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.
A well-known Sonoma County vineyard executive is facing a
multi-million-dollar state fine for allegedly removing trees
and destroying a small wetland on a rural patch of land east of
Cloverdale. Hugh Reimers and Krasilsa Pacific Farms could be on
the hook for up to $3.75 million in fines for allegedly cutting
down trees, grading, ripping and other activities near
tributaries to Little Sulphur Creek, Big Sulphur Creek and
Crocker Creek in the Russian River Watershed … In a complaint
filed May 9, the Water Board accused Reimers and Krasilsa
Pacific Farms of also failing to abide by a 2019 cleanup and
abatement order, which required them to restore the streams and
wetlands.
Gobs of oily tar continue to slip past containment booms and
drain into the Smith River, nearly a month after an overturned
trailer spilled 2,000 gallons of the hot asphalt binder onto
U.S. 199 between Hiouchi and Gasquet. Spokesperson Eric
Laughlin with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s
Office of Spill Prevention and Response confirmed with the
Outpost that the toxic goop is actively leaking into the Smith
River, and that the agency received new reports of the material
traveling downstream on Friday.
If you think about the pollution your car causes, chances are
you’re not thinking about the tires. And probably even less
about a faraway creek, where a Coho Salmon is dying. But
researchers at the University of Washington and elsewhere
… say as the rubber wears away from car tires during
everyday driving, it spreads tiny micro particles, including a
destructive chemical called 6PPD. … Now, with
information gathered in part by the [San Francisco Estuary]
Institute, the State of California is stepping in, laying the
groundwork for potential regulations to curb the toxic tire
pollution.
Today, there are hundreds of hatcheries in the Northwest run by
federal, state and tribal governments … The fish they send to
the Pacific Ocean have allowed restaurants and grocery seafood
counters to offer “wild-caught” Chinook salmon even as the fish
became endangered. The hatcheries were supposed to stop the
decline of salmon. They haven’t. The numbers of each of the six
salmon species native to the Columbia basin have dropped to a
fraction of what they once were, and 13 distinct populations
are now considered threatened or endangered.
Tribes and environmental groups are challenging how the state
manages water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a
major source for much of California, arguing the deterioration
of the aquatic ecosystem has links to the state’s troubled
legacy of racism and oppression of Native people. A group of
activists and Indigenous leaders is demanding that the state
review and update the water quality plan for the Delta and San
Francisco Bay, where fish species are suffering, algae blooms
have worsened and climate change is adding to the
stresses.
Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, is maneuvering against a bill
that seeks higher flows on local rivers. Assembly Bill 2639
would set a Dec. 31, 2023, deadline for the State Water
Resources Control Board to complete its plan for tributaries to
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. They include the Stanislaus,
Tuolumne and Merced rivers. The decision would follow decades
of wrangling over whether fish should get more water on the
lower rivers at the expense of farms and cities.
As drought conditions continue, people who rely on the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are demanding California make sure
their communities are protected. Early Tuesday, a group
gathered in front of the California State Water Resources
Control Board building to demand the state enforce the
Bay-Delta plan. It’s been a long fight and the group said
enough is enough. For many of the tribes, the Delta is an
important lifeline.
Four PacifiCorps dams — the J.C. Boyle, Copco No. 1 and No. 2,
and Iron Gate — are scheduled to be removed as part of a
controversial effort that advocates have said will restore the
health of the river, fish and communities along the river,
including several in the Upper Klamath Basin. Dam removal is
something that has drawn heated discussion for and against for
decades, highlighted in 2001 when decisions to not release
water to Klamath Basin irrigators resulted in protests and
demonstrations that drew national attention.
The fish need the water, the farmers and ranchers need the
water, and the fish win. Because coho salmon are on the
Endangered Species List in the region, and the Scott and Shasta
Rivers are important to their survival. The State of California
put emergency rules in place governing groundwater around those
rivers, and the people in agriculture take exception. We hear
the environmental side of the issue in this interview. Craig
Tucker, Natural Resources Policy Advocate for the Karuk Tribe,
lays out the importance of the water for the fish …
A Trump era decision has further imperiled endangered fish
species in the Trinity River, and commercial fishermen and
local tribes are demanding the federal government take action.
