requires and that science indicates are necessary, Gov.
Gavin Newsom encourages wasteful water practices that
jeopardize the Bay and make the state’s water future
precarious. -Written by Jon Rosenfield, a senior scientist for SF
Baykeeper.
The Delta Stewardship Council (Council) announced the hiring of
Ryan Stanbra, the Council’s legislative and policy advisor, to
the key post of chief deputy executive officer. … Appointed
by Governor Brown in 2015, Ryan joined the Council in the role
of legislative and policy advisor. He has played a pivotal role
in advising on critical Council initiatives like implementation
of reduced reliance on the Delta, interagency coordination and
outreach for the Delta Levees Investment Strategy, increasing
funding for critical science investments, and more. He has
served in the acting chief deputy executive officer role since
January.
Restoration projects, like species, evolve. The Sonoma Creek
Enhancement Project, originally about mosquito control, has
shown itself to be a boon to special-status tidal marsh
wildlife as well. More than a decade of adaptive management
actions made that happen. The existing marsh, formed
rapidly beginning in the 1960s by deposited sediment, lacked
the dendritic channels of a mature marsh. High tides brought in
water that pooled in a central basin and didn’t drain out,
providing breeding habitat for mosquitos. The disadvantages of
chemical treatment prompted land managers to look for
alternatives.
The Federal government is beginning a program for the
unemployed to retrain as much-needed Delta Smelt.
Following a two-day course, candidates will learn to: Seek out
turbid waters; Spawn in sand at secret locations; Surf the
tides; Make themselves present for counting in mid-water
trawls. Major California water projects and water users
are preparing to hire successful graduates for 1-2 year
non-renewable contracts.
Updated water supply allocations announced last week would
still drain upstream reservoirs in order to deliver 4.5 million
acre feet of water to the contractors of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP), devastating
fish and wildlife. This week, the fisheries biologists at the
National Marine Fisheries Service projected that these planned
operations are likely to result in lethal water temperatures
that will kill 89% of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon
below Shasta Dam this year. This mortality estimate is even
worse than what was observed in 2014 and 2015, when salmon
populations were devastated by warm water in their spawning
grounds.
Another advantage to “feeding” the soil in a region plagued
with persistent drought involves the tremendous water savings.
… With below-average precipitation in California,
its reservoirs are showing the impacts of a second dry year.
Lake Oroville stands at 55% of average and Lake Shasta,
California’s largest, now stands at 68%. Most
eco-conscious activists agree that, with the climate’s changing
patterns that lead to decreasing water supplies and die-offs of
pollinators, a lot more needs to be done to help keep our water
and food supplies plentiful.
A legal battle over plans to log in the lower Gualala River
flood plain is heading into a fifth year, despite a recent
victory in state appeals court by Gualala Redwood Timber and
Cal Fire which first approved the project back in 2016. The
fight over the 342-acre timber project in the northwest corner
of Sonoma County adjacent Gualala Point Regional Park is now
shifting to a new case gearing up in federal court. … Friends
of the Gualala River, a 30-year-old grassroots nonprofit
organization supported by like-minded groups around the region,
is seeking to block the harvest, which is targeting stands of
second-growth forest including some century-old redwoods.
Efforts are continuing to support restoration of crucial
habitat for salmon spawning and rearing on the Merced River.
Last fall, Merced Irrigation District completed the Merced
River Instream and Off Channel Habitat Restoration Project.
Adult salmon, which migrated from the ocean to the river, are
already known to have used the new gravel beds for spawning.
Now, in the coming months, surveys will be done by biologists
to further study the use of the new stretch of river and the
developing juvenile salmon that may rear there.
When the first European explorers arrived in California’s
Central Valley, they found a vast mosaic of seasonal and
permanent wetlands, as well as oak woodlands and riparian
forests. What remains of those wetlands are still the backbone
of the Pacific Flyway; along with flooded agricultural fields,
they support millions of migrating waterbirds each
year. According to a just-released study from Audubon,
tens of millions of land birds rely on the Central Valley as
well… But today, the situation is dire. More than 90% of
wetlands in the Central Valley – and throughout California –
have disappeared beneath tractors and bulldozers.
-Written by Samantha Arthur, the Working Lands Program
Director at Audubon California and a member of the
California Water Commission.
The San Francisco Estuary Partnership’s next update to it’s
2016 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan for the
Estuary—or Estuary Blueprint—will bring a new focus on equity
and environmental justice to ongoing efforts to restore and
protect the Bay and Delta.
In the face of climate change and severe weather, there is a
risk of more prolonged droughts in California. Despite recent
storms in March, Santa Clara County is now in a drought and it
is unknown how severe it will get. Valley Water remains focused
on preparing for future dry and wet years through a variety of
projects and programs, including the proposed expansion of
Pacheco Reservoir in southern Santa Clara County. The project
would increase the reservoir’s capacity from 5,500 acre-feet to
up to 140,000 acre-feet, enough water to supply up to 1.4
million residents for one year.
[F]or those who live in the legal Delta zone – some 630,000
people – the braided weave of the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Rivers and their maze of associated wetlands and levees
provides a place of home, community, and recreation. And, as a
recent study by the Delta Stewardship Council shows, climate
change is tugging on the watery thread holding it all together.
… The council’s overview reveals a grim outlook for the
millions of people that are tethered to the region’s water:
drought similar to that experienced in 2012-2016 will be five
to seven times more likely by 2050. This will result in more
severe and frequent water shortages and, as the report bluntly
states, “lower reliability of Delta water exports.”
The rivalry between farms and wildlife for water and land was
long seen as a zero-sum game, especially in California where
water is such a precious commodity that the state’s water
futures are traded on the stock exchange. That competition has
been particularly sharp in the Central Valley: 95% of the
region’s historic wetlands have transformed into farmland, and
the region’s increasingly scarce water supply has been
prioritized for farming. As a result, some of the migratory
birds that rely on the Central Valley for habitat, food, and
water sources have seen steep declines in the past
century.
Meager anticipated snowmelt runoff is expected to mean another
challenging year for maintaining even below-optimal levels of
flows in the Colorado River downstream of the Palisade area for
the benefit of endangered fish. … What’s referred to as
the 15-Mile Reach of the river between the Palisade area and
the Gunnison River confluence is of particular concern for the
Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, which
focuses on four endangered fish. The stretch is primarily used
by two of the fish — the razorback sucker and Colorado
pikeminnow. But it’s also used by a third, the bonytail. And a
fourth, the humpback chub, which favors downstream stretches
such as Westwater Canyon, indirectly benefits from efforts to
bolster flows in the 15-Mile Reach.
The upcoming salmon season doesn’t look promising for
recreational and commercial fishermen on the Coastside. But
environmentalists from the Central Valley are hoping to change
that in the future by easing the movement of salmon between the
Pacific Ocean and inland rivers. One of those rivers is the
Tuolumne River. Its stewards at the Tuolumne River Trust are
sounding the alarm over the river’s health and say that
committing more water to this distant river will help the
salmon populations more than 100 miles away in places like
Coastside fisheries.
