In what one Ukiah Valley water leader calls “the next big era
of major water decisions,” the City of Ukiah has joined up with
Redwood Valley and the Millview water district to form a new
water authority. The aim is to qualify for state infrastructure
grants to create a more reliable water supply for small
communities. The new authority has around 8500 to 9000 water
users, with about half of them in the city of Ukiah. That’s
pretty small by state standards, but First District Supervisor
Glenn McGourty, who is retiring this year, thinks the water
authority will help smaller districts comply with
ever-increasing state requirements.
Water management might look different in Marin County as
agencies partner to understand extreme weather better. The
North Marin Water District, the Marin Municipal Water District
and Marin County joined the Center for Western Weather and
Water Extremes Water Affiliates Group in January. The group
researches “atmospheric rivers” and other severe weather to
improve water management, mitigate flood risk and increase
water supply reliability. … The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration says atmospheric rivers are storms
that move most of the water vapor out of the tropics. According
to the Water Affiliates Group, heavy rainfall from these flows
of condensed water is responsible for almost 85% of floods on
the West Coast.
With a solid winter of rain in the hills, it’s peak waterfall
season in Marin County. The only question is which cascade to
see first. For Ian McLorg, chief park ranger with Marin County
Parks, Dawn Falls is the first that comes to mind. The
approximately three-quarter-mile trail to the falls is in the
Baltimore Canyon Preserve. “Dawn Falls, especially after some
good rain, is a pretty spectacular waterfall,” McLorg said. To
access Dawn Falls Trail, he suggested entering via Crown Road
in Kentfield and hiking the Southern Marin Line Fire Road. “A
short jaunt from the trailhead at Southern Marin Line Fire
Road, you just head as if you’re going towards Corte Madera,
and the Dawn Falls Trail drops off to your left down the fire
road,” McLorg said. “That one is a great one to see this time
of year.”
When rain falls anywhere in Santa Rosa, Windsor, Rohnert Park,
Cotati, or Sebastopol, the water will make its way to the
Laguna de Santa Rosa. Sitting at the bottom of the greater
Santa Rosa plain, the Laguna is the largest freshwater wetlands
complex on the northern California coast. In 2011, it was
designated a Wetland of International Importance. Yet how many
locals could find it on a map? To be fair, parts of the Laguna
have been altered and obscured by decades of development.
Sebastopol dumped its sewage there until 1978. Restoration work
has been underway since the 1990s, and December 2023 saw the
release of the first-ever comprehensive restoration plan for
the entire Laguna, designed to guide its continued recovery.
The legacies of California’s 1849 Gold Rush and the relentless
search for gold that continued decades later are well known:
the rise of San Francisco; statehood; Wells Fargo; Levi’s
jeans; a Bay Area football team named after the fortune-seeking
miners. But along the shores of Clear Lake, just north of Napa
Valley’s famed wineries, is another gold-rush legacy: toxic
pollution. From the 1860s until it closed in 1957, the Sulphur
Bank Mine was one of the largest mercury mines in the United
States. Gold miners in the Sierra Nevada used the mercury dug
from its deep tunnels and craggy cavities to separate gold from
the ore that held it. … Now a major effort has begun to
clean up the historic mess and reduce health threats to people
who have called the area home for thousands of years.
A rare frog that is California’s state amphibian and likely the
species featured in a famous Mark Twain short story is thriving
in its new Napa County home. The Land Trust of Napa County’s
Wragg Ridge preserve near Lake Berryessa has ponds well-suited
for the California red-legged frog, but as of two years ago, no
known frog population. Today, there are frogs by the
hundreds. The Land Trust worked with the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to bring frogs to the ponds.
Forests in the coolest, wettest parts of the western Pacific
Northwest are likely to see the biggest increases in burn
probability, fire size and number of blazes as the climate
continues to get warmer and drier, according to new modeling
led by an Oregon State University scientist. Understanding how
fire regimes may change under future climate scenarios is
critical for developing adaptation strategies, said the study’s
lead author, Alex Dye. Findings were published today in JGR
Biogeosciences. … Forests in all of the affected areas
are linchpins of multiple socio-ecological systems in the
Northwest, Dye said, meaning more fire will likely put pressure
on everything from drinking water sources and timber resources
to biodiversity and carbon stocks.
At the start of the year, the California snowpack sat at an
abysmal 25% of average, but after a series of storms, the
Sierra is glittering white — over the last week, storms added
up to 4 feet of snow to the range. … Statewide, the
snowpack is now 86% of normal for this time of year. And
70% of the April 1 average, which is the end of the water year
and the typical height of the state’s frozen reservoir. Storms
over the last month more than doubled the size of the
snowpack. At his lab north of Lake Tahoe, over the past
week, more than 3 1/2 feet of snow fell during three February
storms.