This week, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations and its sister organization Institute for
Fisheries Research sent the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation a 60-day
notice of their intention to sue the federal agency for
violating the Endangered Species Act. The amount of water the
bureau is diverting from the Trinity River to the Central
Valley Project has decimated the river’s salmon populations
…
After decades of negotiation, the largest dam-removal project
in U.S. history is expected to begin in California’s far north
next year. The first of four aging dams on the Klamath River,
the 250-mile waterway that originates in southern Oregon’s
towering Cascades and empties along the rugged Northern
California coast, is on track to come down in fall 2023. Two
others nearby and one across the state line will follow.
… The native flora and fauna in the region are bound to
prosper as algae-infested reservoirs at the dams are emptied,
the flow of the river quickens and cools, and river passage
swings wide open.
In a stopgap measure to help struggling spring- and winter-run
Chinook salmon spawn in the face of rising water temperatures
and lower water levels due to climate change, state and federal
wildlife officials in Northern California have begun trucking
adult fish to cooler waters. The spring- and winter-run salmon
are genetically different, with the seasonal labels marking
when adult fish travel from the Pacific Ocean back to the
Sacramento River to spawn. The spring-run Chinook, listed
as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, are being moved
from traps at the base of Keswick Dam to Clear Creek in the
Sacramento River.
The final hurdle is in sight and expected to be overcome, in
the decades-long fight to remove four dams from the Klamath
River and hopefully allow restoration of the river’s Chinook
salmon population which was once the third-largest in the
country, but in recent years has plummeted by as much as
ninety-eight percent. The four dams were built between 1903 and
1967 as part of PacifiCorp’s Klamath Hydroelectric Project and
are now obsolete. Removing them will provide native migratory
fish, like Chinook salmon, access to larger spawning grounds.
It will also help restore the natural flow of the river,
providing innumerable benefits to the entire ecosystem.
The Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta lies at the confluence of two
of the state’s largest rivers. Forty percent of California’s
runoff flows into the Delta, which—together with the San
Francisco Bay—forms one of the West Coast’s largest estuaries.
The Delta watershed supplies water to roughly 30 million
residents and more than 6 million acres of farmland. Water
exported from the Delta goes to the Bay Area, the southern San
Joaquin Valley, the Central Coast, and Southern California
(first figure).
Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging Californians to find ways to reduce
their water use in an effort to combat the historic drought and
said upcoming conservation mandates are a priority. The
governor visited a water recycling facility Tuesday afternoon
in Carson. It was originally built as a demonstration project
to recycle household wastewater and replenish groundwater
supplies…. Statewide, water consumption is up just 3.7% since
July compared to 2020, woefully short of Newsom’s 15% goal.
Newsom pledged to spend $100 million on a statewide advertising
campaign to encourage water conservation.
Most people have never heard of Sites, California. It’s just a
tiny dot on maps, little more than an intersection in the road
on the remote west side of rural Colusa County in Northern
California. But the surrounding Antelope Valley, where
wildflowers bloom and cattle graze on spring grasses, is one of
the next battlegrounds in California’s water wars. Under plans
endorsed by state, federal and local officials, the valley
would be flooded by the Sites Reservoir, a 14,000-acre lake
that would take in water pumped from the Sacramento River and
store it for agricultural and municipal use during dry periods.
The rice farmer John Brennan … [is] collaborating with the
scientist Jacob Katz to turn a piece of the Sacramento Valley,
specifically in the Yolo Bypass, into a floodplain that can be
home to baby Chinook salmon during the winter months, as they
make their way down the river system to the Pacific. Their
experiment, aptly named the Nigiri Project (in reference to the
beds of seasoned sushi rice draped in little blankets of raw
fish), involves flooding Brennan’s rice fields once the grain
has been harvested so that the depleted stalks can decompose in
the water, thereby making those nutrients available to bugs and
plankton, which then serve as food for schools of growing
salmon.
Mark your calendars now for our upcoming fall 2022
tours exploring California’s two largest rivers – the
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers! On our
Northern
California Tour, Oct. 12-14, participants
can learn about key reservoirs and infrastructure that
transports vital water resources statewide.
Our San Joaquin River Restoration Tour
Nov. 2-3 returns this year to tell the
story of bringing back a river’s chinook salmon while
balancing water supply needs. Registration is
coming soon!
Rare traits and behaviors within a population often get less
attention, but might sometimes be the perfect ingredient to
ensure the survival of a species in the face of threats like
climate change. A recent article published in the journal
Nature revealed the surprising success of a rare life-history
strategy for threatened spring-run Chinook salmon. Juveniles
that spent the summer in cool, high-elevation habitat and
migrated in the fall rather than the spring were found to be
crucial to the success of the population, especially in years
experiencing stressful environmental conditions.
