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.
We are excited to share that the Twenty-First Century Dams Act
was introduced this month on July 15, 2021. This bill would
invest $21.1 billion to enhance the safety, grid resilience
benefits, and power generating capacity of America’s dams and
provide historic funding to remove dams that are no longer
necessary.
Not a drop of new “moon shoot” water storage has been created
in California for more than 40 years. It’s a point that isn’t
lost on Congressman Josh Harder. Nor is the fact water issues
facing the heart of the Northern San Joaquin Valley are
interconnected with communities often hundreds of miles away
from the 10th District that he represents in Congress. It
is why the Turlock Democrat has pursued do-able water projects
— including those outside of his district that would reduce
efforts to try and commandeer water from the Stanislaus and
Tuolumne watersheds to address fish flow, urban, and irrigation
needs elsewhere — since taking office in 2019.
The plan to remove four Klamath River dams checked another box
on Tuesday as Oregon utility regulators signed off on
transferring ownership of the dams from Portland-based
PacifiCorp to the nonprofit that will carry out the project.
Oregon Public Utility Commission staff found that a
cost/benefit analysis from 2010 “remains valid, and still
reflects a public interest in the removal of the dams as
compared to the costs and risks of relicensing.” The project,
billed as the largest dam removal in U.S. history, is expected
to cost $450 million…
“Bleak” and “grim” were words frequently used Tuesday morning
as part of a joint legislative hearing on the crisis in
California’s salmon fisheries amid the historic drought. How
bad it is during the current drought in the West, however, was
up for debate. “There is no way that this year isn’t going to
be worse than it was in 2014-15, when we saw 95% (of salmon)
dying off,” said North Coast state Sen. Mike McGuire, who was
the chair of the hearing.
Wild beavers play a critical role in the fight against climate
change by creating wetlands that combat drought and wildfire.
The species is native to California — but unlike beavers in
Oregon and Washington, they aren’t protected from being trapped
and killed in the state. Beavers have existed in North America
for millions of years, with large populations in the American
west.
Facing another summer of catastrophic fish kills, California
lawmakers and fisheries managers on Tuesday blamed a Trump-era
water policy and climate change for the sizzling water
temperatures threatening to erase an entire run of Chinook
salmon. … Chinook salmon die-offs on the state’s rivers have
happened routinely over the last two decades. But a pending
disaster on the Sacramento and Klamath rivers has elected
officials, regulators, Native American tribes and fishermen
scrambling to save the keystone species from extinction.
Ben DuVal knelt in a barren field near the California-Oregon
state line and scooped up a handful of parched soil as dust
devils whirled around him and birds flitted between empty
irrigation pipes. DuVal’s family has farmed the land for three
generations, and this summer, for the first time ever, he and
hundreds of others who rely on irrigation from a depleted,
federally managed lake aren’t getting any water from it at all.
… [T]his summer there is simply not enough, and the
farmers, tribes and wildlife refuges that have long competed
for every drop now face a bleak and uncertain future together.
The news reports about the California salmon wipeout got a good
chunk of the story right: Record-breaking heat waves made
Northern California rivers too warm to sustain migrating
Chinook salmon, and virtually all of the salmon in the
Sacramento River this summer have died, or will die, before
reproducing. Any eggs that were successfully laid, or the fry
hatched from those eggs, are also likely doomed. So a
generation of the rare and endangered winter-run Chinook, and
the spring-run as well, are virtually gone.
It’s no secret that California’s ecosystems suffer during
droughts. In times of water scarcity, environmental uses are
often low priority, leading to fish die-offs and other negative
outcomes. For the next year, Professor Sarah Null of Utah State
University will be working with a diverse team of experts to
study how to better manage water stored for the environment, to
better protect vulnerable ecosystems during a time of
biodiversity loss and accelerating climate change. Null, an
expert in environmental water management and water systems
modeling, is a PPIC CalTrout Ecosystem Fellow.
Go 120 miles as the crow flies southeast of Manteca and you
will find the headwaters of two of California’s most tormented
rivers — the San Joaquin River and Owens River. The 183-mile
Owens River starts from Glass Creek on the southern face of the
11,597-foot San Joaquin Mountain. Today instead of ultimately
flowing into Owens Lake that just over 100 years ago covered
108 square miles and was teeming with aquatic life and
migratory birds, the lake is a dusty shell of its former self.
Baby salmon are dying by the thousands in one California river,
and an entire run of endangered salmon could be wiped out in
another. Fishermen who make their living off adult salmon, once
they enter the Pacific Ocean, are sounding the alarm as
blistering heat waves and extended drought in the U.S. West
raise water temperatures and imperil fish from Idaho to
California. Hundreds of thousands of young salmon
are dying in Northern California’s Klamath River as
low water levels brought about by drought allow a parasite to
thrive, devastating a Native American tribe whose diet and
traditions are tied to the fish.
Forced to reckon with a worsening drought, California’s water
regulators are preparing to forbid thousands of farmers from
tapping into the state’s major rivers and streams. It’s an
extraordinary step — and one that regulators didn’t take during
the last drought, which was considered one of the worst on
record. The State Water Resources Control Board on Friday
released an “emergency curtailment” order that would cut
thousands off from rivers and streams in the Sacramento and San
Joaquin river watersheds.
As the summer grinds on, farms, towns and a critical native
salmon restoration program that all rely on water from
Millerton Lake near Fresno continue to hope their water won’t
be needed to fulfill irrigation contracts further up the San
Joaquin Valley. But in this parched year, nothing is
certain. If water is required out of Millerton, which
happened in drought years 2014 and 2015, that could be
especially detrimental for the San Joaquin River Restoration
Program, which is already taking unprecedented steps to nurture
its endangered spring run Chinook salmon population.
As water resources managers work hard this summer to deliver
limited water supplies to cities, rural communities, farms,
refuges and fisheries–while also providing essential
hydropower for the state’s energy grid–there is increasing
attention to prepare for the next water year. … As we think
about water management opportunities for next year, there is an
increasing focus on groundwater recharge …
Join us as we guide you on a virtual journey through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Join us as we guide you on a virtual exploration of the Sacramento River and its tributaries and learn about the issues associated with a key source for the state’s water supply.
All together, the river and its tributaries supply 35 percent of California’s water and feed into two major projects: the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project.
Environmentalists say the San Joaquin watershed needs more
water. So do state officials, who in 2018 ordered water users
to give a large share of water back to the San Joaquin and its
tributaries, notably the Tuolumne. But the fight to restore
this ailing ecosystem has turned political, and
environmentalists leading the effort are facing an unlikely foe
the water service provider for one of the most liberal cities
in the country.
