The Klamath, Trinity, Eel, Russian
and Smith rivers are the major northern streams that drain this
sparsely populated, forested coastal area that stretches from San
Francisco to the Oregon border. These rivers and their
tributaries flow west to the Pacific Ocean and account for about
40 percent of the state’s total runoff.
New testing results that have found record-high levels of
cyanotoxin at sampling sites on Clear Lake prompted the Public
Health officer on Wednesday night to issue a warning to those
who source their water from private intakes on the lake.
To expedite the delivery of much-needed drinking water to
coastal Mendocino County residents whose wells have gone dry,
the California State Water Resources Control Board has amended
its previous curtailment orders to allow the city of Ukiah to
draw water from the Russian River for emergency supplies.
Deep in the northern California wilderness, nestled among
rolling hills and magnificent pines, the Mount Shasta volcano
towers above the landscape as a lone sentinel beckoning to
those around it. Rising to 14,179 feet, Shasta is one of the
tallest mountains in the Lower 48. Given its height, snow cover
is common year-round, especially after a snowy season or two.
It is home to some of the largest glaciers in California and
includes at least seven glaciers, some named after Native
Americans in the 1800s. This year is testing the theory that
snow and ice will always be found on Shasta.
Water has begun trickling from Ukiah to Fort Bragg, and the
county’s main task going forward is to scale up hauling to meet
demand. The city of Fort Bragg announced Sept. 9 that it had
received its first 5,000-gallon delivery of water from Ukiah
and is expected to receive 10,000 gallons per day that will
allow Fort Bragg to resume outside water sales after halting
them in mid-July. The two certified water haulers on the coast
can resume their water sales, too…
The California Legislature released the final budget language
late on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. CalTrout remains
critical of the unnecessary delay in releasing critical budget
items like emergency drought funding, wildfire relief, and
climate resilience packages. As water curtailment orders go
live throughout the state, the legislature is still waiting to
officially approve these critical funding packages to combat
the effects of climate during this year’s especially dry
drought conditions.
Emergency water shipments have begun making their way to
desperate consumers on the Mendocino Coast, a result of
collaborative efforts by county and city officials from Ukiah
and Fort Bragg. But the rollout is starting slowly, and
Mendocino County officials are still working to recruit haulers
with the right kind of tankers to meet the demand. Only one
truck hauling 5,000 gallons a trip is working at the moment,
with enough time in a day to make two deliveries from the water
source in Ukiah to Fort Bragg, according to county
Transportation Director Howard Dashiell.
The city of Ukiah has been relying primarily on groundwater,
recycled water and conservation to get through the drought and
hasn’t been exercising its right to water from the Russian
River, which is experiencing historic low flows. That’s about
to change now that the city has agreed to help the coast
through the drought.
A federal judge has blocked a Northern California county’s ban
on trucks delivering water to Hmong cannabis farmers, saying it
raises “serious questions” about racial discrimination and
leaves the growers without a source of water for basic
sanitation, vegetable gardens and livestock. On Friday, Chief
U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller issued a temporary
injunction against Siskiyou County’s prohibition on trucked-in
water deliveries to Hmong farmers growing marijuana in the
Mount Shasta Vista subdivision in the Big Springs area north of
Weed.
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked a Northern
California county from enforcing water permit laws aimed at
cracking down on illegal marijuana farms, finding the
restrictions might be intended to drive a minority Asian
community out of their homes. … Siskiyou County passed two
ordinances in May 2021 requiring permits to extract and move
groundwater off site and to transport water by truck.
A bust of an illegal cannabis grow site within Sonoma Coast
State Park has weeded out an even bigger problem for the North
Bay suffering from a drought year — water theft. “Cannabis
plants require so much water to grow,” California State Parks
Cannabis Watershed Protection Program Assistant Chief Jeremy
Stinson told the Business Journal, following his team
uncovering the illegal grow site in Bodega Bay that netted two
arrests, 1,500 plants, 1,000 pounds of trash, pollutants and
water diversion lines.
The historic drought in Marin County continues to affect a rare
species of elk. Last weekend, nearly a hundred people carried
water to replenish the drinking supply for tule elk at Point
Reyes National Seashore that are dying in the drought
conditions. Volunteers hiked six miles round trip on Saturday,
carrying gallon jugs of water to provide the animals at Tomales
Point with more to drink. The water drop was organized in part
by TreeSpirit Project, Save The Elk, and In Defense of Animals.
After the Ukiah City Council held a special meeting Monday,
City of Ukiah officials announced Tuesday that they are
preparing to deliver water to coastal communities such as the
village of Mendocino. In a press release, Deputy City Manger
said that the city staff are “working out planning, contracts
and logistics to begin delivering water supplies by truck to
coastal areas of Mendocino County.”
Sanctuary Forest recently broke ground on a restoration project
in McKee Creek between Whitethorn and Ettersburg junctions in
Southern Humboldt. The project aims to address historical
logging impacts and “recharge” groundwater storages to enhance
essential flows for threatened salmon species. Anna Rogers,
administrative director for Sanctuary Forest, said McKee Creek
was rated as a Priority 1 tributary for coho salmon recovery in
the Mattole Coho Recovery Strategy based on spawning and
rearing documented in the past decade.
Volunteers carried out an emergency water drop this weekend,
trying to help the rare tule elk that have been dying in
drought conditions on the Point Reyes National Seashore.
Saturday afternoon, nearly a hundred people carried water three
miles to a pond that is on the verge of drying up. The National
Park Service is embroiled in a lawsuit over the elk, one third
of the herd has died in the past year from lack of water or
sufficient foliage to eat.
Tucked between two mountain ranges in Northern California’s
Siskiyou County, the Shasta Valley is as complex as it is
impressive. … The dearth of knowledge is perhaps most
pronounced when it comes to what scientists call the
hydrogeology of the groundwater basin –– how exactly water
moves through the volcanic rock below the ground. The movement
of that water is the economic linchpin of the valley, with
cattle ranchers, alfalfa farmers, cannabis growers, and others
all depending on it. And thousands of residents also depend on
the groundwater for their homes.
Extreme heat waves have made this a devastating summer for the
endangered salmon species of the U.S. West Coast. In mid July,
California wildlife officials warned that almost all of the
young Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River would likely die
because of lower water levels and higher water temperatures.
… But, amidst all the catastrophic headlines was a cool
spring of good news. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) is finally acting to protect more than two dozen
endangered West Coast salmon and steelhead species from
pesticides.
Arizona has water issues. But they are not nearly as deep
or widespread as those pummeling northern California. Some
areas there are facing mandatory 40% cuts in use. In Redwood
Valley, residents have been asked to live on 55 gallons a day –
barely enough to take a bath and flush the toilet a few times.
Meanwhile, thousands of farmers and others – even those
with senior water rights – have been barred from diverting
water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. As have irrigators
along the Klamath River near the Oregon border, which also is
seeing massive numbers of fish die. -Written by Joanna Allhands, Arizona Republic
columnist.
“I love the smell of diesel power in the afternoon. It smells
like victory.” The line, a play on the quote from the Vietnam
war movie Apocalypse Now, is the first uttered in a July video
by Doug LaMalfa, the US congressman for Siskiyou county. In the
background, bulldozers are destroying what appears to be a
field with marijuana plants. LaMalfa’s video was a response to
a call from the Siskiyou county sheriff, who had invited
citizens in this remote region in northern California to help
his department in the fight against illegal marijuana grows.
When it comes to water supplies in California and the U.S.
Southwest, the news has been remarkably grim in recent weeks.
One story detailed how inn owners in Mendocino County — which
has no municipal water system — were begging guests not to use
showers because their wells had dried up. Another noted that
for the first time ever, the federal government had declared a
Colorado River water shortage. The river’s large adjacent
reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, provide water to 40
million residents of California and six other Western
states.
Prickly pear cactuses used by Indigenous peoples to make the
popular Mexican and Southwestern nopales are shriveling in an
increasingly hot and dry southern Sonoran Desert.
Ancestral lands along the California coast may soon be
underwater, rendering them worthless to many Native peoples,
including the Salinan, Chumash, Tongva and Ajechemem, even
as other lands burn in ever-larger wildfires. Some salmon
species teeter on the brink of extinction due to drought and
diverted water, while elsewhere, people and homes are
swept away on a brown tsunami-like wave of floodwaters.