As California stares down the barrel of yet another dry year,
alarm bells are already ringing over conditions in the Delta.
Environmental groups, fishermen, tribes, and a host of others
are calling on the State Water Resources Control Board to
complete and implement a long-delayed update to the Water
Quality Control Plan for the Bay and Delta (Bay-Delta Plan), to
protect the imperiled ecosystem. At the same time, plans for a
structure with the potential to divert more water than ever to
southern cities and farms are creeping ahead.
An extra dry summer with potential for water shortages – that’s
what state and federal officials are telling Californians to
prepare for. Predictions for 2021 are bleak. Lake levels
are low and the Sacramento region is not getting the spring
showers many hoped for. According to the US drought monitor,
most of the Central Valley is experiencing severe to extreme
drought conditions. This week the Department of Water
Resources lowered its expected forecast of water deliveries
made to cities and farms by half. But any conservation
restrictions would be up to local authorities.
Just before the Trump administration headed out the door, a
federal agency this past December cleared the way for a private
company to begin pumping groundwater from under the Mojave
Trails National Monument in Southern California. The Cadiz
water project would extract roughly 16.3 billion gallons of
groundwater every year for 50 years from aquifers north of
Joshua Tree National Park. The project would overtax the
surrounding environment, according to environmentalists
who filed a lawsuit to halt the project Tuesday. The
latest iteration of this project involves repurposing an
existing oil and gas pipeline.
State and federal water officials have delivered their most
dire warning yet of California’s deepening drought, announcing
that water supply shortages are imminent and calling for quick
conservation. Among a handful of drastic actions this week, the
powerful State Water Board on Monday began sending notices to
California’s 40,000 water users, from small farms to big cities
like San Francisco, telling them to brace for cuts. It’s a
preliminary step before the possibility of ordering their water
draws to stop entirely.
A new lawsuit brought by environmental groups against the
Bureau of Land Management seeks to rescind leases for seven
parcels of federal land auctioned to energy companies in the
waning days of the Trump administration. They are the first
federal land oil and gas leases of their kind to be sold in
nearly a decade and would open vast tracts to oil exploration
and fracking. The land in question sits in California’s Central
Valley, an agricultural region that already experiences some of
the worst air and water quality in the country.
California’s water use varies dramatically across regions and
sectors, and between wet and dry years. With the possibility of
another drought looming, knowing how water is allocated across
the state can make it easier to understand the difficult
tradeoffs the state’s water managers must make in times of
scarcity. The good news is that we’ve been using less over
time, both in cities and on farms. While there are still ways
to cut use further to manage droughts, it won’t always be easy
or cheap to do so. California’s freshwater ecosystems are at
particular risk of drought, when environmental water use often
sees large cuts. Watch the video to learn how Californians use
water.
[I]t was with some surprise that last year Warren Buffett found
himself recently embroiled in a hugely important California
water issue – removal of the Klamath River dams. The
socioecological effects of dams on the Klamath River have been
massive, almost uniformly negative, and ongoing. The Klamath
watershed has been estimated as the third-most productive
drainage on the West Coast for salmon and steelhead. Yet salmon
runs declined substantially over the last century in part
because dams fragment and isolate salmon from their historical
upland spawning habitats. … Indigenous peoples have
disproportionately dealt with the brunt of ecological impacts
from dams on the Klamath River.
Larry Brown …was a renowned research scientist who was
recently acknowledged by a Stanford study as among the world’s
top 2% of scientists in his field.,,,In 1991, Larry joined the
U.S. Geological Survey as a research scientist, an association
that lasted the rest of his career.
As of 2021, California is home to 31 distinct kinds of native
salmon, steelhead and trout species, 20 of which are found only
in our state. These fish are prized for their economic and
cultural significance by local communities, and for their
recreational attributes by anglers from around the world. But
these fish face an alarming threat that can’t be ignored. If
current trends continue, nearly half of these fish will be
extinct within the next 50 years. How do we know this? And
perhaps an even better question: what can be done about
it?
The Peter B. Moyle and California Trout Endowed Professorship
was established by a group of donors concerned with the
conservation and management of coldwater fishes in California.
The endowed chair honors Peter Moyle and the historical and
productive working relationship between CalTrout and UC Davis,
with an endowment fund resting at over $2 million. Dr. Andrew
L. Rypel was appointed to this professorship as the inaugural
holder in 2017, therefore this report reflects year-3 work on
behalf of the chair. A total of 13 peer-reviewed scientific
publications were produced by the Rypel Lab at UC Davis in
2019-2020.
It’s not too hard to find salmon on a menu in the United
States, but that seeming abundance — much of it fueled by
overseas fish farms — overshadows a grim reality on the ground.
Many of our wild salmon, outside Alaska, are on the ropes — and
have been for decades. Twenty years ago Pacific salmon were
found to have disappeared from 40% of their native rivers and
streams across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California.
… In California a groundbreaking project to
allow rivers to flood fallow farm fields in winter has helped
provide both food and rearing habitat for salmon — and has
helped prove that water managers don’t have to choose between
fish and farmers.
CalTrout Watershed and Legacy Circle members and partners
joined together last Thursday for an informative discussion on
the visions for the future of California water. With a zoom
room of visionaries themselves, we had a lively time! You
can listen to the interviews with our guests Gia Schneider of
Natel Energy and Felicia Marcus the William C. Landreth
Visiting Fellow Stanford Water in the West in the video …
The bipartisan confirmation of Michael Regan as Administrator
of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) elevates a
public servant with a wealth of federal, state and nonprofit
experience. … This will require Regan to rely on his
expertise in air quality and climate issues—and the cleanup
agreements he brokered at NCDEQ—as he oversees increased
regulation of traditional energy sources and businesses whose
operations result in air, land and water pollution.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is considering whether
the spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon that occupy the
rivers of Northern California and southern Oregon are
genetically distinct. The decision … would almost
certainly result in a listing under the Endangered Species Act
if seen as a separate species. … [T]he dams and
reservoirs that have been installed at various points
throughout the rivers of the West Coast create problems for
spring-run Chinook that are unique and separate from their
closely related cousins. It also allows the fall-run
species to outcompete the spring run since they both are able
to reach the same spots in the river to reproduce.
Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico made history on Monday
when the Senate confirmed her as President Biden’s secretary of
the Interior, making her the first Native American to lead a
cabinet agency. … Beyond the Interior Department’s
responsibility for the well-being of the nation’s 1.9 million
Native people, it oversees about 500 million acres of public
land, federal waters off the United States coastline, a huge
system of dams and reservoirs across the Western United States
and the protection of thousands of endangered species.
A unique deal between ranchers and wildlife advocates may at
long last bring a reliable water supply to Lower Klamath
National Wildlife Refuge — and the wetlands and birds that
depend on it. Since it was largely drained in the early 20th
Century, the mosaic of wetlands formerly known as Lower Klamath
Lake has relied on water from the Klamath Irrigation Project to
grow food and provide suitable habitat for millions of
migrating birds along the Pacific Flyway each year. Wetlands in
the Klamath Basin support nearly 80% of the Pacific Flyway’s
migratory waterfowl during the spring and fall.