A 500 MW pumped energy storage project proposed jointly by the
City of San Diego and the San Diego County Water Authority
received $18 million in the California state budget. The
support will help fund the San Vicente Energy Storage
Facility through initial design, environmental reviews,
and the federal licensing process. The project … could
generate revenue to help offset the cost of water purchases,
storage, and treatment.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is asking
recreational anglers to voluntarily change how, when and where
they fish to minimize stress and mortality among fish
populations suffering from drought conditions. CDFW is advising
anglers not to fish past noon on certain inland waters as even
catch-and-release angling during the hottest parts of the day
can greatly increase fish stress and mortality.
… Coldwater species such as trout, salmon and steelhead
have the greatest likelihood of being affected by the drought
this year but low water levels and high-water temperatures can
potentially affect all inland aquatic species.
California’s ongoing drought and predicted heatwave is causing
overly warm and low level waters and threatening to kill off
the entire populations of already endangered species like the
chinook salmon. Negotiations between the State Water Resources
Control Board and the federal Bureau of Reclamation approved a
plan for managing water levels. However, experts predict that
releasing water into the irrigation system this early will
disrupt salmon spawning season and could kill as many as 88% of
the salmon in the river.
Each day, it seems, a new climate-related catastrophe makes
headlines. Salmon are dying in California, because the water
they inhabit has been heated to the point that it’s
inhospitable to life. The Hoover Dam reservoir is at
record-low levels, potentially affecting the water supply to
the West Coast. And California is, once again, in a drought.
States and municipalities across the country are asking
residents to conserve water as the precious resource is
threatened with impending scarcity. … We asked experts for
some easy ways to cut back on water usage. Here are their
suggestions.
Today, as a water economist, my job is to help customers
stretch their limited water resources. This means managing
supplies wisely and getting a handle on collective demands.
Fortunately, one of our available tools is an old one: water
markets that can help reallocate the resource to the places
it’s needed most. I’ve learned a lot more about water and water
markets since I was a second-grader determined to help fish in
the San Francisco Bay. One lesson is that even well-intentioned
water markets can have bad outcomes if poorly designed or
executed, as was my first water transfer.
Millions of waterfowl and other birds are going to have a tough
year due to the ongoing drought in the West. Not only is there
less water for ducks and geese, but the agriculture fields
these migrating birds depend on for food will be significantly
smaller, which means less waste grain. … That
potentially can negatively impact Pacific Flyway waterfowl
flights and hunting this year. Farmers report only 25
percent of the fields usually flooded in autumn will have
water. With reduced water, ducks and geese are impacted. They
concentrate more and diseases and bacteria can spread more
readily, including bird botulism.
Science is about more than data and research, it’s about
teamwork. Collaboration is key, and the State Water Contractors
are committed to working together with our partners in
academia, government, non-profit and the private sectors to
invest in California’s water future. The SWC and
Member Agencies participated in multiple interagency and
stakeholder working groups tasked with determining how to
implement permit requirements, including the Spring-Run Chinook
Salmon Juvenile Production Estimate Core Team and Delta
Coordination Group for summer-fall habitat actions for Delta
Smelt.
Joey Gentry hesitates before she drives through the fields of
alfalfa and wheat that line the roads in the Klamath
Basin. ”It’s not safe for Natives to be out in farmland
during a drought year,” [Gentry said.] Like much of the
American West, this dry, hilly, high-elevation landscape
straddling the California-Oregon border is experiencing a
summer of extreme drought. But when the federal government
announced in May that, for the first time ever, it would cut
irrigation water to about 180,000 acres of agriculture in the
basin, tensions ignited between farmers and the Klamath tribes.
For the first time in its 55 year history, the Iron Gate fish
hatchery, which raises salmon and steelhead, will not release
its salmon smolts into the Klamath River this summer. Due to
poor water conditions and an increase in a parasite called C.
Shasta in the river, the hatchery, located in Hornbrook,
California, will keep the tiny fish until fall. Now, the
hatchery is dealing with the logistics of moving millions of
fish to other facilities because they cannot accommodate all of
the growing salmon.
Due to drought and poor water conditions in the Klamath River,
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW)
successfully relocated 1.1 million juvenile, fall-run Chinook
salmon from its Iron Gate Fish Hatchery in Siskiyou County. The
fish were trucked to a nearby satellite facility and to the
Trinity River Hatchery 122 miles away where the fish will
remain until conditions in the Klamath River improve.
California officials are warning nearly all juvenile chinook
salmon in the Sacramento River could die due to abnormally hot
underwater conditions as heat waves continue to bake the West.
There could be a “near-complete loss” of the young endangered
species of salmon because temperatures above 100 degrees for
extended periods of time are overheating the river, making it
uninhabitable for the fish to grow beyond their egg stage, the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) confirmed to
CNN on Tuesday.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, in conjunction
with their state and county partners, are preparing for the
2021 cannabis enforcement season. As authorized by Fish & Game
Code section 12029, CDFW, in coordination with the State Water
Resources Control Board, or SWRCB, and the state licensing
authority, established a watershed enforcement program to
address environmental violations associated with unlicensed
cannabis cultivation. The environmental impacts associated with
illegal cannabis cultivation can have a detrimental effect on
fish and wildlife and their habitats…
Global warming has already left its mark on the backbone of
California’s water supply, and represents a growing threat to
its first developed agricultural region, state experts have
warned in a new study. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
fuels California’s $3 trillion economy, including its $50
billion agricultural industry, sustains more than 750 plant and
animal species and supplies 27 million people with drinking
water. But global warming is likely to destabilize the
landscape that made the delta a biodiversity and agricultural
hotspot …
Yet despite its ecological richness, very little of the land on
either side of the [Eel River] has been protected, as 90
percent of this land remains in private hands, and very little
of it is currently accessible to the public. This could change
soon, however, if two ambitious initiatives to protect this
wild country bisected by the Eel and make it accessible to the
public come to fruition. And both those initiatives received a
boost from the new state budget just passed by the California
Legislature (and, as of this writing, still awaiting Governor
Newsom’s signature).
[A] long-stalled plan to save Sacramento winter-run chinook
salmon, a critically endangered species, proposes trucking them
twice in their lifetimes. Spawning adults would get a lift from
the too-hot Sacramento River over Shasta Dam and be driven up
Interstate 5 to a cold mountain habitat in the McCloud River.
Later, their offspring would catch a ride back to the
Sacramento and head to the ocean to start the cycle again.
The lower Klamath River and the redwoods, which grow nowhere
else on Earth, are at the heart of Yurok culture. The tribe’s
reservation follows the river for its last 44 miles and extends
one mile from each bank, just broad enough to accommodate
dozens of tiny, remote villages and the modest town of Klamath
along the 101. The west end of the reservation is surrounded
by Redwood National and State Parks. I wanted quality
time on the water and under tall trees, but I also wanted to
learn more about a people who were navigating this river
thousands of years before the first Gold Rush prospectors
reached California.
The drought is making the Sacramento River so hot that “nearly
all” of an endangered salmon species’ juveniles could be cooked
to death this fall, California officials warned this week. In a
brief update on the perilous state of the river issued this
week, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife made a
dire prediction about the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon
and its struggles against consistently hot weather in the
Sacramento Valley.