Extreme weather events in recent headlines, including
wildfires, heat waves and flooding, could offer a preview of
what to expect in forecasts of the near future, experts
suggest. … Already, historic heat waves have ravaged the
Pacific Northwest, wildfires blaze across California and Oregon
and agencies are recording some of the hottest months on
record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
said last week that July was the hottest month ever
recorded.
Firefighters face extreme fire conditions and strong wind
gusts this week as they battle several major wildfires
burning throughout Northern California. Almost
10,300 firefighters were working North State fires as of
Monday, including the recently-ignited Morgan Fire burning east
of the small Tehama County town of Mineral near the
570,000-acre Dixie Fire. Dixie was the largest of the fires,
which altogether burned through 821,415 acres as of Monday
morning. Thousands of residents are still under evacuation
orders.
With more critical wildfire weather looming, PG&E Corp. has
warned it might shut off power to thousands of Northern
Californians late Tuesday. Pacific Gas and Electric Co.,
already under investigation in connection with the massive
Dixie Fire, said it might impose a blackout Tuesday
night to 39,000 homes and businesses in 16 counties stretching
from Mendocino to Yolo. About two-thirds of the affected
customers would be in Butte and Shasta counties.
As a measure of both the nation’s creaking infrastructure and
the severity of the drought gripping California there is the $5
shower. That’s how much Ian Roth, the owner of the Seagull Inn,
a bed-and-breakfast in this tourist town three hours north of
San Francisco, spends on water every time a guest washes for
five minutes under the shower nozzle. Water is so scarce in
Mendocino, an Instagram-ready collection of pastel Victorian
homes on the edge of the Pacific, that restaurants have closed
their restrooms to guests, pointing them instead to portable
toilets on the sidewalk.
We are looking at back-to-back La Niña winters, and while
forecasters tried to keep us optimistic about the chances of
average rainfall last winter, we all know how that turned out.
So we should brace ourselves for another year of this drought.
Forecasters at the Climate Prediction Center issued an update
Thursday giving a 60% chance that another La Niña pattern will
form — and this same forecast was given last year, only to be
updated the second week of September to say, “Yep, La Niña is
here.”
The Santa Claus of water rolls through this foggy coastal
hamlet in a silver and white truck, bringing joy and relief.
Wayne Jones refills water tanks for residents and businesses
whose wells have gone dry. A bespectacled bald man with a
majestic white goatee, he moves quickly and speaks sparingly.
Amid Mendocino’s worst drought on record, people are
increasingly desperate for the private water hauler’s help.
Mendocino has no municipal water system. All businesses and
homes rely upon wells — some hand-dug in the 1800s. But rain
has been scant. Underwater aquifers are depleting. Wells are
running dry.
As drought conditions worsen, public officials in Southern
California are beginning to take steps to conserve dwindling
resources. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California — one of the largest water distributors in the
nation — is weighing whether to declare a supply alert for the
first time in seven years, officials said. And one of its
customers, the city of Glendale, this week implemented new
mandatory conservation requirements for its residents.
Drought across the Western U.S. has forced California to
ration water to farms. Hydroelectric dams barely work. The
smallest spark — from a lawnmower or even a flat tire — can
explode into a wildfire. While this region has always
had dry summers, they’re supposed to follow a pattern that
leads to relief with the arrival of the annual rainy
season in November. But a break is no longer
guaranteed…. Here are three forces desiccating the
region.
The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors received an update on
local drought conditions from the drought task force Tuesday
and authorized the group to expand its membership to local
tribes, community services districts and state agencies “as
needed.” The task force, which meets weekly, was created
to explore and develop both short- and long-term actions to
address local impacts from drought. Ryan Derby, the county’s
emergency services manager, said local conditions have only
worsened since the task force’s last update to the board on
July 21.
Moving to provide immediate support to communities facing water
supply challenges, the Department of Water Resources (DWR)
Wednesday announced the first round of funding commitments
for $200 million available through the Small Community Drought
Relief Program. DWR, in coordination with the State Water
Resources Control Board, is directing $25 million to 10 small
water systems in Tulare, Siskiyou, Shasta, Lake and Kern
Counties.
A proposed management plan for Point Reyes National Seashore,
drafted during Donald Trump’s tenure as president, is
environmentally irresponsible, violates the public trust and
should be rejected by President Joe Biden’s Interior
Department. California tule elk once numbered 500,000 before
being nearly extirpated by hunting, their habitat destroyed for
cattle ranching. Restoring these iconic animals at Point Reyes,
the only National Park where they are found, is a significant
achievement we should celebrate. -Written by Todd Steiner, wildlife ecologist and
executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network.
6-PPD is a chemical widely used to protect car tires from
ozone. However, when rainwater washes it into freshwater, 6PPD
degrades into 6-PPD quinone, a contaminant that a recent study
has linked to the mass deaths of Coho salmon in the Pacific
Northwest of the US. Researchers from Northeastern University
and the University of Washington found that even small doses of
6PPDq were lethal for the salmon. … According to the
California Water Board, Coho populations today are
probably less than 6% of what they were in the 1940s, and there
has been ‘at least’ a 70% decline since the 1960s.
Water restrictions in Northern California have prompted
protests from a Hmong community, who say the ordinance has led
to discrimination and a rise in racial tension in the area. The
Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously last
week to hold a third hearing about the ordinances, which were
passed as emergency measures in May. … But many Hmong
residents, many of whom belong to the area’s large farming
population, said the policies disproportionately affect their
community and have led to racial profiling by local
authorities.
With the drought rapidly drying up reservoirs, farmers are
desperately searching for new sources of water and some of them
are turning to a mysterious method, thousands of years old. …
[Rob] Thompson, who owns Thompson Well Location in Sonoma
County, practices the mysterious art of dowsing, locating
underground water with nothing more than a pair of bent steel
rods. He touches his rods to the ground to reset them, then
begins to move them. When they point toward water, the rods
magically cross each other, almost like they become magnetized.
Tourists flock by the thousands to the coastal town of
Mendocino for its Victorian homes and cliff trails, but
visitors this summer are also finding public portable toilets
and signs on picket fences pleading: “Severe Drought. Please
conserve water.” Hotels have closed their lobby bathrooms and
residents have stopped watering their gardens in the foggy
outpost about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of San Francisco
after two years of little rain sapped many of the wells
Mendocino depends on for potable water.
A “fish die-off” is generally a natural phenomena and occurs in
summer when low oxygen and warm temperatures causes large
mortality in a localized population of fish. Fish die-offs can
also happen in winter months when temperature stress can kill a
fish population. We have seen winter die-off happen during
extreme winters here in Clear Lake and her tributaries,
especially to the fragile, small bait fish populations like the
threadfin shad and silversides.
California has big environmental problems to address — extreme
drought, wildfires, species extinction — but the fate of a few
herds of tule elk also invokes raw emotions more than four
decades after they were reintroduced to Point Reyes National
Seashore, about 100 miles from Sacramento. Now, climate change
and extreme drought have added urgency to the dispute between
environmentalists, the National Park Service, ranchers and
indigenous tribal interests in this stunning part of the
Northern California coast.
Known for its starry skies, Joshua Trees and 100-plus-degree
heat, California’s vast desert has recently become a hotbed of
something else: thieves stealing California’s water. So who’s
on the receiving end of all this theft? Local investigators say
it’s often illegal pot farms. And with the parched state in a
withering drought, water managers are doubling as amateur
detectives.
A federal judge has denied a request by environmental groups to
require the Biden administration to immediately provide food
and water for the largest herd of tule elk in the Point Reyes
National Seashore. The groups, represented by Harvard Law
School’s Animal Law and Policy Clinic, allege the National Park
Service failed to provide adequate resources at the Tomales
Point Tule Elk Preserve, which lost 152 elk between the winters
of 2019-2020 and 2020-21. The herd is now below 300 animals.
The City of Arcata Wetlands and Creeks Committee held its
regular meeting by Zoom on Tuesday, July 20. The committee
received a presentation by Community Development staff on the
development of the Gateway Area Plan (Gateway Plan). The
members then participated in an exercise to prioritize (and
customize) their top three to five choices from a list of
potential wetlands and creeks-related implementation measures
for the Gateway Plan.
Facing criticism over its practice of monitoring some fires
rather than quickly snuffing them out, the U.S. Forest Service
has told its firefighters to halt the policy this year to
better prioritize resources and help prevent small blazes from
growing into uncontrollable conflagrations. The change came
days after politicians in California and the West, including
Gov. Gavin Newsom, publicly challenged the “let it burn”
approach after the Tamarack fire ignited last month, as The
Times detailed in a story Sunday.
