California’s two primary salmon species, Coho and Chinook, have
experienced significant declines from historical populations.
Of particular importance is the Chinook salmon because the
species supports commercial fishing and related jobs and economic
activities at fish hatcheries.
The decline in salmon numbers is attributed to a variety of
manmade and natural factors including drought, habitat
destruction, water diversions, migratory obstacles created by
local, state and federal water projects, over-fishing,
unfavorable ocean conditions, pollution and introduced predator
species. Wetlands have also been drained and diked; dams have
blocked salmon from reaching historic spawning grounds.
Years of declining populations represent a significant economic
loss and have led to federally mandated salmon restoration plans
that complicate water diversions and conveyance for agriculture
and other uses.
The removal of four obsolescent hydroelectric dams on the
Klamath River in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, expected in 2023
or 2024, should have been an occasion for celebration,
recognizing an underdog campaign that managed to set in motion
the biggest dam removal project in American history. But that
was before the basin’s troubles turned biblical. … it’s
uncertain whether the remaining salmon will survive long enough
to benefit from the dams’ dismantling.
For many Butte County residents, the Salmon Festival is a
chance to enjoy local vendors and activities. For others, the
festival is an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the
salmon and wildlife culture in the Feather River. To kick off
the festival, the Maidu Konkow Valley Band from the North Fork
of the Feather River performed a series of opening ceremony
dances. Wallace Clark, a member of the Maidu and a “noponi,”
the carrier of traditions, helped host and lead the opening
ceremony alongside the traditional dancers.
Marin County planners announced the first draft of a new stream
protection ordinance for the San Geronimo Valley that will
toughen the permitting process for streamside work in the
Lagunitas Creek watershed. The draft stream conservation
area ordinance, published last week, will enshrine protections
for coho salmon that the Salmon Protection and Watershed
Network, the local arm of an environmental nonprofit, has been
seeking through litigation for more than a decade.
A big construction project is underway in an effort to protect
fish in the American River, especially as they struggle to
survive a serious drought. Crews are working on the Sacramento
Water Forum’s habitat restoration project on the Lower American
River at Ancil Hoffman Park in Carmichael. Workers carved
out a new alcove for young Chinook salmon and steelhead trout
to grow and hide from predators, and they moved lots of gravel
to the area for the adult fish to use when laying eggs.
Members of the public are encouraged to give their feedback on
the proposed law that would create a buffer zone between San
Geronimo Valley waterways and human development in Marin
County. The proposed Stream Conservation Area ordinance aims to
protect the San Geronimo Creek Watershed, which is home to
endangered coho salmon, steelhead trout, and chinook salmon.
If next year is dry in California, modeling from the Bureau of
Reclamation (linked here, dated July 6, 2021) shows that Shasta
Reservoir would store nearly 750,000 acre feet less water in
April 2022 than it did in April 2014 – a year that was an
unmitigated disaster for fish and wildlife. The
operations presented in Reclamation’s modeling could lead to
extinction for winter-run Chinook salmon and other threatened
and endangered fish populations if next year is dry.
San Francisco and several Central Valley irrigation districts
with water rights dating back more than a century are suing the
state for forcing water restrictions, as California deals with
a worsening drought. The lawsuit, filed earlier this month by
the San Joaquin Tributaries Authority, claims the State Water
Resources Control Board does not have the authority to tell
those with the most senior rights to water that they can’t draw
it from the Bay-Delta reservoirs, rivers and streams, even in
the case of drought.
The Two-Basin Partnership, comprised of California Trout,
the County of Humboldt, the Mendocino County Inland Water &
Power Commission, the Round Valley Indian Tribes, and Sonoma
County Water Agency, on September 2 asked the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) to allow additional time to
re-evaluate the proposed plan to take over the Potter Valley
Hydroelectric Project (Project). The Partnership
specifically requested that the time delay continue until May
31, 2022, at which time the Partnership will provide further
notice regarding its plans.
The Foundation’s virtual journeys will whisk you away to
explore California’s key rivers and water regions this
fall from the Sacramento River to the headwaters in the
Sierras. Plus, our annual Water
Summit will feature water managers and other
water experts who are dealing with the “new normal” as
unprecedented drought and wildfires challenge the status
quo.
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 quality regulators let a Sonoma County-based quarry know
last week it could face a $4.5 million-fine for multiple
alleged violations of the Clean Water Act that threaten the
survival of endangered salmon populations in tributaries of the
Russian River. The proposed fine from the North Coast
Regional Water Quality Control Board is part of a legal
proceeding known as an administrative civil liability that
alleges the operator of Mark West Quarry, Dean Soiland, doing
business as BoDean Co. Inc., discharged highly turbid
stormwater from its quarry operations into Porter Creek from
September 2018 through May 2019.
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.
[G]lobal warming is not going away. Last month, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most
alarming report yet: Earth is on the edge of ecological
bankruptcy. That’s what California is facing this summer
with record heat, severe drought, record fires, snow
sublimation, record low reservoir levels, dry wells,
communities without safe drinking water, deaths of salmon and
whales, poisonous algae growth in lakes and streams, and record
glacier melt. -Written by Martha Davis, the former assistant
general manager for policy at the Inland Empire Utilities
Agency and former executive director of the Mono Lake
Committee.
Many rely on the Klamath River Basin on the California border,
especially with the historic drought in the West. Things got
heated this summer between the area’s tribes and ranchers.
… Over the past week, our colleagues over at The
Indicator have been reporting on the historic drought in the
West. They spent some time with ranchers on the front lines,
including the Klamath River Basin. Sally Herships and Ashley
Ahearn report.
A few months before his retirement in October 2021, Ariel
Rubissow Okamoto asked Ted Sommer, lead scientist for the
California Department of Water Resources, to reflect on his
accomplishments and hopes for the future. Sommer is a leading
researcher on native fishes, and has published more than 60
research articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications
since 2001.
With climate change-induced drought causing critical low flows
in the Scott and Shasta Rivers and threatening the survival of
multiple fish species, the State Water Resources Control Board
today approved an emergency curtailment regulation that
includes measures to help maintain minimum flows to protect
fish, ensure supplies for human health and livestock needs, and
encourage voluntary efforts that may be used in lieu of
curtailments.
For centuries, spring-run Chinook salmon, among California’s
most iconic fish, would rest for weeks in these historically
cold waters after their brutal upstream journey. Then they
would lay eggs and, finally, perish to complete one of nature’s
most improbable life cycles. No longer. What once was a place
where life began is now one of untimely death. The creek is
simply too warm, an astounding 10 degrees warmer than average
in some parts of these spawning grounds.
James Gilbert, an associate project scientist in the Institute
of Marine Sciences (IMS) at UC Santa Cruz, was recognized by
the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC) with its
Staff of the Quarter award for the third quarter of fiscal year
2021. … The award recognizes his work as part of the FCP’s
Central Valley Salmon project.
The Oakdale and South San Joaquin Irrigation Districts have
joined in a lawsuit challenging the State Water Resources
Control Board’s authority to prevent the two water agencies
from diverting and storing Stanislaus River runoff in Donnells,
Beardsley, New Melones and Tulloch Reservoirs. The state water
board, in an emergency drought order issued Aug. 20, declared
that OID, SSJID and 4,500 other water rights holders in
California must immediately stop diverting water due to
unprecedented drought conditions.
Michael George is not a spy — but he does use some of the same
equipment. George, a gregarious talker, is a lawyer by trade,
and in his current role as Delta watermaster he oversees the
use of water in one of the country’s most contested waterways.
The Delta in this case is the Sacramento-San Joaquin, a jumble
of fertile land, diked islands, tidal flows, and meandering
sloughs that is the heart of California’s engineered water
system.
The state’s curtailment of river diversions has drawn lawsuits
from eight irrigation districts in and near Stanislaus County,
along with San Francisco. The three filings claim that
the State Water Resources Control Board exceeded its authority
with the Aug. 20 orders. The plaintiffs also said they did not
get enough chance beforehand to make their cases for continued
diversions.
As drought-stricken California considers constructing new dams,
a new study finds that many of the state’s existing structures—
despite efforts to prioritize healthy water temperatures— are
failing the cold-water ecosystems that depend on them. The
study, published in PLOS One, crunched data from 77 cold-water
streams across California to characterize their “thermal
regime” — that is, their annual temperature fluctuations over
an eight- to 12-year period.
The Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service today announced the Notice of Funding Opportunity for
projects that enhance Chinook salmon and steelhead trout
production and associated habitats in the Central Valley,
consistent with the Central Valley Project Improvement Act.
Reclamation and the Service plan to award up to $40 million
(subject to appropriations) in fiscal year 2022 through
multiple grants or cooperative agreements to projects
prioritized by the CVPIA Near-Term Restoration Strategy.
The Bureau of Reclamation began releasing water from the
Klamath River to Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge on
Friday afternoon. Advocates hope it will improve wetland
habitat on the refuge for migrating birds this fall. Last
week, California Waterfowl Association officially purchased
approximately 3,750 acre-feet of water from Agency Ranch in the
Wood River Valley, above Upper Klamath Lake, having announced
the purchase and fundraising effort this spring.
The Klamath River flows some 250 miles from southern Oregon to
Northern California. From its headwaters at Upper Klamath Lake,
east of Medford, Oregon, the river rushes through trout
habitat, forested mountains, farmland and salmon nurseries as
it makes its way to the Pacific Ocean. Rather, the river
usually rushes. But now, drought is desiccating almost the
entire Klamath River basin, some 12,000 to 15,000 square miles.
That’s an area approaching the size of the entirety of
Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.
Freshly cut off from their chief water supply, a group of
California water agencies in one of the state’s most fertile
farming areas sued on Wednesday to freeze the latest round of
emergency drought rules. In a lawsuit filed in Sacramento
County Superior Court, the suppliers argue they were denied due
process when state regulators ordered thousands of landowners
last month to cease diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin
River Delta due to drought conditions.
Join us next Thursday, Sept. 9, for an engaging
online Bay-Delta Tour that will feature live Q&A with
key experts on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state’s
vital water hub and the West Coast’s largest freshwater tidal
estuary. You’ll learn about Delta ecosystem
restoration, impacts to ocean fisheries from changes in
the Delta, agriculture and municipal water use and the Delta’s
role in supplying water to Southern California. You’ll hear
from farmers, fish biologists, water managers, people working
on restoration efforts and more.
One farmer has single handedly ramped up the pace of a program
trying to save native salmon in the San Joaquin River by
donating a key sliver of land to the federal government.
Connley Clayton donated about eight acres of his Madera County
riverfront land to the government’s San Joaquin River
Restoration Program. The land will provide crucial space for
the government to build a passage that fish can use to swim
around the Sack Dam, a significant impediment to salmon
returning upriver from the sea.
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.
Scientists and conservation groups including NRDC have been
warning for years that farms and cities in California need to
plan to divert less water from the Bay-Delta watershed, and the
2009 enactment of the Delta Reform Act established that it is
State policy to reduce reliance on water supplies from the
Bay-Delta through investments in local and regional water
supplies like water recycling (Cal. Water Code § 85021). The
current drought is an unwelcome reminder that we are not
prepared for drought, leading to the State Water Board ordering
curtailments of some water diversions…
Given the current drought, it’s no surprise that California’s
dams are struggling to provide cool water habitats to support
native freshwater ecosystems. But what if they were never able
to support them under any conditions? New research shows how
current stream management fails to provide the patterns of cool
water that California’s native ecosystems need. The challenges
stem from two issues: an oversimplification of stream
temperature targets and the assumption that dam regulation can
replicate desirable cold water patterns.
This summer, tens of millions of salmon have been cooked in
California in their own native habitat. Record-breaking heat
and drought have drawn down the water flows and turned up the
temperatures of the state’s streams and rivers. The heat shock,
along with the impacts of parasites and fungal blights that are
fueled by warmer waters, has decimated the wild salmon
populations. To stem the crisis, scientists have literally
gone above and beyond, hurling salmon over dams via pneumatic
cannons and trucking millions of fish to the Pacific Ocean to
bypass unlivable rivers.
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.
Driving between her northern Central Valley rice fields with
the family dog in tow, fifth-generation farmer Kim Gallagher
points out the window to shorebirds, egrets and avocets
fluttering across a thousand-acre sea of green flooded in six
inches of water. … The nearly 500,000 acres of sushi
rice grown in the Sacramento Valley each year serve as the
wetland habitat for thousands of migrating birds along the
Pacific Coast. Yet the crop also uses more water than most, and
about half of the product is exported to countries including
Japan and South Korea.
It’s been a tough year for the Klamath River. The Klamath,
which flows through Oregon and Northern California and into the
Pacific Ocean, is suffering from drought and infrastructure
problems. That’s caused trouble, not just for the fish in the
river, but also for the tribes and farmers who rely on it for
day-to-day living. Drought conditions are so bad this year that
the U.S. Department of Agriculture allocated $15 million to
support farmers who don’t have enough water for their crops.
Klamath Basin tribes are also struggling to feed their people,
but so far they haven’t received such support.
Substantial work occurs in the Sacramento Valley every year on
projects to develop and enhance habitat for the region’s
terrestrial and aquatic species. In-stream salmon
recovery projects, Pacific Flyway habitat improvements,
floodplain reactivation and many other types of habitat
projects all require environmental permits to be
implemented. There is general recognition that the work
necessary to acquire these permits greatly increases the time
and cost to get the projects done.
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.
As climate-driven drought and wildfires rage in California, the
Biden administration is struggling to navigate the hard
politics that come with deciding who gets access to the state’s
precious — and dwindling — water supplies. … Now the Biden
administration is delaying action on the fundamental question
at the heart of California’s long-running water wars: How much
water should be reserved for species protections, at the
expense of the state’s powerful agricultural industry?
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the
West Coast, is a vital hub in California’s complex water
delivery system as well as a rich farming region, an important
wetlands area – and often, a source of conflict. Join us for an
engaging online journey on Sept. 9 to go deep
into the Delta and its 720,000-acre network of islands and
canals that supports the state’s two large water systems -
the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley
Project.
Dams poorly mimic the temperature patterns California streams
require to support the state’s native salmon and trout — more
than three-quarters of which risk extinction. Bold actions are
needed to reverse extinction trends and protect cold-water
streams that are resilient to climate warming, according to a
study published in the journal PLOS ONE by the University of
California, Davis.
For those who live on the Klamath River, its health
reflects the people, positioning us on the precipice of life or
death. The Klamath is magical and meandering, a river
surrounded by towering redwoods and mountains. But the
controversy over its water has lasted for decades, and the big
questions — whether to remove four dams, who gets the water
during drought years — often put farmers and Natives at odds.
When Bolinas farmer Peter Martinelli decided to help coho
salmon by boosting summer water levels in Pine Gulch Creek,
which runs through his land, he had no idea that the project
would take two decades to complete. Now he’s happy he saw it
through. Coho are endangered in most of their California range,
and droughts like the one we’re experiencing now are among the
biggest threats to these coastal salmon.
Due to drought and poor water conditions at Lake Sonoma,
thousands of juvenile coho salmon have been relocated from the
Warm Springs Fish Hatchery in Geyserville. The fish were
trucked to a conservation facility at a high school in Petaluma
where they will be reared until conditions improve. Beginning
in late spring, rising water temperatures at Warm Springs
Hatchery increased the risk of heat stress and pathogen
outbreaks. Scientists developed the relocation plan as a
precaution to keep the hatchery coho safe.
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.
Cropless fields, fishless rivers, burning forests, empty
reservoirs and powerless dams — either you’ve seen the
headlines, or you’re living it. America’s West has run out of
water. For most of us, this is a reckoning moment. Water exists
in abundance. It’s cheap, free-flowing and limitless. We’re
quite literally swimming in the stuff. But suddenly, that’s no
longer true. California’s surging population and
farming-dependent economy, coupled with sustained drought,
means that demand has completely drowned out supply.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Fisheries announced a Voluntary Drought Initiative recently
designed to protect populations of salmon, steelhead, and
sturgeon from the effects of the current unprecedented drought.
The initiative provides a framework for water users to enter
into individual agreements with the two agencies to maintain
enough water for fish spawning and survival, and implement
other collaborative actions like fish rescue, relocation,
monitoring, and habitat restoration.
Relief may be soon be arriving to salmon imperiled by
exceptionally low flows in the Scott and Shasta rivers this
summer. The California State Water Resources Control Board
adopted regulations Tuesday to limit irrigation diversions and
groundwater pumping in both watersheds, which produce a
significant proportion of the Klamath Basin’s salmon
populations.