California will acquire a sprawling former farm property in the
San Joaquin Valley and create a new state park for the first
time in 13 years. The park is planned for Dos Rios Ranch, where
the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers meet southwest of Modesto.
For the 20th year in a row, people from tribal communities
along the Klamath River are preparing to run the more than 300
mile length of the river, tracing the route of the salmon that
are struggling to survive. … A new 13-minute documentary
called “Bring the Salmon Home” by filmmaker Shane Anderson
highlights the Klamath Salmon Run, which is set to begin at
7:30 a.m. Thursday. The Salmon Run was started after a historic
fish kill in 2002 decimated the Klamath River’s salmon.
A decade ago, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway wrote the seminal
book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured
the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.
Oreskes and Conway documented how scientists paid by the
tobacco industry sowed doubt about the links between smoking
and lung cancer, and how the same strategy has been used with
climate change, acid rain, the ozone hole, and asbestos.
Similar tactics have been used to sow doubt about the causes of
the collapse of native fish populations in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and its watersheds.
Research in Seattle-area creeks has discovered tire bits
shedding lethal amounts of a little-known, salmon-killing
chemical called 6PPD-quinone. … In December 2020, 27
coauthors published an article in the journal Science
identifying 6PPD-quinone as the coho killer. Within weeks, the
U.S Tire Manufacturers Association asked California officials
to treat tires with 6PPD as a priority under the state’s
toxic-chemical laws. Coho salmon is an endangered species in
California. The California rule, once finalized, would give
manufacturers of tires sold there 180 days to assess any known
or potential alternatives to 6PPD in tire rubber.
After years of exclusionary backroom negotiations over
Bay-Delta voluntary agreements, earlier this week the State
made a ham-fisted attempt to greenwash these proposed voluntary
agreements, sending this email inviting a handful of people
who had participated in VA conversations years ago to
participate in “two workshops to finalize the governance and
decision-making process for the implementation of the VA
program.”
What if you had just enough water to spare to make a
life-or-death difference for vulnerable coho salmon or a
steelhead trout stranded in a drought-stricken stream? Federal
and state fish and wildlife officials hope there may be grape
growers or other landowners in key areas of the lower Russian
River watershed who might be willing to share some of their
water to support endangered coho and threatened steelhead. It
doesn’t take much.
The Yolo Bypass is one of two large flood bypasses in
California’s Central Valley that are examples of multi-benefit
floodplain projects (Figure 1; Serra-Llobet et al.,
2022). Originally constructed in the early 20th century
for flood control, up to 75% of the Sacramento River’s flood
flow can be diverted through a system of weirs into the Yolo
Bypass and away from nearby communities (Figure 2; Salcido,
2012; Sommer et al., 2001). During the dry season, floodplain
soils in the bypass support farming of seasonal crops (mostly
rice). Today, the bypass is also widely recognized for its
ecological benefits.
From its headwaters in the Sierra Nevada, the Feather River
flows some 3,600 feet downhill, where, in Oroville, it meets
the tallest dam in the nation. Its path shows exactly why
California geology is ideal for the production of hydropower.
It’s physics. The higher the mountains, the faster the water
falls. Hydropower dams capture this power and divert it through
spinning turbines in nearby powerhouses that activate
generators to produce electricity. But all this hydropower
comes at a cost.
Rivers in California’s Central Valley like to go their own way:
they expand, contract, meander and regenerate soil in the
process. The historic movement of rivers is what made Central
Valley soil so fertile. Naturally flowing rivers recharge and
save water for people and nature, providing habitat for many
species including four distinct runs of chinook salmon.
Before the early 20th century, the Sacramento River had one of
the biggest salmon runs in North America …
California water regulators hosted a public forum on Wednesday
to collect comments about re-adopting drought emergency
regulations for Siskiyou County’s Scott and Shasta River
watersheds. … In response [to current drought conditions],
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
is requesting the re-adoption of a 12-month drought
emergency regulation to protect salmon, steelhead and
other native fish.
Local watersheds in the Eel River Valley and Southern Humboldt
County will benefit from five grants recently awarded by the
McLean Foundation. Grant recipients are the Eel River Recovery
Project and Friends of the Van Duzen, the Salmonid Restoration
Federation, Mattole Restoration Council, Friends of the Eel
River, and Friends of the Lost Coast.
