The Sacramento River is California’s
largest river, providing 35 percent of the state’s developed
water supply. The river helps support the valley’s millions of
acres of irrigated agriculture and is home to wildlife and a
range of aquatic species, including rearing habitat for 70
percent of all salmon caught off the California coast.
Once called “the Nile of the West,” the Sacramento River drains
the inland slopes of the Klamath Mountains, the Cascade Range,
the Coast Ranges and the western slopes of the northern Sierra
Nevada. The river stretches some 384 miles from its headwaters
near Mount Shasta to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Each year, Lake Shasta brings in locals and tourists from all
over, especially for Memorial Day weekend. Businesses on Lake
Shasta are dealing with low lake levels and short staffing but
despite the challenges, they still expect a good holiday
turnout. … With a three-year drought, lake levels are
front-of-mind for many frequent lake visitors, but
there is good news. Lake levels are currently
about 120 feet below full pool and expected to drop 155 feet
later this summer, but that’s still 30 feet higher than we saw
last year. Matt Doyle, general manager of Lake Shasta Caverns,
said businesses around the lake are very hopeful for this
year’s summer.
As drought conditions continue, people who rely on the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are demanding California make sure
their communities are protected. Early Tuesday, a group
gathered in front of the California State Water Resources
Control Board building to demand the state enforce the
Bay-Delta plan. It’s been a long fight and the group said
enough is enough. For many of the tribes, the Delta is an
important lifeline.
Veterinarians and researchers at the University of California,
Davis have developed a new way to detect leptospirosis, a
life-threatening bacterial disease, in dogs using artificial
intelligence. Leptospirosis is caused by the Leptospira
bacteria, according to American Veterinary Medical Association,
and it is typically found in soil and water.
… Infections stem from urine-contaminated soil, food,
bedding or from an animal bite. Dogs can be exposed to the
bacteria from drinking water in rivers, lakes and streams, or
being in contact with infected wildlife, farm animals, rodents
and other dogs.
This month’s Reader Photo Challenge assignment was “bridges.”
Being situated in the California Delta, Central Valley
residents know all too well the importance of bridges. Without
them communities would be stranded from each other and cities
would be split into sections by the network of rivers,
canals and sloughs that are ubiquitous to the area. Bridges
help to connect us to our neighbors and to each other. Eight
readers sent in 31 photos. Here are some of the best examples.
In a stopgap measure to help struggling spring- and winter-run
Chinook salmon spawn in the face of rising water temperatures
and lower water levels due to climate change, state and federal
wildlife officials in Northern California have begun trucking
adult fish to cooler waters. The spring- and winter-run salmon
are genetically different, with the seasonal labels marking
when adult fish travel from the Pacific Ocean back to the
Sacramento River to spawn. The spring-run Chinook, listed
as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, are being moved
from traps at the base of Keswick Dam to Clear Creek in the
Sacramento River.
Most people have never heard of Sites, California. It’s just a
tiny dot on maps, little more than an intersection in the road
on the remote west side of rural Colusa County in Northern
California. But the surrounding Antelope Valley, where
wildflowers bloom and cattle graze on spring grasses, is one of
the next battlegrounds in California’s water wars. Under plans
endorsed by state, federal and local officials, the valley
would be flooded by the Sites Reservoir, a 14,000-acre lake
that would take in water pumped from the Sacramento River and
store it for agricultural and municipal use during dry periods.
The rice farmer John Brennan … [is] collaborating with the
scientist Jacob Katz to turn a piece of the Sacramento Valley,
specifically in the Yolo Bypass, into a floodplain that can be
home to baby Chinook salmon during the winter months, as they
make their way down the river system to the Pacific. Their
experiment, aptly named the Nigiri Project (in reference to the
beds of seasoned sushi rice draped in little blankets of raw
fish), involves flooding Brennan’s rice fields once the grain
has been harvested so that the depleted stalks can decompose in
the water, thereby making those nutrients available to bugs and
plankton, which then serve as food for schools of growing
salmon.
Mark your calendars now for our upcoming fall 2022
tours exploring California’s two largest rivers – the
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers! On our
Northern
California Tour, Oct. 12-14, participants
can learn about key reservoirs and infrastructure that
transports vital water resources statewide.
Our San Joaquin River Restoration Tour
Nov. 2-3 returns this year to tell the
story of bringing back a river’s chinook salmon while
balancing water supply needs. Registration is
coming soon!