For decades, California winemakers have long thought of the
Winkler Index as gospel. Developed in the 1940s by two
professors at the University of California at Davis (U.C.
Davis), the Index uses regional climate conditions to determine
the best places to grow a wide range of wine grapes. With
increasing pressures from heat and drought bearing down on the
state, however, the Index may currently be horribly out of
date. On July 22, U.C. Davis announced it would update the
Index for the first time in more than 75 years.
The Water Committee of the City of Trinidad has announced a
drought notice for its residents. Trinidad draws about 2
million gallons of surface water each month from Luffenholtz
Creek and processes it for about 323 water customers. Surface
water flow of the creek has been steadily decreasing since
June. … If creek water flow were to decrease further,
mandatory restrictions of water use would be enforced.
Forest managers, community and environmental stakeholders, and
policymakers alike have called for an increase in the pace and
scale of proactive forest management. This work is essential to
reducing wildfire risk and improving forest health,
… Water agencies may be well placed to take on a leading
role—based on the value they receive from reducing wildfire
risk, their high capacity to manage complex projects, and their
watershed-scale management approach.
A new study has found that cannabis farms in California’s prime
growing regions, including the North Coast, rely primarily on
groundwater wells to irrigate their crop as opposed to streams,
providing more insight into the debate over water scarcity as
the state grapples with a historic drought. The Cannabis
Research Center at UC Berkeley report found that well water use
by cannabis farms is common statewide, exceeding 75% among
farms that have permits to grow in nine of the 11 top
cannabis-producing counties that include Sonoma, Mendocino and
Lake counties.
The American west has had record-breaking burns in recent
years, blanketing cities in dangerous amounts of smoke and
sending haze across the continent to the east coast. For
smoke’s clearly apparent effects in the sky, new research finds
it changed the ecology of Castle Lake, a freshwater lake in
California, in 2018. … Smoke can alter a lake’s temperature
and primary production. It can even change where fish are.
During a particularly smoky period, rainbow trout that
regularly turn up in shallow water sampling were gone.
Fish, farms or people? Water managers are facing hard choices
about who gets first dibs on an ever dwindling supply of water
in the state’s reservoirs resulting from severe drought
conditions. Fish have historically been last on the priorities
list in drought years and that’s had negative ripple effects
across tribal and coastal communities, according to testimony
presented July 27 at a Joint Committee on Fisheries and
Aquaculture chaired by North Coast State Sen. Mike McGuire.
In Fort Bragg on the Mendocino Coast, city leaders are rushing
to install an emergency desalination system. In Healdsburg,
lawn watering is banned with fines of up to $1,000. In
Hornbrook, a small town in Siskiyou County, faucets have gone
completely dry, and the chairman of the water district is
driving 15 miles each way to take showers and wash
clothes. So far, California’s worsening drought has been
an inconvenience in big cities. But it’s already imperiling an
alarming number of communities, especially between the Bay Area
and the Oregon border, threatening the water supplies for more
than 130,000 people.
At the monthly Mendocino City Community Services District
meeting the board discussed the ground water management
ordinance penalty options for constituents who do not comply to
the permitting and monitoring requirements. The board also
continued to discuss options for drought mitigations. The
Ground Water Extraction Permit Ordinance 2020-1 that passed in
April of 2020 reiterated the district’s authority to compel any
property owner within district boundaries to obtain a ground
water extraction permit and install a meter, monitor their
water usage and report it monthly to MCCSD.
“Bleak” and “grim” were words frequently used Tuesday morning
as part of a joint legislative hearing on the crisis in
California’s salmon fisheries amid the historic drought. How
bad it is during the current drought in the West, however, was
up for debate. “There is no way that this year isn’t going to
be worse than it was in 2014-15, when we saw 95% (of salmon)
dying off,” said North Coast state Sen. Mike McGuire, who was
the chair of the hearing.
It sounds like the plot of a post-apocalyptic movie: Water
thieves roaming scorched terrain in search of nature’s most
precious resource. But in California, water theft is a massive
reality with numbers that are hard to comprehend — and as
droughts increasingly afflict the state, so does the extent of
this illegal activity. Over 12 billion gallons of water have
likely been stolen in California since 2013, John Nores — the
former head of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Marijuana Enforcement Team — recently told CNN.
Extreme and prolonged drought in the American west is prompting
water thieves to tap into other people’s scarce supplies. More
than 12bn gallons of water have been stolen in California in
the past eight years, according to state officials, but the
issue has been further exacerbated by the ongoing drought and
recent searing early summer heatwaves. A significant
amount of recent water theft has been blamed by the authorities
on illegal cannabis cultivation in some parts of the state.
Members of Siskiyou County’s Hmong community rallied outside
the county courthouse in Yreka on Tuesday over what they say is
racist treatment by police and racist enforcement of water
usage rights by the county. An ordinance passed in May
aimed at curtailing illegal marijuana grows prohibits water
trucks and other vehicles from carrying over 100 gallons of
water on certain county roads. Rally organizers say the roads
selected, primarily in the rural, unincorporated communities of
Butte Valley and Big Springs, unfairly target the Hmong
community who reside there.
As humans struggle with the drought, wildlife has an even
harder time adapting. Siskiyou County’s deer, elk, bear,
bobcat, mountain lion and bird populations are in danger
as creeks dry up and lakes evaporate into hot
air. That’s where guzzlers come in. These
large plastic or aluminum water collection devices – 240
of them – are scattered throughout the Klamath and
Shasta-Trinity national forests in Siskiyou County. When it
rains, water is collected in the tanks … which
allows thirsty wildlife to step down and reach the water.
Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen today announced
Jennifer Eberlien as regional forester for the Pacific
Southwest Region. Eberlien replaces incoming Chief Randy
Moore who has served as regional forester in the Pacific
Southwest Region since 2007. Eberlien will oversee 18 national
forests in California, which include 20 million acres covering
the North Coast, Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges and from Big
Sur to the Mexican border in the South Coast range.
Additionally, she will oversee state and private forestry
programs in Hawaii and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands.
The EPA has reported several dog and livestock deaths due to
toxic algae blooms found in riverbeds. A researcher from UNR is
examining what conditions cause these blooms. … [Joanna
Blaszczak, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada,
Reno,] has received a $200,000 grant from the National Science
Foundation. Her research will be focused on three rivers in
Northern California and will be conducted through 2023.
In Northern California, wildfires are burning hot and fast.
…UC Davis Climate Modeling Professor Paul Ullrich says
without sufficient rain, fires are burning much hotter than
normal.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is asking
recreational anglers to voluntarily change how, when and where
they fish to minimize stress and mortality among fish
populations suffering from drought conditions. CDFW is advising
anglers not to fish past noon on certain inland waters as even
catch-and-release angling during the hottest parts of the day
can greatly increase fish stress and mortality.
… Coldwater species such as trout, salmon and steelhead
have the greatest likelihood of being affected by the drought
this year but low water levels and high-water temperatures can
potentially affect all inland aquatic species.
One day last spring, water pressure in pipelines suddenly
crashed In the Antelope Valley, setting off alarms. Demand had
inexplicably spiked, swelling to three and half times normal.
Water mains broke open, and storage tanks were drawn down to
dangerous levels. … It took a while for officials
to figure out where all that water was going: Water thieves —
likely working for illicit marijuana operations — had pulled
water from remote filling stations and tapped into fire
hydrants, improperly shutting off valves and triggering a chain
reaction that threatened the water supply of nearly
300 homes.
The following is a press release from the Humboldt County
Department of Health and Human Services: On May 10, 2021,
California Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded the drought emergency
proclamation to 41 counties, including Humboldt. With this
proclamation comes acknowledgment that droughts can cause
changes to communities and the environment that impact public
health. Reduced stream flows increase the concentration of
pollutants in water and cause stagnation and elevated water
temperatures.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, in conjunction
with their state and county partners, are preparing for the
2021 cannabis enforcement season. As authorized by Fish & Game
Code section 12029, CDFW, in coordination with the State Water
Resources Control Board, or SWRCB, and the state licensing
authority, established a watershed enforcement program to
address environmental violations associated with unlicensed
cannabis cultivation. The environmental impacts associated with
illegal cannabis cultivation can have a detrimental effect on
fish and wildlife and their habitats…
For years, the city of Eureka sent treated wastewater directly
into Humboldt Bay from its Elk River processing plant.
