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.
At the April meeting of the California Water Commission, as
part of their continuing work on examining the state’s role in
financing conveyance projects that could help meet needs in a
changing climate, the Commissioners heard from a panel of
speakers about state policy considerations for conveyance and
the cross-cutting issues of flood-managed aquifer recharge
(flood-MAR), green infrastructure, collaborative partnerships
and governance, and innovation. … Michael George, Delta
Watermaster, … pointed out that it’s physically,
ecologically, and economically impossible to squeeze water out
of the Delta for export.
It’s that time of drought again. During one of the driest years
on record, once again curtailing water deliveries to local
farms, Fresno-area lawmakers wasted little time trotting out
one of their favorite falsehoods. That every year, including
the parched ones like 2021, California “wastes” millions of
gallons of water by “flushing it to the ocean.” Central San
Joaquin Valley residents have heard this declaration so often
and for so long, from the mouths of politicians and parroted on
talk radio, that many of us believe it’s true.
On Monday May 3rd, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations (PCFFA), the West Coast’s largest trade
organization of small-scale commercial fishermen and women,
signed on to a letter asking Representative Katie Porter (D –
Ca 45th) in her capacity as Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on
Government Operations and Chair of the Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations, to open an investigation into
Reclamation’s manipulation of government cost accounting
standards and its own longstanding criteria for allocating
costs owed by Central Valley Project water and power
contractors (Contractors).
The federal government is strictly curtailing irrigation this
year in an attempt to protect endangered fish important to
Indigenous tribes. Farmers say this will make it all but
impossible to farm, while tribal groups say the plan doesn’t go
far enough to save their fisheries. In mid-April, a farming
region in southern Oregon began to release water from the
Klamath River into its irrigation canals. … [A]ccording to
the federal government, it was an illegal maneuver that could
further jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species
and food sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries
in the region.
Conservationists in California and across the West are deeply
skeptical of hydropower, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s
a long history of government agencies damming spectacular
canyons, choking off rivers, obliterating fish populations and
cutting off access to Indigenous peoples. … But despite the
environmental damage they’ve done, many dams also generate
electricity that is free of planet-warming carbon emissions.
Tearing down dams can revitalize ecosystems, but it can also
contribute to a climate crisis that is making rivers around the
world drier in some cases, more prone to flooding in others,
and in many cases hotter and more polluted.
-Written by Sammy Roth, a Los Angeles Times staff
writer.
California’s drought is forcing hatcheries to truck young
salmon to the San Francisco Bay because the fish would
otherwise likely die trying to swim on their own
downstream to the Pacific Ocean. The Coleman National Fish
Hatchery along Battle Creek in Shasta County plans to drive
about 950,000 fall chinook salmon smolts in May to increase
their chances of survival.
In many American communities, rivers irrigate the farms that
feed families, quench people’s thirst—rivers are the source of
more than two-thirds of the drinking water in the U.S.—sustain
wildlife habitat, and provide an economic boost for
communities. Yet only a very small portion of those waterways
are protected from threats ranging from pollution to damming,
which would wreck the water’s natural flow.
… California’s Regional Water Quality Control Boards
have authority to designate ONRWs but to date have done so for
only two bodies of water: Lake Tahoe and Mono Lake. However,
the state did initiate an analysis of the Smith River as
an ONRW but has not completed the effort. The Smith is a
Pacific salmon stronghold.
In our latest effort to ensure that our water management and
farming practices both protect and enhance environmental
benefits in our area, Garden Highway Mutual Water Company
(Garden Highway) recently completed a project to screen its
diversion on the Feather River. This project allows us to
protect Chinook salmon and other fish species from entrainment
while diverting water year-round to irrigate crops and to
provide Pacific Flyway habitat during the fall and winter
months. The project was a cooperative effort between Garden
Highway, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau
of Reclamation U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Family
Water Alliance.
Phase 3C of the Lower Clear Creek Floodway Rehabilitation
Project has been completed, attracting fish and wildlife to new
habitats and people to new recreation opportunities. This phase
concludes the extensive and decades-long effort to restore more
than 2 miles of stream channel on Bureau of Land Management
property below Whiskeytown Dam. It was led by the Clear Creek
Technical Team, which includes BLM, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service, Yurok Tribe and other federal,
tribal, state, local agencies and stakeholders.
California’s current drought is already off to a strong start,
with some major challenges already looming just two years in.
Compared to the drought of 2012‒16, the normally wetter
Sacramento and North Coast regions have been hit much harder
than the rest of the state. Beyond the local challenges this
poses, drought in the Sacramento region is already having
statewide implications, given its key role in supplying water
to farms and cities further south.
Experts say a statewide drought declaration … could bring
significant consequences for the regulatory structure governing
California’s complicated water-delivery system. Many farmers
believe an emergency order could loosen environmental
regulations and free up water supplies for them. Environmental
groups fear the very same thing – that more of California’s
dwindling water supply could be directed to farming at the
expense of fish and wildlife.
A federal judge’s decision rebuffed environmental groups’
effort to increase water flow from California’s Twitchell Dam,
stating that wildlife conservation was not among the dam’s
authorized purposes and that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
(Bureau) had no authority to modify the water releases for
conservation purposes. U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr.
sided with defendants in San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper v.
Santa Maria Valley Water Conservation District, rejecting
plaintiffs’ claim that by failing to release enough water to
benefit protected steelhead trout, the Bureau and local water
district were in violation of the ESA.
The beaver does more to shape its environment than nearly any
other animal on Earth. They can cause incredible amounts of
destruction to infrastructure; downing power lines, and
blocking and rerouting waterways. But their dam-building also
can improve water quality, reduce flood risk, and create the
conditions for complex wetland habitats to form —providing
refuge for wildlife and storing carbon in the process.
California is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet,
and the San Diego region is one of the most diverse in
California, but we are losing our biodiversity at an alarming
rate. The coming summer months and dry conditions are going to
further hurt that richness of life here. Conserving our water
resources directly and indirectly benefits our wildlife and is
consistent with the overall conservation ethic in San Diego,
which is why we need to prepare in case drought conditions
worsen.
-Written by Chuck Bonham, director of the CA Department of
Fish and Wildlife.
According to reports collected by Cal DFW, a low amount of Coho
Salmon, age 0+ and 1+, have been trapped this spring while
exiting the Shasta River Basin and Scott
River. … Felice Pace, the Water Chair of the North
Group Redwood Chapter Sierra Club, says … the Shasta and
Scott Rivers should be top producers of Klamath River Coho
Salmon, but links that poor regulated irrigation is preventing
the salmon to reach the best spawning grounds and is killing
juvenile Coho Salmon before they can move out of the Klamath
River.
Little is said about the role of Lake Pillsbury in our
regional water system or the critical water it provides
to fill Lake Mendocino. If anything, its importance
to understated or not referenced at all in most media
articles. Without Lake Pillsbury at the Eel River
headwaters to control downstream flows, both the Eel and
Russian Rivers and surrounding aquifers will intermittently dry
up. … A strong movement is afoot to remove Scott Dam and
eliminate Lake Pillsbury… -Written by Frank Lynch & Carol Cinquini, Directors of
the Lake Pillsbury Alliance.
Gold Rush communities celebrate their mining past but are
largely unaware of the lasting impacts of that era. For more
than 100 years public and private investors have purchased and
developed land for public uses seemingly unaware of the
presence and implications of the physical and chemical hazards
found on abandoned mine lands (AMLs). As a result, residents of
the Sierra Nevada’s Gold Country – the state’s headwaters – are
living on top of and surrounded by abandoned mines. The toxic
metals discharged by legacy mines continue to flow down river
and deposit into the San Francisco Bay Delta …
A dam that for decades prohibited coho salmon from reaching its
spawning habitat in the Santa Cruz Mountains will be taken down
starting this summer after building materials company Cemex and
the Sempervirens Fund reached an agreement, the environmental
group announced Wednesday. The dam, which is located on Mill
Creek, is on the 8,532-acre San Vicente Redwoods property,
which was formerly owned by Cemex.
California officials will again truck millions of young salmon
raised at fish hatcheries in the Central Valley agricultural
region to the Pacific Ocean because projected river conditions
show that the waterways the fish use to travel downstream will
be historically low and warm due to increasing drought.
Officials said the massive trucking operation is aimed at
ensuring “the highest level of survival for the young salmon on
their hazardous journey to the Pacific Ocean.”
While most irrigators in the Upper Klamath Basin are enduring a
spring without surface water, canals in Klamath Drainage
District have been flowing since the middle of April. And KDD
says no laws were broken to make deliveries to its customers.
KDD opened the Ady and North canals on April 15, diverting
water from the Klamath River to serve its patrons. The Bureau
of Reclamation, whose operations plan for 2021 emphasized that
no water deliveries be made to the Klamath Project prior to May
15, sent a letter to KDD asking them to immediately cease the
diversions.
This weekend’s rain in Northern California, while welcome, did
little to address the dry conditions across our state. As the
state’s recent dismal snow survey showed, we are in for tough
times ahead. Less snow means lower reservoirs, less water in
our rivers and streams, and more groundwater pumping. And that
spells trouble, particularly for disadvantaged communities and
sensitive ecosystems, which have historically borne the brunt
of California drought in consequences like dry wells and salmon
die-offs.
The West Coast’s most important estuary is dying, and Gov.
Gavin Newsom has hastened its demise. As he took office two
years ago, Newsom promised to generate voluntary agreements
among farmers, environmentalists and government officials on
the rules for allocating water that flows through the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. … [C]onditions in the delta
have grown so dire that in March the National Marine Fisheries
Service estimated that high water temperatures could kill 90%
of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River
this year.
-Written by Jacques Leslie.