Only one water storage project remains a possibility in
California seven years after voters approved a bond to build
more dams. Sites Reservoir is the last proposed project
standing. State Senator Jim Nielsen of Red Bluff has spent
years fighting to build Sites Reservoir in Northern California.
It’s a $5-billiion project creating 1-point-8 million acres
feet of water storage.
Green algae blobs choke handmade gill nets that should be
filled with salmon. The Klamath River is warming, heated by
drought and dams, and that allows the algae to thrive, making
it harder and harder to catch fish. Some days, Yurok tribal
members capture nothing but green goop. … Warming conditions
have also encouraged the spread of Ceratonova shasta, which
infected 97% of juvenile salmon in the Klamath last spring,
killing 70%.
Signs of drought proliferate across the American
West. California is rationing water for farmers in the state’s
Central Valley. Salmon are dying en masse in the
Pacific Northwest as river temperatures climb. Lake Mead,
on the border of Nevada and Arizona, is drying up. …
Groundwater is the source of drinking water for half of
Americans, and nearly all of the country’s rural communities.
… But groundwater has become dangerously depleted in places
where pumping has exceeded the rate at which aquifers are
naturally replenished.
CalTrout’s Central Valley 2021 field season (Oct 1, 2020 –
April 1, 2021) marked the much-awaited second year study of
large-scale Fish Food export. For some brief background, the
Fish Food export program is CalTrout’s novel management
practice for transferring benefits of winter-flooded habitat
that juvenile salmon can not get to, back to fish wedged
between the river levee system. The Fish Food program is the
compliment to the Nigiri Project. With Nigiri, we bring fish
onto the floodplain, and with Fish Food, we bring the
floodplain back to the fish.
California’s salmon are suffering massive
die-offs this summer because of the excessive,
reservoir-draining water deliveries authorized by these
biological opinions. And Secretary Haaland has now had 90 days
times two for her review. It is time for her to act. Join us
in telling the Secretary that she must no longer
delay reversing the damage done by these Trump biological
opinions by reinitiating consultation now and putting strong
protections in place while new permits are being drafted.
The Bureau of Reclamation and California Department
of Fish and Wildlife are announcing a
public teleconference negotiation session regarding San Joaquin
River flows to benefit fish from the San
Joaquin Fish Hatchery. This negotiation session is
for a 25-year contract renewal for the same amount of water (55
cubic feet per second); no additional water is under
consideration.
Amid extreme drought, Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking for statewide
conservation of 15%, farmers are facing cutbacks in water
deliveries, and a mass die-off of salmon is expected. Drought
affects us all, so our response must improve the natural
systems that make our water, air and food — our existence —
possible. The State Water Resources Control Board has taken the
rare drastic step of adopting emergency regulations to curtail
diversions of water rights holders when water is not
available. -Written by Sandi Matsumoto, director of The
Nature Conservancy’s California Water Program, and Julie
Zimmerman, the lead freshwater scientist at The Nature
Conservancy in California.
Join us for a Sept. 9 virtual journey into
California’s most critical and controversial water
region in the state, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and
learn how the drought is impacting water quality and supply.
The Delta, a 720,000-acre network of islands and canals,
supports the state’s two large water systems – the State Water
Project and the federal Central Valley Project – and, together
with the San Francisco Bay, forms an important ecological
resource.
What seemed a victory for water users and power customers in
California has been overturned. President Joe Biden rescinded
an environmental opinion issued in the last days of the Trump
Administration — an action that could have a slew of negative
consequences for environmental groups and ag companies as a
three-decade-old law threatens the financial viability of
public utilities in Northern California.
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.
There will undoubtedly always be some folks who believe the
myth that building new dams and reservoirs will be a silver
bullet that solves California’s water supply challenges.
The reality, of course, is that California already has
constructed nearly 1,400 dams and reservoirs, and compared to
the excessive and unsustainable demand for water in our state,
new dams and reservoirs provide little water – at high
cost. And of course, most dams and reservoirs have had
devastating impacts on our native fish and wildlife, and the
Tribes, fishing jobs, and communities that depend on their
health.
Everywhere you go in California, people live in landscapes
where non-native species are conspicuous: European
grasses turning the hills golden, earthworms tilling our garden
soil, exotic trees providing shade, bullfrogs jumping into
backyard ponds, starlings making tight maneuvers overhead. In
this blog, I want to describe the language of our relationships
with non-natives and the nature of those relationships as
biological phenomena, using fishes and other aquatic organisms
as examples.
Seventeen-year-old Danielle Rey Frank was first drawn to
activism in the sixth grade. As a member of the Hoopa Valley
Tribe in what is now Humboldt County, California, she grew up
on the Trinity River, which isn’t just a part of her Tribe’s
food systems and livelihood, it’s also a sacred place that’s
central to their ceremonies and traditions. The Trinity and
other area rivers have been consistently under threat from
pipeline projects, along with rising water temperatures,
pollution, and fish kills due to damming and water diversions
from reservoirs and tunnels.
Shasta Lake is at about 30 percent of capacity, the lowest it’s
been at this time of year since 1977. KRCR spoke with Bureau of
Reclamation Area Manager Don Bader on a windy morning on top of
Shasta Dam. He says a water schedule is set in February and
adjusted as necessary. The release from Keswick Dam is about
8,000 cubic feet per second (CFS). Normally it would be 12,000
CFS. The reason that much water is flowing downriver is for
freshwater fish in the delta and agricultural diversions.
When Bureau of Reclamation water managers decided not to
perform a surface flush of the Klamath River this year, they
knew there might be an explosion of a parasite that could all
but wipe out salmon populations. That’s exactly what
happened in northern California, where the Yurok Tribe depends
on fishing for income and food. Salmon are also an important
part of their culture. On the first Friday in
June … Barry McCovey, director of the Yurok Tribe’s
fisheries department, and his colleagues, fished 361 dead
juvenile Chinook salmon out of a monitoring trap on the Klamath
River.
California doesn’t have enough water to meet all demands even
in wet years, and when drought strikes the competition becomes,
to put it mildly, intense. State and federal officials who must
ration the restricted supply are beset with pleas from farmers,
municipal water systems and advocates for the environment.
However, water managers must also contend with a bewildering
array of water rights, some of which date to the 19th century,
as well as long-standing contractual obligations and laws, both
statutes and judicial decrees, on maintaining flows for
spawning salmon and other wildlife. -Written by Dan Walters, CalMatters columnist.
A deeply troubled group of high-ranking state officials, tribal
leaders, environmentalists and fishermen met July 27 to discuss
the triple whammy that is threatening some species of Pacific
salmon with extinction — a combination of record-breaking heat,
drought and disastrous federal water policies — particularly
those of the Trump administration, which drained mountain
reservoirs of cold water, sending it to the Central Valley.
Gualala Redwood Timber LLC can proceed with its logging project
in California, a federal court in the state ruled after
agreeing with the company that one plaintiff already challenged
the environmental impacts of the project in state courts.
Friends of Gualala River and the Center for Biological
Diversity argued the Dogwood Timber Harvesting Plan that
authorized logging in a private forest on the border of Sonoma
County threatened four protected species. The species include
the California red-legged frog, northern spotted owl, the
Northern California steelhead, and the California Central Coast
Coho salmon.
California regulators cut off thousands of farmers from their
main irrigation supplies Tuesday, banning them from pulling
water from the state’s main rivers and streams as the drought
worsens. The State Water Resources Control Board, following
hours of debate and comment, voted 5-0 to impose an “emergency
curtailment” order covering the rivers of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta watershed — essentially the entire Central
Valley. It’s the most dramatic step taken to date by state
regulators since the drought was officially declared in most of
California’s counties — and surpasses any of the moves made
during the previous drought.
California is in the grip of another extreme drought. The
consequences can be seen all over the Sacramento region and,
unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. We expect to see water
levels in the American River this fall that may reach historic
lows. This will be difficult not only for people who enjoy
recreating in our scenic river corridor, but also for the
salmon, steelhead and other native species that need water to
survive and reproduce. That’s why we’re urging everyone in the
Sacramento region to start conserving water in earnest. -Written by Ralph Propper, president of the
Environmental Council of Sacramento, and Tom Gray, general
manager of the Fair Oaks Water District.
We are excited to introduce Dr. Sarah Null —Associate Professor
of Watershed Sciences at Utah State University — as the latest
appointed Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) CalTrout
Ecosystem Fellow! We recently got to know Sarah through an
interview. Check out her answers in our latest post. Thanks to
the donors that helped us launch this program: Gary Arabian,
the Morgan Family Foundation, Nick Graves, John Osterweis, and
the Rosenberg Ach Foundation.