Local tribes, schools and nonprofits have developed a new high
school curriculum that seeks to encourage environmental
advocacy through an Indigenous lens. The advocacy and water
protection curriculum meets state standards in science, social
studies, health, history and language arts and seeks to bolster
“culturally informed education” in the classroom. The
curriculum is based on the “Advocacy and Water Protection in
Native California” speaker series that was developed by Save
California Salmon …
We’re facing another very dry year, which follows one of the
driest on record for Northern California and one of the hottest
on record statewide. The 2012-16 drought caused
unprecedented stress to California’s ecosystems and pushed many
native species to the brink of extinction, disrupting water
management throughout the state. Are we ready to manage
our freshwater ecosystems through another drought? -Written by Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow,
and Caitrin Chappelle, associate director, at
the Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy
Center.
Local political leaders and a dozen Bay Area environmental
groups are urging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to reject a
permit proposal for an exploratory natural gas drilling project
in Suisun Marsh. The 88,000-acre wetland in Solano County — the
largest contiguous brackish marsh on the west coast of North
America — lies near the North Bay cities of Fairfield and
Benicia, at the mouth of the vast Sacramento-San Joaquin River
Delta where the salty waters of San Francisco Bay mix with
river water to create an estuary ecosystem that is home to
hundreds of species of birds, fish, amphibians and mammals,
including river otter, tule elk and the endangered salt marsh
harvest mouse.
Despite a February court opinion that vacated the quantified
water rights of the Klamath Tribes, the Oregon Water Resources
Department announced Friday that they will continue to enforce
the Tribes’ water calls until a judge orders
otherwise. The Klamath Tribes maintain senior water rights
in the Klamath Basin, which were affirmed by the Klamath
County Circuit Court last month, but Judge Cameron Wogan
wrote in his proposed order that those rights need to be
re-quantified.
Last year, tens of thousands of water birds became paralyzed
and died in a gruesome botulism outbreak caused by lack of
water at two wildlife refuges on California’s border with
Oregon. And it could happen again this summer. The crippling
drought that has plagued the region for years shows no sign of
ending, and there’s been little relief from the bureaucratic
gridlock and lawsuits over water that has slowly starved the
Klamath Basin refuges of their supplies over the past two
decades.
Today, [Tribes, Schools, and NGOs] released the Advocacy
and Water Protection in Native California High School
Curriculum and Teacher’s Resource Guide. The curriculum
… responds to California’s urgent water, climate and
educational crises, along with the need for Native American
culturally informed education and representation in
schools. The curriculum features online, classroom, and
nature-based learning and responds to reports that Humboldt,
Del Norte, and other counties are failing Native students, and
that Native youth are facing a mental health crisis due to
COVID-19 and the state’s water and climate crises.
Bad news for salmon lovers: The quantity of fish in Bay Area
coastal waters this year is expected to be far lower than in
2020. And fewer fish means less work for local fishers and
fewer salmon in stores. The number of adult king salmon
from the Sacramento River fall run is projected to be 271,000
this spring and summer, compared with last year’s estimate
of 473,200….The limited season reflects a downward trend in
the population of king salmon, also known as chinook, over the
last decade because of drought and state policies that have
limited the amount of water allotted to the parts of the
Sacramento River basin where the fish spawn and juveniles spend
their early months.
In the mountains of coastal Orange County, within Cleveland
National Forest, a five-year project is underway to remove 81
small-sized dams across four streams. California Trout is
leading an important role in this large, multi-partner and
multi-level project, which addresses a key initiative for our
organization: reconnecting habitat. We aim to give salmon and
steelhead access to diverse habitat by removing barriers and
getting obsolete dams out. For Southern California, this will
help protect endangered southern steelhead.
On the tail end of the second dry winter in a row, with water
almost certain to be in short supply this summer, California
water officials are apparently planning to largely drain the
equivalent of the state’s two largest reservoirs to satisfy the
thirst of water-wasting farmers. Gov. Gavin Newsom must stop
this irresponsible plan, which threatens the environmental
health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the water supply
for about one-third of the Bay Area residents. We should be
saving water, not wasting it.
Selectively cutting trees in riparian zones to aid forest
restoration can be done without adversely affecting streams’
water temperature as long as the thinning isn’t too intensive,
new research by Oregon State University shows.
… Northern California is well known for its groves of
large, iconic redwood trees. However, intensive logging removed
most of the old-growth forests from this region and less than
10% of those forests remain.
California red-legged frogs disappeared from their natural
habitat in Riverside and San Diego counties decades ago.
Disease and invasive species were their downfalls, according to
John Heil, who works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Now multiple partners — including national and international
nonprofits, government agencies, and private landowners — have
come together to change the course of the frog’s plight, Heil
explained.
Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said the Delta flows
issue has been decades in the making and “it’s going to
take some time to figure this out.”
What does sexual harassment have to do with our water supply?
Far more than you might think. The Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California imports, stores and sells the drinking
water used by nearly half of the people in this state. As a
consequence, the MWD is at the center of the state’s battle
with ongoing drought, the agricultural sector’s demands for
irrigation water and the degrading natural environment’s
inability to sustain iconic species such as migrating salmon.
[Heather] Dyer was the fish biologist spearheading U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service efforts to protect the Santa Ana sucker,
the tiny fish whose habitat was threatened by water projects
along the Santa Ana River….Doug Headrick, the former general
manager of San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, was
so impressed with Dyer he hired her away from the federal
government and put her in charge of leading …the development
of the Upper Santa Ana River Habitat Conservation Plan. …The
plan is expected to be approved by state and federal agencies
this year….Dyer, meanwhile, has been promoted to the position
of Valley District’s CEO and general manager…
California is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots – home
to more unique species of plants and animals than any other
state in the U.S. This biodiversity makes up the beautiful land
and seascapes of the world’s fifth-largest economy and sustains
our health, cultures and quality of life. Yet it is
disappearing at alarming rates. … Environmental
laws such as the Clean Water Act and Endangered
Species Act are designed to protect the environment from
damage. What these laws are not designed to do is provide a
pathway for restoring nature damaged, for instance, by
development projects.
-Written by Ashley Boren, the CEO
of Sustainable Conservation, a San Francisco- and
Modesto-based nonprofit.
Native fish, including smelt and salmon, in the southern Yolo
Bypass in Yolo County have new sources of food and shelter
thanks to a project that successfully restored more than 1,600
acres of former cattle pasture. The Lower Yolo Ranch Tidal
Restoration Project is a collaboration between multiple
agencies including the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and
Westlands Water District (Westlands) which serves western
Fresno and Kings counties. The agencies are working together to
meet a portion of state and federal requirements to restore
8,000 acres of tidal wetland habitat in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta.
Marin County plans to reroute a Bolinas Lagoon creek as part of
an effort to prevent flooding along Highway 1, prepare for
sea-level rise and restore habitat for threatened species. The
county’s Bolinas Lagoon Wye Wetlands Project aims to redirect
Lewis Gulch Creek closer to its historic route and raise a
nearby road to allow the creek more room to wind and flow
during winter storms. The project would also restore
floodplains at the northern end of the 1,100-acre Bolinas
Lagoon that were lost over more than a century as wetlands made
way for roads and pastures.
