Wetlands are among the most important ecosystems in the world.
They produce high levels of oxygen, filter toxic chemicals out of
water, reduce flooding and erosion and recharge groundwater. They
also serve as critical habitat for wildlife, including a large
percentage of plants and animals on California’s endangered
species list.
As the state has grown into one of the world’s leading economies,
Californians have developed and transformed the state’s marshes,
swamps and tidal flats, losing as much as 90 percent of the
original wetlands acreage—a greater percentage of loss than any
other state in the nation.
While the conversion of wetlands has slowed, the loss in
California is significant and it affects a range of factors from
water quality to quality of life.
Wetlands still remain in every part of the state, with the
greatest concentration in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
its watershed, which includes the Central Valley. The Delta
wetlands are especially important because they are part of the
vast complex of waterways that provide two-thirds of California’s
drinking water.
Researchers in Poland have found another reason to love
beavers: They benefit wintering birds. The rodents, once
maligned as destructive pests, have been getting a lot of
positive press lately. And for good reason. Beavers are
ecosystem engineers. As they gather trees and dam waterways,
they create wetlands, increase soil moisture, and allow more
light to reach the ground. That drives the growth of herbaceous
and shrubby vegetation, which benefits numerous animals. Bats,
who enjoy the buffet of insects found along beaver ponds, are
among the beneficiaries. So too are butterflies who come for
the diversity of flowering plants in the meadows beavers
create.
California’s bedrock environmental law has helped protect
residents, wildlife and natural resources from pollution and
other negative effects of development countless times since
then-Gov. Ronald Reagan put it on the books more than half a
century ago. But the California Environmental Quality Act,
better known as CEQA, sometimes is weaponized by competing
businesses, labor unions and anti-development neighbors who
aren’t necessarily motivated by environmental concerns.
… Supporters say the law has blocked or forced changes
for hundreds of projects that would have worsened air, water
and soil pollution…. Witnesses spelled out those competing
realities during an all-day hearing Thursday before the Little
Hoover Commission which, for the first time, is studying
whether to recommend changes to the environmental law.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the
wealthiest and most influential institutions in Utah, plans to
donate a pool of water to help save the Great Salt Lake. The
Utah Department of Natural Resources, which helps manage the
lake, announced the gift Wednesday morning. The donation
amounts to about 20,000 acre-feet worth of shares that the
church holds in the North Point Consolidated Irrigation
Co. … Although the lake is the nation’s largest
saline system, it has run a water deficit of about 1.2 million
acre-feet in recent years. This winter’s substantial snowpack,
however, will likely raise its elevation by at least a few
feet. It currently sits at about 4,190 feet above sea level
but needs to rise to around 4,200 feet to reach an
elevation that’s sustainable for wildlife, recreation and
lake-based industries like brine shrimp and mineral harvesting.
Last summer Governor Newsom released California’s Water Supply
Strategy–which calls for the modernization of our water
management system. We know that the Sacramento Valley continues
to modernize everything we do, from our farms, communities and
businesses, to the way we approach water. These improvements
include adopting improved water efficiency, irrigation systems,
and tools to measure water use. We are planting new varieties
that are more productive and produce more crop per drop. We are
investing millions to improve water delivery systems for the
environment as well as for farms, cities, and disadvantaged
communities.
The southern Sierra Nevada is covered with the deepest snowpack
in recorded history, and the rest of the range is not far
behind. When all that snow melts, where will it go? You
can read the answer in the landscape of the Central Valley. To
the eye it is nearly flat, covered by layers of gravel, silt
and clay washed from the mountains over the eons by rain and
melting snow. … The solution is shockingly simple,
relatively cheap — compared with the cost of cataclysmic floods
— and surprisingly non-controversial. We just haven’t yet done
it on the scale that’s needed. California needs to restore its
floodplains. Not the whole valley floors, and not as they were
in the pre-development era. But it needs to have many more
acres of land reserved for floodwater.