But five years ago, the North Coast Regional Water Control
Board ordered the city to “cease and desist” and to move to
ocean discharge by 2030. The city is now seeking a
resolution that would allow wastewater to continue to be
discharged into the bay. The water board will meet in
mid-August to decide. Whether or not the city is granted
the exemption to continue, there are plans in the works to make
upgrades to the Elk River wastewater facility.
Yet despite its ecological richness, very little of the land on
either side of the [Eel River] has been protected, as 90
percent of this land remains in private hands, and very little
of it is currently accessible to the public. This could change
soon, however, if two ambitious initiatives to protect this
wild country bisected by the Eel and make it accessible to the
public come to fruition. And both those initiatives received a
boost from the new state budget just passed by the California
Legislature (and, as of this writing, still awaiting Governor
Newsom’s signature).
Today the Karuk Tribe filed a formal petition with the
California State Water Resources Control Board demanding that
it use its emergency powers to curtail water use in the Scott
River to prevent the extinction of the Southern Oregon-
Northern California Coho Salmon (Coho). … The Scott
River is home to most of the native Coho salmon left
in the Klamath Basin. Coho were added to the endangered species
list in 1997. While federal agencies have forced water users on
the federal Klamath Irrigation Project along the
California/Oregon border to allow downstream flows to protect
the fish, other water users’ impacts have been ignored.
Faced with the prospect of another devastating wildfire year,
California policymakers are seeking ways to accelerate the pace
and scale of forest management. Urgency is warranted,
especially in the dry mixed-conifer forests that dominate many
headwater regions of the state. Decades of fire
suppression have left California’s forests too dense and
prone to disease. Two exceptional droughts over the past decade
have turned these forests into tinderboxes, primed for extreme
wildfires. Forest management can mitigate wildfire risk; we
just have to act fast and over much larger areas to
reap the benefits.
Skiers and snowboarders pray for snow so they can shred the
slopes. Climatologists and hydrologists have an entirely
different and more critical reason to cross their fingers for
the “white gold.” The West’s historic drought has many impacts,
including water shortages, more severe wildfire seasons and
unprecedented heat waves, to name a few. Intense droughts are a
result of many factors, one of which scientists have recently
begun to analyze with more scrutiny: snow drought.
Vineyards, towns and roads have transformed the landscape, but
one thing hasn’t changed since the days when indigenous people
camped alongside the Napa River. Water is still, after
all these years, life. Descendants of the Pomo, Mishewal
Wappo and other native peoples gathered at Wappo Park on Sunday
to pay tribute to the Napa River through speech, song and
prayer.
The rise in legal cannabis cultivation in California has
brought a once-clandestine industry out of the shadows.
Legalization has begun to illuminate the industry’s impacts on
ecosystems and water—a particularly fraught issue as the state
confronts a new drought. We spoke with Van Butsic and Ted
Grantham, co-directors of UC Berkeley’s Cannabis Research
Center and adjunct fellows at the PPIC Water Policy Center, to
better understand how cannabis cultivation affects the state’s
water.
A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday is alleging the Point Reyes
National Seashore was negligent in its wildlife management and
violated federal law after more than 150 tule elk died in a
park preserve last year. … Environmental groups and
activists allege the Tomales Point elk died because of a lack
of drinking water. Park staff said there were adequate water
sources within the enclosure when the population decline
occurred.
In the 1950s, when University of California forestry professor
Harold Biswell experimented with prescribed burns in the
state’s pine forests, many people thought he was nuts. “Harry
the Torch,” “Burn-Em-Up Biswell” and “Doctor Burnwell” were
some of his nicknames from critics, who included federal and
state foresters and timber groups. Six decades after Biswell
preached an unpopular message to those who advocated full-on
fire suppression, he is seen not as crazy but someone whose
ideas could save the U.S. West’s forests and ease wildfire
dangers.
The State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) and
Sonoma County Department of Environmental Health Services
advise caution for anyone who boats, fishes or swims after
harmful algal blooms (HABs) were discovered in multiple Sonoma
County rivers. Because children and dogs are most susceptible
to serious health impacts, it is recommended that they avoid
touching any suspicious-looking algal material found in the
water or along river banks.
In Los Angeles, people have been hearing about the dangers of
drought for decades. But in this land of infinity pools and
backyard putting greens — better suited for rattlesnakes and
scrub — water never seems to run out. Yet little Redwood Valley
in Mendocino County, which gets a bountiful 38 inches of rain
in an average year and sits near the headwaters of the Russian
River, has been devastated by this year’s drought. Each
resident has been told to use no more than 55 gallons per day —
enough to fill a bathtub and flush a toilet six times.
… When it comes to the impact of drought, location is
key.
In April of 2017, PGE began moving forward with its plans to
relicense the Potter Valley Project (PVP)—with, as of yet, no
designs to remove any of the infrastructure—and in August of
2019, Congressman Jared Huffman created the PVP Ad Hoc
Committee, a Two Basin Solution for the Eel and Russian River
basins, whose more than 20 members were tasked with the
relicensing process of the PVP to improve fisheries and fish
migration, minimize adverse impacts to water supply
reliability, respect tribal rights and minimize and mitigate
adverse impacts to Lake County including Lake Pillsbury.
Lake Pillsbury… is located in the northeast part of Lake
County. Filled in 1922, impounded by the Scott Dam, it is part
of the Potter Valley Project that assures water security for
hundreds of thousands of people in the three counties of
Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin for drinking, farming, aquifer
replenishment and recreation….On March 17, 2021, FERC issued
a Study Plan Determination and per the order the Two Basin
Solution Partnership must analyze the effects of removing Scott
Dam on the communities around Lake Pillsbury, tribal interests,
recreation and other activities on the Eel River …
Pee yew! If you’ve noticed a funky smell south of town — you’re
not alone. Over the last year, a new treatment system at the
city’s wastewater facility has proved to be far more efficient
in the removal of solids from the waste stream than was
expected. Ultimately, the new treatment system improves the
reliability and quality of treated water released into the
ocean, but it means there’s a lot more… stuff… to dry
out.
It’s so dry at Joshua Tree National Park in southern California
that a trail has been shut down to make sure bighorn sheep have
access to water. Thirsty bighorn sheep need surface water to
survive. As the drought becomes more extreme in Joshua Tree,
herds have relied more on a spring near 49 Palms Trail. … To
help make sure the bighorn sheep have the access to water they
need, park officials are shutting down the 49 Palms Trail to
all tourists.
Humboldt County gave the public two chances to air concerns
this week surrounding Nordic Aquafarms’ proposed onshore fish
farm on the Samoa Peninsula. County planners held two public
scoping meetings Thursday to gather input from the public and
affected governmental agencies on areas that should be covered
in the project’s environmental impact report (EIR). The
Humboldt County Planning and Building Department had released a
mitigated negative declaration (MND) for the project in April
but a coalition of environmental groups argued that the
assessment didn’t go far enough.
During the budget hearings on June 8, the Mendocino County
Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a proposal for a
standalone water agency to combat water insecurity in Mendocino
County. This water agency will immediately focus on the local
drought emergency and work on other water-related projects,
such as water curtailment and groundwater management, in the
future.
Water is like electricity. Most people don’t think about it
much until it’s gone. Now, as California and other Western
states find themselves heading into a severe and worsening
drought, a new interactive map is providing a breathtaking
journey that shows where America’s water comes from and ends
up. The project is called River Runner. It allows anyone to
click on any place where a raindrop would fall in the United
States, and then track its path through watersheds, into
creeks, rivers, lakes and ultimately the ocean.
Among the nearly one hundred development projects pending on
the county of Napa Current Projects website comes a sleeper of
a project likely to go unnoticed by Napa city residents and
businesses who will be most negatively impacted. The remote
vineyard development project, proposed deep in the
headwaters above Lake Hennessey, seeks to clear 156.8 acres of
existing vegetation including oak woodlands, foothill pine
communities, and grasslands in order to construct a vineyard in
the Conn Creek/Lake Hennessey watershed. -Written by Kellie Anderson, resident of Angwin.
California has seen its share of droughts, but the one
happening now is so severe that a longtime dairy farmer has
called it quits. … Bob McClure, a 60-year-old
fourth-generation rancher of McClure Dairy, which was founded
in 1889 and remains on the Point Reyes Peninsula in Marin
County, … was already thinking about when he would wrap up
operations at the dairy, but his decision to close at the end
of May was “truly, truly driven by the threat of running out of
water,” he said.