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.
We are excited to share that the Twenty-First Century Dams Act
was introduced this month on July 15, 2021. This bill would
invest $21.1 billion to enhance the safety, grid resilience
benefits, and power generating capacity of America’s dams and
provide historic funding to remove dams that are no longer
necessary.
Not a drop of new “moon shoot” water storage has been created
in California for more than 40 years. It’s a point that isn’t
lost on Congressman Josh Harder. Nor is the fact water issues
facing the heart of the Northern San Joaquin Valley are
interconnected with communities often hundreds of miles away
from the 10th District that he represents in Congress. It
is why the Turlock Democrat has pursued do-able water projects
— including those outside of his district that would reduce
efforts to try and commandeer water from the Stanislaus and
Tuolumne watersheds to address fish flow, urban, and irrigation
needs elsewhere — since taking office in 2019.
The plan to remove four Klamath River dams checked another box
on Tuesday as Oregon utility regulators signed off on
transferring ownership of the dams from Portland-based
PacifiCorp to the nonprofit that will carry out the project.
Oregon Public Utility Commission staff found that a
cost/benefit analysis from 2010 “remains valid, and still
reflects a public interest in the removal of the dams as
compared to the costs and risks of relicensing.” The project,
billed as the largest dam removal in U.S. history, is expected
to cost $450 million…
“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.
Wild beavers play a critical role in the fight against climate
change by creating wetlands that combat drought and wildfire.
The species is native to California — but unlike beavers in
Oregon and Washington, they aren’t protected from being trapped
and killed in the state. Beavers have existed in North America
for millions of years, with large populations in the American
west.
Facing another summer of catastrophic fish kills, California
lawmakers and fisheries managers on Tuesday blamed a Trump-era
water policy and climate change for the sizzling water
temperatures threatening to erase an entire run of Chinook
salmon. … Chinook salmon die-offs on the state’s rivers have
happened routinely over the last two decades. But a pending
disaster on the Sacramento and Klamath rivers has elected
officials, regulators, Native American tribes and fishermen
scrambling to save the keystone species from extinction.
Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon
state line and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust
devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty
irrigation pipes. DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three
generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and
hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted,
federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all.
… [T]his summer there is simply not enough, and the
farmers, tribes and wildlife refuges that have long competed
for every drop now face a bleak and uncertain future together.
The news reports about the California salmon wipeout got a good
chunk of the story right: Record-breaking heat waves made
Northern California rivers too warm to sustain migrating
Chinook salmon, and virtually all of the salmon in the
Sacramento River this summer have died, or will die, before
reproducing. Any eggs that were successfully laid, or the fry
hatched from those eggs, are also likely doomed. So a
generation of the rare and endangered winter-run Chinook, and
the spring-run as well, are virtually gone.
It’s no secret that California’s ecosystems suffer during
droughts. In times of water scarcity, environmental uses are
often low priority, leading to fish die-offs and other negative
outcomes. For the next year, Professor Sarah Null of Utah State
University will be working with a diverse team of experts to
study how to better manage water stored for the environment, to
better protect vulnerable ecosystems during a time of
biodiversity loss and accelerating climate change. Null, an
expert in environmental water management and water systems
modeling, is a PPIC CalTrout Ecosystem Fellow.
Go 120 miles as the crow flies southeast of Manteca and you
will find the headwaters of two of California’s most tormented
rivers — the San Joaquin River and Owens River. The 183-mile
Owens River starts from Glass Creek on the southern face of the
11,597-foot San Joaquin Mountain. Today instead of ultimately
flowing into Owens Lake that just over 100 years ago covered
108 square miles and was teeming with aquatic life and
migratory birds, the lake is a dusty shell of its former self.
Baby salmon are dying by the thousands in one California river,
and an entire run of endangered salmon could be wiped out in
another. Fishermen who make their living off adult salmon, once
they enter the Pacific Ocean, are sounding the alarm as
blistering heat waves and extended drought in the U.S. West
raise water temperatures and imperil fish from Idaho to
California. Hundreds of thousands of young salmon
are dying in Northern California’s Klamath River as
low water levels brought about by drought allow a parasite to
thrive, devastating a Native American tribe whose diet and
traditions are tied to the fish.
Forced to reckon with a worsening drought, California’s water
regulators are preparing to forbid thousands of farmers from
tapping into the state’s major rivers and streams. It’s an
extraordinary step — and one that regulators didn’t take during
the last drought, which was considered one of the worst on
record. The State Water Resources Control Board on Friday
released an “emergency curtailment” order that would cut
thousands off from rivers and streams in the Sacramento and San
Joaquin river watersheds.
As the summer grinds on, farms, towns and a critical native
salmon restoration program that all rely on water from
Millerton Lake near Fresno continue to hope their water won’t
be needed to fulfill irrigation contracts further up the San
Joaquin Valley. But in this parched year, nothing is
certain. If water is required out of Millerton, which
happened in drought years 2014 and 2015, that could be
especially detrimental for the San Joaquin River Restoration
Program, which is already taking unprecedented steps to nurture
its endangered spring run Chinook salmon population.
As water resources managers work hard this summer to deliver
limited water supplies to cities, rural communities, farms,
refuges and fisheries–while also providing essential
hydropower for the state’s energy grid–there is increasing
attention to prepare for the next water year. … As we think
about water management opportunities for next year, there is an
increasing focus on groundwater recharge …
Join us as we guide you on a virtual journey through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Join us as we guide you 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.
Environmentalists say the San Joaquin watershed needs more
water. So do state officials, who in 2018 ordered water users
to give a large share of water back to the San Joaquin and its
tributaries, notably the Tuolumne. But the fight to restore
this ailing ecosystem has turned political, and
environmentalists leading the effort are facing an unlikely foe
the water service provider for one of the most liberal cities
in the country.
A 500 MW pumped energy storage project proposed jointly by the
City of San Diego and the San Diego County Water Authority
received $18 million in the California state budget. The
support will help fund the San Vicente Energy Storage
Facility through initial design, environmental reviews,
and the federal licensing process. The project … could
generate revenue to help offset the cost of water purchases,
storage, and treatment.
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.
California’s ongoing drought and predicted heatwave is causing
overly warm and low level waters and threatening to kill off
the entire populations of already endangered species like the
chinook salmon. Negotiations between the State Water Resources
Control Board and the federal Bureau of Reclamation approved a
plan for managing water levels. However, experts predict that
releasing water into the irrigation system this early will
disrupt salmon spawning season and could kill as many as 88% of
the salmon in the river.
Each day, it seems, a new climate-related catastrophe makes
headlines. Salmon are dying in California, because the water
they inhabit has been heated to the point that it’s
inhospitable to life. The Hoover Dam reservoir is at
record-low levels, potentially affecting the water supply to
the West Coast. And California is, once again, in a drought.
States and municipalities across the country are asking
residents to conserve water as the precious resource is
threatened with impending scarcity. … We asked experts for
some easy ways to cut back on water usage. Here are their
suggestions.
Today, as a water economist, my job is to help customers
stretch their limited water resources. This means managing
supplies wisely and getting a handle on collective demands.
Fortunately, one of our available tools is an old one: water
markets that can help reallocate the resource to the places
it’s needed most. I’ve learned a lot more about water and water
markets since I was a second-grader determined to help fish in
the San Francisco Bay. One lesson is that even well-intentioned
water markets can have bad outcomes if poorly designed or
executed, as was my first water transfer.
Millions of waterfowl and other birds are going to have a tough
year due to the ongoing drought in the West. Not only is there
less water for ducks and geese, but the agriculture fields
these migrating birds depend on for food will be significantly
smaller, which means less waste grain. … That
potentially can negatively impact Pacific Flyway waterfowl
flights and hunting this year. Farmers report only 25
percent of the fields usually flooded in autumn will have
water. With reduced water, ducks and geese are impacted. They
concentrate more and diseases and bacteria can spread more
readily, including bird botulism.
Science is about more than data and research, it’s about
teamwork. Collaboration is key, and the State Water Contractors
are committed to working together with our partners in
academia, government, non-profit and the private sectors to
invest in California’s water future. The SWC and
Member Agencies participated in multiple interagency and
stakeholder working groups tasked with determining how to
implement permit requirements, including the Spring-Run Chinook
Salmon Juvenile Production Estimate Core Team and Delta
Coordination Group for summer-fall habitat actions for Delta
Smelt.