An environmental group dedicated to promoting healthy waterways
around California is taking Sonoma County to court over
permitting policies it says too liberally allow people to drill
groundwater wells, potentially endangering Russian River stream
flows. California Coastkeeper, an affiliate of the locally
based Russian Riverkeeper and a dozen or so other organizations
around the state, filed the first-of-its-kind lawsuit late last
month amid the intensifying drought and a surge in well
drilling around the region.
Today the Karuk Tribe filed a formal petition with the
California State Water Resources Control Board demanding that
it use its emergency powers to curtail water use in the Scott
River to prevent the extinction of the Southern Oregon-
Northern California Coho Salmon (Coho). … The Scott
River is home to most of the native Coho salmon left
in the Klamath Basin. Coho were added to the endangered species
list in 1997. While federal agencies have forced water users on
the federal Klamath Irrigation Project along the
California/Oregon border to allow downstream flows to protect
the fish, other water users’ impacts have been ignored.
Except for a brief stint in the military, Paul Crawford has
spent his entire life farming in southern Oregon. First,
as a boy, chasing his dad through hayfields and now, growing
alfalfa on his own farm with his wife and two kids, who want to
grow up to be farmers. … The American west is drying out
as the region faces an unprecedented drought. Few places
are as devastated as the Klamath Basin, where Crawford’s farm
sits. Straddling the border between California and Oregon, the
watershed spans 12,000sq miles – from agricultural lands fed by
Upper Klamath Lake to tribal communities surrounding the
Klamath River.
Earlier posts here like this one by Grant Lundberg and this one
by David Guy have done a great job of describing the virtues of
floodplain restoration. The profound dedication of people
like Julie Rentner and Jacob Katz inform and energize the work
of the entire Floodplain Forward coalition that I’m proud to be
part of. But moving beyond plans to actually get work
done on the ground is a task that needs broad support.
Our leaders must take bold action to adapt to our new reality
and create a system that can support healthy rivers and
wildlife, communities with access to safe drinking water and a
thriving agricultural economy. Unfortunately, that’s not what
we’re seeing today. The state’s water regulators are draining
our reservoirs and depleting our rivers to deliver vast volumes
of water to a small number of powerful agricultural interests
during a historically dry year. Protecting fish and
wildlife and water quality for Sacramento-San Joaquin River
Delta communities does not mean eliminating agriculture in the
Central Valley. -Written by Rachel Zwillinger, water policy advisor
for Defenders of Wildlife in Sacramento.
In the drought-stricken Klamath Basin along the
California-Oregon border, water is precious. This year, Native
American tribes and farmers are competing for this shrinking
resource. It’s an indicator of future water wars in the West.
Jefferson Public Radio’s Erik Neumann explains.
The time to act is now. Climate change is already altering the
physical environment of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and
Suisun Marsh (Delta), and we will continue to experience its
effects through hotter temperatures, more severe wildfires, and
prolonged droughts. Over the long term, climate change in the
Delta is expected to harm human health and safety, disrupt the
economy, diminish water supply availability and usability,
shift ecosystem function, compromise sensitive habitats, and
increase the challenges of providing basic services. Many of
these impacts will disproportionately affect vulnerable
communities.
The rise in legal cannabis cultivation in California has
brought a once-clandestine industry out of the shadows.
Legalization has begun to illuminate the industry’s impacts on
ecosystems and water—a particularly fraught issue as the state
confronts a new drought. We spoke with Van Butsic and Ted
Grantham, co-directors of UC Berkeley’s Cannabis Research
Center and adjunct fellows at the PPIC Water Policy Center, to
better understand how cannabis cultivation affects the state’s
water.
At almost 30 miles long, Upper Klamath Lake is the home to
several types of fish that live only here. Two of them are
called C’waam and Koptu in the Klamath Tribes’ traditional
language or, in English, the Lost River and shortnose sucker.
They have a stubby face and wide lips, and can live to be
50-years-old. … In recent years, the juvenile fish have been
dying, causing the overall population to crash. Five years ago,
when Gonyaw started working for the tribes, there were about
20,000 shortnose suckers in the lake. Estimates today put them
at just 3,400. The Lost River sucker is disappearing at a
similar rate.
California is home to 131 kinds of native fishes that require
freshwater for some or all of their life-cycle. Most of these
fishes are found only in California and most (81%) are in
decline (Moyle et al. 2015, 2020). Thirty-two (24%) are already
listed as threatened or endangered by state and/or federal
governments. Declines are usually the result of fishes losing
the competition with humans for California’s water and habitat
(Leidy and Moyle 2021). This competition is heightened by the
ongoing severe drought.
An ongoing fish kill has been plaguing the Klamath River since
early May. The Klamath flows through Oregon and northern
California, and like many water sources in the West, has seen
water levels drop considerably due to extreme drought. A lower
river means a slower and warmer river, which is what some
parasites need to thrive. The parasite C.Shasta is expected to
kill off nearly all of this year’s juvenile Chinook salmon in
the Klamath.
For decades, an agonizing war over [water] has divided
indigenous people and the descendants of settlers of [the
Klamath basin], which like much of the American West, is now
plagued by drought. Family farmers often describe the conflict
as one that pits them against federal bureaucrats who protect
the suckerfish, imperiled as the lake grows more inhospitable.
That portrayal, say members of the tribes, dismisses a tougher
truth … about race, equity and generational trauma to a
people whose history includes slaughter, forced removal of
children, federal termination of their tribal status and loss
of land …
Growers are dealing with severe cutbacks in the surface water
deliveries they normally receive from reservoirs. The lack of
steady irrigation has already impacted spring cropping
decisions made by farmers. … A bill introduced by
Republican Congressman David Valadao would allow more water to
be moved south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta while
keeping protections in place for fish such as the delta smelt
and salmon.
In April of 2017, PGE began moving forward with its plans to
relicense the Potter Valley Project (PVP)—with, as of yet, no
designs to remove any of the infrastructure—and in August of
2019, Congressman Jared Huffman created the PVP Ad Hoc
Committee, a Two Basin Solution for the Eel and Russian River
basins, whose more than 20 members were tasked with the
relicensing process of the PVP to improve fisheries and fish
migration, minimize adverse impacts to water supply
reliability, respect tribal rights and minimize and mitigate
adverse impacts to Lake County including Lake Pillsbury.
Water Audit California sued the City of St. Helena this week
over its management of water. The watchdog group says the city
is violating its “public trust” responsibilities relating to
the Napa River and its aquatic habitat. It cites the city’s
policies on groundwater pumping, well permitting, and water
consumption by vineyards and wineries.
Water lines on the banks of Lake Oroville in Butte County have
depleted so rapidly that the reservoir’s hydroelectric power
plant may have to shut down for the first time ever, straining
an already encumbered power grid during the hottest part of the
summer, California officials announced Thursday. Since
1967, the Edward Hyatt Power Plant has been a crucial source of
electricity for the area and usually has the capacity to power
up to 800,000 homes, pumping water from the lake through its
underground facilities, according to CNN.