Millions of young salmon raised at fish hatcheries in the
Central Valley will be trucked to San Francisco Bay and other
coastal sites for release, because the rivers they’d normally
travel to get to the ocean are drying up, state and federal
officials said Wednesday. The ambitious trucking program, a
response to the state’s escalating drought, is intended to
maximize survival of the hatchery fish that prop up
California’s fall-run of chinook — the mainstay of the state’s
commercial and recreational salmon industries. Officials in
charge of the five major inland hatcheries that rear the fish
say convoys of tanker trucks are the only way to ensure the
3-inch smolts make it to sea.
In mid-April, a farming region in southern Oregon began to
release water from the Klamath River into its irrigation
canals. According to the local water authority, this was a
standard move to jumpstart the farming season during one of the
driest seasons in recent memory. But according to the federal
government, it was an illegal maneuver that could further
jeopardize the survival of multiple endangered species and food
sources important to Indigenous tribes and fisheries in the
region.
Today’s commentary breaks my heart. Why? Because
Restore the Delta is focused on water quality issues, flood
control issues, future planning, and training the next
generation of local water experts – for that is where hope
exists. We are focused on the future because in some ways
we have become very cynical about any positive meaningful
change to Delta management presently — from the lack of care at
the highest levels of government, to local pockets of Delta
communities that will not acknowledge the deterioration of the
estuary before their eyes.
-Written by Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, who serves on
the Executive Committee at Large for Restore the
Delta.
No one will forget the intense challenges that 2020 brought us,
from record-breaking hurricanes and wildfires to a global
pandemic that devastated our economy and public health. As
Congress and the Biden administration look to help our country
rebuild and recover from these compounding crises, investing in
nature presents an opportunity to deliver multiple benefits for
communities, birds, and other wildlife. Audubon presents a new
suite of policy recommendations for making our communities and
wildlife more resilient to climate change, by putting our
wetlands, barrier islands, and other ecosystems to work.
Deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains, hidden by dense patches of
conifer and far from any paved road, a century-old, abandoned
dam whose purpose remains lost to history is quietly choking a
small, yet important waterway. But not for long. The unnamed,
30-foot-wide dam on Mill Creek, home to one of the southernmost
runs of endangered coho salmon, will be toppled this summer.
The demolition is part of a broader effort to both open up
passage for struggling fish along the Central Coast and restore
a cherished forest known as San Vicente Redwoods.
The competing needs of different protected fish species are
pitting the Klamath Tribes against the federal government in a
court battle with legal implications for Oregon irrigators. The
Klamath Tribes are seeking an injunction to scale back how much
water the federal government can release from Upper Klamath
Lake to the detriment of endangered sucker species that inhabit
it. … The bureau has prioritized flows in the Klamath
river to benefit threatened coho salmon, jeopardizing the
survival of the suckers by allowing the lake to fall below
levels needed to sustain them…
The Bureau of Reclamation, NOAA Fisheries, and U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service announced their plan today for pulse flow
releases from Whiskeytown Dam into Clear Creek in May. Pulse
flows are rapid increases and decreases in dam-released flows
occurring over a short time. The release of water aims to
advance recovery of threatened Central Valley spring-run
Chinook salmon by attracting adult salmon to move upstream to
take advantage of cooler summer water temperatures and improved
habitat. Flow releases for the pulse will begin on May 7 and
reach a peak of 900 cubic feet per second May 8 to 11.
Along the Oregon-California border, the Klamath River Basin is
a crucial water source for Indigenous tribes, endangered
species, and farmers. This year, though, there is simply not
enough to go around. The Western US is enduring another
major drought, and the Klamath River Basin is at a historic
low. This resulted in different groups being forced to compete
and make their case for why water, now precious and scarce,
should be diverted to their needs. It’s a stark reminder of the
tough, no-win decisions that citizens will continue to face
amid the worsening climate crisis.
Throughout California’s history, rivers have been diverted,
rerouted and contained by concrete. While these actions have
brought agriculture and communities to arid land, and reduced
large-scale flooding, it has also eliminated some of the
natural benefits provided by untamed rivers. Today, efforts are
underway to restore some of the natural riparian areas to the
benefit of both humans and wildlife.
Humboldt State University’s Native American Studies Department
and Save California Salmon recently launched a spring webinar
series, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” a look at how
tribes’ traditional fisheries and fire management practices
could address environmental crises. As California prepares for
yet another year of drought, Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy,
department chair of Native American Studies at HSU, said local
tribes are concerned about the health of rivers.
The Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) has approved
approximately $33.5 million in grants to help enhance flows in
streams throughout California. A total of 30 stream flow
enhancement projects were approved for funding at its April 22
meeting. The approved projects will provide or lead to a direct
and measurable enhancement of the amount, timing and/or quality
of water in streams for anadromous fish or special status,
threatened, endangered or at-risk species, or to provide
resilience to climate change.
An unseasonably dry March and lack of sufficient water supplies
have foiled a proposed water release by the Oakdale and South
San Joaquin Irrigation Districts that would have boosted
Stanislaus River flows beginning this past week for the benefit
of out-migrating salmon, and also supplied water to farms and
communities in the San Joaquin Valley most vulnerable to
extreme drought conditions. The plan would have sent up to
100,000 acre-feet of water down the river between April 15 and
May 15 in what are known as “pulse flows” to help young salmon
navigate their way toward the Delta and, eventually, out to
sea.
Work resumed on the lower Yuba River earlier this month on a
$12 million project designed to enhance the river’s ecosystem
by increasing available juvenile salmon habitat to improve the
natural production of Chinook salmon and Central Valley
steelhead — both of which are listed as threatened under the
Endangered Species Act.
The nearly 12,000-acre Oroville Wildlife Area (OWA) in Butte
County is a popular stopping place on the Pacific Flyway for
migrating and native birds. After the Oroville Dam was
completed in 1968, the Department of Water Resources (DWR)
contracted with the then California Department of Fish and Game
to operate the Oroville Wildlife Area for the preservation of
fish and wildlife habitat. The OWA also includes DWR’s
Thermalito Afterbay reservoir, a prime habitat for migrating
waterfowl as well as several different Endangered Species.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has appointed Virginia Madueño
to serve as a member of the Delta Stewardship Council (Council)
effective April 14, 2021. The compensation for this position is
$50,497.
The dry year and reduced flows in the Sacramento River System
are challenging the ability for water resources managers to
serve water for cities and rural communities, farms, wildlife
refuges, fish and recreation. Part of the challenge has been
the inordinate focus on temperature management in the upper
part of the river below Shasta Lake. As we have all seen
countless times before, a focus on one species or in this case
one aspect (temperature) of water management is not a path
forward for the long-term, successful recovery of salmon…
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday declared a drought emergency for
Sonoma and Mendocino counties, but resisted calls to issue a
statewide proclamation — at least for now. Newsom’s emergency
order primarily affects communities and water districts in the
Russian River watershed, which includes the cities of Santa
Rosa, Ukiah and Sebastopol. Some 360,000 people live in the
area.
A new proposal to drill for natural gas in the East Bay has
environmentalists up in arms, and not just because it’s a
polluting fossil fuel. It’s the location that has people really
upset. That’s because it’s in the Suisun Marsh, the largest
marshland on the West Coast, a highly protected natural habitat
for migratory birds, fish and wildlife. … A dozen
environmental and community groups have submitted a letter
opposing a plan by Brentwood-based Sunset Explorations to build
an acre pad on private property in the marsh and drill an
exploratory gas well there.
The state and federal agencies tasked with protecting our fish,
wildlife, and natural resources are once again scrambling to
avoid wiping out this year’s cohort of chinook salmon that
spawn below Shasta Dam. If this sounds familiar, it is because
this scenario is a repeat of attempts to “manage” Shasta
operations in 2014 and 2015, which resulted in over 75% of the
eggs and fry of endangered winter run chinook salmon being
destroyed in both of those years, solely from the lack of
sufficient cold water being released from Shasta Dam …
Last Tuesday, American Rivers released its annual America’s
Most Endangered Rivers list for 2021. Because of a Trump-era
proposal to raise Shasta Dam, the group named northern
California’s McCloud River as the nation’s 7th most threatened
river. Over the past century, California has engineered the
structure of water capture and distribution in the state.
… During the Trump administration, then Secretary of the
Interior David Bernhardt advanced plans to increase the height
of Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet and to expand Shasta Lake by more
than 200 billion gallons.
The Klamath River Basin is in a dire situation this
year. The plan curtails irrigation diversions to less than
10% of demand while failing to meet the biological needs of
salmon and other fisheries downstream. … Reclamation also
announced $15 million in immediate aid to the Klamath Project
through the Klamath Project Drought Relief Agency, an
additional $3 million in technical assistance to Tribes for
ecosystem activities in the basin, as well as funding for
groundwater monitoring in the basin.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will begin releasing warmer
water from the upper layers of the Shasta Reservoir directly
into the Sacramento River to maintain flows, while saving
colder water for the winter-run Chinook salmon migration.
The Yurok Tribe has long faced state and federal policies meant
to eliminate its land base. Before American colonization and
conquest, the tribal territory stretched along what is now the
Northern California coast and inland within the Klamath River
watershed. The gold rush in the 1840s drew white
settlers West, where they killed tens of thousands of
Native people through forced displacement, enslavement, and
disease. In the 20th century, the Yurok continued to be denied
access to their land and water, leading to decades of
legal battles over fishing rights.
Reclamation announced today that spring-time operations at
Shasta Dam will adjust to benefit endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon in the Sacramento River during this critically dry water
year. … No additional water from Shasta Reservoir will be
released during this temporary adjustment—only the withdrawal
elevation and timing of water releases will change.
The Yurok Tribe said it’s sounding the alarm as culturally
invaluable salmon edge closer to extinction. The Yurok also
said it is canceling its commercial fishery for the fifth time
this year. Tribal officials said past water management
decisions and climate change have put Klamath river salmon
stocks at risk. The tribe said it’s gravely concerned about the
rapidly declining salmon stocks in the Klamath River
Basin … Tribal officials said [Reclamation's] plan
provides bare-minimum flows for imperiled Klamath salmon and
sucker fish populations.