It was a Friday in late August when four jet boats made their
way up the Klamath River under a cloudless blue sky. The boats
carried three tribal chairs. From the Karuk Tribe, there was
Russell “Buster” Attebery, who’d found pride as a boy catching
salmon from the river and bringing them home to his family, and
later come to believe some tribal youth’s troubles — from
suicides to substance use — could be traced back to their never
having had that opportunity, growing up alongside a river now
choked with algae and diminishing fish populations.
Yuba Water Agency’s board of directors today approved an
agreement that adds the Cordua Irrigation District to the
historic Lower Yuba River Accord, a model water management
agreement that supports endangered salmon and steelhead,
ensures water supplies for cities and farms and reduces
conflict over water use.
A man accused of illegally repairing a levee and damaging
sensitive aquatic habitat in the Suisun Marsh is facing a $2.8
million fine following a California appeals court decision last
month. John Sweeney, who ran a kiteboarding club on Point
Buckler Island in Solano County after buying it in 2011, must
also abide by a clean up and abatement order that requires him
to restore the marshlands and tidal channels damaged during the
levee work.
A recent global assessment, released by 16 conservation
organizations, of the world’s freshwater fish species found
that nearly a third are at risk of extinction. Overfishing and
climate change are the most significant and pervasive drivers
of the global decline in freshwater biodiversity, but the
blockages created by dams and the introduction of non-native
species have also played significant roles. The news is
distressing, yet CalTrout sees this as a call to action. Our
organization works diligently to ensure resilient wild fish
thrive in healthy waters.
A forecast of relatively low numbers of Sacramento and Klamath
River fall Chinook salmon now swimming in the ocean off
the California coast points to restricted ocean and
river salmon fishing seasons in 2021. State and
federal fishery managers during the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife’s salmon fishery information on-line meeting
on February 25 forecast an ocean abundance this year of 271,000
adult Sacramento Valley fall Chinook salmon, about 200,000 fish
lower than the 2020 estimate.
California’s rivers, wetlands, and other freshwater ecosystems
are in poor health. Water management practices, pollution,
habitat change, invasive species, and a changing climate have
all taken a toll, leaving many native species in dire straits.
And the current approach for managing freshwater ecosystems is
not working. In this video Jeff Mount, senior fellow at the
PPIC Water Policy Center, discusses the many benefits these
ecosystems bring to California, and outlines a path for
improving their condition to secure these benefits for future
generations.
The southern western pond turtle, San Diego’s only native
freshwater turtle, is becoming rarer and rarer in coastal
Southern California. These pond turtles are competing against
other recently introduced animals such as bullfrogs and
largemouth bass, and especially released pets such as other
turtles. Do NOT release pet turtles, or any other type of pet,
into the wild as they often eat the smaller southern western
pond turtle’s natural food and even their hatchlings, said Ms.
Mallory Lindsay of Ms. Mallory Adventures. Other non-native
turtle species can be found in the region such as snapping
turtles, softshell turtles, and red-eared sliders.
One of the key issues on the table—highlighted in the CalTrout
and UC Davis Report, SOS II: Fish in Hot Water—is that on our
current trajectory, it’s predicted that 45% of native
California salmonids will face extinction in the next 50
years. When a species faces imminent extinction – there is
a sense of urgency to act, but recovery programs differ
depending on the species. Because steelhead, the ocean-going
form of Oncorhynchus mykiss, use many areas of a watershed from
ocean to headwaters, there are a range of threats to address
and many stakeholder interests to balance. Making things more
complex, Southern steelhead recovery takes place in the middle
of 20 million people – so a pragmatic approach is essential.
The Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Water Resources
plan to allocate approximately 5 million acre feet of water
this year – as long as California allows them to effectively
drain the two largest reservoirs in the state, potentially
killing most or nearly all the endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon this year, threatening the state’s resilience to
continued dry conditions, and maybe even violating water
quality standards in the Delta.
Though the nonprofit tasked with Klamath River dam removal is
about to submit its definite plan to federal regulators, Del
Norte County and the Crescent City Harbor District are still
worried about potential negative impacts. Harbor commissioners
on Thursday agreed to sign onto a memorandum of understanding
that includes the county and the Klamath River Renewal
Corporation. The MOU contains conditions that ensures the
harbor and county can recover potential damages to the port and
the fishing industry that occur as a result of dam removal and
reservoir drawdown on the Klamath River.
Southern California’s unarmored three-spine stickleback has
made headlines periodically, most recently over a lawsuit that
was filed on Jan. 18 by the Center for Biological
Diversity against the Trump Administration for allegedly
failing to take measures to protect the endangered fish. What
is the three-spine stickleback and what is going on with the
fish? … The unarmored three-spine stickleback was listed
as endangered in 1970 under the precursor to today’s Endangered
Species Act. Critical habitat was proposed for the species by
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1980, but never
designated.
Michael Preston grew up in the old village site of the Winnemem
Wintu tribe, along the McCloud River in Northern California
where the Shasta Dam has flooded spiritual and cultural lands.
Since the 1940s, the creation of the dam has also blocked the
usual migration of winter-run salmon, effectively endangering
the species. Now, there are proposals to raise the dam by an
additional 18.5 feet, which will cause further destruction.
“Our tribal goal is to bring the salmon back … ” he said,
adding that it’s more than just the fish. With the lack of
salmon, which is a keystone species, other animals, such as
bears, eagles and mountain lions are being starved.
The organization River Partners teamed up with California State
Parks and Butte County Resource Conservation District on
Thursday to host a flood plain restoration and
reforestation event. The event was called the
Bidwell-Sacramento River State Park Riparian Restoration
Project and was held near the Pine Creek Access point of the
Sacramento River in Chico.
[S]cientists were having a hard time telling delta smelt apart
from a fish species from Japan called wakasagi.
… Wakasagi were introduced by the government in the
1950s. There’s no shortage of them here or in Japan. Especially
when they’re young, to the naked eye they look virtually
identical to deltas. They’re so similar, in fact, to the
nearly extinct fish that scientists were worried about
hybridization — that this plentiful species and the delta smelt
would start hooking up, making mixed-species fish babies.
San Francisco has long been an international leader on
environmental issues. However, water policy has been a stain on
that record. … Many California rivers are overtapped by
excessive pumping, but few are in worse condition than the
Tuolumne River. In drier years, more than 90% of the Tuolumne’s
water is diverted. On average, 80 percent of the river’s flow
never makes it to the Bay. It’s not a surprise that the river’s
health has collapsed. …
-Written by Bill Martin, a member of the Sierra Club
Bay Chapter Water Committee, and Hunter Cutting, a member
of the Sierra Club Bay Chapter’s San Francisco Group Executive
Committee.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent
today to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking
Endangered Species Act protection for the Clear Lake hitch, a
large minnow found only in Northern California’s Clear Lake and
its tributaries. The Trump administration denied the fish
protection in a December 2020 determination.