The learned doctors attending the bedside of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Delta agree on one thing: the patient is not
doing well. What ails it, many students of the case suggest, is
dehydration: the perennial artificial drought induced by
withdrawals of water for human use, whether pulled from feeder
rivers or extracted from the Delta itself. … Recently,
though, attention has turned to what might be called a
comorbidity: malnutrition. Delta waters simply don’t generate
enough basic food, in the form of phytoplankton, to sustain the
food chains …
As much as 100,000 acre-feet of water — enough to meet the
annual demand of more than 40,000 Tuolumne County residents for
at least five years — that’s currently stored in New Melones
Reservoir could soon be sent south to aid drought-stricken
farmers under an agreement between the Oakdale and South San
Joaquin irrigation districts.
[T]he problem goes way beyond grazing. Dozens of tributaries
and hundreds of springs feed Upper Klamath Lake, supplying
plenty of good, clean water. A century of mismanagement has
caused erosion of high phosphorus soils that accumulate in the
bottom of Upper Klamath Lake. Now, annual algae blooms kill
entire generations of young endangered fish every year.
… All the problems in the Upper Klamath Lake flow
downstream, affecting endangered salmon in the Klamath River as
it runs to the Pacific Ocean. The Karuk, a Klamath River tribe,
are worried that this could be another year marked by a
historic fish kill.
Water in a key California reservoir will fall so low this
summer that its hydroelectric power plant will be forced to
shut down for the first time, officials said Thursday,
straining the state’s already-taxed electric
grid. An unrelenting drought and record
heat, both worsened by the changing climate, have pushed the
water supply at Northern California’s Lake Oroville to deplete
rapidly. As a result of the “alarming levels,” officials will
likely be forced to close the Edward Hyatt Power Plant for the
first time since it opened in 1967…
The California Supreme Court has denied review of the February
appellate decisions in Sweeney v. Regional Water Board and
Sweeney v. Bay Conservation and Development Commission, leaving
in place key administrative orders against the Point Buckler
Club for unauthorized levee construction and other
environmentally harmful activities at Point Buckler
Island.
A proposal to bring down four hydroelectric dams near the
California-Oregon border cleared a major regulatory hurdle
Thursday, setting the stage for the largest dam demolition
project in U.S. history to save imperiled migratory salmon.
While typically the water flow in the Stanislaus River slows
during the summer, that’s not likely to happen this year, so
recreational users of the river are urged to observe safety
precautions to avoid tragedy. Why is the river running so high?
… In a nutshell, it means New Melones is being
called upon to backfill a good portion of water that Shasta,
Folsom and Oroville should be releasing during this summer to
the delta…
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) today
announced the selection of 28 projects to receive funding for
projects to restore and protect multi-benefit ecosystem
restoration and protection projects under its Proposition 1
grant programs. The awards, totaling $39 million, were made
under CDFW’s 2021 Proposition 1 Watershed Restoration Grant &
Delta Water Quality and Ecosystem Restoration Grant Program
Proposal Solicitation Notice.
Santa Cruz Water Department staff is completing its annual
spring fish survey, and with it comes some important
dispatches. Steelhead numbers are low with drought
conditions plaguing Santa Cruz for a second consecutive year.
But coho salmon, a species at-risk of extinction, were spotted
off Santa Cruz’s North Coast in the Laguna Creek estuary.
Documenting coho anywhere in Santa Cruz County is a relatively
rare event, explained Chris Berry, watershed compliance manager
with the city.
The seriousness of California’s drought is being driven home to
thousands of farmers in the Central Valley. State regulators
warned 6,600 farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
watershed on Tuesday that they’re about to lose the right to
pull water from the estuary’s rivers at some point this summer.
The watershed covers a major swath of the Central Valley.
The intensive engineering of the river exacted a huge toll on
its native ecosystems. No species suffered more than the
Chinook salmon, whose epic migration from the Pacific Ocean to
its spawning grounds in the High Sierra was cut short by
numerous choke points, not the least of which was Friant’s
impenetrable barrier of concrete. … Rife with
compromises, [a 1988] settlement mandated that a mere half of
the San Joaquin’s original flow be restored. The river’s many
dams would remain, but alternative passages would be built and
new spawning areas added in the lower river.
A study of woodland ecosystems that provide habitat for rare
and endangered species along streams and rivers throughout
California reveals that some of these ecologically important
areas are inadvertently benefitting from water that humans are
diverting for their own needs. Though it seems a short-term
boon to these ecosystems, the artificial supply creates an
unintended dependence on its bounty, threatens the long-term
survival of natural communities and spotlights the need for
changes in the way water is managed across the state.
The California water board has approved a plan for water
releases into the Sacramento River that could kill off an
entire run of endangered chinook salmon and put at risk another
population that is part of the commercial salmon fishery. …
Because the [Bureau of Reclamation’s] plan involves releasing
water to irrigation districts earlier in the season, the river
will be lower and warmer during salmon spawning season and
could result in killing as many as 88% of endangered winter-run
chinook eggs and young fish.
California never has enough water to meet all demands and even
when supplies are relatively robust there’s a triangular
competition over their allocation. Farmers, municipal users and
environmental advocates vie for shares of water that has been
captured by California’s extensive network of dams and
reservoirs. … When California experiences one of its
periodic droughts and reservoirs shrink from scant rain and
snowfall, its perpetual conflict becomes even sharper. -Written by Dan Walters, a CalMatters columnist
Humboldt County gave the public two chances to air concerns
this week surrounding Nordic Aquafarms’ proposed onshore fish
farm on the Samoa Peninsula. County planners held two public
scoping meetings Thursday to gather input from the public and
affected governmental agencies on areas that should be covered
in the project’s environmental impact report (EIR). The
Humboldt County Planning and Building Department had released a
mitigated negative declaration (MND) for the project in April
but a coalition of environmental groups argued that the
assessment didn’t go far enough.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland released a letter Friday to
the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee in support of Klamath
dam removal. … The four hydroelectric dams clogging the
Klamath River are slated to be removed in 2023 under an
agreement forged between the states of California and Oregon,
the dams’ owner PacifiCorp and the Karuk and Yurok tribes. And
Haaland’s letter comes as conditions in the Klamath River Basin
are the worst they’ve been in years due to drought conditions.
California is rolling out a fresh strategy to keep its economy
afloat — releasing 17 million salmon into the San Francisco
Bay. Millions of Chinook salmon raised in hatcheries will
bypass California’s drought-stricken riverbanks to be released
directly into colder, downstream sites in the San Francisco
Bay, in an attempt to maximize their survival rate amid some of
the most extreme environmental conditions the state has ever
faced.
Tricia Hill tears up when she talks about the emotional toll
the water shut-off in southern Oregon has had on her family.