There is dry, and then there is desiccated. As any movie
fan knows from the classic film Chinatown, California is
an infamously thirsty place. But this year, even by its own
standards, the state is shockingly, scarily parched. So far in
2021, the state has received half of its expected
precipitation; that makes it the third driest year on record
according to California’s Department of Water Resources.
According to a flyer put out by the California Water Boards,
anyone who diverts water from a surface stream, lake or pond
into a water hauling truck must have a valid water right and
any unauthorized drafting or hauling of water is subject to
prosecution and fines—up to $500 a day, as high as $1,000 a day
during a drought year, and $2,500 per acre-foot of water
diverted—by the State Water Boards and the Department of Fish &
Wildlife.
In August of 2018, Congressman Jared Huffman created the Potter
Valley Project (PVP) Ad Hoc Committee for the Two-Basin
Solution for the Eel and Russian River basins with parties
working toward the relicensing process of the PVP that reflects
the following primary goals and principles: improve fish
passage and habitat on the Eel River sufficient to support
recovery of naturally reproducing, self-sustaining and
harvestable native anadromous fish populations including
migratory access upstream and downstream at current project dam
locations…
The appeal filed by Gordon Bennett of a proposed well outside
of Point Reyes Station was rejected on Monday by planning
commissioners, who said they did not have the expertise to
evaluate it. Mr. Bennett says he will now appeal the
project to the Board of Supervisors, and will keep appealing
until someone addresses his concerns about maintaining a
minimum flow for endangered coho salmon in Lagunitas
Creek.
Following recent ordinances from Siskiyou County Board of
Supervisors that prohibit the transfer of water along certain
county roads without a permit, ripple effects have been seen
throughout the community. The emergency ordinances were
passed in an effort to crack down on illegal marijuana grow
operations. … [The conflict] has fanned the flames of racism,
saying they are seeing community members racially profile Asian
Americans in the community because the Shasta Vista subdivision
is known to have a large Asian American population.
In just a few weeks, California’s water conditions have gone
from bad to terrible. Sacramento residents have been asked to
cut water usage 10%. Their counterparts on the Russian River
are being told to reduce their consumption 20%. Farmers across
the Central Valley are letting fields lie fallow and
dismantling their orchards. Government agencies are warning of
massive fish kills on the Sacramento River. After
a warm spring dried up practically the entire Sierra
Nevada snowpack — and robbed California of enough water to fill
most of Folsom Lake — state and federal officials have been
forced to dramatically ramp up their drought response plans.
In terms of sheer size, Nordic Aquafarms’ land-based
aquaculture facility, slated for construction on the Samoa
Peninsula, would be the largest development project Humboldt
County has seen for decades, maybe since the heyday of the
timber industry. The facility’s five buildings — including two
massive production modules where Atlantic salmon would be
raised inside fully-contained recirculating tanks — would total
766,530 square feet, nearly an acre larger than the footprint
of the Bayshore Mall. It’s been more than two years since the
Norwegian company announced its ambitious plans, and the
environmental review period was scheduled to wrap up this
week.
The Crescent City Council is moving forward with a study on
water and sewer rates, which may result in increased rates for
residents. After receiving a grant from the California State
Water Resources Control Board totaling about $80,000, the city
is pressing on with the overdue rate studies. Typically, rate
studies for water and sewer are completed every five years,
however, the last water rate study came in 2013 and the last
update to wastewater came in 2015, said City Manager Eric Wier.
Wier said these projects are the first-step in maintaining the
overall health of both systems.
Day after day, sheriff’s deputies drive up and down the road
outside Steve Griset’s 600-acre farm, pulling over anyone who
appears to be hauling water for the thousands of marijuana
greenhouses that have taken over the countryside here. Griset
has become a target, even though he grows alfalfa. Last year,
investigators with the Siskiyou County District Attorney’s
Office raided Griset’s house with a search warrant looking for
his business records, and the DA followed up with a lawsuit in
civil court. Griset’s alleged transgressions? He was selling
water from his well to his pot-farming neighbors, immigrants of
Hmong descent …
The Marin County Planning Commission voted on Monday to reject
an environmental group’s petition to block a West Marin water
supply project over potential impacts to Lagunitas Creek flows
and endangered wildlife. The decision allows the North Marin
Water District to build a new well that it says is necessary to
ensure its West Marin customers have adequate water supply in
the face of the worsening saltwater contamination at some of
its existing wells.
The Mendocino County Farm Bureau encourages local, state and
federal leadership to focus current drought relief measures on
multi-purpose projects that address agricultural, municipal,
environmental, recreational and fire suppression water needs.
… On-stream ponds are created by damning a water course and
off- stream ponds are created by diverting from a river, a well
or a flood control contract.
Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,
NOAA funded 125 habitat restoration projects in coastal areas
throughout the country. … Through the Recovery Act, NOAA
partnered with the [California Conservation Corps] to support
more than 30 coastal habitat restoration projects. These
projects benefitted threatened and endangered salmon and
steelhead throughout coastal California. More than 200 corps
members worked to open waterways to fish migration, stabilize
stream banks, conduct project monitoring, and more.
At its May 20, 2021 quarterly meeting, the Wildlife
Conservation Board (WCB) approved approximately $23.5 million
in grants to help restore and protect fish and wildlife habitat
throughout California. Some of the 35 approved projects will
benefit fish and wildlife — including some endangered species —
while others will provide public access to important natural
resources. Several projects will also demonstrate the
importance of protecting working landscapes that integrate
economic, social and environmental stewardship practices
beneficial to the environment, landowners and the local
community.
On May 18, 2021, deputies with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s
Office Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) served one search
warrant to investigate illegal cannabis cultivation in the
Blake Mountain area of Eastern Humboldt County. The California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, Humboldt County Department of
Health and Human Services Environmental Health – HazMat Unit,
Humboldt County Code Enforcement and the California State Water
Resources Control Board assisted in the service of the warrant.
Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson, along with prominent
North Coast water managers and politicians gathered at a
virtual summit yesterday morning to discuss the severe drought
facing the North Coast and the entire state. At the summit (a
recording of which is available on YouTube), State Senator Mike
McGuire stated that the state legislature is moving forward on
a several billion dollar drought relief package, which would
include $1 billion in grants to help ratepayers and utilities
pay off back bills and $500 million to help smaller low income
communities develop enhanced drinking water supplies, among
other things (read the full list below).
The North Marin Water District failed to adequately study
whether there will be enough water for endangered fish in
Lagunitas Creek if it builds a new well in West Marin, an
environmental group alleges. The well is intended to address
worsening saltwater contamination in the water supply. Save Our
Seashore, a nonprofit in Inverness, filed an appeal against the
project with the Marin County Planning Commission. … The
commission is expected to hold a hearing on the issue on May
24.
Anyone who lived through California’s last big drought from
2012 to 2016 remembers the rules. You couldn’t water your
yard so much that the water ran off into the street or
sidewalk. Or hose down a driveway. Hotels had to put up signs
telling customers they could choose not to have sheets and
towels washed every day. Ornamental fountains were prohibited
unless they recycled water. Watering landscaping within 48
hours of rain was forbidden. … Now California is entering a
new drought with dwindling reservoir levels. But so far, there
are no statewide prohibitions against wasting water.
A U.S. District Court judge has ordered McKinleyville-based
construction firm Kernen Construction Co. to pay over
$2,087,750 in civil penalties after it was found to have
violated the Clean Water Act by discharging contaminated storm
water into a nearby tributary creek of the Mad River. The order
was issued by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on May 2 after the
company was found to have discharged storm water without
engaging in pollution control measures mandated by the
CWA.
In many American communities, rivers irrigate the farms that
feed families, quench people’s thirst—rivers are the source of
more than two-thirds of the drinking water in the U.S.—sustain
wildlife habitat, and provide an economic boost for
communities. Yet only a very small portion of those waterways
are protected from threats ranging from pollution to damming,
which would wreck the water’s natural flow.
… California’s Regional Water Quality Control Boards
have authority to designate ONRWs but to date have done so for
only two bodies of water: Lake Tahoe and Mono Lake. However,
the state did initiate an analysis of the Smith River as
an ONRW but has not completed the effort. The Smith is a
Pacific salmon stronghold.