Former Assemblymember Christy Smith announced that she has been
appointed by Speaker Anthony Rendon to serve on the Delta
Stewardship Council. … The Council was created to advance the
state’s coequal goals for the Delta – a more reliable statewide
water supply and a healthy and protected ecosystem, both
achieved in a manner that protects and enhances the unique
characteristics of the Delta as an evolving place.
As Executive Officer Jessica R. Pearson identified in her
December blog on the Delta Adapts initiative, “social
vulnerability means that a person, household, or community has
a heightened sensitivity to the climate hazards and/or a
decreased ability to adapt to those hazards.” With an eye
toward social vulnerability and environmental justice along
with the coequal goals in mind, we launched our Delta Adapts
climate change resilience initiative in 2018.
A local environmental group is urging the State Water Board to
investigate alleged water diversion from Gaviota Creek, an
action they assert is being done illegally and threatening the
population of endangered Southern Steelhead fish. Coastal
Ranches Conservancy, an environmental protection group that
operates along the Gaviota Coast, sent a petition to the State
Water Board back in June 2020, requesting that officials
examine water removal from Gaviota Creek. The CRC alleges that
the water diversion is happening illegally to provide water to
Gaviota rest stops.
Conservation groups said 80 species were known to have gone
extinct, 16 in the last year alone. Millions of people rely on
freshwater fish for food and as a source of income through
angling and the pet trade. But numbers have plummeted due to
pressures including pollution, unsustainable fishing, and the
damming and draining of rivers and wetlands. The report said
populations of migratory fish have fallen by three-quarters in
the last 50 years. Over the same time period, populations of
larger species, known as “megafish”, have crashed by 94%.
California’s environmental permitting system was developed to
prevent bad things from happening to the environment, but it
often slows efforts to do good things, too. How can California
improve regulatory processes to make them more efficient and
effective? The PPIC Water Policy Center recently discussed
these issues with a group of experts…
Coho salmon have recently been observed higher upstream in
Fortuna’s Rohner Creek than in previous years, thanks in part
to stream and habitat improvements completed last year. Flow
monitoring for fish passage at the 12th Street culvert has been
underway and the results are being finalized according to city
consultant, GHD Civil Engineer Brett Vivyan.
A few weeks after [California's late-January] storm, in early
February, eight scientists with a research consortium called
the Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network, or MARINe, hiked
towards a beach smothered by one of the Big Sur debris flows.
The sour smell of decomposing creatures hit them. A few turkey
vultures nipped at the sand. There were dead sea stars,
chitons, and likely hundreds of dead black abalone. In a
previous visit to this site, scientists were able to count 150
black abalone or “abs” in a small 50-meter area, with hundreds
left uncounted. A fraction of the site’s population remained.
Nearing the 50th anniversary of the federal Clean Water Act,
Assemblyman Robert Rivas held a press conference on Feb. 2 to
discuss the proposed California Clean Water Act, AB 377. The
legislation, co-introduced by Rivas and state Senate Majority
Leader Robert Hertzberg, would work to ensure all rivers,
lakes, oceans and other bodies of water in California are clean
enough for drinking, swimming and fishing purposes by
2050.
Scientists at Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest
Service have demonstrated that DNA extracted from water samples
from rivers across Oregon and Northern California can be used
to estimate genetic diversity of Pacific salmon and trout. The
findings, just published in the journal Molecular Ecology, have
important implications for conservation and management of these
species, which are threatened by human activities, including
those exacerbating climate change.
Steelhead season is underway in the Central Valley as three
major hatcheries are set to release over 1.1 million fish into
the Feather, American and Mokelumne rivers later this month.
Steelhead are the migratory form of rainbow trout that make
their journey to the Pacific Ocean and return to freshwater
streams.
The first few months of this rainfall season were below average
across California, with drought conditions evident statewide.
Although the Golden State received a much-needed soaking in
late January, moderate drought conditions remain across Santa
Clara County. Valley Water remains focused on preparing
for future wet and dry years through various projects and
programs, including the proposed expansion of Pacheco Reservoir
in southern Santa Clara County. -Written by Valley Water Directors, Vice Chair Gary
Kremen, John L. Varela, and Richard P. Santos.
For the better part of the last two centuries, the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has been modified in any number of
ways to meet the demands of Californians. But a new
wide-ranging study looks at what might be the most serious
Delta threat that doesn’t come in the form of an excavator –
global warming.
Modern forecasting methods fueled by advances in understanding
and predicting atmospheric river storms have enabled U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers (USACE) operators to better optimize water
resources at Lake Mendocino, a Northern California reservoir. A
multi-agency report issued Feb. 4, 2021, describes how
these forecasting tools have helped operators increase the
lake’s dry season stores of drinking water, improve its ability
to alleviate flood risk, and enhance environmental conditions
in the downstream Russian River to support salmonid
species.
Federal scientists and regulators repeatedly complained they
were sidelined by Donald Trump’s administration when they
warned of risks to wildlife posed by a California water
management plan, according to newly unveiled documents.
A Northern California water users’ association has filed a
motion against a $450 million plan to tear down four dams on
the Klamath River they claim irrevocably hurts local
homeowners. The motion was filed with the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) last Wednesday by the Murphy and
Buchal Law firm on behalf of the Siskiyou County Water Users
Association. It claims the interstate agreement reached by
Oregon and California last year to remove the dams has incurred
“irreparable damage” to lakefront home values in the COPCO Lake
area as water levels are feared to decline.
Save the Redwoods League today announced the successful
protection of Mailliard Ranch, a 14,838-acre property in
southern Mendocino County and the largest coast redwood forest
left in private family hands. The $24.7 million project secures
three conservation easements across the entire property, which
safeguard the land from subdivision and development, regardless
of future ownership. In addition to protecting sustainable
working forests across nearly 14,000 acres, the easement
protects nearly 1,000 acres of reserves, including old-growth
coast redwoods, mature mixed-conifer forest and salmon-bearing
streams.
A question I get asked on occasion is: Why all this fuss about
endangered delta smelt when there is another smelt that looks
just the same that can takes its place? The smelt being
referenced is the wakasagi (Hypomesus nipponensis), which is
indeed similar to the delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus).
In fact, both species were once thought to be a single species
(H. olidus), the pond smelt, with populations scattered along
the Pacific Rim, from California to Japan.
Environmentalist groups aiming to stop a major controversial
housing development at the edge of Newark’s wetlands are
appealing an Alameda County court decision that would allow the
project to go forward, marking the latest volley in a
decades-long fight over the best use for the land. The Citizens
Committee to Complete the Refuge and the Center for Biological
Diversity … said the development “would contribute to
the loss of Bay wetlands and wildlife habitat,” such as the
endangered salt marsh harvest mouse, and could worsen flooding
in nearby areas.
Shortly after taking office two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom
promised to deliver a massive compromise deal on the water
rushing through California’s major rivers and the
critically-important Delta — and bring lasting peace to the
incessant water war between farmers, cities, anglers and
environmentalists. … [C]oming to an agreement as promised
will require Newsom’s most artful negotiating skills. He’ll
have to get past decades of fighting and maneuvering, at the
same time California is continuing to recover from the worst
wildfire season in modern state history and a pandemic that has
since killed more than 42,000 state residents.