Even with winter’s remarkable rainfall, Mono Lake will not rise
enough to reduce unhealthy dust storms that billow off the
exposed lakebed and violate air quality standards. Nor will it
offset increasing salinity levels that threaten Mono Lake
Kutzadika’a tribe’s cultural resources and food for millions of
migratory birds. Any gain Mono Lake makes surely won’t last due
to the [Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's] ongoing
diversions….If DWP won’t voluntarily cooperate in finding a
way to protect Mono Lake, then the State Water Board needs to
step up and save Mono Lake – again. -Written by Martha Davis, a board member for the
Mono Lake Committee.
Before Californians built a network of levees and dams to keep
cities from flooding, the rivers that formed the Central Valley
each winter would spill out of their channels. In the wettest
years, they’d flood to form a massive inland sea that stretched
hundreds of miles from Redding to Bakersfield. In wet winters
such as this one, those rivers keep trying to form that massive
seasonal wetland again, testing the strength of the levees that
protect communities built on the state’s floodplains. Along two
of the state’s most flood-prone rivers, Ducks Unlimited has
been working to create wetlands that use those natural flood
patterns to create vital habitat for waterbirds and wildlife.
The projects highlight why Californians should look to wetland
expansion as one of the solutions to help reduce the risks from
future floods.
The House on Thursday voted to overturn the Biden
administration’s protections for thousands of small
streams, wetlands and other waterways, advancing long-held
Republican arguments that the regulations are an environmental
overreach and burden to business. The vote was 227-198 to
overturn the rule. House Republicans used the Congressional
Review Act, which allows Congress to block recently enacted
executive-branch regulations. The measure now heads to the
Senate, where Republicans hope to attract Democratic senators
wary of Biden’s environmental policies. Sen. Joe Manchin,
D-W.Va., a frequent Biden antagonist, has already pledged to
support the overturn of a rule he calls federal overreach.
Biden said he would veto the measure if it reaches his desk.
Explore the epicenter of groundwater sustainability on
our Central Valley Tour
April 26-28 and engage directly with some of
the most important leaders and experts in water storage,
management and delivery, agriculture, habitat, land use policy
and water equity. The tour focuses on the San Joaquin Valley,
which has struggled with consistently little to no
surface water deliveries and increasing pressure to reduce
groundwater usage to sustainable levels while also facing water
quality and access challenges for disadvantaged
communities. Led by Foundation staff and
groundwater expert Thomas Harter, Chair for Water
Resources Management and Policy at the University of
California, Davis, the tour explores topics such as subsidence,
water supply and drought, flood management, groundwater
banking and recharge, surface water storage, agricultural
supply and drainage, wetlands and more. Register
here!
It’s a familiar scenario: Rising rivers are pinched off from
the flood plains that could have spread, slowed and stored the
sudden abundance of water. Floodwaters break through levees and
leave destruction and heartbreaking loss in their wake. Renewed
frustration and fury enter the public dialogue about “wasted”
water. … River managers use the term “environmental
flows” to describe the water that’s allowed to stay in rivers
to nurture the ecosystem, as opposed to water diverted or
stored for farms, cities or hydropower. While I worked at the
UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, we dove in deep on
environmental flows, calculating an environmental flow
management strategy for every major tributary to the San
Joaquin River, which nourishes the valley that bears its
name. -Written by Ann Willis, California Regional Director
for American Rivers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to
restoring and protecting rivers across the country.
A new USGS study shows that a warming climate is likely to
cause freshwater wetlands to release substantially more methane
than under normal conditions. This finding has big implications
for climate mitigation strategies focused on reducing
greenhouse gas emissions from people. … Methane is a gas
that produces a strong greenhouse effect in our atmosphere.
It’s estimated to be contributing about 25% to warming
temperatures from climate change. But it works very differently
than carbon dioxide—the better-known greenhouse gas.