Seven years ago, after the fish died, Sarah Ryan decided she
couldn’t wait any longer for help. California at the time
was in the depths of its worst drought in the last millennium
and its ecosystems were gasping. For Ryan, the fish kill in
Clear Lake, the state’s second largest and the centerpiece of
Lake County, was the last straw. Ryan is the environmental
director for Big Valley Rancheria, a territory of the Big
Valley Band of Pomo Indians that sits on the ancient
lake’s western shore. She and others raised alarms for several
years about increasingly dire blooms of toxic
cyanobacteria.
Little is said about the role of Lake Pillsbury in our
regional water system or the critical water it provides
to fill Lake Mendocino. If anything, its importance
to understated or not referenced at all in most media
articles. Without Lake Pillsbury at the Eel River
headwaters to control downstream flows, both the Eel and
Russian Rivers and surrounding aquifers will intermittently dry
up. … A strong movement is afoot to remove Scott Dam and
eliminate Lake Pillsbury… -Written by Frank Lynch & Carol Cinquini, Directors of
the Lake Pillsbury Alliance.
This weekend’s rain in Northern California, while welcome, did
little to address the dry conditions across our state. As the
state’s recent dismal snow survey showed, we are in for tough
times ahead. Less snow means lower reservoirs, less water in
our rivers and streams, and more groundwater pumping. And that
spells trouble, particularly for disadvantaged communities and
sensitive ecosystems, which have historically borne the brunt
of California drought in consequences like dry wells and salmon
die-offs.
Stunning drone photographs of Lake Oroville help illustrate the
drought emergency declared by Gov. Gavin Newsom in two Northern
California counties. Water levels at Lake Oroville [the
keystone reservoir of the State Water Project, which supplies
water to 27 million Californians] have dropped to 42% of its
3,537,577 acre foot capacity. Conditions are particularly acute
in Mendocino and Sonoma counties because the local water supply
depends on rainfall in the Russian River watershed.
After 21 vintages of making wine from far-coastal Marin County,
Pey-Marin Vineyards is coming to an end. Wineries rarely close
down entirely; more often, when an owner wants out, they sell.
But Jonathan Pey, who founded Pey-Marin Vineyards with his late
wife, Susan, in 1999, said that the extreme conditions of west
Marin farming have simply gotten too punishing, in part due to
climate change.
On Earth Day, the California Coastal Commission conditionally
approved a general management plan for a 28,700-acre federally
owned park in the San Francisco Bay Area — a plan vehemently
opposed by conservationists because it calls for killing native
tule elk in an area where thousands of acres of federal land
are leased to small dairy and cattle beef farmers.
… Last year, an estimated one-third of one the
tule elk herds died due to malnutrition, likely
exacerbated by drought conditions which decimated the animals’
foraging habitat at Point Reyes.
It won’t solve California’s drought problems, but it’s better
than nothing. The first rain in a month could wet the Bay Area
and much of Northern California this weekend, forecasters say,
as a late-season storm from the Gulf of Alaska appears to be
headed toward the region. Computer models show the rain will
begin late Saturday in the North Bay, spreading across the
wider Bay Area and Santa Cruz Mountains on Sunday. … The
weekend system also could bring snow to the Sierra Nevada on
Sunday.
The Eel River runs through Lake, Mendocino, and Trinity
counties before reaching the Pacific Ocean in southern Humboldt
County. Its name was given by Josiah Gregg in 1850 as he was
exploring and looking for land to settle. Coming upon a group
of Indigenous Wiyot fishermen, he traded a frying pan for some
Pacific lampreys, which he mistook for eels.
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.
[S]ome scientists [are] saying the region is on the precipice
of permanent drought. That’s because in 2000, the
Western U.S. entered the beginning of what scientists call
a megadrought — the second worst in 1,200 years —
triggered by a combination of a natural dry cycle and
human-caused climate change. In the past 20 years,
the two worst stretches of drought came in 2003 and 2013 — but
what is happening right now appears to be the beginning stages
of something even more severe. And as we head into the summer
dry season, the stage is set for an escalation of extreme dry
conditions, with widespread water restrictions expected and yet
another dangerous fire season ahead.
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.
The city of St. Helena’s water system recently failed a
drinking water standard, city officials said Thursday evening.
… The city routinely monitors its distribution system for the
presence of drinking water contaminants. Testing results
received for Nov. 10, 2020, and March 9, 2021, showed the
system exceeded the standard or maximum contaminant level —MCL
— for haloacetic acids, or HAA, [Jo Ann Burkman, acting chief
operator for the city's water division] said. The standard
MCL for haloacetic acids is 60 ug/L; the running annual average
for the LSWTP Distribution System in the fourth quarter of 2020
measured 68 ug/L…
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.
Humboldt County authorities are warning people it is still too
early to swim in some rivers due to high and swift water. A
report of multiple swimmers in distress this week led to a
sheriff’s deputy rescuing three people stuck on a rock in
Willow Creek. The Sheriff’s Office says the three Arcata-area
residents had decided to swim due to good weather. The office
says people should check National Weather Service information
on river levels and flow information. The advice includes the
Trinity River. Warming spring weather causes snowmelt that
sends cold and fast-moving water down through California’s
rivers to lakes and reservoirs. Authorities say even the most
experienced swimmers can be in danger. California State
Parks on Thursday began a series of online programs to help
prevent drownings in waterways.
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.
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.
On March 24, 2021, deputies with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s
Office Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) served one search
warrant to investigate illegal cannabis cultivation in the
Salmon Creek area. … Assisting agencies found one water
diversion violation (up to $8,000 fine per day, per violation).
Additional violations with civil fines are expected to be filed
by the assisting agencies.
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.
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.
Humboldt County’s timber industry legacy includes abandoned
mill sites that can be contaminated with dioxins. Now, a former
mill site between the cities of Arcata and Blue Lake is a
priority case because it’s a potential threat to the drinking
water of 88,000 county residents.
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.
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.
In a January test of the water in Abbotts Lagoon [at Point
Reyes National Seashore] …, the number of E. Coli cells found
in water samples was twenty times the safe amount. At Kehoe
Lagoon, the safety margin was exceeded by a factor of 40. It
gets worse for E. Coli’s nasty bacterial cousin known as
Enterococcus. It can devour your heart, stomach, brain, and
spinal cord. This monster thrives in raw sewage and intestines.
Kehoe Lagoon seethes with 300 times the acceptable amount of
this voracious creature. … Gee, you’d think the Park
Service would put up a few warning signs. But, no, there are
zero signs cautioning those who touch these waters that a drop
can wound and kill.
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.
When you think of shipping Humboldt’s Finest in Ziplocs
to Southern California, you’re not thinking of bags of
river water. But, putting Humboldt’s water in giant baggies on
a boat to Southern California was a plan actually
taken seriously in 2003 to encourage more water use.
Humboldt historically has an outsized allocation of water from
the state because the former pulp mills consumed an
astronomical amount of water. Squandering water in order to
preserve our state water allocation was the idea of some
political leaders and business people. Written by J.A.
Savage.
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.
This winter, Northern California has seen significantly below
average rainfall and snowpack, and as Cal Fire prepares for the
potential of another intense wildfire season, communities
across the North Coast are struggling to determine how to best
prepare for the “new normal” precipitated by climate change,
and what solutions might work to build community resiliency. At
the University of California Hopland Research and Extension
Center (HREC), researchers have long been examining how the
environment has been changing with the climate, best practices
for land management after wildfires, changes to water
resources, and more…
The winter storms that dumped heavy snow and rain
across California early in 2021 are likely not enough to negate
what will be a critically dry year, state water officials
believe. California’s Department of Water Resources on
Tuesday recorded a snow depth of 56 inches and water content of
21 inches at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada. The water
content of the overall snowpack was 61% of the average for
March 2 and 54% of the average for April 1, when it is
historically at its maximum.
Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties could play host to
part of the largest new designation of federal wilderness in a
decade if Democratic sponsors of the land-protection package
can find a way through the divided U.S. Senate. A bill
sponsored by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, would designate
257,797 of new acres of wilderness in Northern California while
placing 480 miles of river in the region under the nation’s
strictest environmental protections for waterways.
The Eureka City Council is set to consider a letter from the
mayor to the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, a
subdivision of the California Environmental Protection Agency,
regarding a potential water contamination hazard. The letter is
on the agenda for the March 2 meeting as a consent calendar
item.
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.