Joey Gentry hesitates before she drives through the fields of
alfalfa and wheat that line the roads in the Klamath
Basin. ”It’s not safe for Natives to be out in farmland
during a drought year,” [Gentry said.] Like much of the
American West, this dry, hilly, high-elevation landscape
straddling the California-Oregon border is experiencing a
summer of extreme drought. But when the federal government
announced in May that, for the first time ever, it would cut
irrigation water to about 180,000 acres of agriculture in the
basin, tensions ignited between farmers and the Klamath tribes.
For the first time in its 55 year history, the Iron Gate fish
hatchery, which raises salmon and steelhead, will not release
its salmon smolts into the Klamath River this summer. Due to
poor water conditions and an increase in a parasite called C.
Shasta in the river, the hatchery, located in Hornbrook,
California, will keep the tiny fish until fall. Now, the
hatchery is dealing with the logistics of moving millions of
fish to other facilities because they cannot accommodate all of
the growing salmon.
Due to drought and poor water conditions in the Klamath River,
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW)
successfully relocated 1.1 million juvenile, fall-run Chinook
salmon from its Iron Gate Fish Hatchery in Siskiyou County. The
fish were trucked to a nearby satellite facility and to the
Trinity River Hatchery 122 miles away where the fish will
remain until conditions in the Klamath River improve.
California officials are warning nearly all juvenile chinook
salmon in the Sacramento River could die due to abnormally hot
underwater conditions as heat waves continue to bake the West.
There could be a “near-complete loss” of the young endangered
species of salmon because temperatures above 100 degrees for
extended periods of time are overheating the river, making it
uninhabitable for the fish to grow beyond their egg stage, the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) confirmed to
CNN on Tuesday.
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…
Global warming has already left its mark on the backbone of
California’s water supply, and represents a growing threat to
its first developed agricultural region, state experts have
warned in a new study. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
fuels California’s $3 trillion economy, including its $50
billion agricultural industry, sustains more than 750 plant and
animal species and supplies 27 million people with drinking
water. But global warming is likely to destabilize the
landscape that made the delta a biodiversity and agricultural
hotspot …
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).
[A] long-stalled plan to save Sacramento winter-run chinook
salmon, a critically endangered species, proposes trucking them
twice in their lifetimes. Spawning adults would get a lift from
the too-hot Sacramento River over Shasta Dam and be driven up
Interstate 5 to a cold mountain habitat in the McCloud River.
Later, their offspring would catch a ride back to the
Sacramento and head to the ocean to start the cycle again.
The lower Klamath River and the redwoods, which grow nowhere
else on Earth, are at the heart of Yurok culture. The tribe’s
reservation follows the river for its last 44 miles and extends
one mile from each bank, just broad enough to accommodate
dozens of tiny, remote villages and the modest town of Klamath
along the 101. The west end of the reservation is surrounded
by Redwood National and State Parks. I wanted quality
time on the water and under tall trees, but I also wanted to
learn more about a people who were navigating this river
thousands of years before the first Gold Rush prospectors
reached California.
The drought is making the Sacramento River so hot that “nearly
all” of an endangered salmon species’ juveniles could be cooked
to death this fall, California officials warned this week. In a
brief update on the perilous state of the river issued this
week, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife made a
dire prediction about the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon
and its struggles against consistently hot weather in the
Sacramento Valley.
An environmental group dedicated to promoting healthy waterways
around California is taking Sonoma County to court over
permitting policies it says too liberally allow people to drill
groundwater wells, potentially endangering Russian River stream
flows. California Coastkeeper, an affiliate of the locally
based Russian Riverkeeper and a dozen or so other organizations
around the state, filed the first-of-its-kind lawsuit late last
month amid the intensifying drought and a surge in well
drilling around the region.
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.
Except for a brief stint in the military, Paul Crawford has
spent his entire life farming in southern Oregon. First,
as a boy, chasing his dad through hayfields and now, growing
alfalfa on his own farm with his wife and two kids, who want to
grow up to be farmers. … The American west is drying out
as the region faces an unprecedented drought. Few places
are as devastated as the Klamath Basin, where Crawford’s farm
sits. Straddling the border between California and Oregon, the
watershed spans 12,000sq miles – from agricultural lands fed by
Upper Klamath Lake to tribal communities surrounding the
Klamath River.
Earlier posts here like this one by Grant Lundberg and this one
by David Guy have done a great job of describing the virtues of
floodplain restoration. The profound dedication of people
like Julie Rentner and Jacob Katz inform and energize the work
of the entire Floodplain Forward coalition that I’m proud to be
part of. But moving beyond plans to actually get work
done on the ground is a task that needs broad support.
Our leaders must take bold action to adapt to our new reality
and create a system that can support healthy rivers and
wildlife, communities with access to safe drinking water and a
thriving agricultural economy. Unfortunately, that’s not what
we’re seeing today. The state’s water regulators are draining
our reservoirs and depleting our rivers to deliver vast volumes
of water to a small number of powerful agricultural interests
during a historically dry year. Protecting fish and
wildlife and water quality for Sacramento-San Joaquin River
Delta communities does not mean eliminating agriculture in the
Central Valley. -Written by Rachel Zwillinger, water policy advisor
for Defenders of Wildlife in Sacramento.
In the drought-stricken Klamath Basin along the
California-Oregon border, water is precious. This year, Native
American tribes and farmers are competing for this shrinking
resource. It’s an indicator of future water wars in the West.
Jefferson Public Radio’s Erik Neumann explains.
The time to act is now. Climate change is already altering the
physical environment of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and
Suisun Marsh (Delta), and we will continue to experience its
effects through hotter temperatures, more severe wildfires, and
prolonged droughts. Over the long term, climate change in the
Delta is expected to harm human health and safety, disrupt the
economy, diminish water supply availability and usability,
shift ecosystem function, compromise sensitive habitats, and
increase the challenges of providing basic services. Many of
these impacts will disproportionately affect vulnerable
communities.
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.
At almost 30 miles long, Upper Klamath Lake is the home to
several types of fish that live only here. Two of them are
called C’waam and Koptu in the Klamath Tribes’ traditional
language or, in English, the Lost River and shortnose sucker.
They have a stubby face and wide lips, and can live to be
50-years-old. … In recent years, the juvenile fish have been
dying, causing the overall population to crash. Five years ago,
when Gonyaw started working for the tribes, there were about
20,000 shortnose suckers in the lake. Estimates today put them
at just 3,400. The Lost River sucker is disappearing at a
similar rate.
California is home to 131 kinds of native fishes that require
freshwater for some or all of their life-cycle. Most of these
fishes are found only in California and most (81%) are in
decline (Moyle et al. 2015, 2020). Thirty-two (24%) are already
listed as threatened or endangered by state and/or federal
governments. Declines are usually the result of fishes losing
the competition with humans for California’s water and habitat
(Leidy and Moyle 2021). This competition is heightened by the
ongoing severe drought.
An ongoing fish kill has been plaguing the Klamath River since
early May. The Klamath flows through Oregon and northern
California, and like many water sources in the West, has seen
water levels drop considerably due to extreme drought. A lower
river means a slower and warmer river, which is what some
parasites need to thrive. The parasite C.Shasta is expected to
kill off nearly all of this year’s juvenile Chinook salmon in
the Klamath.
For decades, an agonizing war over [water] has divided
indigenous people and the descendants of settlers of [the
Klamath basin], which like much of the American West, is now
plagued by drought. Family farmers often describe the conflict
as one that pits them against federal bureaucrats who protect
the suckerfish, imperiled as the lake grows more inhospitable.
That portrayal, say members of the tribes, dismisses a tougher
truth … about race, equity and generational trauma to a
people whose history includes slaughter, forced removal of
children, federal termination of their tribal status and loss
of land …
Growers are dealing with severe cutbacks in the surface water
deliveries they normally receive from reservoirs. The lack of
steady irrigation has already impacted spring cropping
decisions made by farmers. … A bill introduced by
Republican Congressman David Valadao would allow more water to
be moved south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta while
keeping protections in place for fish such as the delta smelt
and salmon.
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.
Water Audit California sued the City of St. Helena this week
over its management of water. The watchdog group says the city
is violating its “public trust” responsibilities relating to
the Napa River and its aquatic habitat. It cites the city’s
policies on groundwater pumping, well permitting, and water
consumption by vineyards and wineries.
