The Sacramento Valley, the northern part of the Central Valley,
spreads through 10 counties north of the Sacramento–San Joaquin
River Delta (Delta). Sacramento is an important agricultural
region, growing citrus, nuts and rice among many other crops.
Water flows from the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range to the region’s
two major rivers — the Sacramento and American – and west into
the Delta. Other rivers include the Cosumnes, which is the
largest free-flowing river in the Central Valley, the lower
Feather, Bear and Yuba.
The Sacramento Valley attracts more than 2 million ducks and
geese each winter to its seasonal marshes along the Pacific
Flyway. Species include northern pintails, snow geese, tundra
swans, sandhill cranes, mallards, grebes, peregrine falcons,
heron, egrets, and hawks.
A pre-Memorial Day heat wave will prime the Bay Area for
another dry fire season, roasting the region’s landscape with
some of the hottest weather so far in 2022 and pushing
temperatures in some cities close to 100 degrees. A month ahead
of the official start of summer, high temperatures could climb
5 to 20 degrees above normal on Tuesday and Wednesday for much
of the Bay Area — a pre-Memorial Day blast of hot weather that
prompted a heat advisory for the entire Central Valley and a
red flag warning for a broad swath of Northern California
stretching from Vallejo to Redding…. Already,
California’s drought has depleted reservoirs and contributed to
some of the state’s largest fires on record in recent years.
Three years ago, when he sank everything he had into 66 acres
of irrigated pasture in Shasta County, [farmer Josh] Davy
thought he’d drought-proofed his cattle operation. He’d been
banking on the Sacramento Valley’s water supply… But this
spring, for the first time ever, no water is flowing through
his pipes and canals or those of his neighbors: The district
won’t be delivering any water to Davy or any of its roughly 800
other customers.
The Clear Lake hitch is one of 13 species endemic to
California’s largest, oldest and now most toxic lake. Known
as chi to local tribes, the hitch teeter on the edge
of extinction, a fate to which their cousins, two other
formerly endemic lake species — the thicktail chub (last seen
in 1938) and the Clear Lake splittail (last seen in the
1970s) — have already succumbed. Clear Lake hitch are
vanishing because of our unabated appetites for fossil fuels,
sportfishing, irrigation water and wine.
As the drought deepens and an election nears, Gov. Gavin Newsom
is taking extra steps to increase pressure—and
responsibility—on the Water Commission for the Sites Reservoir
Project proposal. During a Senate budget subcommittee
hearing on Tuesday, Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot
said the governor has tasked him with ensuring the commission
“isn’t slowing down the progress of getting those [Proposition
1] projects online.” Newsom also charged Crowfoot with finding
ways to remove regulatory barriers and accelerate the approval
process for those projects.
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.
Don Bransford has been growing rice in the fertile Sacramento
Valley for 42 years. Not this summer. California’s
worsening drought has cut so deeply into water supplies on the
west side of the Valley that Bransford and thousands of other
farmers aren’t planting a single acre of rice. … It’s
spring in the Sacramento Valley, normally the season for
planting rice. It’s the region’s most important crop, a $900
million-a-year business that employs thousands of workers and
puts Valley agriculture on a global stage.
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.
This time of year, the Sacramento Valley should be buzzing with
tractors working the soil and planes dropping rice seed onto
flooded fields as farmers ramp up planting. … There’s a lack
of activity because more rice fields will go unplanted this
season due to the drought and reduced water deliveries to
farms. In its prospective plantings report released at the end
of March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that
California rice acreage will drop to 348,000 this year, the
lowest since 1983-84. That’s compared to 407,000 acres last
year and 517,000 acres in 2020.
Aging subterranean infrastructure in Sacramento will get a
boost from $3.5 million in federal funding that will pay for
future underground reservoirs to harden parts of the combined
storm and sewage system within the city’s core. The funding was
celebrated Friday during a news conference in Land Park to
outline the project with Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, and
city leaders including County Supervisor Patrick Kennedy and
City Councilman Rick Jennings.