New Frontier Data, the premier data, analytics and technology
firm specializing in the global cannabis industry, in
partnership with Resource Innovation Institute and the Berkeley
Cannabis Research Center, releases Cannabis H2O: Water Use and
Sustainability in Cultivation. The report provides an in-depth
look at water usage in the regulated cannabis cultivation
market and how its use compares to the illicit market and
traditional agricultural sectors. … The report reveals that
the cannabis industry uses significantly less water than other
major agricultural crops in California.
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.
Ancient giant redwoods are among the charred survivors in Big
Basin Redwoods State Park after a wildfire last year. Now
rangers and conservationists are developing plans to better
protect them out of fear that the world’s tallest trees may not
survive future blazes that are almost certain to come.
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.
Following a disappointing 2019 adult fall run on the Klamath,
2020 proved to be only slightly better. Unfortunately, the
numbers weren’t enough to get us out of the “overfished”
category, and it’s likely we’ll have some severe
restrictions both in the ocean and in the Klamath and Trinity
rivers in 2021. … According to CDFW, the number of returning
fall run kings in 2020 was 45,407, about half the long-term
average. In 2019 only 37,270 adult kings returned. The return
of fall Chinook jacks was 9,037 fish, which is also below the
long-term average of 17,740.
The Marin Municipal Water District is calling on customers to
voluntarily cut back on their water use for the first time
since the 2013 drought in response to meager rainfall
reminiscent of the notorious 1976-1977 drought.
The Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District and the Trinidad
Rancheria are moving forward with a feasibility study to
investigate the possibility of extending water service from
McKinleyville up to the Rancheria. The Trinidad City Council
and the Westhaven Community Services District declined to
participate in the study last month, citing risks of
overdevelopment.
In the Pacific Northwest, several species of salmon are in
danger of extinction. The Washington State Recreation and
Conservation Office has released a report on the
state of salmon populations in the state’s watersheds — and the
findings predict a grim future. … The population changes
aren’t surprising to [scientist Daniel] Pauly. “This is what
happens when temperature increases,” he said. “The fish are
looking for the temperatures that they are attuned to, and if
those temperatures are farther north, they move farther north.
If you make a map from high arctic Alaska to California, the
salmon stocks in California are essentially dead.”
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.
Marin County water districts are weighing the need for
mandatory conservation actions in the face of abnormally low
rainfall and what could be another prolonged drought. Marin’s
two largest suppliers — the Marin Municipal Water District and
the North Marin Water District — plan to begin with voluntary
conservation measures before considering more restrictive
options such as rationing and irrigation bans similar to those
of the 2014 drought.
Forests in the Sierra‒Cascade headwater region have
dramatically changed over the past 150 years. The prohibition
of Indigenous burning, aggressive wildfire suppression, and
early timber harvest practices made these forests denser over
time, increasing their vulnerability to catastrophic wildfires
and widespread tree-die off. These forests are a dominant
feature on the landscape, occupying nearly 40% of the 15
million acre headwater region overall and well over half of
some northern watersheds. Changing the way we manage these
forests can improve their health and make them more resilient
to wildfire, drought, and disease.
For years, Gamble Vineyards has worked to create a more
biodiverse habitat on vineyard land, including establishing
animal sanctuaries throughout the property and donating acreage
to the Napa River Restoration project. Now the river’s growing
beaver population is chewing the trees that Gamble has planted
over the last 20 years.
A new set of winery wastewater guidelines will be imposed on a
statewide basis. The State Water Resources Control Board
recently adopted a general order regulating how wastewater will
be processed and discharged. … While the wine industry
is concerned with water quality issues, there is some concern
that a statewide mandate may not be the best approach to the
issue.
Sandbars are spreading across rain-starved Lake Mendocino, the
reservoir near Ukiah that is 35 feet lower than it was a year
ago, a grim wintertime sight for the second major source of
water for more than 655,000 people in Sonoma, Mendocino and
Marin counties. But the situation would be considerably worse
without the payoff from a six-year, $50 million project
applying high-tech weather forecasting to management of the
reservoir behind Coyote Valley Dam built on the East Fork of
the Russian River in 1958.
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.
A strong storm system brought heavy rain and powerful winds to
the Bay Area late Tuesday, increasing the risks of mudslides
and flash floods that have already prompted evacuations in some
parts of Northern California. An atmospheric river barreled
into the West Coast, causing flooding, evacuations and dropping
snowfall in the Sierra. In some places, including San Benito
County and Big Sur, the storm was expected to bring up to 10
inches of rain by Wednesday.
The Trinidad City Council on Tuesday will consider whether to
participate in a feasibility study for a project that would
bring a steady flow of water to the city from the Mad River via
a new pipeline. The Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District
(HBMWD), which supplies water to Eureka, Arcata, McKinleyville,
Blue Lake and other area communities, is in the early stages of
researching the possibility of expanding its service area north
via a waterline extension at least as far north as the Trinidad
Rancheria…
Two out-of-state men were ordered by a judge to pay $117,373 in
restitution for water pollution violations stemming from an
overturned fuel tank that released an estimated 760 gallons of
diesel into Rock Tree Creek, a tributary of the Eel River.
About a mile of bare, cracked earth now lies like a desertscape
between the boat ramp at the north end of Lake Mendocino and
the water’s edge of a diminished reservoir that helps provide
water for 600,000 Sonoma and Marin County residents. The
human-made lake near Ukiah is about 30 feet lower than it was
at this time last year, and Nick Malasavage, an Army Corps of
Engineers official who oversees operations at the reservoir,
said the scene is “pretty jarring.”
Three people were appointed Thursday to the California Water
Commission by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The three are Amy Cordalis,
40, of McKinleyville, Kimberly Gallagher, 45, of Davis,
and Fern Steiner, 71, of San Diego.
You may know it as Dog Ranch or perhaps Dead Man’s Drop Forest,
but forget that. The parcels immediately to the west of Samoa
Bridge [near Humboldt Bay] are now officially the Samoa Dunes
and Wetlands Conservation Area. “We’re looking to re-introduce
this place to our community,” says Mike Cipra, who heads up
Friends of the Dunes, the new titleholder of the 357 acres.
“This property is a fantastic jewel for our local community and
we want to emphasize just how special it is with the name.”
For many years Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has operated the
“Potter Valley Project,” a hydroelectric facility on the main
stem of the Eel River consisting of Scott and Cape Horn dams
and a tunnel diverting water into the Russian River watershed,
where it is used to generate a small amount of electricity and
for irrigation by farmers in Potter Valley and farther south in
Sonoma County. The construction of Scott Dam in 1922
completely blocked passage of critically imperiled anadromous
fish including salmon, steelhead and lamprey…
For years, researchers have worked to solve the mysterious
cause of extreme coho salmon mortality in the Pacific
Northwest. A recent study by the San Francisco Estuary
Institute and the University of Washington has finally
identified the microscopic culprit as a highly toxic
contaminant associated with tire particles…The study focused
on water samples from the San Francisco Bay area and the Puget
Sound in Washington state, but scientists fear the contaminant
could affect coho salmon in the Eel and Klamath rivers as well.
In 2019 the Two-Basin Solution Partnership filed a Notice of
Intent to apply for relicensing and ownership of the [Potter
Valley] project, followed in the spring of 2020 by a
feasibility study and project plan that includes removal of
Scott Dam, and a commitment to provide water to Potter Valley
and the Russian River…. Many questions remain, starting with
impacts on local recreational users and cabin owners. By
Victoria Brandon, board president of Tuleyome, a nature-based
environmental organization based in Woodland.
By burning and brushing, nurturing important plants and
keeping lands around their homes clear of dead brush and
debris, Native peoples carefully stewarded the lands to sustain
the biodiverse ecologies California is known for. Their
work resulted in a richly productive landscape that provided
food and habitat for not only humans but many land, air and
water animals. That included the salmon, a staple of tribes in
the West for millennia. All that changed when California became
a U.S. state in 1850.
Plans to regulate groundwater for the first time ever in the
Ukiah Valley Basin are moving forward. And though the details
are wonky and a little esoteric, the results could affect water
and ag policy for years to come. Last week, the Ukiah Valley
Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency discussed how their
mammoth project of sustainably managing the groundwater is
coming along.
The Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District agreed on Thursday to
send a draft of an agreement to the Cher-Ae Heights Indian
Community of the Trinidad Rancheria to pursue a feasibility
study for an extension of water service. The tribe made the
request after the California Coastal Commission deemed the
tribe’s water supply inadequate for the proposed multi-story
Hyatt hotel at the Cher-Ae Heights Casino.
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.