Rare traits and behaviors within a population often get less
attention, but might sometimes be the perfect ingredient to
ensure the survival of a species in the face of threats like
climate change. A recent article published in the journal
Nature revealed the surprising success of a rare life-history
strategy for threatened spring-run Chinook salmon. Juveniles
that spent the summer in cool, high-elevation habitat and
migrated in the fall rather than the spring were found to be
crucial to the success of the population, especially in years
experiencing stressful environmental conditions.
Severe drought is taking a severe toll on California rice crops
as this year, hundreds of thousands of acres won’t be planted.
Some call the impact on farmers and the surrounding communities
catastrophic…. The Northern California Water Association
expects the rice industry to lose more than $250 million
statewide, including more than $70 million in lost wages.
I will attempt to convince you the drought is simply an excuse
to take our water and that farmers are the unfortunate victims,
too. Just ask members of the Anderson-Cottonwood Irrigation
District (ACID), who thought they were safe from having their
water taken because ACID holds a Sacramento River Settlement
Contract with the United States Bureau of Reclamation. The
contract states the irrigation district… will have their full
supply of 100 percent cut to 25 percent (although some users
say it’s 18 percent) even though their contract states 75
percent during critical years. -Written by Shanna Long, a fourth generation
journalist and former editor of the Corning Daily
Observer.
Your eyes aren’t playing tricks. That honking blob that looked
like a sea lion near Tower Bridge — it probably was one.
Sightings of the marine animals often make their rounds on
Sacramento social media, and can send the average user down a
rabbit hole (if you’re new, or younger than, say, 35 you may
also be excited to learn about Humphrey, the vagabond humpback
whale). But why are these creatures — who typically spend their
time on the coast — appearing so far from the ocean? The
answer’s rather simple: They’re are more of them, and they’re
hungry.
A decade ago, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway wrote the seminal
book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured
the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.
Oreskes and Conway documented how scientists paid by the
tobacco industry sowed doubt about the links between smoking
and lung cancer, and how the same strategy has been used with
climate change, acid rain, the ozone hole, and asbestos.
Similar tactics have been used to sow doubt about the causes of
the collapse of native fish populations in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and its watersheds.
The Delta is crucial because, if it ever failed as a hub, the
resulting water crisis in California would increase existing
tensions with the Colorado’s other parched dependents. … The
Delta’s problems are as dire, but they receive far less public
attention. The main threat to the Delta is saltwater
intrusion. If an earthquake caused a major levee failure, the
sunken islands would flood, drawing salt water from the Pacific
into waterways that are now kept fresh by the pressure of
inflows from the Sacramento.
The Yolo Bypass is one of two large flood bypasses in
California’s Central Valley that are examples of multi-benefit
floodplain projects (Figure 1; Serra-Llobet et al.,
2022). Originally constructed in the early 20th century
for flood control, up to 75% of the Sacramento River’s flood
flow can be diverted through a system of weirs into the Yolo
Bypass and away from nearby communities (Figure 2; Salcido,
2012; Sommer et al., 2001). During the dry season, floodplain
soils in the bypass support farming of seasonal crops (mostly
rice). Today, the bypass is also widely recognized for its
ecological benefits.
Rivers in California’s Central Valley like to go their own way:
they expand, contract, meander and regenerate soil in the
process. The historic movement of rivers is what made Central
Valley soil so fertile. Naturally flowing rivers recharge and
save water for people and nature, providing habitat for many
species including four distinct runs of chinook salmon.
Before the early 20th century, the Sacramento River had one of
the biggest salmon runs in North America …
A divided Zone 7 Water Agency Board of Directors voted to
continue participating in the planning phase for the ambitious
and long-discussed Delta Conveyance Project, following
discussions about intricacies and concerns related to the
matter last month. The directors’ 5-2 vote on April 20 comes
with an a commitment of an additional $4.75 million in funding
by Zone 7 for environmental planning for the proposed project.
Critically endangered adult salmon are again swimming above a
century-old dam in this remote corner of far Northern
California in the shadow of the Mount Lassen volcano. But this
isn’t a habitat-restoration success story — at least not yet.
For the past two weeks, state and federal fisheries managers
have begun hauling the winter-run Chinook nearly 50 miles by
truck from the dangerously warming Sacramento River to a
stretch of the north fork of Battle Creek and releasing them, a
handful at a time, into the creek’s icy waters.
