The San Joaquin River, which helps
drain California’s Central Valley, has been negatively impacted
by construction of dams, inadequate streamflows and poor water
quality. Efforts are now underway to restore the river and
continue providing agricultural lands with vital irrigation,
among other water demands.
After an 18-year lawsuit to restore water flows to a 60-mile dry
stretch of river and to boost the dwindling salmon populations,
the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement is underway.
Water releases are now used to restore the San Joaquin River and
to provide habitat for naturally-reproducing populations of
self-sustaining Chinook salmon and other fish in the San Joaquin
River. Long-term efforts also include measures to reduce or avoid
adverse water supply impacts from the restoration flows.
This month’s Reader Photo Challenge assignment was “bridges.”
Being situated in the California Delta, Central Valley
residents know all too well the importance of bridges. Without
them communities would be stranded from each other and cities
would be split into sections by the network of rivers,
canals and sloughs that are ubiquitous to the area. Bridges
help to connect us to our neighbors and to each other. Eight
readers sent in 31 photos. Here are some of the best examples.
California is hoping to get a new state park. The site, now
known as the Dos Rios Reserve, is just a 20-minute drive from
Modesto and may be open to the public by next year if Gov.
Gavin Newsom’s budget is approved. The site is where two
rivers, Tuolumne and San Joaquin, meet.
Mark your calendars now for our upcoming fall 2022
tours exploring California’s two largest rivers – the
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers! On our
Northern
California Tour, Oct. 12-14, participants
can learn about key reservoirs and infrastructure that
transports vital water resources statewide.
Our San Joaquin River Restoration Tour
Nov. 2-3 returns this year to tell the
story of bringing back a river’s chinook salmon while
balancing water supply needs. Registration is
coming soon!
California will acquire a sprawling former farm property in the
San Joaquin Valley and create a new state park for the first
time in 13 years. The park is planned for Dos Rios Ranch, where
the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers meet southwest of Modesto.
At a scenic spot where two rivers meet amid sprawling almond
orchards and ranchlands between San Jose and Modesto,
California’s state park system is about to get bigger. On
Friday, as part of his revised May budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom is
scheduled to announce that the state is acquiring 2,100 acres
near the confluence of the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers to
become a new state park — an area rich with wildlife and
brimming with possibilities to reduce flood risk and restore
some of California’s lost natural heritage.
The Yolo Bypass is one of two large flood bypasses in
California’s Central Valley that are examples of multi-benefit
floodplain projects (Figure 1; Serra-Llobet et al.,
2022). Originally constructed in the early 20th century
for flood control, up to 75% of the Sacramento River’s flood
flow can be diverted through a system of weirs into the Yolo
Bypass and away from nearby communities (Figure 2; Salcido,
2012; Sommer et al., 2001). During the dry season, floodplain
soils in the bypass support farming of seasonal crops (mostly
rice). Today, the bypass is also widely recognized for its
ecological benefits.
Kern River watershed watcher Scott Williams put out what will
be his final Kern River Snow and Water Report May 3 and the
news was grim. The predicted run off for the Kern River has
dwindled from an already meager 33% of normal last month to a
downright miserly 28% of normal this month. The snow pack just
didn’t materialize this year and what snow there was has
diminished quickly, according to Williams’ report.
A divided Zone 7 Water Agency Board of Directors voted to
continue participating in the planning phase for the ambitious
and long-discussed Delta Conveyance Project, following
discussions about intricacies and concerns related to the
matter last month. The directors’ 5-2 vote on April 20 comes
with an a commitment of an additional $4.75 million in funding
by Zone 7 for environmental planning for the proposed project.
Over the past two centuries, 95% of the Central Valley’s
wetlands have been lost to development, landscaped out of
existence to satisfy the hunger of an urbanizing, growing
nation. But that’s only part of the picture. California’s
Central Valley extends far beyond what you can see from the
freeways bisecting the belly of the state to connect the
Redding to the Bay Area to Los Angeles. The region once boasted
one of the largest and most biologically diverse wetlands on
earth nourished by the mighty Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers
…
Rather than planning for droughts and ensuring that minimum
water quality objectives are achieved in critically dry years,
the proposed voluntary agreement appears to be a “plan to fail”
to protect the Delta in future droughts. Droughts are a
fact of life in California, even as climate change is making
them worse. The Governor’s Water Resilience Portfolio
recognizes the need to improve drought preparedness, requiring
that the State to be able to protect fish and wildlife during a
six year drought …
California is immersed in a third year of drought, with
January, February and March of 2022 experiencing the lowest
precipitation on record. Weather whiplash of big storms
followed by dry spells makes every drop of rain, every flake of
snow, and every water molecule vital this year for families,
farms, the environment and the economy. But outdated
infrastructure and the orientation of the pumping facilities in
the south Delta limits our ability to capture available water
from storm events. The Delta Conveyance Project would help
resolve this limitation.
Between vast almond orchards and dairy pastures in the heart of
California’s farm country sits a property being redesigned to
look like it did 150 years ago, before levees restricted the
flow of rivers that weave across the landscape. The 2,100 acres
(1,100 hectares) at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San
Joaquin rivers in the state’s Central Valley are being reverted
to a floodplain.
Not only does the proposed Bay-Delta voluntary agreement wholly
fail to provide the water that the environment needs, but even
the woefully inadequate flows and the habitat restoration
proposed in the VA would largely come from other water users
and taxpayers, rather than the water districts that signed the
MOU. … [P]art of the funding supposedly coming from
water districts simply redirects existing fees they are
required to pay under the 1992 Central Valley Project
Improvement Act ($10M/year).
The Colorado River is the epicenter of the nation’s water and
climate crisis, according to an annual report from
the conservation group American Rivers that ranked the waterway
the country’s most endangered. … More than 20 years of
record-breaking climate change-driven drought has
brought the river and reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead to
record lows. Last month, Lake Powell dropped below a
critical threshold of 3,525 feet for the first time — a
number the states and federal government have worked to
avoid to keep enough water in the reservoir for continued
hydropower production.
Despite being the largest estuary on the West Coast and
supporting both a highly diverse ecosystem and a multi-billion
dollar economy, the San Francisco Bay Estuary was not getting
its fair share of federal funding for restoration, according to
local lawmakers and environmental organizations. That changed
this year after Congress and President Joe Biden approved more
than $50 million in funding to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency for projects to restore lost wetlands,
improve water quality, address pollution and bolster sea-level
rise defenses throughout San Francisco Bay.
Flows will ramp up on the Tuolumne River over several days to
help newly hatched salmon reach the Pacific Ocean. The river
will rise as much as 6 feet as measured at the Ninth Street
Bridge in Modesto, the Turlock Irrigation District said in a
news release Wednesday. The water will be released from Don
Pedro Reservoir near La Grange starting Saturday, April 16. It
will peak in the middle of next week and ramp back down by
Monday, April 25. The water takes about 24 hours to reach
Modesto and continues on to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Land and waterway managers labored
hard over the course of a century to control California’s unruly
rivers by building dams and levees to slow and contain their
water. Now, farmers, environmentalists and agencies are undoing
some of that work as part of an accelerating campaign to restore
the state’s major floodplains.
Voluntary agreements in California
have been touted as an innovative and flexible way to improve
environmental conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and the rivers that feed it. The goal is to provide river flows
and habitat for fish while still allowing enough water to be
diverted for farms and cities in a way that satisfies state
regulators.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