As the effects of heat-trapping pollution continue to raise sea
levels, wetlands dotting American coastlines could drown —
or they could flourish. Their fate will depend upon rates of
sea-level rise, how quickly the plants can grow, and whether
there’s space inland into which they can migrate. Climate
Central modeled how American coastal wetlands will
respond to sea level rise in an array of potential scenarios.
It found that conserving land for wetlands to migrate into is a
decisive factor in whether wetlands will survive or drown.
Wetlands and development have long been in conflict, with
ecological values weighed against waterfront economic
opportunities. As seas rise, benefits of conserving areas
inland for wetland migration are creating new tensions. And as
climate change intensifies storms and elevate high tides and
storm surges, the economic values of wetlands are growing.
Once hailed as the “American Nile,” the Colorado River spans
1,450 miles and supplies nearly 40 million people across seven
states plus northern Mexico with drinking water, irrigation for
farmland and hydroelectric power. But after decades of drought
and overuse, major reservoirs along the river are drying
up. As the Colorado River levels drop to historic lows,
tensions are rising between the seven states that depend on its
flow — Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah
and Wyoming. Their original agreement for distributing the
river water lacked foresight and failed to account for dire
circumstances like long-term drought. The American
Southwest now faces a crisis it knew was coming.
Reports of at least 200 sick or dead band-tailed pigeons
throughout Northern California could be linked to an outbreak
of avian trichomonosis, according to the California Department
of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). – Video above: Blizzard Conditions
force closure of Interstate 80 Since early February, reports
have been coming in from residents located along the Central
Coast, the Bay Area and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The
band-tailed pigeon is native to California and during the
winter is often gathering acorns for the winter from central
California to Southern California.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake doesn’t look so “great” these days. This
place where tourists once bobbed up and down like corks in
water far saltier than the ocean is now quite literally turning
to dust. … Climate change and the West’s historic
megadrought certainly haven’t done the lake any favors, but
it’s the diversion of water away from the lake that Romney says
is less than divine: “The water in this area helped us bloom
like a rose, as the Scripture says. And yeah, we’ve got trees
and beautiful lawns. But some of that’s gonna have to
change.” Most of the lake’s water is spoken for long
before it gets there. It’s not just those green lawns for
Utah’s exploding population; 70% of the water goes to
agriculture. And then there’s the billion-dollar-a-year mineral
extraction industry. It uses the lake’s water, too.
What do Bordeaux, Loire, Mosel, Rhine, Rhône, Douro, Napa,
Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Tokaj and the Wachau all have in
common? If you said they are all major wine regions split by
rivers or laced with tributaries, pour yourself a glass of
wine. It may seem obvious, but wine wouldn’t exist without
water. And rivers deliver it. For centuries that has meant
soil, sediment, nutrients, warming and cooling influences and,
of course, water, all traveling along riverbanks. According to
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), today the United
States alone has more than 3 million miles of rivers and
streams—and many of those miles have historically made
agriculture, including viticulture, possible. … Running
around 50 miles from Mt. St. Helena in the north and
spilling into the San Pablo Bay, the Napa River is home to
plants, endangered critters and some of the most valuable
acreage of grapevines in the country.
A Ninth Circuit panel on Tuesday revived a Trump-era Clean
Water Act regulation, finding the lower court lacked authority
to vacate the rule without finding it unlawful. In 2021, U.S.
District Judge William Alsup vacated a Trump administration
revision of the “Clean Water Act 401 Certification Rule,” which
narrows what issues state and tribal governments can consider
when determining whether a project, particularly one
discharging pollution into a waterway, complies with state
water quality standards. The rule affected the permitting and
relicensing process for thousands of industrial projects,
including natural gas pipelines, hydroelectric plants,
wastewater treatment facilities and construction sites near
sensitive wetlands. Beginning September 2020, states could no
longer consider a project’s effects on air emissions and road
traffic congestion.
Climate change isn’t the only threat facing California’s birds.