Amid historic, climate change-driven drought, the federal
government in May shut down the water supply from the Upper
Klamath Basin on the California-Oregon border to protect native
fish species on the verge of extinction. As a result, Hill and
other farmers like her in the region have been cut off from
water they have used for decades.
California’s drought highlights the importance of an
appointment sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk – filling the
final seat on the State Water Resources Control
Board. This is a critical agency appointment at a
critical time. The drought highlights many inequities in
California water policy. Disadvantaged communities in Stockton
face the prospect of a drought summer plagued by harmful algae
blooms in Delta rivers. Those algae outbreaks, which can
harm children and kill pets, are caused by excessive nutrients
and inadequate freshwater flow. -Written by Belinda Faustina, a strategic advisor
with Los Angeles Waterkeeper, and Barbara
Barrigan-Parilla, the executive director of Restore the
Delta.
After years of drought, salmon in Northern California are
facing extinction. Conservation groups in the region have
drafted a water management plan that, if adopted, would send
less water to Central Valley farmers and keep more cold water
for fish. Last week, fishery advocates in Northern
California submitted their temperature management plan to the
State Water Resources Control Board. They want to change water
operations in the Shasta, Trinity, Sacramento and Lower Klamath
Rivers so the region’s salmon runs have enough cold water to
survive.
A Sacramento woman says she nearly drowned and her son was
traumatized when she got stuck in a fish trap while floating on
the American River. A lawsuit filed Friday in Superior Court
seeks damages from state and federal wildlife agencies and
Sacramento County over the incident, on June 10, 2020, just
west of the Watt Avenue bridge in Sacramento. The woman and her
son had been floating on inner tubes for less than a
quarter-mile, the complaint says, when hers was pulled toward a
“rotary screw trap” — a floating device intended to
capture salmon for monitoring purposes.
The Ventura County Public Works Agency commemorated the start
of the Santa Ana Boulevard Bridge replacement project with a
groundbreaking ceremony Monday afternoon. The ceremony took
place at 2 p.m. and was attended by the county supervisor, Matt
LaVere, as well as representatives from the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife and California State Coastal
Conservancy.
The Klamath Basin is suffering the worst drought in the state.
Competing need for the water by local tribes seeking to sustain
endangered fish populations, farmers and ranchers, and
commercial and tribal fisheries has been a persistent issue,
and has led to conflicts in the past. The Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement, which took 10 years to plan, was a
turning point and a compromise for the parties needing access
to the water.
When the Palo Alto City Council publicly backed the Bay-Delta
Plan in 2018, it was swimming against the political tide. The
plan, formally known as the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta Estuary plan, sets limits on how much water
agencies can siphon from the three tributaries of the San
Joaquin River. While it aims to protect salmon, steelhead and
other river species, it has also attracted intense opposition
and litigation from water districts that claim that the new
restrictions will undermine the reliability of their water
supply.
Fears of a confrontation between law enforcement and rightwing
militia supporters over the control of water in the
drought-stricken American west have been sparked by protests at
Klamath Falls in Oregon. Protesters affiliated with rightwing
anti-government activist Ammon Bundy’s People’s Rights Network
are threatening to break a deadlock over water management in
the area by unilaterally opening the headgates of a reservoir.
Tribes and environmental advocates fear flows along the Klamath
River could be reduced to a trickle if the State Water
Resources Control Board doesn’t take action on water use
upstream on the Scott and Shasta rivers. Andy Marx, board
president of Friends of the Shasta River, said the river
“virtually dried up” over Memorial Day weekend as a result of
excessive irrigation diversions.
A gene-editing tool that has led to new cancer therapies and a
rapid test for COVID-19 is now helping scientists find
endangered species of salmon in the San Francisco Bay. The
CRISPR-based Sherlock tool can identify four types of Chinook
salmon, including Sacramento winter-run and Central Valley
spring-run, which are both protected under the federal
Endangered Species Act.
California’s water wars are legendary, complex and
ongoing. To avoid getting too far in the weeds, media often
boil it down to a dispute over who should have priority to a
limited supply of water — people or fish. The real beauty
of aerial snow surveys is that it’s one thing that farmers and
environmentalists can agree on. -Written by Garth Stapley, The Modesto Bee’s Opinions Page
editor.
Flows into the San Joaquin River under a program to bring back
native salmon will be stopped now through early September to
try and protect fish already upstream. The flow reduction being
instituted by the San Joaquin Restoration Program is in
reaction to rapidly dwindling runoff coming out of the Sierra
Nevada mountains this year.
Water Audit California is suing to make Napa County increase
oversight of groundwater pumping for vineyards, wineries, and
other uses, claiming that the pumping affects the Napa River.
The lawsuit said the county has a “public trust” duty to care
for the river. The idea is that too much groundwater pumping
from wells can keep groundwater from seeping into the river
during dry months, to the detriment of fish and other aquatic
life.
This May, while collecting live fish for their annual aquatic
pathogen assessment on the Klamath River in Northern
California, Yurok Tribe biologists made a shocking discovery:
over 70 percent of the young, ocean-bound Chinook salmon
captured in their traps were dead. Almost all of the fish
tested upstream were infected with Ceratonova shasta, a
parasite that relies on both fish and annelid worms as hosts.
Barry McCovey, senior fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe,
expects most of the infected fish to die.
Salmon and steelhead in Northern California have been in
trouble for more than 100 years, primarily because of habitat
damage and loss resulting from human activities. Climate change
has only worsened these habitat problems. For the last 50
years, communities have worked to restore this habitat in hopes
of reversing the fortunes of these fish. Scientists and local
restoration communities are seeking new ways to maximize the
benefits of habitat restoration so that rivers and streams can
support healthy fish populations again.
In response to record low precipitation in the Klamath Basin,
the Karuk Tribe has declared a state of emergency. This
emergency declaration acknowledges the reality that climate
change is upon us, and the dangers that it poses to rivers,
forests, wildlife and communities.
Migratory steelhead and Chinook salmon have access to six more
miles of historic spawning sites in a refurbished creek on
California’s Beale Air Force Base. All thanks to a unique
cooperative effort between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service (USFWS) and the Air Force Civil Engineer Center
(AFCEC).
Tensions have been building in Klamath Falls in recent weeks
over a drought that is devastating farmland, fish deemed sacred
to native tribes, and wildlife. The Klamath Basin, along the
Oregon-California border, has a complex history. Drought and
fights over water aren’t new. Here are five things to know
about the unfolding Klamath water crisis:
Two weeks ago, the “greenest city in America” sued California’s
State Water Board to prevent measures that would restore the
beleaguered San Francisco Bay-Delta. After more than a decade
of studies based on the best available science, the state wants
to require San Francisco to release more water from its dams
into the Tuolumne River — the source of our Hetch Hetchy
drinking water — to benefit fish, wildlife and downstream water
quality. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission,
meanwhile, wants a “voluntary agreement” for the Tuolumne
River. -Written by Peter Drekmeier, policy director of the
Tuolumne River Trust.