The historic drought that’s choked off rivers and reservoirs
from the Rocky Mountains to the California coast is
threatening to strain power grids this summer, raising the
specter of blackouts and forcing the region to rely on more
fossil fuels. Many reservoirs that should be brimming with
spring snowmelt show bathtub rings of dry dirt instead,
including the largest one in the U.S., Lake Mead, which fell
this week to a record low. Hydropower dams feeding off those
reservoirs won’t be able to pump out as much electricity as
they should, if they keep operating at all.
In addition to sufficient flows of cold water, chinook salmon
migrating in the Sacramento River depend on having sufficient
gravel in the riverbed to support spawning. In response to that
need, Reclamation and its partners — U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, Sacramento River Settlement
Contractors, Reclamation District 108, and the
Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District – recently completed
placing 20,000 tons of spawning gravel on the west bank of the
Sacramento River below Keswick Dam.
Over the past two centuries, 95% of the Central Valley’s
wetlands have been lost to development, landscaped out of
existence to satisfy the hunger of an urbanizing, growing
nation. But that’s only part of the picture. California’s
Central Valley extends far beyond what you can see from the
freeways bisecting the belly of the state to connect the
Redding to the Bay Area to Los Angeles. The region once boasted
one of the largest and most biologically diverse wetlands on
earth nourished by the mighty Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers
…
Nine people were arrested by state wildlife police on suspicion
of poaching, selling animals on the black market and other
offenses after a sprawling investigation by the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, the agency said. Eight men
were arrested on suspicion of poaching white sturgeon from
Sacramento Valley waterways, the department said last week. A
ninth man was arrested on suspicion of selling Dungeness crab
and red abalone on the black market.
Rather than planning for droughts and ensuring that minimum
water quality objectives are achieved in critically dry years,
the proposed voluntary agreement appears to be a “plan to fail”
to protect the Delta in future droughts. Droughts are a
fact of life in California, even as climate change is making
them worse. The Governor’s Water Resilience Portfolio
recognizes the need to improve drought preparedness, requiring
that the State to be able to protect fish and wildlife during a
six year drought …
In November 2021, salmon entering Putah Creek were part of a
large fish kill in the lower creek. The event took
everyone familiar with the creek by surprise and prevented
successful migration of the creek’s fall salmon. Only 4 or 5
adult Chinook salmon made it upstream to suitable spawning
habitat. The result was particularly tragic as it followed
on the heels of the restoration of a salmon run in the creek,
as well as habitat for other fishes.
The group “We Advocate Through Environmental Review” and the
Winnemem Wintu Tribe challenged the environmental impact report
prepared by the city [of Mt. Shasta] and Siskiyou County. They
argued county officials offered a misleading report and failed
to properly look at the impacts of the bottling plant on the
environment. The groups filed two lawsuits, one against the
city and one against the county.
A total of nine people have been arrested after an
investigation into a large suspected sturgeon poaching
operation along Sacramento Valley waterways. The California
Department of Fish and Wildlife says the investigation started
as two separate cases, but a connection between the suspects
led them to uncovering the larger operation.
The Sacramento River Settlement Contractors are currently
implementing another project on the Sacramento River just
downstream from Keswick Reservoir that will contribute to the
habitat targets established by the recently signed Voluntary
Agreements Memorandum of Understanding. The 2022 Keswick Gravel
Injection Project will provide much needed spawning habitat in
the upper Sacramento River for endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon.
California is immersed in a third year of drought, with
January, February and March of 2022 experiencing the lowest
precipitation on record. Weather whiplash of big storms
followed by dry spells makes every drop of rain, every flake of
snow, and every water molecule vital this year for families,
farms, the environment and the economy. But outdated
infrastructure and the orientation of the pumping facilities in
the south Delta limits our ability to capture available water
from storm events. The Delta Conveyance Project would help
resolve this limitation.
Growing up in a Northern Californian fishing town, Nate
Mantua’s family owned a business connected to the local salmon
fishing industry. When one of the worst El Niño events ever
recorded hit the West Coast in 1982 and 1983, the salmon
fishery his family relied on suffered. Nate would go on to
study how to predict El Niño events in graduate school, years
later. Now he works to understand the impacts of climate
change. Nate leads a team of salmon ecologists, biologists,
freshwater and ocean experts at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest
Fisheries Science Center.