The Eel River runs through Lake, Mendocino, and Trinity
counties before reaching the Pacific Ocean in southern Humboldt
County. Its name was given by Josiah Gregg in 1850 as he was
exploring and looking for land to settle. Coming upon a group
of Indigenous Wiyot fishermen, he traded a frying pan for some
Pacific lampreys, which he mistook for eels.
After years of neglect, numerous measures to make sure much
needed and overdue repairs of the Friant-Kern Canal are fully
funded continue to be introduced. Congressman Jim Costa and
Senator Dianne Feinstein were the latest to introduce
legislation on Thursday that would help fund repairs for the
Friant-Kern Canal. Along with Congressman Josh Harder they
introduced a bill that has bipartisan support, the Canal
Conveyance Restoration Act that would provide more than $800
million for repairs to three San Joaquin Valley canals,
including the Friant-Kern Canal, along with restoring salmon
runs in the San Joaquin River.
Restoration flows will begin tomorrow, April 16, on the Trinity
River to help improve conditions after another critically dry
water year. A flow schedule based on the expected amount of
water available to support salmon restoration efforts on the
Trinity River is brought forward by the Trinity Management
Council each year. This week’s two-day schedule is slated to
increase daily average flows from 300 cubic feet per second to
1,300 cubic feet per second.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation delivered a gut-punch to Klamath
Project irrigators Wednesday, announcing a historically low
water allocation as the basin struggles with extreme drought.
Farms and ranches in the Project will receive an initial
allocation of just 33,000 acre-feet — the lowest total since
the shutdown of 2001 and barely 8% of historical demand. That
is dramatically lower than the bureau’s original estimate of
130,000 acre-feet based on hydrological conditions at the
beginning of March.
Shasta Dam, which rises over 600 feet, flooded much of our
tribe’s homeland and inundated dozens of our sacred sites. It
stopped our salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. And by
holding back water when it is needed by the river, Shasta Dam
has driven our salmon to the brink of extinction. That threat
continues in the proposal to raise Shasta Dam. That project
would flood more of our sacred sites and further harm salmon.
The Trump administration made that project their top priority
water infrastructure project in the nation.
-Written by Caleen Sisk, the spiritual leader of the
Winnemem Wintu Tribe.
Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project
that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they
will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst
drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance
the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and
endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of
several tribes. Oregon’s governor said the prolonged drought in
the region has the “full attention of our offices,” and she is
working with congressional delegates, the White House and
federal agencies to find relief for those affected.
On Wednesday, March 3rd, the Northern California Water
Association (NCWA) Board of Directors officially adopted our
2021 Priorities. The water leaders in this region look forward
to working with our many partners in 2021 to cultivate a shared
vision for a vibrant way of life in the Sacramento River Basin.
We will continue to re-imagine our water system in the
Sacramento River Basin as we also work to harmonize our water
priorities with state, federal, and other regions’ priorities
to advance our collective goal of ensuring greater water and
climate resilience throughout California for our communities,
the economy, and the environment.
How many salmon populate the Lower Putah Creek? What are the
demographics of these fish? In what ways can their habitat be
preserved so the lower creek remains healthy? Researchers at
the University of California, Davis are researching these
questions, and the Solano County Water Agency (SCWA) has given
them another year of funding to continue their research as part
of the Lower Putah Creek Salmon Study through the rest of the
2021-22 fiscal year.
CITIZENS for a SUSTAINABLE HUMBOLDT (CSH) and the NORTHCOAST
ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER (NEC) have filed a lawsuit in the Humboldt
County Superior Court, with claims under the California
Environmental Quality, the State Planning and Zoning Law, and
other laws, challenging the environmental review and permits
approved by the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack designated 50 California
counties as natural disaster areas last month because of the
drought. And, over the weekend, Fresno Congressman Jim Costa
said on KSEE-24’s Sunday Morning Matters program that Gov.
Newsom should declare a statewide emergency because of the
dangerously dry conditions. …Yet, Newsom… last week
rejected a request from a bipartisan coalition of state
lawmakers from the Valley to declare a statewide drought
emergency.
The Suisun Marsh — known as the largest swath of contiguous
wetlands on the West Coast and a haven for thousands of
migrating waterfowl — has become the Bay Area’s latest
battleground between fossil fuel producers and
environmentalists hellbent on fighting climate change. A
Brentwood company, Sunset Exploration Inc., announced in
January it wants to explore for natural gas by drilling a
section of the 116,000-acre marshland about 9 miles southwest
of Suisun City in an area known as Hunter’s Point, according to
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
One of the worst droughts in memory in a massive agricultural
region straddling the California-Oregon border could mean steep
cuts to irrigation water for hundreds of farmers this summer to
sustain endangered fish species critical to local tribes. The
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water allocations in
the federally owned Klamath Project, is expected to announce
this week how the season’s water will be divvied up after
delaying the decision a month.
Nancy L. Vogel of Sacramento has been appointed Deputy
Secretary for Water at the California Natural Resources Agency,
where she has been Director of the Governor’s Water Portfolio
Program since 2019 and was Deputy Secretary of Communications
from 2015 to 2017.
The little-known Joint Powers Authority charged with getting
the embattled Delta tunnel across its finish line recently
changed executive directors, marking an exit for Kathryn
Mallon, who had stirred controversy for her exorbitant pay and
alleged pressuring of a citizens advisory committee to work
through the most dangerous part of the
pandemic. Meanwhile, as California Governor Gavin Newsom
begins campaigning against the effort to remove him from
office, he’s soliciting huge donations from the same
south-state barons of agriculture who have promoted the
environmentally fraught tunnel concept for years.
[S]ome scientists [are] saying the region is on the precipice
of permanent drought. That’s because in 2000, the
Western U.S. entered the beginning of what scientists call
a megadrought — the second worst in 1,200 years —
triggered by a combination of a natural dry cycle and
human-caused climate change. In the past 20 years,
the two worst stretches of drought came in 2003 and 2013 — but
what is happening right now appears to be the beginning stages
of something even more severe. And as we head into the summer
dry season, the stage is set for an escalation of extreme dry
conditions, with widespread water restrictions expected and yet
another dangerous fire season ahead.
The Bureau of Reclamation announced today that this year’s
restoration flow schedule for the Trinity River will begin on
April 16. Each year, the Trinity Management Council advances a
flow schedule based on the expected amount of water available
to support salmon restoration efforts on the Trinity River. Due
to lack of precipitation and snowpack in the Trinity Mountains
this winter, the flow schedule for 2021 is scaled to a
critically dry water year. Critically dry is one of five water
year types used by the Trinity River Restoration Program to
decide how much reservoir water will be released in support of
the program’s goals to improve habitat for anadromous fish—fish
that migrate to fresh water from salt water to spawn—like
salmon and steelhead.
The Marin County Superior Court last
Friday ruled that the county in Northern California
failed to adequately protect coho salmon and their habitat in
the San Geronimo Valley. Marin County originally planned to
adopt a streamside conservation ordinance to preserve
vegetation, maintain water quality and prevent erosion in 2007
when it last updated its countywide plan. But 12 years later,
the measure has still not materialized, in violation of the
California Environmental Quality Act. The lawsuit was
brought by the Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (SPAWN)
and Center for Biological Diversity.
With a salmonella outbreak in eight states already under
investigation by the Centers for Disease Control, officials are
watching in California for another disease that impacts
waterfowl. Botulism killed thousands of waterfowl and other
birds last year on two national wildlife refuges near the
border of California and Oregon. Some estimates were as high as
60,000 dead birds. The Lower Klamath Basin and Tule Lake
national wildlife refuges were among the first created more
than 100 years ago. Millions of waterfowl and shore birds,
along with songbirds, migrated along the Pacific Flyway into
the two refuges and beyond. Today, between severe
restrictions on water flowing into and out of the refuges
and a crippling drought that shows no sign of letting up,
the refuge marshes are going dry.
California’s hottest commodity could become even more scarce as
state and federal officials announce water cutbacks on the
brink of another drought. Now, state legislators are banding
together to ask Governor Newsom to declare a state of emergency
amid what they call a water crisis. … [State Senator Andreas]
Borgeas authored a letter alongside the Assembly agriculture
committee chair and several other state lawmakers to send to
the governor. This comes after the California Department of
Water Resources announced a 5% allocation to farmers and
growers in late March.
In the first episode in the Delta Conveyance Team Spotlight
video series, [DWR] spoke with the project’s Executive
Director Tony Meyers about his long and eventful career in
engineering, including work on some of DWR’s most ambitious and
significant infrastructure projects. In this excerpt, he
reflects on the appeal of large-scale engineering projects and
speaks about the importance of the Delta Conveyance Project in
protecting the security of California’s water supply.
OID and SSJID … have invested considerable money into
improving salmon habitat on the Stanislaus River and as well as
conservation measures aimed at reducing growers’ use of water —
have proposed pushing the spring pulse flow from an anticipated
1,400 cfs at Vernalis to almost 3,000 cfs. … The SSJID and OID
have also worked with the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water
Authority and State Water Contractors that may get only 5
percent of the water they need from the Bureau this year to
purchase the [water] by diverting it once it enters the
Delta.
As we begin spring in the Sacramento Valley, the region
illuminates – we see the brown landscape turn verdant, and the
Valley bustles with activity as people share the hope of a new
year and collectively cultivate a shared vision in the region
for a vibrant way of life. With the dry year in Northern
California, the water resource managers are working overtime to
carefully manage our precious water systems including rivers,
streams, reservoirs and diversions to serve multiple benefits.
To effectively do this, water resources must be managed in an
efficient manner, with the same block of water often used to
achieve several beneficial uses as it moves through the
region’s waterways.
The slide gates at the bottom of the Temperature Control Device
(TCD) on the inside face of Shasta Dam (Figure 1) allow deeper,
colder water in the reservoir to be drawn into the power plant
intake penstocks and released to the river below. Use of the
slide gates allows more colder water to be released for salmon
in the river below in summer and fall in years when reservoir
levels are low and the cold-water-pool is limited. In 2014 and
2015, NMFS and the Bureau of Reclamation learned that when the
reservoir level is low and the slide gates are opened to access
cold water, some warmer surface water is also drawn downward
into the slide gate openings.