Water lines on the banks of Lake Oroville in Butte County have
depleted so rapidly that the reservoir’s hydroelectric power
plant may have to shut down for the first time ever, straining
an already encumbered power grid during the hottest part of the
summer, California officials announced Thursday. Since
1967, the Edward Hyatt Power Plant has been a crucial source of
electricity for the area and usually has the capacity to power
up to 800,000 homes, pumping water from the lake through its
underground facilities, according to CNN.
The learned doctors attending the bedside of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta agree on one thing: the patient is not
doing well. What ails it, many students of the case suggest, is
dehydration: the perennial artificial drought induced by
withdrawals of water for human use, whether pulled from feeder
rivers or extracted from the Delta itself. … Recently,
though, attention has turned to what might be called a
comorbidity: malnutrition. Delta waters simply don’t generate
enough basic food, in the form of phytoplankton, to sustain the
food chains …
As much as 100,000 acre-feet of water — enough to meet the
annual demand of more than 40,000 Tuolumne County residents for
at least five years — that’s currently stored in New Melones
Reservoir could soon be sent south to aid drought-stricken
farmers under an agreement between the Oakdale and South San
Joaquin irrigation districts.
[T]he problem goes way beyond grazing. Dozens of tributaries
and hundreds of springs feed Upper Klamath Lake, supplying
plenty of good, clean water. A century of mismanagement has
caused erosion of high phosphorus soils that accumulate in the
bottom of Upper Klamath Lake. Now, annual algae blooms kill
entire generations of young endangered fish every year.
… All the problems in the Upper Klamath Lake flow
downstream, affecting endangered salmon in the Klamath River as
it runs to the Pacific Ocean. The Karuk, a Klamath River tribe,
are worried that this could be another year marked by a
historic fish kill.
Water in a key California reservoir will fall so low this
summer that its hydroelectric power plant will be forced to
shut down for the first time, officials said Thursday,
straining the state’s already-taxed electric
grid. An unrelenting drought and record
heat, both worsened by the changing climate, have pushed the
water supply at Northern California’s Lake Oroville to deplete
rapidly. As a result of the “alarming levels,” officials will
likely be forced to close the Edward Hyatt Power Plant for the
first time since it opened in 1967…
The California Supreme Court has denied review of the February
appellate decisions in Sweeney v. Regional Water Board and
Sweeney v. Bay Conservation and Development Commission, leaving
in place key administrative orders against the Point Buckler
Club for unauthorized levee construction and other
environmentally harmful activities at Point Buckler
Island.
A proposal to bring down four hydroelectric dams near the
California-Oregon border cleared a major regulatory hurdle
Thursday, setting the stage for the largest dam demolition
project in U.S. history to save imperiled migratory salmon.
While typically the water flow in the Stanislaus River slows
during the summer, that’s not likely to happen this year, so
recreational users of the river are urged to observe safety
precautions to avoid tragedy. Why is the river running so high?
… In a nutshell, it means New Melones is being
called upon to backfill a good portion of water that Shasta,
Folsom and Oroville should be releasing during this summer to
the delta…
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) today
announced the selection of 28 projects to receive funding for
projects to restore and protect multi-benefit ecosystem
restoration and protection projects under its Proposition 1
grant programs. The awards, totaling $39 million, were made
under CDFW’s 2021 Proposition 1 Watershed Restoration Grant &
Delta Water Quality and Ecosystem Restoration Grant Program
Proposal Solicitation Notice.
Santa Cruz Water Department staff is completing its annual
spring fish survey, and with it comes some important
dispatches. Steelhead numbers are low with drought
conditions plaguing Santa Cruz for a second consecutive year.
But coho salmon, a species at-risk of extinction, were spotted
off Santa Cruz’s North Coast in the Laguna Creek estuary.
Documenting coho anywhere in Santa Cruz County is a relatively
rare event, explained Chris Berry, watershed compliance manager
with the city.
The seriousness of California’s drought is being driven home to
thousands of farmers in the Central Valley. State regulators
warned 6,600 farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
watershed on Tuesday that they’re about to lose the right to
pull water from the estuary’s rivers at some point this summer.
The watershed covers a major swath of the Central Valley.
The intensive engineering of the river exacted a huge toll on
its native ecosystems. No species suffered more than the
Chinook salmon, whose epic migration from the Pacific Ocean to
its spawning grounds in the High Sierra was cut short by
numerous choke points, not the least of which was Friant’s
impenetrable barrier of concrete. … Rife with
compromises, [a 1988] settlement mandated that a mere half of
the San Joaquin’s original flow be restored. The river’s many
dams would remain, but alternative passages would be built and
new spawning areas added in the lower river.
A study of woodland ecosystems that provide habitat for rare
and endangered species along streams and rivers throughout
California reveals that some of these ecologically important
areas are inadvertently benefitting from water that humans are
diverting for their own needs. Though it seems a short-term
boon to these ecosystems, the artificial supply creates an
unintended dependence on its bounty, threatens the long-term
survival of natural communities and spotlights the need for
changes in the way water is managed across the state.
The California water board has approved a plan for water
releases into the Sacramento River that could kill off an
entire run of endangered chinook salmon and put at risk another
population that is part of the commercial salmon fishery. …
Because the [Bureau of Reclamation’s] plan involves releasing
water to irrigation districts earlier in the season, the river
will be lower and warmer during salmon spawning season and
could result in killing as many as 88% of endangered winter-run
chinook eggs and young fish.
California never has enough water to meet all demands and even
when supplies are relatively robust there’s a triangular
competition over their allocation. Farmers, municipal users and
environmental advocates vie for shares of water that has been
captured by California’s extensive network of dams and
reservoirs. … When California experiences one of its
periodic droughts and reservoirs shrink from scant rain and
snowfall, its perpetual conflict becomes even sharper. -Written by Dan Walters, a CalMatters columnist
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.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland released a letter Friday to
the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee in support of Klamath
dam removal. … The four hydroelectric dams clogging the
Klamath River are slated to be removed in 2023 under an
agreement forged between the states of California and Oregon,
the dams’ owner PacifiCorp and the Karuk and Yurok tribes. And
Haaland’s letter comes as conditions in the Klamath River Basin
are the worst they’ve been in years due to drought conditions.
California is rolling out a fresh strategy to keep its economy
afloat — releasing 17 million salmon into the San Francisco
Bay. Millions of Chinook salmon raised in hatcheries will
bypass California’s drought-stricken riverbanks to be released
directly into colder, downstream sites in the San Francisco
Bay, in an attempt to maximize their survival rate amid some of
the most extreme environmental conditions the state has ever
faced.
Tricia Hill tears up when she talks about the emotional toll
the water shut-off in southern Oregon has had on her family.
Amid historic, climate change-driven drought, the federal
government in May shut down the water supply from the Upper
Klamath Basin on the California-Oregon border to protect native
fish species on the verge of extinction. As a result, Hill and
other farmers like her in the region have been cut off from
water they have used for decades.
California’s drought highlights the importance of an
appointment sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk – filling the
final seat on the State Water Resources Control
Board. This is a critical agency appointment at a
critical time. The drought highlights many inequities in
California water policy. Disadvantaged communities in Stockton
face the prospect of a drought summer plagued by harmful algae
blooms in Delta rivers. Those algae outbreaks, which can
harm children and kill pets, are caused by excessive nutrients
and inadequate freshwater flow. -Written by Belinda Faustina, a strategic advisor
with Los Angeles Waterkeeper, and Barbara
Barrigan-Parilla, the executive director of Restore the
Delta.
After years of drought, salmon in Northern California are
facing extinction. Conservation groups in the region have
drafted a water management plan that, if adopted, would send
less water to Central Valley farmers and keep more cold water
for fish. Last week, fishery advocates in Northern
California submitted their temperature management plan to the
State Water Resources Control Board. They want to change water
operations in the Shasta, Trinity, Sacramento and Lower Klamath
Rivers so the region’s salmon runs have enough cold water to
survive.
A Sacramento woman says she nearly drowned and her son was
traumatized when she got stuck in a fish trap while floating on
the American River. A lawsuit filed Friday in Superior Court
seeks damages from state and federal wildlife agencies and
Sacramento County over the incident, on June 10, 2020, just
west of the Watt Avenue bridge in Sacramento. The woman and her
son had been floating on inner tubes for less than a
quarter-mile, the complaint says, when hers was pulled toward a
“rotary screw trap” — a floating device intended to
capture salmon for monitoring purposes.