Between vast almond orchards and dairy pastures in the heart of
California’s farm country sits a property being redesigned to
look like it did 150 years ago, before levees restricted the
flow of rivers that weave across the landscape. The 2,100 acres
(1,100 hectares) at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San
Joaquin rivers in the state’s Central Valley are being reverted
to a floodplain.
Several years ago on this site, we celebrated the 20th
anniversary of the Center for Watershed Sciences—what we termed
a “really good idea.” That blog described the founding
principles of the Center that live on today. A few years
after starting the Center, we had a second really good idea—a
course called Ecogeomorphology. For us, the most
rewarding aspect of the Center was the opportunity to
collaborate with colleagues from different disciplines to try
and address complex water management problems.
Despite being the largest estuary on the West Coast and
supporting both a highly diverse ecosystem and a multi-billion
dollar economy, the San Francisco Bay Estuary was not getting
its fair share of federal funding for restoration, according to
local lawmakers and environmental organizations. That changed
this year after Congress and President Joe Biden approved more
than $50 million in funding to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency for projects to restore lost wetlands,
improve water quality, address pollution and bolster sea-level
rise defenses throughout San Francisco Bay.
In the vast labyrinth of the West
Coast’s largest freshwater tidal estuary, one native fish species
has never been so rare. Once uncountably numerous, the Delta
smelt was placed on state and federal endangered species lists in
1993, stopped appearing in most annual sampling surveys in 2016,
and is now, for all practical purposes, extinct in the wild. At
least, it was.
Land and waterway managers labored
hard over the course of a century to control California’s unruly
rivers by building dams and levees to slow and contain their
water. Now, farmers, environmentalists and agencies are undoing
some of that work as part of an accelerating campaign to restore
the state’s major floodplains.
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
This tour guided participants on a virtual journey deep into California’s most crucial water and ecological resource – the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The 720,000-acre network of islands and canals support the state’s two major water systems – the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project. The Delta and the connecting San Francisco Bay form the largest freshwater tidal estuary of its kind on the West coast.
USACE Sacramento District has a proven track record of facing
challenges head-on. When 2020 brought with it the Novel
Coronavirus, the District responded quickly to address the
needs of a rapidly changing work environment…This year marked
the start of major construction on the [American River Common
Features] project, and the pandemic hit just as crews were
mobilizing, meaning both USACE and its contractors faced
unexpected public impacts.
Voluntary agreements in California
have been touted as an innovative and flexible way to improve
environmental conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and the rivers that feed it. The goal is to provide river flows
and habitat for fish while still allowing enough water to be
diverted for farms and cities in a way that satisfies state
regulators.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
The deadliest and most destructive
wildfire in California history had a severe impact on the water
system in the town of Paradise. Participants on our Oct. 2-4
Northern California
Tour will hear from Kevin Phillips, general manager of
Paradise Irrigation District, on the scope of the damages, the
obstacles to recovery and the future of the water district.
The Camp Fire destroyed 90 percent of the structures in Paradise,
and 90 percent of the irrigation district’s ratepayer base. The
fire did not destroy the irrigation district’s water storage or
treatment facilities, but it did melt plastic pipes, releasing
contaminants into parts of the system and prompting do-not-drink
advisories to water customers.
Get an up-close look at some of
California’s key water reservoirs and learn about farming
operations, salmon habitat restoration, flood management and
wetlands on our Northern California Water Tour Oct. 2-4.
Each year, participants on the tour enjoy three days exploring
the Sacramento Valley during the temperate fall. Join us as we
travel through a scenic landscape along the Sacramento and
Feather rivers to learn about issues associated with storing
and delivering the state’s water supply.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
The Colorado River Basin is more
than likely headed to unprecedented shortage in 2020 that could
force supply cuts to some states, but work is “furiously”
underway to reduce the risk and avert a crisis, Bureau of
Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman told an audience of
California water industry people.
During a keynote address at the Water Education Foundation’s
Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento, Burman said there is
opportunity for Colorado River Basin states to control their
destiny, but acknowledged that in water, there are no guarantees
that agreement can be reached.
An hour’s drive north of Sacramento sits a picture-perfect valley hugging the eastern foothills of Northern California’s Coast Range, with golden hills framing grasslands mostly used for cattle grazing.