The dams that are built in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River
Watershed protect thousands of people and billions of dollar’s
worth of agriculture but they are far too old and far too many
of them need repair. Some unnecessary dams are drying rivers
and putting business in front of the environment.
For seven days in mid-March 2021, the Bureau of Reclamation
substantially increased Folsom Lake storage releases. Roughly,
the releases tripled in volume (Figure 1). The release of over
20,000 acre-feet of water is significant for a year in which
Folsom storage is not much better than it was in the worst year
on record – 1977 (Figure 2).1 With the release in mid-March,
the lake level dropped 3 feet. Yes, there was rain in the
forecast and a decent snowpack, but certainly no flood
concerns. So why? The reason was to meet state water quality
requirements for Delta outflow. Delta outflow increased from
7,000 cfs to 12,000 cfs for a few days (Figure 3).
In anticipation of this week’s Bay-Delta Science Conference, I
thought it would be useful to consider some of what it takes to
understand a complex ecosystem like an estuary and to encourage
everyone working in the San Francisco Estuary – scientists,
policymakers, and local stakeholders – to continue shifting our
ecosystem management focus from the simple to the complex. I’ll
explain why in a moment. Here are four suggestions for
improving ecosystem management in the San Francisco Bay-Delta:
The Elk River is the largest tributary to Humboldt Bay and
provides habitat for three runs of salmon and steelhead. But
after this timber-rich watershed was heavily logged more than
20 years ago, major storms washed soils from clear-cuts into
the river, causing ecological devastation, local flooding, and
contamination of local drinking water supplies. We talked to
Darren Mierau of CalTrout about the Elk River Recovery
Program and the big challenges facing this effort.
California is at the edge of another protracted drought, just a
few years after one of the worst dry spells in state history
left poor and rural communities without well water, triggered
major water restrictions in cities, forced farmers to idle
their fields, killed millions of trees, and fueled devastating
megafires. … Just four years since the state’s last
drought emergency, experts and advocates say the state isn’t
ready to cope with what could be months and possibly years of
drought to come.
With commercial salmon fishing in California likely headed
toward a shortened season starting in late June, fishermen out
of Half Moon Bay remain worried about what a short season means
during an already down year. … The shortened season will
be set based on an estimated low stock of chinook salmon
derived from statistical modeling. An ocean abundance forecast
of adult salmon estimated the Sacramento River in 2021 to have
around 271,000 salmon, while the Klamath River had around
181,500, both lower than their 10-year averages of 487,600 and
449,000, respectively, Morgenstern said.
The California Department of Justice (DOJ) filed comments with
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) regarding Sunset
Exploration’s proposal to drill for natural gas in the Suisun
Marsh. Located in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, this 88,000-acre
wetland is home to a number of endangered and threatened
species, including California Ridgway’s rail, black rail, and
Chinook salmon – and is just a few short miles from
environmental justice communities in Solano County…. DOJ
urges the Army Corps to fully consider the proposal’s
significant environmental impacts, including harm to these
communities and protected species, as well as increased
greenhouse gas emissions, before deciding whether to grant the
requested permit.
In 2016—after two years of rigorous scientific study by
CalTrout and its partners in the Sierra Meadows Partnership—the
Sierra Meadows Strategy for restoring and protecting our
state’s Sierra Nevada meadows was officially released. A key
piece of CalTrout’s source-waters-to-sea approach to combatting
the effects of drought and climate change, this strategy
developed among a broad coalition of conservation partners aims
to restore and conserve meadows throughout the Sierra Nevada,
protecting a major source of our state’s water supply and
critical habitats to fish and other species.
Water releases designed to benefit the critical outmigration of
juvenile salmon on the Stanislaus River as well as assist farms
and communities along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley
already starting to suffer the effects of two consecutive dry
years is languishing in the federal bureaucracy. Up to
100,000 acre feet is proposed to be released that belongs to
the South San Joaquin and Oakdale irrigation districts that
would provide a critical impulse flow from April 15 to May
15. That water based on measurements at Vernalis south of
Manteca where the Stanislaus River joins the San Joaquin River
would significantly improve the survivability of the threatened
salmon.
In recent years, the Wiyot Tribe in Northern California secured
ownership of its ancestral lands and is working to restore its
marine habitats; the nearby Yurok Tribe fought for the removal
of dams along the Klamath River and has plans to reconnect with
salmon, its traditional food source; and the Quapaw Nation in
Oklahoma has cleaned up contaminated land to make way for
agriculture and cattle businesses.
San Francisco Bay’s life support systems are unravelling
quickly, and a wealth of science indicates that unsustainable
water diversions are driving this estuary’s demise. Yet,
with another drought looming, federal and state water managers
still plan to divert large amounts of water to their
contractors and drain upstream reservoirs this summer.
Meanwhile, the state’s most powerful water districts are
preparing yet another proposal to maintain excessive water
diversions for the long-term. By delaying reforms that the
law requires and that science indicates are necessary, Gov.
Gavin Newsom encourages wasteful water practices that
jeopardize the Bay and make the state’s water future
precarious. -Written by Jon Rosenfield, a senior scientist for SF
Baykeeper.
The Delta Stewardship Council (Council) announced the hiring of
Ryan Stanbra, the Council’s legislative and policy advisor, to
the key post of chief deputy executive officer. … Appointed
by Governor Brown in 2015, Ryan joined the Council in the role
of legislative and policy advisor. He has played a pivotal role
in advising on critical Council initiatives like implementation
of reduced reliance on the Delta, interagency coordination and
outreach for the Delta Levees Investment Strategy, increasing
funding for critical science investments, and more. He has
served in the acting chief deputy executive officer role since
January.
Restoration projects, like species, evolve. The Sonoma Creek
Enhancement Project, originally about mosquito control, has
shown itself to be a boon to special-status tidal marsh
wildlife as well. More than a decade of adaptive management
actions made that happen. The existing marsh, formed
rapidly beginning in the 1960s by deposited sediment, lacked
the dendritic channels of a mature marsh. High tides brought in
water that pooled in a central basin and didn’t drain out,
providing breeding habitat for mosquitos. The disadvantages of
chemical treatment prompted land managers to look for
alternatives.
On March 24, 2021, deputies with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s
Office Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) served one search
warrant to investigate illegal cannabis cultivation in the
Salmon Creek area. … Assisting agencies found one water
diversion violation (up to $8,000 fine per day, per violation).
Additional violations with civil fines are expected to be filed
by the assisting agencies.
Updated water supply allocations announced last week would
still drain upstream reservoirs in order to deliver 4.5 million
acre feet of water to the contractors of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP) and State Water Project (SWP), devastating
fish and wildlife. This week, the fisheries biologists at the
National Marine Fisheries Service projected that these planned
operations are likely to result in lethal water temperatures
that will kill 89% of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon
below Shasta Dam this year. This mortality estimate is even
worse than what was observed in 2014 and 2015, when salmon
populations were devastated by warm water in their spawning
grounds.
A legal battle over plans to log in the lower Gualala River
flood plain is heading into a fifth year, despite a recent
victory in state appeals court by Gualala Redwood Timber and
Cal Fire which first approved the project back in 2016. The
fight over the 342-acre timber project in the northwest corner
of Sonoma County adjacent Gualala Point Regional Park is now
shifting to a new case gearing up in federal court. … Friends
of the Gualala River, a 30-year-old grassroots nonprofit
organization supported by like-minded groups around the region,
is seeking to block the harvest, which is targeting stands of
second-growth forest including some century-old redwoods.
In the face of climate change and severe weather, there is a
risk of more prolonged droughts in California. Despite recent
storms in March, Santa Clara County is now in a drought and it
is unknown how severe it will get. Valley Water remains focused
on preparing for future dry and wet years through a variety of
projects and programs, including the proposed expansion of
Pacheco Reservoir in southern Santa Clara County. The project
would increase the reservoir’s capacity from 5,500 acre-feet to
up to 140,000 acre-feet, enough water to supply up to 1.4
million residents for one year.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has
announced a series of workshops intended to solicit public
input on the development of a community benefit program
associated with the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP). According
to DWR, community benefit programs go beyond traditional
concepts of mitigation. They attempt to provide greater
flexibility in addressing possible community impacts associated
with the major construction projects.
The second consecutive dry winter has prompted state water
managers to reduce allocations to the state water project that
supplies millions of Californians and 750,000 acres of
farmland. The state Department of Water Resources
announced this week that it will only be able to deliver
5% of the requested allocations following below-average
precipitation across the state. That figure is down from the
initial allocation of 10% announced in December. Many of
the state’s major reservoirs are recording just 50% of average
water storage for this time of year, and won’t see a major
increase due to a snowpack that is averaging just 65% of
normal, according to state statistics..
[F]or those who live in the legal Delta zone – some 630,000
people – the braided weave of the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Rivers and their maze of associated wetlands and levees
provides a place of home, community, and recreation. And, as a
recent study by the Delta Stewardship Council shows, climate
change is tugging on the watery thread holding it all together.
… The council’s overview reveals a grim outlook for the
millions of people that are tethered to the region’s water:
drought similar to that experienced in 2012-2016 will be five
to seven times more likely by 2050. This will result in more
severe and frequent water shortages and, as the report bluntly
states, “lower reliability of Delta water exports.”
The rivalry between farms and wildlife for water and land was
long seen as a zero-sum game, especially in California where
water is such a precious commodity that the state’s water
futures are traded on the stock exchange. That competition has
been particularly sharp in the Central Valley: 95% of the
region’s historic wetlands have transformed into farmland, and
the region’s increasingly scarce water supply has been
prioritized for farming. As a result, some of the migratory
birds that rely on the Central Valley for habitat, food, and
water sources have seen steep declines in the past
century.