At California’s second biggest freshwater lake, the latest
fallout of drought is gruesome: dead fish in nearby stream beds
that have run dry. Some of the foot-long, silvery Clear Lake
hitch have been decapitated by racoons and other varmints,
which have had easy pickings of the beached minnow. The
grim sightings by Lake County and tribal crews surveying the
lake have prompted a rescue effort over the past week to save
hitch, a threatened species found only in this region.
Lake County’s drought conditions led this week to the need to
rescue hundreds of threatened native fish. Lake County Water
Resources staff and the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, working alongside of Robinson Rancheria and
Habematolel Pomo tribal members, leapt to the rescue on
Thursday when it was reported that there were Clear Lake hitch
in an isolated pool in Adobe Creek near Soda Bay in Lakeport.
The hitch, a large minnow found only in Clear Lake and its
tributaries, has been a culturally important fish for the Pomo
tribes, which considered it a staple food.
During Tuesday’s Butte County Board of Supervisors Meeting, the
board heard from Luhdorff and Scalmanaini Consulting Engineers,
who they hired in December 2021 to do a drought impact analyst
study. The results found that for agriculture: Areas that
utilize surface water in normal years pump more in drought
years, as is expected. Total cost of water compared to total
cost of production remains low but may increase in the
future…
As California’s wildfire season nears amid another year of
drought, Folsom Lake looks much different than it did a year
ago when a low water level left an exposed lakebed. Now,
splashing, swimming and boats have returned—but will it last?
… According to the National Weather Service Sacramento,
Folsom Lake’s water level has risen to 75% capacity. That’s
103% of the historical average for this time of year …
A group of Butte County farmers, who rely solely on groundwater
to farm mostly tree crops north of Chico, are one step closer
to finalizing formation of a new water district. They say the
new district will help future generations comply with a state
regulation to bring groundwater supplies into balance in 20
years. … SGMA, signed into law in 2014, establishes a
new structure for managing groundwater in California and
requires groundwater sustainability agencies to manage
groundwater locally and develop and implement plans to achieve
long-term sustainability.
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 city council, Tuesday, April 19, approved amendment
agreement A-8332 with SPI (Separation Processes Inc) for the
Groundwater Desalter Improvement Project. THE approval executes
a first amendment to the agreement in the amount of $263,702
for a new contract not to exceed $1.064 million for additional
design work required for the groundwater desalter improvement
project. The deal also approves a $263,703 budget appropriation
transfer from the Water Appropriations to the Capital Water
Project.
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.
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.
$31-million in federal funds planned for forest landscape
restoration include projects in Southern Oregon and Northern
California involving the Rogue Basin, Lakeview and Western
Klamath Mountains. The Biden-Harris Administration and U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Forest Service announced the
funding today for 15 projects that “aim to reduce the risk of
severe wildfires, support local economies, create jobs and
enhance forest and watershed health in eight states …
[including] $3 million to the Western Klamath Mountains
Fire and Fire Resiliency Project … [and] $3 million in
the North Yuba River watershed across 356,000 acres.
The Nevada Irrigation District will begin managing the South
Yuba Canal and the Deer Creek Powerhouse this month. The
purchase technically helps NID diversify Nevada County’s energy
sources, but the district’s purchase of the powerhouse is
“ancillary more than anything” to the acquisition of the canal
itself, Hydroelectric Manager Keane Sommers said. The canal
services the residents of Grass Valley, Nevada City, their fire
hydrants, the air attack base and Sierra Nevada Memorial
Hospital — over 30,000 customers.
Hundreds of millions of new federal dollars are headed to the
region to help fund the massive Natomas levee project.
President Joe Biden has signed legislation that includes $157
million for an existing project in the Natomas Basin, as well
as $17.9 million to begin construction in West Sacramento. In
addition, Biden’s budget proposal for fiscal 2023, the 12 month
period that begins Oct. 1, includes another $172 million for
the levee project and $79.7 million to help the West Sacramento
project.
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.
To survive the next drought and meet
the looming demands of the state’s groundwater sustainability
law, California is going to have to put more water back in the
ground. But as other Western states have found, recharging
overpumped aquifers is no easy task.