Back in the late 1800s, pioneer John Sites built his ranch there and a small township, now gone, bore his name. Today, the community of a handful of families and ranchers still maintains a proud heritage.
Farmers in the Central Valley are broiling about California’s plan to increase flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems to help struggling salmon runs avoid extinction. But in one corner of the fertile breadbasket, River Garden Farms is taking part in some extraordinary efforts to provide the embattled fish with refuge from predators and enough food to eat.
And while there is no direct benefit to one farm’s voluntary actions, the belief is what’s good for the fish is good for the farmers.
The Sacramento and San Joaquin
rivers are the two major Central Valley waterways that feed the
Delta, the hub of California’s water supply
network. Our last water tours of
2018 will look in-depth at how these rivers are managed and
used for agriculture, cities and the environment. You’ll see
infrastructure, learn about efforts to restore salmon runs and
talk to people with expertise on these rivers.
Get an up-close look at some of
California’s key water reservoirs and learn about farming
operations, habitat restoration, flood management and wetlands in
the Sacramento Valley on our Northern California Water Tour
Oct. 10-12.
Each year, participants on the Northern California Water Tour
enjoy three days exploring the Sacramento Valley during the
temperate fall. Join us as we travel through a scenic landscape
along the Sacramento and Feather rivers to learn about
issues associated with storing and delivering the state’s water
supply.
New water storage is the holy grail
primarily for agricultural interests in California, and in 2014
the door to achieving long-held ambitions opened with the passage
of Proposition
1, which included $2.7 billion for the public benefits
portion of new reservoirs and groundwater storage projects. The
statute stipulated that the money is specifically for the
benefits that a new storage project would offer to the ecosystem,
water quality, flood control, emergency response and recreation.
For more than 100 years, invasive
species have made the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta their home,
disrupting the ecosystem and costing millions of dollars annually
in remediation.
The latest invader is the nutria, a large rodent native to South
America that causes concern because of its propensity to devour
every bit of vegetation in sight and destabilize levees by
burrowing into them. Wildlife officials are trapping the animal
and trying to learn the extent of its infestation.
Along the banks of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Oakley, about 50 miles southwest
of Sacramento, is a park that harkens back to the days when the
Delta lured Native Americans, Spanish explorers, French fur
trappers, and later farmers to its abundant wildlife and rich
soil.
That historical Delta was an enormous marsh linked to the two
freshwater rivers entering from the north and south, and tidal
flows coming from the San Francisco Bay. After the Gold Rush,
settlers began building levees and farms, changing the landscape
and altering the habitat.
Despite the heat that often
accompanies debates over setting aside water for the environment,
there are instances where California stakeholders have forged
agreements to provide guaranteed water for fish. Here are two
examples cited by the Public Policy Institute of California in
its report arguing for an environmental water right.
Does California need to revamp the way in which water is dedicated to the environment to better protect fish and the ecosystem at large? In the hypersensitive world of California water, where differences over who gets what can result in epic legislative and legal battles, the idea sparks a combination of fear, uncertainty and promise.
Saying that the way California manages water for the environment “isn’t working for anyone,” the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shook things up late last year by proposing a redesigned regulatory system featuring what they described as water ecosystem plans and water budgets with allocations set aside for the environment.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
The Sacramento and San Joaquin are the two major rivers in the
Central Valley that feed the Delta, the hub of
California’s water supply network.
Our last two water tours of 2017 will take in-depth looks at how
these rivers are managed and used for agriculture, cities and the
environment. You’ll see infrastructure, learn about efforts to
restore salmon runs and talk to people with expertise on these
rivers.
Each year, participants on the Northern California Water Tour
enjoy three days exploring the Sacramento Valley during the
temperate fall. Join us as we travel along the Sacramento and
Feather rivers through a scenic landscape and learn about
issues associated with storing and delivering the state’s water
supply.
Before dams were built on the upper
Sacramento River, flood water regularly carried woody debris that
was an important part of the aquatic habitat.
Deprived of this refuge, salmon in the lower parts of the upper
Sacramento River have had a difficult time surviving and making
it down the river and out to the ocean. Seeing this, a group of
people, including water users, decided to lend a hand with an
unprecedented pilot project that saw massive walnut tree trunks
affixed to 12,000-pound boulders and deposited into the deepest
part of the Sacramento River near Redding to provide shelter for
young salmon and steelhead migrating downstream.