The Ventura County Public Works Agency commemorated the start
of the Santa Ana Boulevard Bridge replacement project with a
groundbreaking ceremony Monday afternoon. The ceremony took
place at 2 p.m. and was attended by the county supervisor, Matt
LaVere, as well as representatives from the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife and California State Coastal
Conservancy.
The Klamath Basin is suffering the worst drought in the state.
Competing need for the water by local tribes seeking to sustain
endangered fish populations, farmers and ranchers, and
commercial and tribal fisheries has been a persistent issue,
and has led to conflicts in the past. The Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement, which took 10 years to plan, was a
turning point and a compromise for the parties needing access
to the water.
When the Palo Alto City Council publicly backed the Bay-Delta
Plan in 2018, it was swimming against the political tide. The
plan, formally known as the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta Estuary plan, sets limits on how much water
agencies can siphon from the three tributaries of the San
Joaquin River. While it aims to protect salmon, steelhead and
other river species, it has also attracted intense opposition
and litigation from water districts that claim that the new
restrictions will undermine the reliability of their water
supply.
Fears of a confrontation between law enforcement and rightwing
militia supporters over the control of water in the
drought-stricken American west have been sparked by protests at
Klamath Falls in Oregon. Protesters affiliated with rightwing
anti-government activist Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights Network
are threatening to break a deadlock over water management in
the area by unilaterally opening the headgates of a reservoir.
Tribes and environmental advocates fear flows along the Klamath
River could be reduced to a trickle if the State Water
Resources Control Board doesn’t take action on water use
upstream on the Scott and Shasta rivers. Andy Marx, board
president of Friends of the Shasta River, said the river
“virtually dried up” over Memorial Day weekend as a result of
excessive irrigation diversions.
A gene-editing tool that has led to new cancer therapies and a
rapid test for COVID-19 is now helping scientists find
endangered species of salmon in the San Francisco Bay. The
CRISPR-based Sherlock tool can identify four types of Chinook
salmon, including Sacramento winter-run and Central Valley
spring-run, which are both protected under the federal
Endangered Species Act.
California’s water wars are legendary, complex and
ongoing. To avoid getting too far in the weeds, media often
boil it down to a dispute over who should have priority to a
limited supply of water — people or fish. The real beauty
of aerial snow surveys is that it’s one thing that farmers and
environmentalists can agree on. -Written by Garth Stapley, The Modesto Bee’s Opinions Page
editor.
Flows into the San Joaquin River under a program to bring back
native salmon will be stopped now through early September to
try and protect fish already upstream. The flow reduction being
instituted by the San Joaquin Restoration Program is in
reaction to rapidly dwindling runoff coming out of the Sierra
Nevada mountains this year.
Water Audit California is suing to make Napa County increase
oversight of groundwater pumping for vineyards, wineries, and
other uses, claiming that the pumping affects the Napa River.
The lawsuit said the county has a “public trust” duty to care
for the river. The idea is that too much groundwater pumping
from wells can keep groundwater from seeping into the river
during dry months, to the detriment of fish and other aquatic
life.
This May, while collecting live fish for their annual aquatic
pathogen assessment on the Klamath River in Northern
California, Yurok Tribe biologists made a shocking discovery:
over 70 percent of the young, ocean-bound Chinook salmon
captured in their traps were dead. Almost all of the fish
tested upstream were infected with Ceratonova shasta, a
parasite that relies on both fish and annelid worms as hosts.
Barry McCovey, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe,
expects most of the infected fish to die.
Salmon and steelhead in Northern California have been in
trouble for more than 100 years, primarily because of habitat
damage and loss resulting from human activities. Climate change
has only worsened these habitat problems. For the last 50
years, communities have worked to restore this habitat in hopes
of reversing the fortunes of these fish. Scientists and local
restoration communities are seeking new ways to maximize the
benefits of habitat restoration so that rivers and streams can
support healthy fish populations again.
In response to record low precipitation in the Klamath Basin,
the Karuk Tribe has declared a state of emergency. This
emergency declaration acknowledges the reality that climate
change is upon us, and the dangers that it poses to rivers,
forests, wildlife and communities.
Migratory steelhead and Chinook salmon have access to six more
miles of historic spawning sites in a refurbished creek on
California’s Beale Air Force Base. All thanks to a unique
cooperative effort between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service (USFWS) and the Air Force Civil Engineer Center
(AFCEC).
Tensions have been building in Klamath Falls in recent weeks
over a drought that is devastating farmland, fish deemed sacred
to native tribes, and wildlife. The Klamath Basin, along the
Oregon-California border, has a complex history. Drought and
fights over water aren’t new. Here are five things to know
about the unfolding Klamath water crisis:
Two weeks ago, the “greenest city in America” sued California’s
State Water Board to prevent measures that would restore the
beleaguered San Francisco Bay-Delta. After more than a decade
of studies based on the best available science, the state wants
to require San Francisco to release more water from its dams
into the Tuolumne River — the source of our Hetch Hetchy
drinking water — to benefit fish, wildlife and downstream water
quality. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission,
meanwhile, wants a “voluntary agreement” for the Tuolumne
River. -Written by Peter Drekmeier, policy director of the
Tuolumne River Trust.
As the extreme drought causes various agencies to squabble over
dwindling water supplies, conservationists say the state is
still not doing enough to prevent an endangered run of salmon
from dying in the Sacramento River. At issue is how the federal
Bureau of Reclamation manages water flows from Shasta Lake into
the Sacramento River, which is both the spawning grounds for
chinook salmon and the main water source for Central Valley
farms. If the bureau releases too much water to irrigation
districts, the river level could drop low enough and warm
enough to kill off 50% of the eggs …
The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an
early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to
spread across the West as a widespread drought, associated with
a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the
region. In Nevada, water levels have dropped so
drastically in Lake Mead that officials are preparing for a
serious shortage that could prompt major reductions in Colorado
River water deliveries next year. In California, Gov. Gavin
Newsom has placed 41 counties under a state of emergency.
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.
Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,
NOAA funded 125 habitat restoration projects in coastal areas
throughout the country. Now, more than a decade later, we’re
taking a look back at some of the projects we funded. We’ll
explore the benefits this restoration work continues to bring
to communities and ecosystems across the country. … NOAA
partnered with the Yurok Tribe to restore habitat for
salmon and steelhead in Terwer Creek and McGarvey Creek,
tributaries to the Lower Klamath River.
In the summer of 2001, local farmers and other activists armed
with saws and blowtorches breached a chain-link fence and
opened the headgates of a federal canal that supplies farmland
in Oregon and far Northern California. Local farmer Grant Knoll
was among the activists there that year. The protesters forced
the gates open three times but were eventually blocked by U.S.
marshals. Now, with a drought just as severe as two decades ago
— and with farmers’ water again cut off — he’s prepared to
fight again.
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.
A crippling drought — largely connected to climate change — is
gripping the Western United States, affecting over 70 million
people and around 40% of the U.S. … Farmers,
scientists, tribal officials, foresters and other groups
affected by the worsening drought testified at a House Natural
Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife hearing on
Tuesday, asking lawmakers for both short-term relief and
long-term solutions from the worsening conditions.
California is dry. Bay Area counties have declared drought
emergencies and imposed restrictions. State and federal
officials are trucking baby salmon to the ocean. But San
Franciscans are still using their primary water source, the
Tuolumne River, which feeds the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in
Yosemite National Park. Last week, City Attorney Dennis Herrera
— who Mayor London Breed recently tapped to head San
Francisco’s water agency — filed a lawsuit challenging the
state’s efforts to protect salmon and the overall health of the
river. -Written by Robyn Purchia, an environmental
attorney, environmental blogger and environmental
activist.
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 Sonoma County Regional Parks department is in the early
stages of exploring an idea to turn the seasonal summer dam at
Healdsburg Veteran’s Memorial Beach into a series of about 18
inches of drops, which would create four mini pools for lazy
river-style tubing, family-friendly swimming and fishing. The
early concept is a result of the need to either rebuild the
aging dam infrastructure, or create an alternative option in
lieu of the dam. The concept includes low flow channels for
fish passage, portage access, fishing access, trails and three
separate beaches.