The Klamath River Renewal Corporation last week signed an
agreement with Resource Environmental Solutions, a Texas-based
ecological restoration company, to provide restoration services
following the removal of four dams on the Klamath River. The
agreement with RES brings North Coast tribes one step closer to
their decades-long goal of dam removal.
Cascadian Farm, a pioneering brand in the organic movement,
announced its commitment of $750,000 to The Nature Conservancy
to help rebuild farmland in California’s Sacramento Valley. The
two-year investment will focus on partnering with farmers to
rebuild wildlife habitat and regenerate groundwater on more
than 25 million square feet, equal to 600 acres of farmland, in
this key sourcing region for the brand.
A detailed analysis released by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
could change its approach in operating the Klamath Project in
compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
As we welcome the Biden and Harris administration to the White
House and a new California legislature into session, CalTrout
has taken some time to reflect and prepare for 2021. … We
have already seen glimpses of changes and good news: the
omnibus bill, passed in late 2020, offered restoration funding
for a key watershed. The executive orders signed on January
20th seek to restore science as our guiding light, and CalTrout
has an ambitious California advocacy agenda for 2021.
California researchers now investigating the source of [the
Sacramento River's Chinook] salmon’s nutritional problems find
themselves contributing to an international effort to
understand thiamine deficiency, a disorder that seems to be on
the rise in marine ecosystems across much of the planet. It’s
causing illness and death in birds, fish, invertebrates, and
possibly mammals, leading scientists from Seattle to
Scandinavia to suspect some unexplained process is compromising
the foundation of the Earth’s food web by depleting ecosystems
of this critical nutrient.
The official salmon count for Putah Creek revealed just 140
individuals for the winter run. That was down from 550 reported
last year and close to the same number the year before that,
and is considerably lower than the peak of nearly 2,000 fish
during the 2017 run. One count put the number for the 2019
report at closer to 1,500 fish.
Today, 95% of the Central Valley’s historical floodplains are
cut off from the river by levees. Built in the early 1900s to
combat devastating floods, levees and bypasses were constructed
to corral mighty rivers and push water quickly through the
system. Even before invasive species, large rim dams, and Delta
water export facilities were introduced into the system, salmon
populations started to dramatically decline with the
construction of the levees. Simply put, the levees prevented
Chinook salmon from accessing their primary food source.
If you look deep into the eyes of a fish, it will tell you its
life story. Scientists from the University of California,
Davis, demonstrate that they can use stable isotopic analysis
of the eye lenses of freshwater fish—including threatened and
endangered salmon—to reveal a fish’s life history and what it
ate along the way. They conducted their study, published today
in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, through
field-based experiments in California’s Central Valley. The
study carries implications for managing floodplains, fish and
natural resources; prioritizing habitat restoration efforts;
and understanding how landscape disturbances impact fish.
Each spring and fall, an estimated 1 billion birds migrate
through the Pacific Flyway, which snakes down from Alaska,
along the West Coast of the United States and Mexico,
and into South America. … Now new research reveals what
has been long-suspected but never confirmed: California’s
Central Valley and the Colorado River Delta are hotspots for
North America’s migratory landbirds.
A federal agency has ruled that the state can continue to seek
higher flows on the Tuolumne River than planned by the Modesto
and Turlock irrigation districts. The Jan. 19 ruling drew
cheers from environmental and fishing groups that have long
sought larger releases from Don Pedro Reservoir into the lower
river.
San Francisco rightly prides itself on being an environmental
leader. Given this deep commitment to protecting the
environment, the city’s water agency — the San Francisco Public
Utilities Commission — should be a leader in smart, sustainable
water policy. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. But
Mayor London Breed now has a once-in-a-decade chance to turn
the SFPUC in a new direction by appointing a progressive,
visionary new general manager who reflects the city’s values.
San Francisco’s Bay-Delta ecosystem and the Central Valley
rivers that feed it are in steep decline… -Written by John McManus, president of the Golden State
Salmon Association, and Kate Poole, the water lead for the
Natural Resources Defense Council.
As wildfires, heat waves, water scarcity and threats to
wildlife intensify in the West, California’s effort to confront
these environmental crises now has support in Washington, a
stark change from the past four years. Even as former President
Donald Trump spent his final days in office on the sidelines,
lamenting his election loss, his administration continued to
roll back environmental conservation and gut climate
regulations.
California water issues are notoriously complicated by a
massive diversity of users, ecosystems, applications and
futures. Indeed, water in the Delta has been described as
a “wicked problem” indicating that these problems cannot
be ignored and defy straightforward characterization and
solutions. Below we highlight how a Swiss cheese model might be
applied to vexing long-term declines in native fish populations
in California.
The Yurok people have lived in the 15,700 square miles Klamath
River Basin, in what is now called Northern California, for
millennia. They are among the key organizers in a coalition of
Indigenous groups, environmentalists, concerned citizens and
commercial fishers that have joined forces in a decades-long
movement to Un-dam the Klamath.
2020 was a bad year for delta smelt. No smelt were found in the
standard fish sampling programs (fall midwater trawl, summer
townet survey). Surveys designed specifically to catch smelt
… caught just two of them despite many long hours of
sampling. The program to net adult delta smelt for captive
brood stock caught just one smelt in over 151 tries. All signs
point to the Delta smelt as disappearing from the wild this
year, or, perhaps, 2022.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice of
its intent to sue outgoing Interior Secretary David Bernhardt
for delaying protection for 11 species that have been
identified as warranting endangered status but placed on a
candidate list instead. The species that have been kept waiting
for protection are the monarch butterfly, eastern gopher
tortoise, Peñasco least chipmunk, longfin smelt, Colorado Delta
clam, three Texas mussels, magnificent ramshorn snail, bracted
twistflower and northern spotted owl.
A winter storm is expected to blow through Northern California,
bringing much-needed rain to the Valley and snow to the Sierra.
Rain coming in waves like it is this week is huge for
fish. To date, we are really behind in precipitation
across most of the state.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt started off 2020 empowering
his most controversial public lands deputy, a move that a
federal judge later deemed “unlawful.” He’s ending the year in
quarantine, having tested positive for COVID-19. In between
these bleak-sounding bookends, the 51-year-old Bernhardt
rewrote how the Interior Department works. While the results
get mixed reviews, and in some cases may get erased by the
incoming Biden administration, 2020 was undeniably
consequential for the department.
A new habitat definition has been finalized by the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Marine Fisheries
Service. The final rule dictating how a habitat is determined
will be used for identifying critical habitat under the
Endangered Species Act (ESA). The updated definition will go
into effect in 2021. There had previously not been a clear and
decisive definition outlining what is to be considered a
habitat under the ESA.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine
Fisheries Service have finalized a regulatory definition of the
term “habitat” that will be used for designating critical
habitat under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The definition
is part of the efforts of the Trump Administration to balance
effective, science-based conservation with common-sense policy
designed to bring the ESA into the 21st century.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that Endangered
Species Act protections for the Clear Lake hitch, a large
minnow found only in Northern California’s Clear Lake and its
tributaries, are not warranted.