Critically endangered adult salmon are again swimming above a
century-old dam in this remote corner of far Northern
California in the shadow of the Mount Lassen volcano. But this
isn’t a habitat-restoration success story — at least not yet.
For the past two weeks, state and federal fisheries managers
have begun hauling the winter-run Chinook nearly 50 miles by
truck from the dangerously warming Sacramento River to a
stretch of the north fork of Battle Creek and releasing them, a
handful at a time, into the creek’s icy waters.
Congressman Jared Huffman introduced a new bill this week that
aims to give land back to the Yurok Tribe. HR7581, known as the
Yurok Lands Act, would expand the Yurok reservation boundaries
and give the tribe more than 1,229 additional acres of U.S.
Forest Service land. … By reclaiming land, the Tribe
hopes to help keep local forests and salmon populations
healthy.
A coalition of water stakeholder organizations from across
California joined together to send a letter addressed to
Gov. Gavin Newsom and six key legislators requesting
action to address water issues. The nine page document dated
April 19, 2022 was signed by 18 organizations and entities
including the San Joaquin Valley Water Blueprint and 10
Southern California, four Bay Area and three trade groups. The
letter laid out the need to include a $6.5 billion
appropriation in the 2022-2023 General Fund budget to
strengthen statewide drought and flood resilience. -Written by Don Wright, a contributor to The San
Joaquin Valley Sun.
In addition to sufficient flows of cold water, chinook salmon
migrating in the Sacramento River depend on having sufficient
gravel in the riverbed to support spawning. In response to that
need, Reclamation and its partners — U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, Sacramento River Settlement
Contractors, Reclamation District 108, and the
Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District – recently completed
placing 20,000 tons of spawning gravel on the west bank of the
Sacramento River below Keswick Dam.
The Klamath Basin provides a cautionary tale for Oregon about
the need to plan more intentionally and sustainably with its
shrinking water supply. Though the state and its watersheds
aren’t newcomers to drought, research suggests that climate
change is magnifying the impacts of the region’s natural wet
and dry cycles…. Oregon’s next governor will inherit a
state whose ecosystems, economy and communities are enduring
their driest period in 1,200 years.
In this new series, our Communications Associate, Kara
Glenwright, sits down for conversations with the women on our
Conservation and Policy/Legal teams. Follow along as these
women share their own stories and experiences as women in
conservation and science at CalTrout.
For the first time in half a century, ocean-going fish will
soon be able to migrate up Alameda Creek to spawn, now that a
second fish ladder has been completed in the lower portion of
the creek in Fremont. Alameda County Water District and Alameda
County Flood Control District officials on Monday celebrated
the completion of the fish ladder, which was finished earlier
this month, according to Sharene Gonzales, a water district
spokesperson. The ladder, which consists of a series of
steadily elevating pools, allows migratory fish such as Chinook
salmon and threatened steelhead trout to get around human-made
barriers in the lower creek …
Over the past two centuries, 95% of the Central Valley’s
wetlands have been lost to development, landscaped out of
existence to satisfy the hunger of an urbanizing, growing
nation. But that’s only part of the picture. California’s
Central Valley extends far beyond what you can see from the
freeways bisecting the belly of the state to connect the
Redding to the Bay Area to Los Angeles. The region once boasted
one of the largest and most biologically diverse wetlands on
earth nourished by the mighty Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers
…
Rather than planning for droughts and ensuring that minimum
water quality objectives are achieved in critically dry years,
the proposed voluntary agreement appears to be a “plan to fail”
to protect the Delta in future droughts. Droughts are a
fact of life in California, even as climate change is making
them worse. The Governor’s Water Resilience Portfolio
recognizes the need to improve drought preparedness, requiring
that the State to be able to protect fish and wildlife during a
six year drought …
On a cold April evening, a few dozen people gathered inside the
humid Roaring Judy Fish Hatchery north of Gunnison. Adults and
kids hovered over the sides of 22 concrete tanks filled to the
brim with millions of kokanee salmon fry — 3.1 million to be
exact…. For years, the Gunnison hatchery has led the
state in the annual harvest of kokanee eggs. But drought and
obligation to demands downstream in the Colorado River Basin
are drawing down water levels and robbing the kokanee of their
habitat.