Twenty years after a shut-off of most irrigation water in the
parched Klamath Project brought the competing needs of farmers,
fishermen and tribes to a head, a new drought — and a fresh
federally-ordered water shut-off — is triggering a sense
of déjà vu. Now, two Klamath Project irrigators with
ties to radical activist Ammon Bundy have purchased private
property located next to the headgates of the “A” Canal in
Klamath Falls, which would normally deliver water to area
farms. And along with local members of the Oregon chapter of
People’s Rights, a group founded by Bundy in 2020, they’ve set
up an information center and gathering place to talk to the
public about the brewing water crisis in the Klamath Basin.
Late Friday the State Water Resources Control Board appeared to
tentatively approve a temperature management plan for Shasta
Dam that sacrifices salmon and fishing jobs for agribusiness
profits this year, violates water quality standards, and leaves
California woefully unprepared if next year is also dry.
Specifically, the State Water Board indicated that they would
approve a temperature management plan if it achieves 1.25
million acre feet of water in Shasta at the end of September.
As the State Water Board knows, allowing storage to drop
that low is estimated to kill more than 50% of the endangered
winter run Chinook salmon and … the vast majority of the
fall run Chinook …
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from
dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off
irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said
they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or
to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of
migrating birds each year. In what is shaping up to be the
worst water crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation said it will not release water this season into the
main canal that feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath
Reclamation Project, marking a first for the 114-year-old
irrigation system.
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.
When Sierra snow seeps into the ground or evaporates before it
can flow downstream into reservoirs, you know California is
facing a severe drought. It’s happening this spring up and down
the mountain range that is a primary water source for the
state. Water from snowmelt that hydrologists had expected only
a few weeks ago to replenish foothill reservoirs is vanishing.
It’s being absorbed by the parched soil or dissipating into the
thin mountain air. -Written by George Skelton, a Los Angeles Times
columnist.
As it enters the Yurok Reservation, the Lower Klamath River is
as picturesque as it gets. Clear water rushes over gentle
rapids, framed by verdant hills and a cerulean sky. An
untrained eye would never notice the devastation beneath the
surface — save for the tiny fish floating lifeless in the
water. Over the past several weeks, an outbreak of the
parasite Ceratonova shasta has ripped through young
salmon throughout the lower reaches of the Klamath watershed.
Driven by high temperatures and low flows out of Iron Gate Dam,
the disease is resulting in what the Yurok Tribe is calling a
“catastrophic” fish kill.
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.
In wetter times, these feathery beds of asparagus would produce
generations of tender green spears, reaching for the vast San
Joaquin Valley sky. [Last] Monday they were disked into the dry
dirt, their long lives cut short by unreliable and expensive
water. … With no guarantee of irrigation water this
summer, Del Bosque and other California farmers are making
tough choices, sacrificing one crop to save another. The
strategy is part of a larger and longer agricultural shift here
in the heart of California’s $50 billion agriculture industry:
Low-value, high-water crops are disappearing from the Golden
State.
Juvenile salmon migrating to the sea in the Sacramento River
face a gauntlet of hazards in an environment drastically
modified by humans, especially with respect to historical
patterns of stream flow. Many studies have shown that survival
rates of juvenile salmon improve as the amount of water flowing
downstream increases, but “more is better” is not a useful
guideline for agencies managing competing demands for the
available water.
The commercial salmon season has been cut in half this year due
to low numbers of salmon. California’s salmon runs are still
rebuilding after millions of baby salmon died in the last
drought, deprived of the cold water they needed to
survive. That damage is still being felt by salmon fishing
families. Today, water managers are on the verge of repeating
that mistake. - Written by John McManus, president of the
Golden Gate Salmon Association.
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.
As more of California sinks into extreme drought, Gov. Gavin
Newsom has asked the Legislature to appropriate billions of
dollars to address critical water needs. In the “May revise”—an
update to the budget proposal he initially submitted to the
Legislature in January—Newsom proposes to spend nearly $3.5
billion on water supply and resilience projects, with total
investment reaching $5.1 billion over multiple years.
With the driest year in memory, the water resources managers
and landowners in the Sacramento Valley are working hard to
serve multiple benefits throughout the region with limited
water supplies. This has required all hands-on deck and
creative management within the region as all surface water
supplies have been significantly reduced, with hundreds of
thousands of farmland acres idled throughout the region, urban
suppliers working with their citizens to implement various
conservation measures to reduce water use and there will
undoubtedly be challenges for domestic groundwater wells.
Last week, the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA)
held their spring conference virtually. Keynote speakers
included Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of Natural Resources, and
Karla Nemeth, Director of the Department of Water
Resources. In his speech, [Crowfoot] discussed the Newsom
Administration’s priorities, calling this the ‘decade of
resilience’, and giving three principles for going
forward. He also discussed the Voluntary
Agreements. Director Karla Nemeth gave the Thursday
morning keynote speech, touching on the Department’s response
to drought, SGMA implementation, the Delta Conveyance Project,
and the water use efficiency regulations.
The Shasta-Klamath Region organizes work around protecting
California source water and volcanic aquifers, working with
family farms to improve water management, and protecting legacy
fly-fishing waters like the McCloud River, Hat Creek, and Fall
River. In 2021, we are heavily invested in conservation
projects in the Shasta and Scott watersheds. These key Klamath
tributaries will be critical for recovering salmon populations
in the Mid-Klamath Basin after dam removal.
What was already forecasted to be a historically bleak water
year in the Klamath Project has quickly become a living
nightmare for farms and ranches fighting for survival in the
drought-stricken basin. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shut
down the Project’s A Canal for the entire irrigation season May
12 in response to worsening conditions — allotting zero surface
water from Upper Klamath Lake for thirsty crops and livestock.
It is the first time in more than a century the A Canal will
deliver no water. Meanwhile, irrigators are left to wonder how
they will pay the bills as fields turn to dust.
San Francisco has sued a state agency over proposed Tuolumne
River flows that it claims would be “devastating” to Bay Area
water users. The Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts
joined in the lawsuit as “real parties in interest,” due to
similar concerns about their customers not getting enough
water. The suit is one more twist in the decades-long battle
over how much water to provide for salmon and other fish
downstream from Don Pedro Reservoir.
The seven members of the Delta Stewardship Council were seated
in 2010. The Council appointed ten prominent scientists to the
Delta ISB. Over the next decade, the Delta ISB produced over 30
scientific reviews, averaging over 3,000 hours of work per
year. But in 2020, the work of the Delta ISB stalled. The Delta
Stewardship Council reduced funding for the Delta ISB by over
90%.
A group of protesters gathered at Sugarman’s Corner in downtown
Klamath Falls on Saturday, preparing to welcome a 25-car
caravan of mostly Klamath Tribal members calling for solutions
to the Klamath Basin’s water crisis. A man walked by the
demonstrators, eyeing their signs with statements like “Peace
and Healing in the Klamath Basin,” “Water Justice is Social
Justice” and “Undam the Klamath.”
California — already in the clutches of another drought
emergency — is looking over its shoulder at what happened
last time, anticipating the worst and evaluating the strategies
that worked and those that failed. So is California in a
better position to weather this drought? Some things are
worse, some better: Groundwater is still being pumped with no
statewide limits, siphoning up drinking water that rural
communities rely on. In northern counties, residents are
reliving the last disaster as water restrictions kick in again,
but in the south, enough water is stored to avoid them for now.
… The upshot is California isn’t ready — again.
The city of San Francisco is reviving a long-simmering feud
with the state over water, filing a lawsuit Friday that charges
state regulators with trying to take away the city’s coveted
Sierra Nevada water supplies. The suit claims the state water
board is demanding the city forfeit too much water from the
Tuolumne River as part of a licensing deal for two dams in the
faraway basin. State regulators have said the water is needed
to maintain proper river flows and support struggling salmon,
but city officials contend the demands would leave Bay Area
residents and businesses vulnerable to water shortages.
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from
dire to catastrophic as federal regulators shut off irrigation
water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would
not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a
half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating
birds each year. In what is shaping up to be the worst water
crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it
will not release water this season into the main canal that
feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath Reclamation Project,
marking a first for the 114-year-old irrigation system.
Rural, low-income Latino communities across California were
hardest hit by the last drought and could see drinking water
shortages again this year as extreme drought spreads across the
state, according to a report released Thursday by non-partisan
advisors to California’s lawmakers. The report from the
Legislative Analyst’s Office warns state officials to prepare
by ramping up monitoring of wells in vulnerable communities and
lining up emergency drinking water supplies to send
there.