Protecting and restoring California’s populations of threatened
and endangered Chinook salmon and steelhead trout have been a big
part of the state’s water management picture for more than 20
years. Significant resources have been dedicated to helping the
various runs of the iconic fish, with successes and setbacks. In
a landscape dramatically altered from its natural setting,
finding a balance between the competing demands for water is
challenging.
Less than 50 miles northeast of Chico, California, begins the
93-mile Butte Creek – a tributary of the Sacramento River. It is named
after Butte County, which was in turn named for the nearby
volcanic plateaus, or “buttes,” and travels through a massive
canyon on its way southwest to the Sacramento Valley.
As a watershed, it drains about 800 square miles, both for
agricultural and residential use. The upper watershed is
dominated by forests, while the lower watershed is primarily
agricultural.
Whiskeytown Lake, a major reservoir in the foothills of the
Klamath Mountains nine miles west of Redding, was
built at the site of one of Shasta County’s first Gold Rush
communities. Whiskeytown, originally called
Whiskey Creek Diggings, was founded in 1849 and named in
reference to a whiskey barrel rolling off a citizen’s pack mule;
it may also refer to miners drinking a barrel per day.
Headwaters are the source of a
stream or river. They are located at the furthest point from
where the water body empties or merges with
another. Two-thirds of California’s surface water supply
originates in these mountainous and typically forested regions.
The American River, with headwaters
in the Tahoe and Eldorado national forests of the Sierra Nevada,
is the birthplace of the California Gold Rush. It currently
serves as a major water supply, recreational destination and
habitat for hundreds of species. The geologically diverse
North, Middle and South forks comprise the American
River or the Río de los Americanos, as it was called during
California’s Mexican rule.
Newly elected to your local water board? Or city council? Or
state Legislature? This packet of materials provides you with the
valuable background information you need – and at a special
price!
This 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to
Flood Management explains the physical flood control system,
including levees; discusses previous flood events (including the
1997 flooding); explores issues of floodplain management and
development; provides an overview of flood forecasting; and
outlines ongoing flood control projects.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
A new look for our most popular product! And it’s the perfect
gift for the water wonk in your life.
Our 24×36 inch California Water Map is widely known for being the
definitive poster that shows the integral role water plays in the
state. On this updated version, it is easier to see California’s
natural waterways and man-made reservoirs and aqueducts
– including federally, state and locally funded
projects – the wild and scenic rivers system, and
natural lakes. The map features beautiful photos of
California’s natural environment, rivers, water projects,
wildlife, and urban and agricultural uses and the
text focuses on key issues: water supply, water use, water
projects, the Delta, wild and scenic rivers and the Colorado
River.
The 6,000-foot Delta Cross Channel diverts water from the
Sacramento River into a
branch of the Mokelumne River, where it follows natural channels
for about 50 miles to the Jones Pumping Plant
intake channel. Located near the State Water Project’s
Harvey O.
California’s largest river, the Sacramento, provides
31 percent of the state’s surface water runoff.
Once called “the Nile of the West,” the Sacramento River drains
the inland slopes of the Klamath Mountains, the Cascade Range,
the Coast Ranges and the western slopes of the northern Sierra Nevada. The river stretches
some 384 miles from its headwaters near Mount Shasta to the
Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta.
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed issue of Western Water provides an overview of the
idea of a dual conveyance facility, including questions
surrounding its cost, operation and governance
This printed copy of Western Water examines the native salmon and
trout dilemma – the extent of the crisis, its potential impact on
water deliveries and the lengths to which combined efforts can
help restore threatened and endangered species.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the Delta through the
many ongoing activities focusing on it, most notably the Delta
Vision process. Many hours of testimony, research, legal
proceedings, public hearings and discussion have occurred and
will continue as the state seeks the ultimate solution to the
problems tied to the Delta.
This issue of Western Water analyzes northern California’s
extensive flood control system – it’ history, current concerns,
the Paterno decision and how experts are re-thinking the concept
of flood management.
This issue of Western Water examines the presence of mercury in
the environment and the challenge of limiting the threat posed to
human health and wildlife. In addition to outlining the extent of
the problem and its resistance to conventional pollution
remedies, the article presents a glimpse of some possible courses
of action for what promises to be a long-term problem.