Successfully recharging aquifers could bring multiple benefits
for farms and wildlife and help restore the vital interconnection
between groundwater and rivers or streams. As local areas around
California draft their groundwater sustainability plans, though,
landowners in the hardest hit regions of the state know they will
have to reduce pumping to address the chronic overdraft in which
millions of acre-feet more are withdrawn than are naturally
recharged.
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.
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.
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
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.
More than a decade in the making, an
ambitious plan to deal with the vexing problem of salt and
nitrates in the soils that seep into key groundwater basins of
the Central Valley is moving toward implementation. But its
authors are not who you might expect.
An unusual collaboration of agricultural interests, cities, water
agencies and environmental justice advocates collaborated for
years to find common ground to address a set of problems that
have rendered family wells undrinkable and some soil virtually
unusable for farming.
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.
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.
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.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as we 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. This year,
special attention was paid to the flood event at Oroville Dam and
the efforts to repair the dam spillway before the next rainy
season.
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.
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.
ARkStorm stands for an atmospheric
river (“AR”) that carries precipitation levels expected to occur
once every 1,000 years (“k”). The concept was presented in a 2011
report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) intended to elevate
the visibility of the very real threats to human life, property
and ecosystems posed by extreme storms on the West Coast.
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.
A new era of groundwater management
began in 2014 with the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA), which aims for local and regional agencies
to develop and implement sustainable groundwater management
plans with the state as the backstop.
SGMA defines “sustainable groundwater management” as the
“management and use of groundwater in a manner that can be
maintained during the planning and implementation horizon without
causing undesirable results.”
This handbook provides crucial
background information on the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act, signed into law in 2014 by Gov. Jerry Brown. The handbook
also includes a section on options for new governance.
This 24-page booklet traces the development of the
landmark Water Forum Agreement, signed in April 2000 by 40
Sacramento region water purveyors, public officials, community
group leaders, environmentalists and business representatives.
The publication also offers insight on lessons learned by
Water Forum participants.
This 24-page booklet details the conflict between
environmentalists, fish organizations and the Yuba County Water
Agency and how it was resolved through the Lower Yuba River
Accord – a unique agreement supported by 18 agencies and
non-governmental organizations. The publication details
the history and hydrology of the Yuba River, past and present
environmental concerns, and conflicts over dam operations and
protecting endangered fish is included.
This 30-minute documentary, produced in 2011, explores the past,
present and future of flood management in California’s Central
Valley. It features stories from residents who have experienced
the devastating effects of a California flood firsthand.
Interviews with long-time Central Valley water experts from
California Department of Water Resources (FloodSAFE), U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, Central Valley Flood
Management Program and environmental groups are featured as they
discuss current efforts to improve the state’s 150-year old flood
protection system and develop a sustainable, integrated, holistic
flood management plan for the Central Valley.
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.
15-minute DVD that graphically portrays the potential disaster
should a major earthquake hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“Delta Warning” depicts what would happen in the event of an
earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter scale: 30 levee breaks,
16 flooded islands and a 300 billion gallon intrusion of salt
water from the Bay – the “big gulp” – which would shut down the
State Water Project and Central Valley Project pumping plants.
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.
Fashioned after the popular California Water Map, this 24×36 inch
poster was extensively re-designed in 2017 to better illustrate
the value and use of groundwater in California, the main types of
aquifers, and the connection between groundwater and surface
water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater is an in-depth,
easy-to-understand publication that provides background and
perspective on groundwater. The guide explains what groundwater
is – not an underground network of rivers and lakes! – and the
history of its use in California.
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 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 Pacific Flyway is one of four
major North American migration routes for birds, especially
waterfowl, and extends from Alaska and Canada, through
California, to Mexico and South America. Each year, birds follow
ancestral patterns as they travel the flyway on their annual
north-south migration. Along the way, they need stopover sites
such as wetlands with suitable habitat and food supplies. In
California, 90 percent of historic wetlands have been lost.
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the challenges facing
small water systems, including drought preparedness, limited
operating expenses and the hurdles of complying with costlier
regulations. Much of the article is based on presentations at the
November 2007 Small Systems Conference sponsored by the Water
Education Foundation and the California Department of Water
Resources.