The upcoming salmon season doesn’t look promising for
recreational and commercial fishermen on the Coastside. But
environmentalists from the Central Valley are hoping to change
that in the future by easing the movement of salmon between the
Pacific Ocean and inland rivers. One of those rivers is the
Tuolumne River. Its stewards at the Tuolumne River Trust are
sounding the alarm over the river’s health and say that
committing more water to this distant river will help the
salmon populations more than 100 miles away in places like
Coastside fisheries.
As California stares down the barrel of yet another dry year,
alarm bells are already ringing over conditions in the Delta.
Environmental groups, fishermen, tribes, and a host of others
are calling on the State Water Resources Control Board to
complete and implement a long-delayed update to the Water
Quality Control Plan for the Bay and Delta (Bay-Delta Plan), to
protect the imperiled ecosystem. At the same time, plans for a
structure with the potential to divert more water than ever to
southern cities and farms are creeping ahead.
An extra dry summer with potential for water shortages – that’s
what state and federal officials are telling Californians to
prepare for. Predictions for 2021 are bleak. Lake levels
are low and the Sacramento region is not getting the spring
showers many hoped for. According to the US drought monitor,
most of the Central Valley is experiencing severe to extreme
drought conditions. This week the Department of Water
Resources lowered its expected forecast of water deliveries
made to cities and farms by half. But any conservation
restrictions would be up to local authorities.
State and federal water officials have delivered their most
dire warning yet of California’s deepening drought, announcing
that water supply shortages are imminent and calling for quick
conservation. Among a handful of drastic actions this week, the
powerful State Water Board on Monday began sending notices to
California’s 40,000 water users, from small farms to big cities
like San Francisco, telling them to brace for cuts. It’s a
preliminary step before the possibility of ordering their water
draws to stop entirely.
Water is one of the most valuable resources on the
planet — we need it to survive, to stay clean
and healthy, to grow food, to run businesses, to
support ecosystems, and so much more. And yet clean,
accessible, abundant water is often taken for granted, in
part because its cost rarely reflects its true value. But
anyone who has spent even a day, or a few hours, without
access to water knows its vital importance. Still today
over 2.2 billion people globally lack
access to safe drinking water.
California’s water use varies dramatically across regions and
sectors, and between wet and dry years. With the possibility of
another drought looming, knowing how water is allocated across
the state can make it easier to understand the difficult
tradeoffs the state’s water managers must make in times of
scarcity. The good news is that we’ve been using less over
time, both in cities and on farms. While there are still ways
to cut use further to manage droughts, it won’t always be easy
or cheap to do so. California’s freshwater ecosystems are at
particular risk of drought, when environmental water use often
sees large cuts. Watch the video to learn how Californians use
water.
[I]t was with some surprise that last year Warren Buffett found
himself recently embroiled in a hugely important California
water issue – removal of the Klamath River dams. The
socioecological effects of dams on the Klamath River have been
massive, almost uniformly negative, and ongoing. The Klamath
watershed has been estimated as the third-most productive
drainage on the West Coast for salmon and steelhead. Yet salmon
runs declined substantially over the last century in part
because dams fragment and isolate salmon from their historical
upland spawning habitats. … Indigenous peoples have
disproportionately dealt with the brunt of ecological impacts
from dams on the Klamath River.
Larry Brown …was a renowned research scientist who was
recently acknowledged by a Stanford study as among the world’s
top 2% of scientists in his field.,,,In 1991, Larry joined the
U.S. Geological Survey as a research scientist, an association
that lasted the rest of his career.
As of 2021, California is home to 31 distinct kinds of native
salmon, steelhead and trout species, 20 of which are found only
in our state. These fish are prized for their economic and
cultural significance by local communities, and for their
recreational attributes by anglers from around the world. But
these fish face an alarming threat that can’t be ignored. If
current trends continue, nearly half of these fish will be
extinct within the next 50 years. How do we know this? And
perhaps an even better question: what can be done about
it?
The Peter B. Moyle and California Trout Endowed Professorship
was established by a group of donors concerned with the
conservation and management of coldwater fishes in California.
The endowed chair honors Peter Moyle and the historical and
productive working relationship between CalTrout and UC Davis,
with an endowment fund resting at over $2 million. Dr. Andrew
L. Rypel was appointed to this professorship as the inaugural
holder in 2017, therefore this report reflects year-3 work on
behalf of the chair. A total of 13 peer-reviewed scientific
publications were produced by the Rypel Lab at UC Davis in
2019-2020.
It’s not too hard to find salmon on a menu in the United
States, but that seeming abundance — much of it fueled by
overseas fish farms — overshadows a grim reality on the ground.
Many of our wild salmon, outside Alaska, are on the ropes — and
have been for decades. Twenty years ago Pacific salmon were
found to have disappeared from 40% of their native rivers and
streams across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California.
… In California a groundbreaking project to
allow rivers to flood fallow farm fields in winter has helped
provide both food and rearing habitat for salmon — and has
helped prove that water managers don’t have to choose between
fish and farmers.
An Oregon judge has agreed to hear further legal arguments over
his ruling that tribal water rights in the Klamath basin must
be re-quantified. Because the judge’s legal opinion from last
month hasn’t yet been reduced to an order, that means the
Klamath tribes can enforce their water rights to shut off
irrigation in the meantime.
Tribal leaders see President Joe Biden’s administration as
an opportunity to increase tribal consultation regarding issues
like water management, oil and gas leasing, and land
conservation. Here, we look at four major projects … that the
new administration is tasked with advancing…. Negotiations
among federal, tribal and state governments on water flows and
allocations in the Colorado River Basin began last year and are
set to conclude by 2026…. After years of political,
social and regulatory barriers, the undamming of the Klamath
River is within sight….
Through collaborative projects, birds and endangered fish are
returning to areas they once reared in more than 100 years ago.
Partnerships among farmers, conservationists, universities, and
state and federal agencies are proving that by reactivating our
historic floodplains and using our bypasses during key times of
the year, we can create high-quality habitat that produces safe
haven and up to 149 times more food for salmon than the river.
These key projects demonstrate some of the work being done on
the wet-side of the levee.
CalTrout Watershed and Legacy Circle members and partners
joined together last Thursday for an informative discussion on
the visions for the future of California water. With a zoom
room of visionaries themselves, we had a lively time! You
can listen to the interviews with our guests Gia Schneider of
Natel Energy and Felicia Marcus the William C. Landreth
Visiting Fellow Stanford Water in the West in the video …
The National Marine Fisheries Service is considering whether
the spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon that occupy the
rivers of Northern California and southern Oregon are
genetically distinct. The decision … would almost
certainly result in a listing under the Endangered Species Act
if seen as a separate species. … [T]he dams and
reservoirs that have been installed at various points
throughout the rivers of the West Coast create problems for
spring-run Chinook that are unique and separate from their
closely related cousins. It also allows the fall-run
species to outcompete the spring run since they both are able
to reach the same spots in the river to reproduce.
Local tribes, schools and nonprofits have developed a new high
school curriculum that seeks to encourage environmental
advocacy through an Indigenous lens. The advocacy and water
protection curriculum meets state standards in science, social
studies, health, history and language arts and seeks to bolster
“culturally informed education” in the classroom. The
curriculum is based on the “Advocacy and Water Protection in
Native California” speaker series that was developed by Save
California Salmon …
We’re facing another very dry year, which follows one of the
driest on record for Northern California and one of the hottest
on record statewide. The 2012-16 drought caused
unprecedented stress to California’s ecosystems and pushed many
native species to the brink of extinction, disrupting water
management throughout the state. Are we ready to manage
our freshwater ecosystems through another drought? -Written by Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow,
and Caitrin Chappelle, associate director, at
the Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy
Center.
Dwindling Chinook salmon runs have forced the Pacific Fishery
Management Council to shorten the commercial salmon fishing
season. The Sacramento Valley fall-run Chinook salmon runs are
projected to be half as abundant as the 2020 season while the
Klamath River fall Chinook abundance forecast is slightly
higher than the 2020 but is still significantly lower than the
long-term average. During a press briefing on Friday morning,
John McManus President of the Golden State Salmon Association
said the added restrictions will deal a blow to commercial
fishermen.
Despite a February court opinion that vacated the quantified
water rights of the Klamath Tribes, the Oregon Water Resources
Department announced Friday that they will continue to enforce
the Tribes’ water calls until a judge orders
otherwise. The Klamath Tribes maintain senior water rights
in the Klamath Basin, which were affirmed by the Klamath
County Circuit Court last month, but Judge Cameron Wogan
wrote in his proposed order that those rights need to be
re-quantified.
The California commercial salmon season, due to start May 1,
will be only about half as long as last year’s season, after
the Pacific Fisheries Management Council settled on three
proposals for the dates and months fishing can take place this
season. The main reason for the shorter season is
the smaller number of adult Sacramento River
salmon expected to be in the ocean this spring and summer.
While commercial fishing boats were permitted to go out for 167
days total last year, the three proposals for the 2021 season
would only allow fishing for a total of 78 days, 94 days or 104
days.
Last year, tens of thousands of water birds became paralyzed
and died in a gruesome botulism outbreak caused by lack of
water at two wildlife refuges on California’s border with
Oregon. And it could happen again this summer. The crippling
drought that has plagued the region for years shows no sign of
ending, and there’s been little relief from the bureaucratic
gridlock and lawsuits over water that has slowly starved the
Klamath Basin refuges of their supplies over the past two
decades.
One of the largest undammed river systems in California, the
South Fork Trinity watershed supports vulnerable populations of
salmon and steelhead, and boasts dramatic scenery. The South
Fork National Recreation Trail parallels the river’s rapids and
pools through stands of pine, fir, and oak. Nearly 500 miles of
water, including parts of the South Fork Trinity River and its
tributaries, would be permanently protected by the Northwest
California Wilderness, Recreation, and Working Forests Act,
sponsored by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), which was also included
in the Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act
that recently passed the House.