Over the years, Marin has taken the initiative to restore its
wetlands. The focus and work is a recognition of the importance
this soggy acreage plays in the ecological chain that keeps our
bays and oceans healthy and thriving. In many cases, it means
restoring historic wetlands covered by years of built-up silt
and blanketed by landfill. The announcement that work will soon
start on two such projects is another sign that progress is
being made to restore and revive these shorelines. In
Kentfield, work will soon start to lower sections of the tall
concrete flood-control walls built along Corte Madera Creek in
the 1960s.
PG&E has decided to withdraw the proposal that was
submitted by the Inland Water and Power Commission (IWPMC),
Sonoma Water, and Round Valley Indian Tribes (RVIT) to include
the building of new infrastructure to continue some level of
water transfer from the Eel River to the Russian River after
removal of Scott and Cape Horn Dams as a part of their
decommissioning plan being submitted to the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC). What does this mean for the
communities dependent on the Russian River? … If the ability
to divert water from the Eel River to the Russian River ceases
completely, it could have severe consequences for the 650,000
people who depend on the Russian River including Marin
County. -Written by Adam Gaska.
If anyone can accurately describe the massive scope of the
plastics problem in the Pacific, it’s [Mary] Crowley, the
founder and director of Ocean Voyages Institute, a nonprofit
based in Sausalito. She didn’t, however, set out to become an
expert on the topic. In fact, the seasoned mariner was happy
operating her yacht chartering company and logging 125,000
miles sailing the world. Yet with each passing year, she
noticed more and more plastic in the ocean. Finally, Crowley
knew she had to act. Since 2009, she’s led eight cleanup
expeditions, hauling more than 700,000 pounds of plastic out of
our planet’s blue heart and transporting it to recyclers.
[Former golfing grounds in northern California] haven’t been
doused with pesticides or rodenticides since 2018, which was
when this 157-acre stretch of land stopped being the San
Geronimo Golf Course, and began a journey toward becoming wild,
or at least wilder, once again. A small number of shuttered
golf courses around the country have been bought by land
trusts, municipalities and nonprofit groups and transformed
into nature preserves, parks and wetlands. … The
restoration of the San Geronimo land is still underway.
Floodplains will be reconnected, and a fish
barrier has been removed, allowing access to more robust
migratory and breeding grounds for endangered coho salmon and
threatened steelhead trout. Trails are planned that would skirt
sensitive habitat, making the land a publicly accessible
ecological life raft, starkly different from its time as a golf
course.
If open space, ocean views and wildlife are your thing,
Chanslor Ranch in Bodega Bay should be your next destination.
Long a privately owned getaway known primarily for horseback
trail rides, the 378-acre ranch across Highway 1 from Bodega
Dunes and Salmon Creek state beaches is now in county hands and
open to the general public. … [V]isitors are welcome to hike
4.5 miles of trail leading up coastal hills, down to Salmon
Creek and around the rugged landscape, which is bounded in part
by the creek. The land is known for a diversity of habitat,
from wetlands to coastal prairie, as well as many plants and
animals. The wetlands are a stopover for migrating birds, as
well.
The University of California, Berkeley (UCB) recently published
a scientific brief in February regarding illegal water use for
cannabis plants. Entitled “Water Use: Cannabis in Context,” the
brief was conducted by individuals at the Berkeley Cannabis
Research Center, which is part of the College of Environmental
Science Policy & Management. The Cannabis Research Center has
been reviewing cannabis water use since 2017, and the most
recent brief is split into four sections posed with a question.
First, “How much water does cannabis use relative to stream
flow?” explains that cannabis water use in regions along the
Northern California coast and semi-inland areas (primarily
Humboldt and Mendocino County) represents a “small fraction” of
surface water supplies year-round, and especially during the
months of July, August, and September.
The Eel River is the third-largest watershed in California—and
it once hosted one of the state’s great salmon runs, with as
many as a million salmon returning annually. For a century,
however, dams have blocked fish from reaching historical
high-quality spawning grounds, and today it is estimated that
less than 5% of the historical fish population remains in the
Eel. In 2023, American Rivers named the Eel River one of the
most endangered rivers in America. Removing the Eel River dams
could restore access to more than 200 miles of habitat, but how
will these changes affect the many communities connected to the
river? Filmmaker Cameron Nielsen spoke to people on all sides
of the issue in this visually arresting short documentary.