As the extreme drought causes various agencies to squabble over
dwindling water supplies, conservationists say the state is
still not doing enough to prevent an endangered run of salmon
from dying in the Sacramento River. At issue is how the federal
Bureau of Reclamation manages water flows from Shasta Lake into
the Sacramento River, which is both the spawning grounds for
chinook salmon and the main water source for Central Valley
farms. If the bureau releases too much water to irrigation
districts, the river level could drop low enough and warm
enough to kill off 50% of the eggs …
The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an
early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to
spread across the West as a widespread drought, associated with
a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the
region. In Nevada, water levels have dropped so
drastically in Lake Mead that officials are preparing for a
serious shortage that could prompt major reductions in Colorado
River water deliveries next year. In California, Gov. Gavin
Newsom has placed 41 counties under a state of emergency.
In August of 2018, Congressman Jared Huffman created the Potter
Valley Project (PVP) Ad Hoc Committee for the Two-Basin
Solution for the Eel and Russian River basins with parties
working toward the relicensing process of the PVP that reflects
the following primary goals and principles: improve fish
passage and habitat on the Eel River sufficient to support
recovery of naturally reproducing, self-sustaining and
harvestable native anadromous fish populations including
migratory access upstream and downstream at current project dam
locations…
The appeal filed by Gordon Bennett of a proposed well outside
of Point Reyes Station was rejected on Monday by planning
commissioners, who said they did not have the expertise to
evaluate it. Mr. Bennett says he will now appeal the
project to the Board of Supervisors, and will keep appealing
until someone addresses his concerns about maintaining a
minimum flow for endangered coho salmon in Lagunitas
Creek.
Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,
NOAA funded 125 habitat restoration projects in coastal areas
throughout the country. Now, more than a decade later, we’re
taking a look back at some of the projects we funded. We’ll
explore the benefits this restoration work continues to bring
to communities and ecosystems across the country. … NOAA
partnered with the Yurok Tribe to restore habitat for
salmon and steelhead in Terwer Creek and McGarvey Creek,
tributaries to the Lower Klamath River.
In the summer of 2001, local farmers and other activists armed
with saws and blowtorches breached a chain-link fence and
opened the headgates of a federal canal that supplies farmland
in Oregon and far Northern California. Local farmer Grant Knoll
was among the activists there that year. The protesters forced
the gates open three times but were eventually blocked by U.S.
marshals. Now, with a drought just as severe as two decades ago
— and with farmers’ water again cut off — he’s prepared to
fight again.
In just a few weeks, California’s water conditions have gone
from bad to terrible. Sacramento residents have been asked to
cut water usage 10%. Their counterparts on the Russian River
are being told to reduce their consumption 20%. Farmers across
the Central Valley are letting fields lie fallow and
dismantling their orchards. Government agencies are warning of
massive fish kills on the Sacramento River. After
a warm spring dried up practically the entire Sierra
Nevada snowpack — and robbed California of enough water to fill
most of Folsom Lake — state and federal officials have been
forced to dramatically ramp up their drought response plans.
In terms of sheer size, Nordic Aquafarms’ land-based
aquaculture facility, slated for construction on the Samoa
Peninsula, would be the largest development project Humboldt
County has seen for decades, maybe since the heyday of the
timber industry. The facility’s five buildings — including two
massive production modules where Atlantic salmon would be
raised inside fully-contained recirculating tanks — would total
766,530 square feet, nearly an acre larger than the footprint
of the Bayshore Mall. It’s been more than two years since the
Norwegian company announced its ambitious plans, and the
environmental review period was scheduled to wrap up this
week.
A crippling drought — largely connected to climate change — is
gripping the Western United States, affecting over 70 million
people and around 40% of the U.S. … Farmers,
scientists, tribal officials, foresters and other groups
affected by the worsening drought testified at a House Natural
Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife hearing on
Tuesday, asking lawmakers for both short-term relief and
long-term solutions from the worsening conditions.
California is dry. Bay Area counties have declared drought
emergencies and imposed restrictions. State and federal
officials are trucking baby salmon to the ocean. But San
Franciscans are still using their primary water source, the
Tuolumne River, which feeds the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in
Yosemite National Park. Last week, City Attorney Dennis Herrera
— who Mayor London Breed recently tapped to head San
Francisco’s water agency — filed a lawsuit challenging the
state’s efforts to protect salmon and the overall health of the
river. -Written by Robyn Purchia, an environmental
attorney, environmental blogger and environmental
activist.
The Marin County Planning Commission voted on Monday to reject
an environmental group’s petition to block a West Marin water
supply project over potential impacts to Lagunitas Creek flows
and endangered wildlife. The decision allows the North Marin
Water District to build a new well that it says is necessary to
ensure its West Marin customers have adequate water supply in
the face of the worsening saltwater contamination at some of
its existing wells.
The Sonoma County Regional Parks department is in the early
stages of exploring an idea to turn the seasonal summer dam at
Healdsburg Veteran’s Memorial Beach into a series of about 18
inches of drops, which would create four mini pools for lazy
river-style tubing, family-friendly swimming and fishing. The
early concept is a result of the need to either rebuild the
aging dam infrastructure, or create an alternative option in
lieu of the dam. The concept includes low flow channels for
fish passage, portage access, fishing access, trails and three
separate beaches.
Twenty years after a shut-off of most irrigation water in the
parched Klamath Project brought the competing needs of farmers,
fishermen and tribes to a head, a new drought — and a fresh
federally-ordered water shut-off — is triggering a sense
of déjà vu. Now, two Klamath Project irrigators with
ties to radical activist Ammon Bundy have purchased private
property located next to the headgates of the “A” Canal in
Klamath Falls, which would normally deliver water to area
farms. And along with local members of the Oregon chapter of
People’s Rights, a group founded by Bundy in 2020, they’ve set
up an information center and gathering place to talk to the
public about the brewing water crisis in the Klamath Basin.
Late Friday the State Water Resources Control Board appeared to
tentatively approve a temperature management plan for Shasta
Dam that sacrifices salmon and fishing jobs for agribusiness
profits this year, violates water quality standards, and leaves
California woefully unprepared if next year is also dry.
Specifically, the State Water Board indicated that they would
approve a temperature management plan if it achieves 1.25
million acre feet of water in Shasta at the end of September.
As the State Water Board knows, allowing storage to drop
that low is estimated to kill more than 50% of the endangered
winter run Chinook salmon and … the vast majority of the
fall run Chinook …
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from
dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off
irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said
they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or
to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of
migrating birds each year. In what is shaping up to be the
worst water crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation said it will not release water this season into the
main canal that feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath
Reclamation Project, marking a first for the 114-year-old
irrigation system.
Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,
NOAA funded 125 habitat restoration projects in coastal areas
throughout the country. … Through the Recovery Act, NOAA
partnered with the [California Conservation Corps] to support
more than 30 coastal habitat restoration projects. These
projects benefitted threatened and endangered salmon and
steelhead throughout coastal California. More than 200 corps
members worked to open waterways to fish migration, stabilize
stream banks, conduct project monitoring, and more.
When Sierra snow seeps into the ground or evaporates before it
can flow downstream into reservoirs, you know California is
facing a severe drought. It’s happening this spring up and down
the mountain range that is a primary water source for the
state. Water from snowmelt that hydrologists had expected only
a few weeks ago to replenish foothill reservoirs is vanishing.
It’s being absorbed by the parched soil or dissipating into the
thin mountain air. -Written by George Skelton, a Los Angeles Times
columnist.
As it enters the Yurok Reservation, the Lower Klamath River is
as picturesque as it gets. Clear water rushes over gentle
rapids, framed by verdant hills and a cerulean sky. An
untrained eye would never notice the devastation beneath the
surface — save for the tiny fish floating lifeless in the
water. Over the past several weeks, an outbreak of the
parasite Ceratonova shasta has ripped through young
salmon throughout the lower reaches of the Klamath watershed.
Driven by high temperatures and low flows out of Iron Gate Dam,
the disease is resulting in what the Yurok Tribe is calling a
“catastrophic” fish kill.
At its May 20, 2021 quarterly meeting, the Wildlife
Conservation Board (WCB) approved approximately $23.5 million
in grants to help restore and protect fish and wildlife habitat
throughout California. Some of the 35 approved projects will
benefit fish and wildlife — including some endangered species —
while others will provide public access to important natural
resources. Several projects will also demonstrate the
importance of protecting working landscapes that integrate
economic, social and environmental stewardship practices
beneficial to the environment, landowners and the local
community.
In wetter times, these feathery beds of asparagus would produce
generations of tender green spears, reaching for the vast San
Joaquin Valley sky. [Last] Monday they were disked into the dry
dirt, their long lives cut short by unreliable and expensive
water. … With no guarantee of irrigation water this
summer, Del Bosque and other California farmers are making
tough choices, sacrificing one crop to save another. The
strategy is part of a larger and longer agricultural shift here
in the heart of California’s $50 billion agriculture industry:
Low-value, high-water crops are disappearing from the Golden
State.
Juvenile salmon migrating to the sea in the Sacramento River
face a gauntlet of hazards in an environment drastically
modified by humans, especially with respect to historical
patterns of stream flow. Many studies have shown that survival
rates of juvenile salmon improve as the amount of water flowing
downstream increases, but “more is better” is not a useful
guideline for agencies managing competing demands for the
available water.
The commercial salmon season has been cut in half this year due
to low numbers of salmon. California’s salmon runs are still
rebuilding after millions of baby salmon died in the last
drought, deprived of the cold water they needed to
survive. That damage is still being felt by salmon fishing
families. Today, water managers are on the verge of repeating
that mistake. - Written by John McManus, president of the
Golden Gate Salmon Association.
On May 18, 2021, deputies with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s
Office Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) served one search
warrant to investigate illegal cannabis cultivation in the
Blake Mountain area of Eastern Humboldt County. The California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, Humboldt County Department of
Health and Human Services Environmental Health – HazMat Unit,
Humboldt County Code Enforcement and the California State Water
Resources Control Board assisted in the service of the warrant.
As more of California sinks into extreme drought, Gov. Gavin
Newsom has asked the Legislature to appropriate billions of
dollars to address critical water needs. In the “May revise”—an
update to the budget proposal he initially submitted to the
Legislature in January—Newsom proposes to spend nearly $3.5
billion on water supply and resilience projects, with total
investment reaching $5.1 billion over multiple years.
With the driest year in memory, the water resources managers
and landowners in the Sacramento Valley are working hard to
serve multiple benefits throughout the region with limited
water supplies. This has required all hands-on deck and
creative management within the region as all surface water
supplies have been significantly reduced, with hundreds of
thousands of farmland acres idled throughout the region, urban
suppliers working with their citizens to implement various
conservation measures to reduce water use and there will
undoubtedly be challenges for domestic groundwater wells.
Last week, the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA)
held their spring conference virtually. Keynote speakers
included Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of Natural Resources, and
Karla Nemeth, Director of the Department of Water
Resources. In his speech, [Crowfoot] discussed the Newsom
Administration’s priorities, calling this the ‘decade of
resilience’, and giving three principles for going
forward. He also discussed the Voluntary
Agreements. Director Karla Nemeth gave the Thursday
morning keynote speech, touching on the Department’s response
to drought, SGMA implementation, the Delta Conveyance Project,
and the water use efficiency regulations.
The Shasta-Klamath Region organizes work around protecting
California source water and volcanic aquifers, working with
family farms to improve water management, and protecting legacy
fly-fishing waters like the McCloud River, Hat Creek, and Fall
River. In 2021, we are heavily invested in conservation
projects in the Shasta and Scott watersheds. These key Klamath
tributaries will be critical for recovering salmon populations
in the Mid-Klamath Basin after dam removal.
What was already forecasted to be a historically bleak water
year in the Klamath Project has quickly become a living
nightmare for farms and ranches fighting for survival in the
drought-stricken basin. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shut
down the Project’s A Canal for the entire irrigation season May
12 in response to worsening conditions — allotting zero surface
water from Upper Klamath Lake for thirsty crops and livestock.
It is the first time in more than a century the A Canal will
deliver no water. Meanwhile, irrigators are left to wonder how
they will pay the bills as fields turn to dust.
San Francisco has sued a state agency over proposed Tuolumne
River flows that it claims would be “devastating” to Bay Area
water users. The Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts
joined in the lawsuit as “real parties in interest,” due to
similar concerns about their customers not getting enough
water. The suit is one more twist in the decades-long battle
over how much water to provide for salmon and other fish
downstream from Don Pedro Reservoir.
The seven members of the Delta Stewardship Council were seated
in 2010. The Council appointed ten prominent scientists to the
Delta ISB. Over the next decade, the Delta ISB produced over 30
scientific reviews, averaging over 3,000 hours of work per
year. But in 2020, the work of the Delta ISB stalled. The Delta
Stewardship Council reduced funding for the Delta ISB by over
90%.
A group of protesters gathered at Sugarman’s Corner in downtown
Klamath Falls on Saturday, preparing to welcome a 25-car
caravan of mostly Klamath Tribal members calling for solutions
to the Klamath Basin’s water crisis. A man walked by the
demonstrators, eyeing their signs with statements like “Peace
and Healing in the Klamath Basin,” “Water Justice is Social
Justice” and “Undam the Klamath.”
California — already in the clutches of another drought
emergency — is looking over its shoulder at what happened
last time, anticipating the worst and evaluating the strategies
that worked and those that failed. So is California in a
better position to weather this drought? Some things are
worse, some better: Groundwater is still being pumped with no
statewide limits, siphoning up drinking water that rural
communities rely on. In northern counties, residents are
reliving the last disaster as water restrictions kick in again,
but in the south, enough water is stored to avoid them for now.