Today, [Tribes, Schools, and NGOs] released the Advocacy
and Water Protection in Native California High School
Curriculum and Teacher’s Resource Guide. The curriculum
… responds to California’s urgent water, climate and
educational crises, along with the need for Native American
culturally informed education and representation in
schools. The curriculum features online, classroom, and
nature-based learning and responds to reports that Humboldt,
Del Norte, and other counties are failing Native students, and
that Native youth are facing a mental health crisis due to
COVID-19 and the state’s water and climate crises.
Bad news for salmon lovers: The quantity of fish in Bay Area
coastal waters this year is expected to be far lower than in
2020. And fewer fish means less work for local fishers and
fewer salmon in stores. The number of adult king salmon
from the Sacramento River fall run is projected to be 271,000
this spring and summer, compared with last year’s estimate
of 473,200….The limited season reflects a downward trend in
the population of king salmon, also known as chinook, over the
last decade because of drought and state policies that have
limited the amount of water allotted to the parts of the
Sacramento River basin where the fish spawn and juveniles spend
their early months.
Our map of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has been
updated with a fresh, new look and new text and images to
better tell the story of one of California’s most important
ecological and water supply resources. The new map
explores the Delta’s importance as a haven for birds, fish and
other wildlife, its vital role in moving water to farms and
cities across California, and the array of challenges facing
the Delta’s present and future.
On the tail end of the second dry winter in a row, with water
almost certain to be in short supply this summer, California
water officials are apparently planning to largely drain the
equivalent of the state’s two largest reservoirs to satisfy the
thirst of water-wasting farmers. Gov. Gavin Newsom must stop
this irresponsible plan, which threatens the environmental
health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the water supply
for about one-third of the Bay Area residents. We should be
saving water, not wasting it.
Those of us in the water industry are always looking for new
ways to ask our customers to save, conserve, and never waste
water. And we do that for good reason. We live in a region
prone to regular periods of drought, punctuated by sudden and
catastrophic floods. Last year we had a very dry year, and this
water year is off to a very dry start as well. Sonoma Water,
which supplies drinking water to 600,000 residents in Sonoma
and Marin counties, relies on rainfall to fill our reservoirs
and consecutive years of below-average rainfall are always
cause for concern. Will this be a two-year dry spell, or the
beginning of a multi-year drought? Written by Barry Dugan, Senior Programs Specialist in
the Community and Government Affairs Division at Sonoma
Water.
If 2020 was a difficult water year for the Klamath Basin, then
2021 is likely to be even more challenging. With record-low
inflows coming into Upper Klamath Lake, the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation anticipates it will not have anywhere near enough
water this summer to meet minimum requirements for endangered
fish — let alone enough water to meet irrigation demands for
farmers and ranchers. Jeff Payne, deputy regional director for
the bureau, said the basin in Southern Oregon and Northern
California appears to be entering a second consecutive year of
extreme drought, exacerbating what was already a critical
situation.
Selectively cutting trees in riparian zones to aid forest
restoration can be done without adversely affecting streams’
water temperature as long as the thinning isn’t too intensive,
new research by Oregon State University shows.
… Northern California is well known for its groves of
large, iconic redwood trees. However, intensive logging removed
most of the old-growth forests from this region and less than
10% of those forests remain.
Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said the Delta flows
issue has been decades in the making and “it’s going to
take some time to figure this out.”
What does sexual harassment have to do with our water supply?
Far more than you might think. The Metropolitan Water District
of Southern California imports, stores and sells the drinking
water used by nearly half of the people in this state. As a
consequence, the MWD is at the center of the state’s battle
with ongoing drought, the agricultural sector’s demands for
irrigation water and the degrading natural environment’s
inability to sustain iconic species such as migrating salmon.
Native fish, including smelt and salmon, in the southern Yolo
Bypass in Yolo County have new sources of food and shelter
thanks to a project that successfully restored more than 1,600
acres of former cattle pasture. The Lower Yolo Ranch Tidal
Restoration Project is a collaboration between multiple
agencies including the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and
Westlands Water District (Westlands) which serves western
Fresno and Kings counties. The agencies are working together to
meet a portion of state and federal requirements to restore
8,000 acres of tidal wetland habitat in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta.
It was a Friday in late August when four jet boats made their
way up the Klamath River under a cloudless blue sky. The boats
carried three tribal chairs. From the Karuk Tribe, there was
Russell “Buster” Attebery, who’d found pride as a boy catching
salmon from the river and bringing them home to his family, and
later come to believe some tribal youth’s troubles — from
suicides to substance use — could be traced back to their never
having had that opportunity, growing up alongside a river now
choked with algae and diminishing fish populations.
Yuba Water Agency’s board of directors today approved an
agreement that adds the Cordua Irrigation District to the
historic Lower Yuba River Accord, a model water management
agreement that supports endangered salmon and steelhead,
ensures water supplies for cities and farms and reduces
conflict over water use.
A man accused of illegally repairing a levee and damaging
sensitive aquatic habitat in the Suisun Marsh is facing a $2.8
million fine following a California appeals court decision last
month. John Sweeney, who ran a kiteboarding club on Point
Buckler Island in Solano County after buying it in 2011, must
also abide by a clean up and abatement order that requires him
to restore the marshlands and tidal channels damaged during the
levee work.
A recent global assessment, released by 16 conservation
organizations, of the world’s freshwater fish species found
that nearly a third are at risk of extinction. Overfishing and
climate change are the most significant and pervasive drivers
of the global decline in freshwater biodiversity, but the
blockages created by dams and the introduction of non-native
species have also played significant roles. The news is
distressing, yet CalTrout sees this as a call to action. Our
organization works diligently to ensure resilient wild fish
thrive in healthy waters.
A forecast of relatively low numbers of Sacramento and Klamath
River fall Chinook salmon now swimming in the ocean off
the California coast points to restricted ocean and
river salmon fishing seasons in 2021. State and
federal fishery managers during the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife’s salmon fishery information on-line meeting
on February 25 forecast an ocean abundance this year of 271,000
adult Sacramento Valley fall Chinook salmon, about 200,000 fish
lower than the 2020 estimate.
California’s rivers, wetlands, and other freshwater ecosystems
are in poor health. Water management practices, pollution,
habitat change, invasive species, and a changing climate have
all taken a toll, leaving many native species in dire straits.
And the current approach for managing freshwater ecosystems is
not working. In this video Jeff Mount, senior fellow at the
PPIC Water Policy Center, discusses the many benefits these
ecosystems bring to California, and outlines a path for
improving their condition to secure these benefits for future
generations.
The Bureau of Reclamation and Department of Water Resources
plan to allocate approximately 5 million acre feet of water
this year – as long as California allows them to effectively
drain the two largest reservoirs in the state, potentially
killing most or nearly all the endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon this year, threatening the state’s resilience to
continued dry conditions, and maybe even violating water
quality standards in the Delta.
Though the nonprofit tasked with Klamath River dam removal is
about to submit its definite plan to federal regulators, Del
Norte County and the Crescent City Harbor District are still
worried about potential negative impacts. Harbor commissioners
on Thursday agreed to sign onto a memorandum of understanding
that includes the county and the Klamath River Renewal
Corporation. The MOU contains conditions that ensures the
harbor and county can recover potential damages to the port and
the fishing industry that occur as a result of dam removal and
reservoir drawdown on the Klamath River.
How do you factor in climate change? It can be a worrisome
question, yet, it’s one that rightfully so demands an answer. A
question that seems to loom over us, especially those who work
within and on behalf of the environment. Yet, it might be
difficult to notice the effects of climate change on Putah
Creek. A walk along the creek exposes you to native riparian
habitat and birds aplenty. Surely, the Chinook salmon return to
their historic spawning habitat along Putah Creek could only
signal a more healthy and stabilized habitat. -Written by Alli Permann, Putah Creek Council Education
Program Assistant.
Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties could play host to
part of the largest new designation of federal wilderness in a
decade if Democratic sponsors of the land-protection package
can find a way through the divided U.S. Senate. A bill
sponsored by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, would designate
257,797 of new acres of wilderness in Northern California while
placing 480 miles of river in the region under the nation’s
strictest environmental protections for waterways.
Michael Preston grew up in the old village site of the Winnemem
Wintu tribe, along the McCloud River in Northern California
where the Shasta Dam has flooded spiritual and cultural lands.
Since the 1940s, the creation of the dam has also blocked the
usual migration of winter-run salmon, effectively endangering
the species. Now, there are proposals to raise the dam by an
additional 18.5 feet, which will cause further destruction.
“Our tribal goal is to bring the salmon back … ” he said,
adding that it’s more than just the fish. With the lack of
salmon, which is a keystone species, other animals, such as
bears, eagles and mountain lions are being starved.
The organization River Partners teamed up with California State
Parks and Butte County Resource Conservation District on
Thursday to host a flood plain restoration and
reforestation event. The event was called the
Bidwell-Sacramento River State Park Riparian Restoration
Project and was held near the Pine Creek Access point of the
Sacramento River in Chico.
San Francisco has long been an international leader on
environmental issues. However, water policy has been a stain on
that record. … Many California rivers are overtapped by
excessive pumping, but few are in worse condition than the
Tuolumne River. In drier years, more than 90% of the Tuolumne’s
water is diverted. On average, 80 percent of the river’s flow
never makes it to the Bay. It’s not a surprise that the river’s
health has collapsed. …
-Written by Bill Martin, a member of the Sierra Club
Bay Chapter Water Committee, and Hunter Cutting, a member
of the Sierra Club Bay Chapter’s San Francisco Group Executive
Committee.
Former Assemblymember Christy Smith announced that she has been
appointed by Speaker Anthony Rendon to serve on the Delta
Stewardship Council. … The Council was created to advance the
state’s coequal goals for the Delta – a more reliable statewide
water supply and a healthy and protected ecosystem, both
achieved in a manner that protects and enhances the unique
characteristics of the Delta as an evolving place.