U.S. Rep. John Garamendi has filed an official objection to a
plan backed by Sonoma County and his House Democratic colleague
Jared Huffman to remove Scott Dam on the Eel River and drain
Lake Pillsbury, a popular recreation spot for nearly a century.
Completely dry riverbeds, record low flows, and diminished fish
populations — that’s what staff and volunteers from a local
environmental nonprofit found when they surveyed tributaries of
the Eel River earlier this month.
Right now, the Mendocino County Sustainable Groundwater Agency
is writing up a groundwater sustainability plan for the basin.
The plan will regulate groundwater in the Ukiah Valley basin
for the first time ever, and will define how water is managed
in and near Redwood Valley, Calpella, and Ukiah for perpetuity.
Congressman John Garamendi, who represents the northern half of
Lake County, on Friday submitted a formal comment to the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission opposing removal of Scott
Dam on the Eel River at Lake Pillsbury and demanding that Lake
County have an equal seat at the table for determining the
future of Potter Valley Project and the lake.
The South Fork Eel River is considered one of the highest
priority watersheds in the state for flow enhancement projects.
Forested tributaries like Redwood Creek provide refugia habitat
for threatened juvenile coho salmon but suffer from the
cumulative impacts of legacy logging and unregulated water
diversions.
Residents of Bolinas and Inverness must take further steps to
reduce their water consumption to stave off rationing. Both the
Inverness and Bolinas utility Districts lack significant water
storage in their systems; recently, they put increased pressure
on their customers to cut water use and warned of mandatory
restrictions should they fail to comply.
Landowners with access to underground water have been able to
pull as much water, at any rate, any time, and for any reason
without worrying about protocols or following government rules.
That is about to change. Last Tuesday, local officials and
environmental engineers introduced an outline for how to
sustainably manage and regulate groundwater in the region.
Samples with confirmed cyanobacteria were collected at three
locations on the Mad River spurring local Public and
Environmental Health officials to warn community residents to
keep themselves and their pets out of the water.
Jacob Pounds, environmental program coordinator with the Blue
Lake Rancheria, told the Outpost this afternoon that the
bacteria — well established in other local waterways, such as
the Eel and the Klamath — has never been confirmed in the Mad
before…
Starting in mid-July, the flows in the Noyo River began
dropping faster than in any other summer on record. The river
flow is below 2015 low flows, when the entire state was in a
drought emergency. John Smith, director of Fort Bragg Public
Works, said staff had never before seen water levels in the
Noyo drop so precipitously.
At their regular meeting Tuesday, Sept. 1, the Siskiyou County
Board of Supervisors discussed issues that Big Springs area
residents are still facing regarding alleged privatized water
sale for illegal marijuana grows. Despite an urgency ordinance
prohibiting the trucking of water and a rally near one of the
alleged extraction sites on Aug. 22, residents say they’re
still noticing trucking going on.
Creek Week (starting the fourth week of September), and
California’s Coastal Cleanup Day all coincide in September to
encourage public participation in keeping our water free of
harmful pollutants, with a primary focus on removing trash from
local waterways.
The organizers of the Advocacy and Water Protection in Native
California Speakers Series are hosting a new webinar series
aimed at taking action against environmental racism and for
water justice in California. Humboldt State University Native
American Studies and Save California Salmon are organizing the
“Mobilizing for Water Justice in California” Webinar Series on
Sept. 14-18.
As darkness fell and a thick Pacific fog crept in over the
Point Reyes peninsula on Sunday, a small band of animal
activists waited for a National Park Service official to leave
his check-post… At 6 p.m., as his shift came to a close and
he drove away, the small bucket-brigade crept in. They were
transporting roughly 200 gallons of water to the park’s tule
elk…
To inform our conservation work on the Eel, CalTrout has teamed
up with partners on this new project – The Adult Salmonid Sonar
Monitoring Program – to tally the annual spawning run of
Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and steelhead on the South Fork
Eel River with a Sound Metrics Dual Frequency Identification
Sonar camera.
“The thirsty elk are currently beset by drought and wildfire
smoke and caged into the preserve by a fence which prevents
them from accessing alternative water sources,” the groups
said, asserting that most or all the ponds the elk should be
able to use have dried up.
Land-based seafood firm Nordic Aquafarms has submitted its
first permit application for the construction of its new
land-based salmon farm in Humboldt, California, the company
said on Tuesday. … Discharge from the farm will be sent
through an existing pipe into open waters where effective
dilution is achieved, with no impairment of waters identified,
the company said.
Sonoma Water Engineer Chris Delaney led development of a
forecast informed reservoir operations (FIRO) decision support
system for Lake Mendocino… Center For Western Weather And
Water Extremes… A proof-of-concept model was originally
developed by Chris in 2015 as a personal research project, and
has been refined over the past 5 years with research and
real-time testing…
The California Advisory Committee on Salmon and Steelhead Trout
was re-established by the Legislature in 1983 in response to
public concern about declining populations of salmon and
steelhead. … At the July meeting, committee members received
an update on the Klamath dams, Matilija Dam, and the Potter
Valley Project dam removal projects.
A Marin County Superior Court judge rejected a petition filed
by a group of San Geronimo residents and golfers to halt creek
restoration work in the former San Geronimo Golf Course. The
ten residents and golfers, known as the San Geronimo Heritage
Alliance, filed the lawsuit in July alleging the creek
restoration work is illegal.
District Superintendent Ryan Rhoades reported that conditions
have not changed and that the district remains in a Stage 4
drought. He commended the community for their cooperation by
reducing their water use. Customers should strive for 50
gallons per person per day and cut overall use by at least 40
percent, he said.
While it’s fair to say that salmon and steelhead are dying the
death of a thousand cuts in the Eel River, Scott Dam is by far
the deepest and most damaging of these injuries. Dam removal
efforts from Maine to Washington State to here in California
have shown time and again that restoring access to historical
spawning grounds is key to rebounding fish populations.
A five-year battle over plans to log in the remote Gualala
River flood plain has taken a big step up with a powerhouse
environmental group’s declaration to take the case to federal
court, alleging the commercial tree harvest would harm
protected fish, frogs and birds.
I look at Trinidad more like a watershed than simply a square
mile of streets, homes and businesses. We provide water to our
residents, to some customers in Westhaven, and need to be able
to consider new water requests holistically.
The streams and creeks that supply West Marin are running low
after the extraordinarily dry winter, and local water system
managers are sounding the alarm. The Bolinas Community Public
Utility District and North Marin Water District have already
imposed water-use reductions, and the Inverness Public Utility
District may do so later this month.
The Eel River Recovery Project, also known as the ERRP, has
released the public draft of the Tenmile Creek Watershed
Conservation and Restoration Action Plan, which is the
culminating product of a two-year pilot project.
The feasibility study refers to removal of Scott Dam as a
foregone conclusion. The reason being salmon and steelhead are
not able to access spawning grounds above the dam. This area is
a small percentage of the overall spawning habitat of the Eel
River watershed. … A fish ladder around Scott Dam makes much
more sense.
With dry conditions resulting in low flows and threatening the
survival of coho salmon, the State Water Board today sent
notices of water unavailability to110 junior water right
holders in the Scott River basin in Siskiyou County, urging
them to stop diverting.
In recognition of the immense opportunity for recovery in Elk
River, CalTrout, the North Coast Regional Water Board, and
several project partners joined together to form the Elk River
Watershed Stewardship Program. The purpose is to engage with
the Elk River community to develop a landowner supported
recovery plan to reduce nuisance flooding, address the severe
sediment impairment, and rehabilitate habitat for native
salmonids.
CalTrout and our partners have been working extensively with
landowners to figure out ways to leave some of their water
instream for the benefit of salmon. Often this means helping
the landowner improve their on-ranch irrigation efficiency to
decrease the amount of water needed maintain their agricultural
operations.
Having hit a roadblock in negotiations with the City of
Trinidad, the Trinidad Rancheria has turned a beseeching eye
toward the county’s largest water supplier — the Humboldt Bay
Municipal Water District — in hopes of securing a reliable
water source for future development, including a controversial
five-story, 100-room hotel near Cher-Ae Heights Casino.
In order for the Chinook and steelhead to rebound in the Eel
River, there should be at least 26,400 fish returning from the
ocean to spawn annually… Although the Eel salmon population
was larger this year than last, Fish and Wildlife’s June 1
report shows the population fell far below the margin for
species recovery. Only 8,263 made the journey, they wrote.