… The upshot is California isn’t ready — again.
The city of San Francisco is reviving a long-simmering feud
with the state over water, filing a lawsuit Friday that charges
state regulators with trying to take away the city’s coveted
Sierra Nevada water supplies. The suit claims the state water
board is demanding the city forfeit too much water from the
Tuolumne River as part of a licensing deal for two dams in the
faraway basin. State regulators have said the water is needed
to maintain proper river flows and support struggling salmon,
but city officials contend the demands would leave Bay Area
residents and businesses vulnerable to water shortages.
The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from
dire to catastrophic as federal regulators shut off irrigation
water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would
not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a
half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating
birds each year. In what is shaping up to be the worst water
crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it
will not release water this season into the main canal that
feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath Reclamation Project,
marking a first for the 114-year-old irrigation system.
Rural, low-income Latino communities across California were
hardest hit by the last drought and could see drinking water
shortages again this year as extreme drought spreads across the
state, according to a report released Thursday by non-partisan
advisors to California’s lawmakers. The report from the
Legislative Analyst’s Office warns state officials to prepare
by ramping up monitoring of wells in vulnerable communities and
lining up emergency drinking water supplies to send
there.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Wednesday that
more than 1,000 farmers in the Klamath Basin will not receive
any reserved water from Upper Klamath Lake — a devastating
prospect for farmers who have already planted fields, hired
crews and made plans for the growing season ahead. … Farmers
in Klamath, Siskiyou and Modoc counties were already reeling
over the prospect of receiving less than 10% of their
allotment, or a total of 33,000 acre-feet of water. The
latest announcement feels “like a punch to the gut,” farmers
said …
During a typical spring, the silver young salmon swimming in
long tanks at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery east of Sacramento would
be released into the American River and then make their way out
to the Pacific Ocean to grow to adulthood. But with extreme
drought now gripping California and much of West Coast, the
rivers are too warm for the salmon to survive. This week, the
3.5-inch (90-mm) smolt, as the young fish are known, embarked
on a much different journey when they were loaded on to trucks
and driven to the San Francisco Bay for release into cooler
waters.
Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson, along with prominent
North Coast water managers and politicians gathered at a
virtual summit yesterday morning to discuss the severe drought
facing the North Coast and the entire state. At the summit (a
recording of which is available on YouTube), State Senator Mike
McGuire stated that the state legislature is moving forward on
a several billion dollar drought relief package, which would
include $1 billion in grants to help ratepayers and utilities
pay off back bills and $500 million to help smaller low income
communities develop enhanced drinking water supplies, among
other things (read the full list below).
An entire run of endangered winter-run chinook salmon, as well
as the fall-run salmon that make up the core of the California
fishery, are in danger of being wiped out this year if the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation keeps diverting water to farmers at its
current rate. With state water resources constrained by the
extreme drought, that’s the alarm that environmental, fishing
and tribal groups are sounding after reports show the
Sacramento River will reach dangerous temperatures during
spawning season, based on federal scientific scenarios that
analyze the bureau’s planned water releases.
Don’t be fooled. Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision Monday to
declare drought in most of California, including here, is no
reason for most farmers in Stanislaus County to break out the
party hats. They know full well that words on a declaration
will not generate an extra drop of water for their orchards and
row crops. They also know that a drought declaration could take
some power over the water we do have from our locally elected
irrigation leaders — who represent institutions guiding us
through periodic droughts for more than 100 years — and hand it
to nonelected Sacramento bureaucrats.
Spring is generally a time of renewal for the watersheds of the
western United States. Warmed by the lengthening days, the
region’s towering mountain ranges shed their mantle of snow,
releasing freshets of water into welcoming streams and
reservoirs. This year, though, the cycle is in disarray.
Outside of the Olympic and Cascade ranges of Washington state,
winter snows were subpar. The spring melt has been a dud. From
the Klamath to the Colorado and Rio Grande, watersheds are
under stress once again, and water managers face difficult
tradeoffs between farms, fisheries, and at-home uses.
A conflict over access to water in the Klamath Basin is
signaling the way climate change could play out across the
western United States. After a drier-than-normal spring,
farmers and indigenous tribes in the Klamath Basin are at odds
over water in Upper Klamath Lake. According to the U.S. Drought
Monitor, the Klamath Basin is experiencing “extreme drought,”
… Centuries ago, the area was wetlands; but in the early
20th century, the land was opened up to agriculture. Members of
the Klamath Tribes say tree removal and drainage hastened
drying as the climate warmed.
On Friday, a coalition of conservation groups, fishing
organizations, stakeholders in the Delta, and the Winnemem
Wintu Tribe sent this letter to the Biden Administration,
urging the Administration not to endorse the so-called
“Voluntary Agreements” for the Bay-Delta watershed.
Unfortunately, the State of California continues to negotiate
backroom deals with the biggest water users in the State that
fail to protect and restore water quality in the
Bay-Delta, threatening thousands of fishing jobs, farms and
communities in the Delta, and the health of this watershed and
its native fish and wildlife.
As California enters what could be a record-breaking drought, a
just-completed nine-year floodplain restoration project at the
confluence of the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers offers an
ambitious attempt at one mitigation solution. At a 1,600-acre
former dairy ranch called Dos Rios, the conservation
organization River Partners removed berms that farmers had
originally constructed to protect their alfalfa and wheat crops
from the river. It turned fields into seasonal pools where
endangered baby salmon and migratory birds can rest, and water
can trickle down to refill aquifers.
The North Marin Water District failed to adequately study
whether there will be enough water for endangered fish in
Lagunitas Creek if it builds a new well in West Marin, an
environmental group alleges. The well is intended to address
worsening saltwater contamination in the water supply. Save Our
Seashore, a nonprofit in Inverness, filed an appeal against the
project with the Marin County Planning Commission. … The
commission is expected to hold a hearing on the issue on May
24.
A U.S. District Court judge has ordered McKinleyville-based
construction firm Kernen Construction Co. to pay over
$2,087,750 in civil penalties after it was found to have
violated the Clean Water Act by discharging contaminated storm
water into a nearby tributary creek of the Mad River. The order
was issued by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on May 2 after the
company was found to have discharged storm water without
engaging in pollution control measures mandated by the
CWA.
At a rare joint meeting between all three of their leadership
boards, Klamath, Siskiyou and Modoc Counties discussed ways to
support agricultural communities during the Klamath Basin’s
historic drought this year. Farmers and ranchers in the Klamath
Project will receive 33,000 acre-feet of water, less than 10%
of their normal allocation, more than a month later than
normal. Irrigators on tributaries to the Lower Klamath River,
like the Scott River, are also expecting water deliveries to be
curtailed during the summer.
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.