In November 2021, salmon entering Putah Creek were part of a
large fish kill in the lower creek. The event took
everyone familiar with the creek by surprise and prevented
successful migration of the creek’s fall salmon. Only 4 or 5
adult Chinook salmon made it upstream to suitable spawning
habitat. The result was particularly tragic as it followed
on the heels of the restoration of a salmon run in the creek,
as well as habitat for other fishes.
No one was surprised by Thursday’s letter granting PG&E an
annual license to run the Potter Valley Project until April of
next year. And, while a last-minute mystery application did
provide a few moments of titillating speculation, the enigmatic
Antonio Manfredini failed to generate any real suspense. The
50-year license to operate the Potter Valley Project, which
diverts water from the Eel River into the east branch of the
Russian River to Lake Mendocino by way of a tunnel, a pair of
dams and reservoirs, and a small hydropower plant, expired on
April 14.
Northern California farmers use pumped river water during
freezing spring nights to coat the growing grapes with a
protective layer of ice, and without this protection there
could be significant losses to crops. That water, however,
comes from the homes of the hook-mouthed coho salmon and
the threatened steelhead trout. Once plentiful, the coho salmon
is now a protected species under threat (via NOAA Fisheries).
Salmon-Safe seeks to protect important species in California
and beyond, while still supporting the many brewery and winery
industries that need water to thrive.
The Sacramento River Settlement Contractors are currently
implementing another project on the Sacramento River just
downstream from Keswick Reservoir that will contribute to the
habitat targets established by the recently signed Voluntary
Agreements Memorandum of Understanding. The 2022 Keswick Gravel
Injection Project will provide much needed spawning habitat in
the upper Sacramento River for endangered winter-run Chinook
salmon.
With very little rain falling throughout our region from
January to March, most of us were already preparing for summer.
However, the April showers hitting the coast are providing a
second winter. These rains will definitely impact the health of
future salmon and steelhead runs, which will likely be stronger
a few years down the road because of it.
The Bureau of Reclamation recently announced this year’s
restoration flow schedule for the Trinity River. … Due to
lack of precipitation and snowpack in the Trinity Mountains
this winter, the flow schedule for 2022 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
determine 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 100-year-old Potter Valley Project consists of two dams
along Northern California’s Eel River. The upstream Scott Dam
blocks salmon and steelhead from reaching prime spawning
grounds, according to Alicia Hamann, the director of Friends of
Eel River. Both fish are threatened under the Endangered
Species Act. Friends of the Eel River are one of a handful of
environmental groups planning to sue PG&E to seek
protections for these dwindling fish populations.
Concerns are being raised over what the drought might be doing
to an ancient salmon run that goes through the heart of Silicon
Valley. Roger Castillo doesn’t look after the rivers and
streams and their wildlife in Silicon Valley because it’s his
job. He does it because he loves it. … The mostly
self-taught citizen-naturalist is a former truck mechanic who
just discovered thriving schools of Chinook salmon fry in Los
Gatos Creek. But because of reduced water flows due to the
drought, they’re likely to become trapped in pools of warm
water upstream with no way to swim out to sea when they mature.
A Native American tribe in Oregon said Tuesday it is assessing
its legal options after learning the U.S. government plans to
release water from a federally operated reservoir to downstream
farmers along the Oregon-California border amid a historic
drought. Even limited irrigation for the farmers who use
Klamath River water on about 300 square miles of crops puts two
critically endangered fish species in peril of extinction
because the water withdrawals come at the height of spawning
season, The Klamath Tribes said.
Growing up in a Northern Californian fishing town, Nate
Mantua’s family owned a business connected to the local salmon
fishing industry. When one of the worst El Niño events ever
recorded hit the West Coast in 1982 and 1983, the salmon
fishery his family relied on suffered. Nate would go on to
study how to predict El Niño events in graduate school, years
later. Now he works to understand the impacts of climate
change. Nate leads a team of salmon ecologists, biologists,
freshwater and ocean experts at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest
Fisheries Science Center.
A coalition of fishery groups has formally notified PG&E
that it plans to file suit under the Endangered Species Act,
alleging the continued injury to once abundant federally
protected salmon and steelhead trout as a result of operations
at the utility’s aging Potter Valley powerhouse. The legal
maneuver is part of an effort to expedite removal of Scott and
Cape Horn dams, which pose a threat to vulnerable fish species
in the Eel River and block access to hundreds of miles of prime
habitat upstream.