As Executive Officer Jessica R. Pearson identified in her
December blog on the Delta Adapts initiative, “social
vulnerability means that a person, household, or community has
a heightened sensitivity to the climate hazards and/or a
decreased ability to adapt to those hazards.” With an eye
toward social vulnerability and environmental justice along
with the coequal goals in mind, we launched our Delta Adapts
climate change resilience initiative in 2018.
A local environmental group is urging the State Water Board to
investigate alleged water diversion from Gaviota Creek, an
action they assert is being done illegally and threatening the
population of endangered Southern Steelhead fish. Coastal
Ranches Conservancy, an environmental protection group that
operates along the Gaviota Coast, sent a petition to the State
Water Board back in June 2020, requesting that officials
examine water removal from Gaviota Creek. The CRC alleges that
the water diversion is happening illegally to provide water to
Gaviota rest stops.
Conservation groups said 80 species were known to have gone
extinct, 16 in the last year alone. Millions of people rely on
freshwater fish for food and as a source of income through
angling and the pet trade. But numbers have plummeted due to
pressures including pollution, unsustainable fishing, and the
damming and draining of rivers and wetlands. The report said
populations of migratory fish have fallen by three-quarters in
the last 50 years. Over the same time period, populations of
larger species, known as “megafish”, have crashed by 94%.
California’s environmental permitting system was developed to
prevent bad things from happening to the environment, but it
often slows efforts to do good things, too. How can California
improve regulatory processes to make them more efficient and
effective? The PPIC Water Policy Center recently discussed
these issues with a group of experts…
Coho salmon have recently been observed higher upstream in
Fortuna’s Rohner Creek than in previous years, thanks in part
to stream and habitat improvements completed last year. Flow
monitoring for fish passage at the 12th Street culvert has been
underway and the results are being finalized according to city
consultant, GHD Civil Engineer Brett Vivyan.
The largest dam removal in United States history is set to take
place along the Klamath River by 2023, but getting to this
point was neither easy nor quick. Water management, especially
in densely populated and water-scarce places like California,
is a challenge from practically every aspect: ownership and
operations of water infrastructure, local politics, maintenance
costs, and sustainability concerns.
Scientists at Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest
Service have demonstrated that DNA extracted from water samples
from rivers across Oregon and Northern California can be used
to estimate genetic diversity of Pacific salmon and trout. The
findings, just published in the journal Molecular Ecology, have
important implications for conservation and management of these
species, which are threatened by human activities, including
those exacerbating climate change.
There has been recent commentary and discussion around a
commodity futures market for water in California. In the
Sacramento Valley, we are not involved in this process; nor are
we participating in these contracts. Although we are not
entirely clear on this market or what is being traded, it is
clear that this new market does not involve real/wet
water–which is our focus in the Sacramento Valley. We will
continue to focus on serving water for cities and rural
communities, farms, fish, birds, other wildlife and recreation.
For the better part of the last two centuries, the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has been modified in any number of
ways to meet the demands of Californians. But a new
wide-ranging study looks at what might be the most serious
Delta threat that doesn’t come in the form of an excavator –
global warming.
Following a disappointing 2019 adult fall run on the Klamath,
2020 proved to be only slightly better. Unfortunately, the
numbers weren’t enough to get us out of the “overfished”
category, and it’s likely we’ll have some severe
restrictions both in the ocean and in the Klamath and Trinity
rivers in 2021. … According to CDFW, the number of returning
fall run kings in 2020 was 45,407, about half the long-term
average. In 2019 only 37,270 adult kings returned. The return
of fall Chinook jacks was 9,037 fish, which is also below the
long-term average of 17,740.
Modern forecasting methods fueled by advances in understanding
and predicting atmospheric river storms have enabled U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers (USACE) operators to better optimize water
resources at Lake Mendocino, a Northern California reservoir. A
multi-agency report issued Feb. 4, 2021, describes how
these forecasting tools have helped operators increase the
lake’s dry season stores of drinking water, improve its ability
to alleviate flood risk, and enhance environmental conditions
in the downstream Russian River to support salmonid
species.
Last month in an announcement on Business Wire, the Klamath
River Renewal Corporation (KRRC) and Resource Environmental
Solutions (RES) announced they have signed a contract for RES
to provide restoration services in connection with the removal
of four dams on the Klamath River. The agreement between RES
and KRRC finalizes habitat restoration, maintenance, and
liability transfer responsibilities for a fixed price, opening
the door to a successful restoration of native vegetation and
anadromous fish habitat along the historical, pre-dam path of
the Klamath River.
Federal scientists and regulators repeatedly complained they
were sidelined by Donald Trump’s administration when they
warned of risks to wildlife posed by a California water
management plan, according to newly unveiled documents.
Scientists studying annual salmon runs in Putah Creek are still
waiting for the absolute proof that fry born in the creek and
leave for the ocean as juveniles are returning to spawn.
However, since identifying one spawning fish in 2017 that was
identified with a Putah Creek-Feather River origin, the
University of California, Davis, and NOAA scientists have been
collecting additional samples each year for analysis.
In the Pacific Northwest, several species of salmon are in
danger of extinction. The Washington State Recreation and
Conservation Office has released a report on the
state of salmon populations in the state’s watersheds — and the
findings predict a grim future. … The population changes
aren’t surprising to [scientist Daniel] Pauly. “This is what
happens when temperature increases,” he said. “The fish are
looking for the temperatures that they are attuned to, and if
those temperatures are farther north, they move farther north.
If you make a map from high arctic Alaska to California, the
salmon stocks in California are essentially dead.”
A Northern California water users’ association has filed a
motion against a $450 million plan to tear down four dams on
the Klamath River they claim irrevocably hurts local
homeowners. The motion was filed with the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) last Wednesday by the Murphy and
Buchal Law firm on behalf of the Siskiyou County Water Users
Association. It claims the interstate agreement reached by
Oregon and California last year to remove the dams has incurred
“irreparable damage” to lakefront home values in the COPCO Lake
area as water levels are feared to decline.
It might be hard to imagine that it has already been more than
five years since we exited the extreme dry years of 2014 and
2015. At that time, local, state and federal water managers
were taking unprecedented actions in response to the dry
conditions to maximize beneficial uses and every Californian
was feeling the impact of multiple dry years. … In their
blog earlier this year, Fritz Durst and Brent Hastey outlined
much of the work that has occurred since 2015 to prepare
for the next dry year. In addition to those actions, we also
have worked to better identify the timing and quantity of water
needed during dry years to maximize habitat benefits with
limited resources.
Save the Redwoods League today announced the successful
protection of Mailliard Ranch, a 14,838-acre property in
southern Mendocino County and the largest coast redwood forest
left in private family hands. The $24.7 million project secures
three conservation easements across the entire property, which
safeguard the land from subdivision and development, regardless
of future ownership. In addition to protecting sustainable
working forests across nearly 14,000 acres, the easement
protects nearly 1,000 acres of reserves, including old-growth
coast redwoods, mature mixed-conifer forest and salmon-bearing
streams.
As long as people have lived in Pasadena, water has been an
essential element for the life-style, health and economy of our
region. Now, however, Pasadena faces a severe water crisis.
This never has been an easy need to resolve, but population,
growth and climate change have made the development of a
sustainable or resilient water program an even greater
necessity for the future. It’s not just a challenge
for Pasadena, but also for all of California, and even the
nation. -Written by Tim Brick, the Managing Director of the Arroyo
Seco Foundation.
Shortly after taking office two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom
promised to deliver a massive compromise deal on the water
rushing through California’s major rivers and the
critically-important Delta — and bring lasting peace to the
incessant water war between farmers, cities, anglers and
environmentalists. … [C]oming to an agreement as promised
will require Newsom’s most artful negotiating skills. He’ll
have to get past decades of fighting and maneuvering, at the
same time California is continuing to recover from the worst
wildfire season in modern state history and a pandemic that has
since killed more than 42,000 state residents.
The Klamath River Renewal Corporation last week signed an
agreement with Resource Environmental Solutions, a Texas-based
ecological restoration company, to provide restoration services
following the removal of four dams on the Klamath River. The
agreement with RES brings North Coast tribes one step closer to
their decades-long goal of dam removal.
Cascadian Farm, a pioneering brand in the organic movement,
announced its commitment of $750,000 to The Nature Conservancy
to help rebuild farmland in California’s Sacramento Valley. The
two-year investment will focus on partnering with farmers to
rebuild wildlife habitat and regenerate groundwater on more
than 25 million square feet, equal to 600 acres of farmland, in
this key sourcing region for the brand.
A detailed analysis released by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
could change its approach in operating the Klamath Project in
compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
While wetter streets and a greener White House may offer San
Franciscans some hope for the future, the situation remains
dire for salmon in the Tuolumne River. … [I]t’s hard not to
feel that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s water
policies are partially to blame. Californians are significantly
reducing or eliminating dependence on river water. But the
SFPUC continues to side with agricultural users to fight
limitations on the water it takes from the Tuolumne. -Written by Robyn Purchia, an environmental attorney,
blogger and activist
In an act of cultural appreciation, two open spaces in Redding
are being renamed using the native Wintu language. What has
been known as the Henderson Open Space along the bank of the
Sacramento River in the heart of the city will now be known as
“Nur Pon Open Space.” About $5-million have been spent in the
area in the last 10 years, including the construction of a
salmon spawning channel.
Sacramento, at least, is excited about Washington’s new climate
direction. Jared Blumenfeld and Wade Crowfoot head California’s
environmental protection and natural resources agencies,
respectively. Last week, they discussed with KQED’s Kevin Stark
what the change from the Trump to Biden administrations might
mean for California. … The president’s order to triple
protected land and waterways across the country should also
infuse the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
Management with badly needed funds.
On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we are
speaking with Sacramento Bee environment reporter Ryan Sabalow
about his five part investigation, Nothing Wild: California’s
relationship with the animal kingdom is broken. Can it be
fixed? Invasive grasses are causing fires to explode, thousands
of water birds are dying miserable deaths, and the sage grouse
is at risk of disappearing forever. Sabalow explores
California’s ecological crisis and our relationship with its
wild places.