When ecologist Jackie Charbonneau learned that cattle ponds in
the East Bay hills are vital to rare amphibians, it came as a
surprise. Stock ponds can be so muddy and trampled that “they
can look like a bomb hit them,” said Charbonneau… But the
stock ponds dotting East Bay rangelands are in
trouble…. Today Charbonneau is part of a multi-agency
team that restores these unconventional wildlife habitats.
A coalition of conservation groups is working to prevent the
development of a dam in the Del Puerto Canyon. The proposed Del
Puerto Canyon Reservoir [in Stanislaus County] would reportedly
store more than 80,000 acre-feet of water…. In a lawsuit
filed on November 20, the plaintiffs assert that the project
would negatively impact the habitat of several species.
With the realities of climate change looming ever closer,
California transportation officials are now moving a key
stretch of highway more than 350 feet inland — one of the first
major efforts by the state to relocate, or “manage retreat,”
critical infrastructure far enough from the coast to make room
for the next 100 years of sea level rise.
Over the past three years, a team of scientists from
universities, NGOs, and state agencies across California have
been working to provide guidance on how to better manage river
flows for freshwater ecosystems throughout the state. A key
product of this effort is the California Environmental Flows
Framework (Framework), a guidance document and set of tools to
help managers and stakeholders develop environmental flow
recommendations for California’s rivers.
In early November, the Domestic Names Committee of the U.S.
Board of Geographic Names voted unanimously to name a peak in
Nevada’s Amargosa Valley, outside of Death Valley National
Park, for the endangered Devils Hole and the Ash Meadows
Amargosa pupfishes.
While Republican members of Congress praised the most recent
step toward approving raising the height of Shasta Dam, fishing
and environmental groups criticized it as the illegal actions
of a “lame duck federal agency.”
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced
Tuesday it’s awarding $10.7 million for fisheries habitat
restoration program projects. Ten out of the 27 projects
selected by the CDFW are in Humboldt County and will receive a
total of nearly $2.7 million of the funding.
It was daybreak and Barron Tsinigine had been fishing for
rainbow trout, until he found out he could earn $25 for landing
a brown trout. That’s when his plan changed. … Tsinigine was
one of the first anglers to participate in Arizona’s
incentivized harvest of brown trout … in hopes of keeping the
predacious trout from moving downstream and endangering native
fish, like the humpback chub.
Karuk Tribe natural resources spokesperson Craig Tucker joined
John Howard to talk about the historic agreement, its impact on
the region’s Salmon fisheries, and the potential for
replication in other places where dams are contested.
Why would a public water agency that exists primarily to serve
irrigation water to farmers on the west side of Fresno and
Kings counties undertake an ecosystem restoration project in
the Delta?
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has provided a $10 million grant
to Chico State and its partners to re-establish juvenile salmon
and salmonid habitats along the Sacramento River.
On Nov. 17, California, Oregon, PacifiCorp, and the Yurok and
Karuk Tribes announced a new agreement with the Klamath River
Renewal Corporation to reaffirm KRRC’s status as dam removal
entity and provide additional funding for the removal of four
hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. The agreement is the
latest development in a decade-long effort…
Westlands Water District announced Wednesday that it recently
completed the Lower Yolo Restoration Project, which restored
the habitat for fish and other wildlife species in part of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. … The land had been previously
used for cattle grazing, and now it has transformed into tidal
marsh, riparian and upland buffer habitat.
Work crews have been busy this week along Twin Cities Road near
Courtland. They are conducting core sampling, the first step in
drafting an environmental impact report for a tunnel plan known
as the Delta Conveyance Project.
The Trump Administration Thursday released the Shasta Lake
Water Resources Investigation Final Supplemental Environmental
Impact Statement to increase water storage capacity in the
Shasta Lake reservoir by 634,000 acre-feet,
Current estimates of young salmon lost to the south Delta pumps
are based on a smattering of studies from the 1970s and should
be updated, according to a new analysis. “They don’t represent
current operations,” says Ukiah-based consultant Andrew Jahn,
lead author of the analysis reported in the September 2020
issue of San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science.
At its Nov. 18 meeting, the Wildlife Conservation Board
approved $19 million in grants to help restore and protect fish
and wildlife habitat throughout California. Some of the 26
projects will benefit fish and wildlife — including some
endangered species — while others will provide public access to
important natural resources.
The California Natural Resources Agency recently announced the
investment of almost $50 million in Proposition 68 funding for
projects to promote salmon recovery. More than $220 million in
Proposition 1 and Proposition 68 funds have also been dedicated
for multi-benefit flood protection projects in the past two
years that will benefit salmon.
The Kern County Water Agency board of directors voted
unanimously to approve an agreement with the Department of
Water Resources to pay $14 million over 2021 and 2020 as its
initial share of the early planning and design phase for what’s
now being called the Delta Conveyance Facility.
There really hasn’t been many salmon in Pescadero Creek north
of Santa Cruz for years. On Tuesday, that changed. …
Ranchers, farmers and all manner of public agencies finally got
on the same page and major portions of the creek are now
restored.
America’s largest dam removal project has been brought back to
life with a new agreement among California, Oregon, tribes and
a utility owned by billionaire Warren Buffett. The decadeslong
effort to remove four dams on the Klamath River in Northern
California that have had a devastating impact on salmon runs
had appeared in danger following an unexpected July regulatory
order.
How did two of the most important waterfowl refuges in the
United States reach such a sad state? The decline of the Tule
Lake and Lower Klamath refuges was a hundred years in the
making. There are no villains here; rather it is simply a tale
of too little water to go around on an arid landscape.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District and its
partner, the California Department of Parks and Recreation,
Angeles District, are one step closer on a project to restore
Malibu Creek’s ecosystem after receiving support from the
Corps’ top brass.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and his Oregon counterpart signed a landmark
deal Tuesday to take control of four aging dams targeted for
removal on the Lower Klamath River, an agreement designed to
push the controversial $450 million plan over the finish line.
… The agreement “ensures that we have sufficient backing” to
get the four dams demolished, said Chuck Bonham, director of
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
A research team from California State University, Chico will
continue its exceptional work to re-establish juvenile salmon
and salmonid habitats along the Sacramento River, after
learning it would continue to be funded by the United States
Bureau of Reclamation.
Reported deficiencies in the design and construction of the
water delivery system have resulted in poor water circulation
that has caused algae to overbloom, while cattails and duckweed
are growing like wildfire along pond shores, creating
conditions ripe for mosquitoes. Fairview Park administrator
Cynthia D’Agosta said maintenance costs have ballooned far
beyond the annual $40,000 anticipated at the outset of the
work.
The last three administrations have been active in Klamath
Basin issues regardless of political party. Negotiations for a
basin-wide agreement began under the Bush Administration and
continued under the Obama Administration until faltering in the
House of Representatives — though each president’s approach has
varied. Dan Keppen, executive director of the Family Farm
Alliance, said Biden’s experience in the Obama Administration
could prove an asset, if he brings a similar approach.