Not only does the proposed Bay-Delta voluntary agreement wholly
fail to provide the water that the environment needs, but even
the woefully inadequate flows and the habitat restoration
proposed in the VA would largely come from other water users
and taxpayers, rather than the water districts that signed the
MOU. … [P]art of the funding supposedly coming from
water districts simply redirects existing fees they are
required to pay under the 1992 Central Valley Project
Improvement Act ($10M/year).
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) announces
California recreational ocean salmon fishing season dates are
now set for the remainder of 2022 and offer about the same
number of open days as last year. Sport fisheries opened south
of Point Arena on April 2 and the remainder of the coast will
open May 1. Although anglers can enjoy an earlier start to the
season than last year, there will be intermittent breaks in
fishing opportunity in management areas north of Pigeon Point.
Flows will ramp up on the Tuolumne River over several days to
help newly hatched salmon reach the Pacific Ocean. The river
will rise as much as 6 feet as measured at the Ninth Street
Bridge in Modesto, the Turlock Irrigation District said in a
news release Wednesday. The water will be released from Don
Pedro Reservoir near La Grange starting Saturday, April 16. It
will peak in the middle of next week and ramp back down by
Monday, April 25. The water takes about 24 hours to reach
Modesto and continues on to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Land and waterway managers labored
hard over the course of a century to control California’s unruly
rivers by building dams and levees to slow and contain their
water. Now, farmers, environmentalists and agencies are undoing
some of that work as part of an accelerating campaign to restore
the state’s major floodplains.
Biologists have designed a variety
of unique experiments in the past decade to demonstrate the
benefits that floodplains provide for small fish. Tracking
studies have used acoustic tags to show that chinook salmon
smolts with access to inundated fields are more likely than their
river-bound cohorts to reach the Pacific Ocean. This is because
the richness of floodplains offers a vital buffet of nourishment
on which young salmon can capitalize, supercharging their growth
and leading to bigger, stronger smolts.
This tour guided participants on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
In 1983, a landmark California Supreme Court ruling extended the public trust doctrine to tributary creeks that feed Mono Lake, which is a navigable water body even though the creeks themselves were not. The ruling marked a dramatic shift in water law and forced Los Angeles to cut back its take of water from those creeks in the Eastern Sierra to preserve the lake.
Now, a state appellate court has for the first time extended that same public trust doctrine to groundwater that feeds a navigable river, in this case the Scott River flowing through a picturesque valley of farms and alfalfa in Siskiyou County in the northern reaches of California.
An hour’s drive north of Sacramento sits a picture-perfect valley hugging the eastern foothills of Northern California’s Coast Range, with golden hills framing grasslands mostly used for cattle grazing.
Back in the late 1800s, pioneer John Sites built his ranch there and a small township, now gone, bore his name. Today, the community of a handful of families and ranchers still maintains a proud heritage.
Farmers in the Central Valley are broiling about California’s plan to increase flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems to help struggling salmon runs avoid extinction. But in one corner of the fertile breadbasket, River Garden Farms is taking part in some extraordinary efforts to provide the embattled fish with refuge from predators and enough food to eat.
And while there is no direct benefit to one farm’s voluntary actions, the belief is what’s good for the fish is good for the farmers.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned about the
issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of
California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State
Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
Before dams were built on the upper
Sacramento River, flood water regularly carried woody debris that
was an important part of the aquatic habitat.
Deprived of this refuge, salmon in the lower parts of the upper
Sacramento River have had a difficult time surviving and making
it down the river and out to the ocean. Seeing this, a group of
people, including water users, decided to lend a hand with an
unprecedented pilot project that saw massive walnut tree trunks
affixed to 12,000-pound boulders and deposited into the deepest
part of the Sacramento River near Redding to provide shelter for
young salmon and steelhead migrating downstream.
Protecting and restoring California’s populations of threatened
and endangered Chinook salmon and steelhead trout have been a big
part of the state’s water management picture for more than 20
years. Significant resources have been dedicated to helping the
various runs of the iconic fish, with successes and setbacks. In
a landscape dramatically altered from its natural setting,
finding a balance between the competing demands for water is
challenging.
Less than 50 miles northeast of Chico, California, begins the
93-mile Butte Creek – a tributary of the Sacramento River. It is named
after Butte County, which was in turn named for the nearby
volcanic plateaus, or “buttes,” and travels through a massive
canyon on its way southwest to the Sacramento Valley.