The organization tasked with removing four dams on the Klamath
River has contracted with Resource Environmental Solutions to
spearhead habitat restoration work. The Bellaire, Texas firm
will be the lead restoration contractor for the project led by
the Klamath River Renewal Corporation. In hiring RES, KRRC
meets federal and state permitting requirements, according to a
Friday news release from Business Wire.
As we welcome the Biden and Harris administration to the White
House and a new California legislature into session, CalTrout
has taken some time to reflect and prepare for 2021. … We
have already seen glimpses of changes and good news: the
omnibus bill, passed in late 2020, offered restoration funding
for a key watershed. The executive orders signed on January
20th seek to restore science as our guiding light, and CalTrout
has an ambitious California advocacy agenda for 2021.
California researchers now investigating the source of [the
Sacramento River's Chinook] salmon’s nutritional problems find
themselves contributing to an international effort to
understand thiamine deficiency, a disorder that seems to be on
the rise in marine ecosystems across much of the planet. It’s
causing illness and death in birds, fish, invertebrates, and
possibly mammals, leading scientists from Seattle to
Scandinavia to suspect some unexplained process is compromising
the foundation of the Earth’s food web by depleting ecosystems
of this critical nutrient.
The official salmon count for Putah Creek revealed just 140
individuals for the winter run. That was down from 550 reported
last year and close to the same number the year before that,
and is considerably lower than the peak of nearly 2,000 fish
during the 2017 run. One count put the number for the 2019
report at closer to 1,500 fish.
Today, 95% of the Central Valley’s historical floodplains are
cut off from the river by levees. Built in the early 1900s to
combat devastating floods, levees and bypasses were constructed
to corral mighty rivers and push water quickly through the
system. Even before invasive species, large rim dams, and Delta
water export facilities were introduced into the system, salmon
populations started to dramatically decline with the
construction of the levees. Simply put, the levees prevented
Chinook salmon from accessing their primary food source.
[T]he decades-long effort to remove four hydroelectric dams
that clog the upper Klamath River should be seen not simply
through an environmental and economic lens but also a social
justice one, according to Craig Tucker, a natural resources
consultant for the Karuk Tribe.
If you look deep into the eyes of a fish, it will tell you its
life story. Scientists from the University of California,
Davis, demonstrate that they can use stable isotopic analysis
of the eye lenses of freshwater fish—including threatened and
endangered salmon—to reveal a fish’s life history and what it
ate along the way. They conducted their study, published today
in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, through
field-based experiments in California’s Central Valley. The
study carries implications for managing floodplains, fish and
natural resources; prioritizing habitat restoration efforts;
and understanding how landscape disturbances impact fish.
The biologists working in a fish hatchery near Shasta Dam grew
increasingly concerned last year when newly hatched salmon fry
began to act strangely — swimming around and around, in tight,
corkscrewing motions, before spiraling to their deaths at the
bottom of the tanks. … [S]cientists eventually unlocked part
of the mystery: The fish had a deficiency of thiamine, or
vitamin B1.
Guardians of the River, produced by American
Rivers and Swiftwater Films, focuses on the hard-won
efforts of leaders of the Yuroks. Frankie Joe Myers, vice
chair of the tribe; Sammy Gensaw, director of
the Ancestral Guard; Barry McCovey, fisheries
biologist with the tribe; and members of the Ancestral
Guard and Klamath Justice Coalition share why removing
four dams across southern Oregon and Northern California is
vital to restoring clean water, food
sovereignty, and justice for the Klamath River.
Californians have recently endured increasingly aggressive
wildfires, rolling power outages, and smoke-filled air for
days. Unless the state government changes course, we can
add water shortages to this list. … However, the dirty
little secret is that 50 percent of California’s water supply
is used for environmental purposes and is ultimately flushed
out into the Pacific Ocean, 40 percent goes to agriculture, and
only 10 percent goes for residential, industrial, commercial,
and governmental uses. -Written by Daniel Kolkey, a former judge and former
counsel to Governor Pete Wilson and board member of Pacific
Research Institute.
A federal agency has ruled that the state can continue to seek
higher flows on the Tuolumne River than planned by the Modesto
and Turlock irrigation districts. The Jan. 19 ruling drew
cheers from environmental and fishing groups that have long
sought larger releases from Don Pedro Reservoir into the lower
river.
San Francisco rightly prides itself on being an environmental
leader. Given this deep commitment to protecting the
environment, the city’s water agency — the San Francisco Public
Utilities Commission — should be a leader in smart, sustainable
water policy. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. But
Mayor London Breed now has a once-in-a-decade chance to turn
the SFPUC in a new direction by appointing a progressive,
visionary new general manager who reflects the city’s values.
San Francisco’s Bay-Delta ecosystem and the Central Valley
rivers that feed it are in steep decline… -Written by John McManus, president of the Golden State
Salmon Association, and Kate Poole, the water lead for the
Natural Resources Defense Council.
California water issues are notoriously complicated by a
massive diversity of users, ecosystems, applications and
futures. Indeed, water in the Delta has been described as
a “wicked problem” indicating that these problems cannot
be ignored and defy straightforward characterization and
solutions. Below we highlight how a Swiss cheese model might be
applied to vexing long-term declines in native fish populations
in California.
California’s tussle with federal authorities over water
operations will get a second look under the new administration
of President Joe Biden. The 46th president plans to sign a
number of executive orders, including one that instructs agency
heads to review actions taken under President Donald Trump that
“were harmful to public health, damaging to the environment,
unsupported by the best available science, or otherwise not in
the national interest.” On the list for both the departments of
Commerce and Interior is a review of new biological opinions
adopted in 2019 governing water delivery in California.
Chinook salmon have spawned for millennia in Auburn
Ravine Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River in
Northern California northeast of Sacramento, but
biologists have been uncertain if salmon could get past the
Chaparral Cascades. … Now there is proof that salmon can
get through the cascades to spawn upstream. A local resident
noticed salmon spawning about 375 yards upstream from the
Chaparral Cascades on November 5, 2016 and preserved video
proof of that…
More than 200 farm and water organizations from 15 states are
urging President-elect Joe Biden and congressional leaders to
address aging Western water infrastructure in any economic
recovery package. Groups including state Farm Bureaus, the
Family Farm Alliance and Western Growers issued letters to
Biden and lawmakers Wednesday saying existing canals and
reservoirs were built more than 50 years ago and are in
desperate need of rehabilitation.
After years of negotiations and agreements, roadblocks,
renegotiations, and new agreements, dam removal on the Klamath
river is closer than ever to becoming a reality. With almost
all of the bureaucratic hurdles overcome, four of the six dams
on the Klamath are slated to be removed by 2024, restoring fish
access to the entire river. If carried out as planned, it will
be the largest dam removal project in the history of the United
States, opening up 400 river-miles of habitat to
salmon, trout, and eels, for the first time in decades. The
Yurok Tribe and Klamath River Renewal Corporation hope it will
also mean a return to a healthy river…
We’ve reached a critical moment to take action for endangered,
wild coho salmon and the forests and watersheds they need to
survive. But we can’t do it alone. From keeping an eye out for
pollution in the environment to using reusable tote bags, there
are many actions we can take as individuals to help create a
healthy planet for us all. We’ve put together five ways to be
salmon-friendly in 2021…
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC)
put tire manufacturers on notice that California wants them to
explore alternatives to using zinc, a toxic chemical that harms
aquatic life and burdens waterways. Zinc helps make rubber
stronger, but also wears off tire tread and washes into storm
drains, streams, rivers and lakes, threatening California fish
and other aquatic organisms.
The Yurok people have lived in the 15,700 square miles Klamath
River Basin, in what is now called Northern California, for
millennia. They are among the key organizers in a coalition of
Indigenous groups, environmentalists, concerned citizens and
commercial fishers that have joined forces in a decades-long
movement to Un-dam the Klamath.
In the latter part of 2020, various actions were implemented in
the Sacramento Valley to promote salmon recovery that point
positive as we begin 2021. Even during a global pandemic,
partners were working together on efforts to advance science to
inform salmon recovery decisions and tangible projects to
improve habitat for fish
There has likely been 95% or more decline in [coho salmon]
numbers since the 1960s in California due to dam construction
and habitat degradation from various land-use practices. Toxic
tire pollution is another threat added to the already long lost
of myriad threats this species face.
Holidays are a natural time of introspection on who we are,
what we do, and why. Towards a bit of our own self-reflection,
some researchers from UC Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences
(CWS) have each contributed a photo and short description of
their work. We hope you enjoy reading about us and learning
even more about us. It is hopefully a soft bookend to a wild
2020!
For years, researchers have worked to solve the mysterious
cause of extreme coho salmon mortality in the Pacific
Northwest. A recent study by the San Francisco Estuary
Institute and the University of Washington has finally
identified the microscopic culprit as a highly toxic
contaminant associated with tire particles…The study focused
on water samples from the San Francisco Bay area and the Puget
Sound in Washington state, but scientists fear the contaminant
could affect coho salmon in the Eel and Klamath rivers as well.
After a record-setting season of catastrophic wildfires in
California, no single fire in 2020 burned more than the Creek
Fire in the Upper San Joaquin River watershed east of Fresno.
The Creek Fire, the largest single-source fire in California
history, ravaged nearly 380,000 acres from September to
November. Now, with 35% of the watershed burned, hydrologists
want to better understand what impact the Creek Fire may have
on spring runoff – essential to the San Joaquin Valley’s water
supply and to the welfare of a burgeoning salmon population.
The only hope for salmon to return to the Klamath River, which
runs though southern Oregon and northern California before
emptying into the Pacific Ocean, is to remove some of those
river-blocking dams because they have interfered with the
breeding habits of the fish, experts say.
Southern California steelhead are statistically the most
endangered native fish in America. In the early 1900s, hundreds
of thousands of them returned to the rivers between San Louis
Obispo and Mexico. Now, there are reportedly under a few
hundred adults returning annually.