To protect smelt and salmon, there need to be reasonable water
temperature standards in the Delta. The existing water
temperature standard in the lower Sacramento River above the
Delta is 68oF, but managers of the state and federal water
projects pay it almost no heed.
We’ve identified five priorities for the Biden-Harris
administration and Congress in our 2021 Blueprint for Action.
While some of these priorities can be accomplished by the new
administration itself, many will require congressional action.
California’s war with Washington over the environment will soon
come to an end. … President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to
act quickly to restore and strengthen dozens of protections on
public lands, water and wildlife. In addition, California’s
efforts to fight climate change will no longer face hurdles put
up by the White House, which has downplayed the global threat.
Why are our food producers, including many century-old family
farms with 100-year-old water rights, facing a shortage of
water? Because we drain Oregon’s largest lake to artificially
increase water supply in California.
Voluntary agreements have been proposed as a collaborative,
modern and holistic alternative to the State Water Resources
Control Board’s staff proposed update to the Bay-Delta Water
Quality Control Plan. … Westlands and other public water
agencies are eager to reengage in the process to finalize the
voluntary agreements, as they offer the best path forward for
California water.
The Department of Water Resources has moved one step closer to
starting the Delta’s largest multi-benefit tidal restoration
and flood improvement project… Lookout Slough is in
unincorporated Solano County, near the border of Yolo County.
It is adjacent to additional tidal restoration efforts,
including Yolo Flyway Farms and Lower Yolo Ranch, to create a
contiguous wetland restoration complex spanning 16,000 acres in
the Cache Slough region of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
A declaration suit filed in Superior Court in Sacramento by
attorneys for some of the leading environmental groups in
America accuses the California Department of Water Resources of
trying to prevent anyone in California from filing a court
action challenging … the financing of a single tunnel that
would be built under the Delta for 35 miles.
At the October meeting of the Central Valley Flood Protection
Board, Elizabeth Vasquez, Deputy Program Manager for the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program for the Bureau of Reclamation
and Paul Romero, Supervising Engineer with DWR’s South Central
Region Office, updated the board members on the ongoing
implementation of the program.
Recent legal testimonies assert that the Oregon Water Resources
Department has not taken exclusive charge of stored water in
Upper Klamath Lake, despite court orders requiring it do so.
Desertification is dawning on the Central Coast, according to
University of California, Santa Cruz ecology professor Barry
Sinervo, and the impact can be seen in the disappearance of a
uniquely giant and talkative amphibian from a southern Monterey
County site: the Pacific giant salamander.
Using a system of radio tags and electrical fields, the
equipment is expected to give researchers more accurate counts
of coho salmon that will return to Lagunitas Creek to spawn
beginning later this month as well as the young salmon leaving
the creek and entering the ocean in the spring.
Just weeks after the Bobcat fire ravaged the San Gabriel
Mountains, state and federal biologists are racing to salvage
as many federally endangered species as possible before storms
could inundate the animals’ last outposts with mud and debris.
… “This may be the last time in my life that I see wild
mountain yellow-legged frogs in the last best place for them,”
said biologist Robert Fisher…
Should the public have access to documents that show why the
federal government changed its stance on the impact an EPA rule
would have on vulnerable species? That’s the question the
Supreme Court will set out to answer Monday in the case Fish
and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club, which deals with a Freedom
of Information Act request for documents underpinning a 2014
rule for cooling water intake structures at power plants.
In their statement, the scientists laid out the grim picture
that has emerged from thousands of peer-reviewed studies:
Climate change is inflicting extensive harm to aquatic
ecosystems, both in freshwater and the oceans. The degradation
of these ecosystems, which are among the most threatened on
Earth, is accelerating.
Lobbing another hurdle at California’s $16 billion plan to
tunnel underneath the West Coast’s largest estuary,
environmentalists on Thursday sued to freeze public funding for
the megaproject championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Led by Sierra
Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, a familiar
coalition of critics claim the cash-strapped state is pursuing
a “blank check” for a project that isn’t fully cooked.
Scientists from several fish and wildlife agencies have
launched a rapid research and response effort for deficiency of
thiamine, or Vitamin B1. This deficiency was recently found to
be increasing juvenile mortality among Chinook salmon in
California’s Central Valley. The magnitude of its effect is not
clear. However, it could be a risk to Chinook stocks, including
endangered winter-run Chinook salmon and the fishery for
fall-run Chinook salmon.
The Bureau of Reclamation announces the selection of four
funding award recipients to implement $40 million in salmon
habitat improvement projects along the Sacramento River. The
restoration projects will enhance and improve spawning and
rearing habitat for salmon at approximately 25 different
locations across 132 river miles.
Protecting the health of California’s rivers, estuaries, and
wetlands has been the grandest—and perhaps thorniest—of the
many challenges facing the state’s water managers. The San
Joaquin River watershed, the state’s third largest and an
important water source for irrigating farmland in the San
Joaquin Valley, epitomizes this challenge. Yet California is
making progress here, bringing a glimmer of hope.
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…
At least 700 sub-adult and adult winter-run Chinook salmon
(winter Chinook) returned this year to Battle Creek. …
Establishing another self-sustaining population in a second
watershed (in addition to population in Sacramento River), such
as Battle Creek, is a high priority and a major component of
the Central Valley salmonid recovery plan.
ACWA on Oct. 15 submitted “A Roadmap To Achieving the Voluntary
Agreements” to Gov. Gavin Newsom and top members of his
Administration that calls on the state to take the necessary
steps to re-engage on Voluntary Agreements regarding the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta and its tributaries.
A team of scientists from the California Department of Water
Resources are working with federal and state partners to
embrace the challenge of overseeing the implementation of one
of the most complex endangered species permits in California
history.
Join us as we guide you 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.
U.S. and tribal officials are celebrating completion of a $34
million fish bypass system at a Nevada dam that will allow a
threatened trout species to return to some of its native
spawning grounds for the first time in more than a century.
Construction of the side channel with fish-friendly screens is
a major step toward someday enabling Lahontan cutthroat trout
to make the same 100-mile journey — from a desert lake
northeast of Reno to Lake Tahoe atop the Sierra — that they did
before the dam was built in 1905.
Valley Water this week began draining Anderson Reservoir in
preparation for a seismic retrofit of the body’s dam in east
Morgan Hill, but Gov. Gavin Newsom also vetoed a state Assembly
bill that would have expedited the project that the water
district has been planning for more than 10 years.
Biologists and engineers are setting the stage for an
environmental recovery effort in downtown Los Angeles that
could rival the return of the gray wolf, bald eagle and
California condor. This time, the species teetering on the edge
of extinction is the Southern California steelhead trout and
the abused habitat is a 4.8-mile-long stretch of the L.A. River
flood-control channel that most people only glimpse from a
freeway.
The day the gates closed on the Shasta Dam in 1943,
approximately 200 miles of California’s prime salmon and
steelhead spawning habitat disappeared. Although devastating
for all four distinct runs of Central Valley Chinook salmon,
the high dam hit the Sacramento winter-run Chinook the hardest.