As a watershed, it drains about 800 square miles, both for
agricultural and residential use. The upper watershed is
dominated by forests, while the lower watershed is primarily
agricultural.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
This 30-minute documentary-style DVD on the history and current
state of the San Joaquin River Restoration Program includes an
overview of the geography and history of the river, historical
and current water delivery and uses, the genesis and timeline of
the 1988 lawsuit, how the settlement was reached and what was
agreed to.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, features
a map of the San Joaquin River. The map text focuses on the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program, which aims to restore flows
and populations of Chinook salmon to the river below Friant Dam
to its confluence with the Merced River. The text discusses the
history of the program, its goals and ongoing challenges with
implementation.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Truckee River Basin, including
the Newlands Project, Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe. Map text
explains the issues surrounding the use of the Truckee-Carson
rivers, Lake Tahoe water quality improvement efforts, fishery
restoration and the effort to reach compromise solutions to many
of these issues.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to
Flood Management explains the physical flood control system,
including levees; discusses previous flood events (including the
1997 flooding); explores issues of floodplain management and
development; provides an overview of flood forecasting; and
outlines ongoing flood control projects.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to California Water provides an
excellent overview of the history of water development and use in
California. It includes sections on flood management; the state,
federal and Colorado River delivery systems; Delta issues; water
rights; environmental issues; water quality; and options for
stretching the water supply such as water marketing and
conjunctive use. New in this 10th edition of the guide is a
section on the human need for water.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Central Valley Project
explores the history and development of the federal Central
Valley Project (CVP), California’s largest surface water delivery
system. In addition to the project’s history, the guide describes
the various CVP facilities, CVP operations, the benefits the CVP
brought to the state and the CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA).
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
The Red Bluff Diversion Dam, its gates raised since 2011 to allow
fish passage, spans the Sacramento River two miles
southeast of Red Bluff on the Sacramento River in Tehama County.
It is owned by the Bureau of Reclamation and operated and
maintained by the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority.
Pelagic fish are those that live near the water’s surface rather
than on the bottom. In California, pelagic fish species include
the Delta smelt, longfin
smelt, striped bass and salmon.
In California, the fate of pelagic fish has been closely tied to
the use of the water that supports them.
The Klamath Basin’s Chinook salmon and coho salmon serve a vital
role in the watershed.
Together, they are key to the region’s water management, habitat
restoration and fishing.
However, years of declining population have led to federally
mandated salmon restoration plans—plans that complicate the
diversion of Klamath water for agriculture and other uses.
Battle Creek, a tributary of the
Sacramento River in Shasta and Tehama counties, is considered one
of the most important anadromous fish spawning streams in the
Sacramento Valley.
At present, barriers make it difficult for anadromous fish,
including chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead trout, to
migrate. Battle Creek has several hydroelectric dams, diversions
and a complex canal system between its north and south forks that
impede migration.
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed issue of Western Water examines science –
the answers it can provide to help guide management decisions in
the Delta and the inherent uncertainty it holds that can make
moving forward such a tenuous task.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the Russian and
Santa Ana rivers – areas with ongoing issues not dissimilar to
the rest of the state – managing supplies within a lingering
drought, improving water quality and revitalizing and restoring
the vestiges of the native past.
This printed issue of Western Water provides an overview of the
idea of a dual conveyance facility, including questions
surrounding its cost, operation and governance
This printed copy of Western Water examines the native salmon and
trout dilemma – the extent of the crisis, its potential impact on
water deliveries and the lengths to which combined efforts can
help restore threatened and endangered species.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the Delta through the
many ongoing activities focusing on it, most notably the Delta
Vision process. Many hours of testimony, research, legal
proceedings, public hearings and discussion have occurred and
will continue as the state seeks the ultimate solution to the
problems tied to the Delta.
This issue of Western Water explores the implications for the San
Joaquin River following the decision in the Natural Resources
Defense Council lawsuit against the Bureau of Reclamation and
Friant Water Users Authority that Friant Dam is required to
comply with a state law that requires enough water be released to
sustain downstream fish populations.
Fresh from the ocean, adult salmon struggle to swim hundreds of
miles upstream to spawn — and then die — in the same stream in
which they were born. For the salmon, the river-to-ocean,
ocean-to-river life cycle is nothing more than instinct. For
humans, it invites wonder. The cycle has prevailed for centuries,
yet as salmon populations have declined, the cycle has become a
source of conflict. Water users have seen their supplies reduced.
Fishermen have had their catch curtailed. Environmentalists have
pushed for more instream flows for fish.