Over the course of the 20th century, urban sprawl and
agricultural development have dramatically changed the
landscape of the state, forcing many native species to adapt to
new and unfamiliar habitats. In a new study, biologists at
the University of California, Berkeley, use current and
historical bird surveys to reveal how land use
change has amplified—and in some cases mitigated—the
impacts of climate change on bird populations in Los
Angeles and the Central Valley.
I often tell people in Placer County that the Sacramento Valley
is a national leader in delivering high quality water to farms,
wildlife refuges, and all of our residents in a sustainable
way. But what does this really mean in practice? I
was recently asked to author an article for the American Water
Resources Association’s IMPACT magazine to give an example to
our ridgetop to river mouth “Supershed” approach. I am
sharing the article with you today, which discusses why it is
so important to our collective future to make sure we take a
broad view of water and natural resource management in our
respective watersheds.
A shortage on the Colorado River has put tremendous pressure on
the water supply that serves more than 40-million people in the
Western United States. But a punishing drought and the over
allocation of the river have also created an urgent problem for
California’s Salton Sea. The 340-square-mile lake was formed in
1905 when a canal carrying river water to farmers in the
Imperial Valley ruptured. The flood created a desert oasis that
lured tourists and migratory birds to its shore. A century
later, the Salton Sea — California’s largest lake — is
spiraling into an ecological disaster. At 223 feet below
sea level, Bombay Beach occupies a low spot on the
map. Many of the shoreline community’s trailer homes are
rusting into the earth and tagged with graffiti. Artists have
created large pieces of public sculpture, including a vintage
phone booth that stands on the shoreline as a tribute to a
bygone era.
A new definition of “waters of the United States” (“WOTUS”)
will help drive the regulatory reach of the Federal Water
Pollution Control Act, or Clean Water Act (“CWA”), starting
March 20, 2023. The term WOTUS is used to determine the extent
to which the CWA applies to different types of water bodies,
such as rivers, streams, lakes, wetlands, and other water
resources. Redefining WOTUS changes the scope of CWA programs
imposing water quality standards, allocating total maximum
daily loads of pollutants to impaired waters, certifying CWA
Section 401 compliance, regulating the discharge of pollutants
through National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System
permits, and regulating the discharge of dredged or fill
material under CWA Section 404 permits.
A bill that will be introduced in the Utah State Legislature
will task one person with overseeing efforts to save the Great
Salt Lake. The position, currently titled the “Great Salt Lake
Commissioner,” will coordinate with government agencies,
environmental, tribal and industry groups and come up with a
master plan for the future of the lake. … The bill is
expected to be made public in the Utah State Legislature soon.
It would be a significant change in approach to how the
state is responding to the lake shrinking to historic lows
and the environmental catastrophe it presents with toxic
dust storms, reduced snowpack and harms to wildlife and public
health.
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
To walk on to the Great Salt Lake, the largest salt lake in the
western hemisphere which faces the astounding prospect of
disappearing just five years from now, is to trudge across
expanses of sand and mud, streaked with ice and desiccated
aquatic life, where just a short time ago you would be wading
in waist-deep water. … The terror comes from toxins laced in
the vast exposed lake bed, such as arsenic, mercury and lead,
being picked up by the wind to form poisonous clouds of dust
that would swamp the lungs of people in nearby Salt Lake City,
where air pollution is often already worse than that of Los
Angeles, potentially provoking a myriad of respiratory and
cancer-related problems. … [T]he Great Salt Lake is
being parched by an antediluvian network of water rights for
agriculture rather than thirsty newcomers. About three-quarters
of the diverted water goes to growing crops, with the growing
of alfalfa …
More than 20 years ago, Craig McNamara started planting woody
vegetation on his family’s farm, west of Sacramento,
California. McNamara was an early organic pioneer in the
region, and he prioritized weaving nature into the agricultural
landscape at a time when it was far from popular. Native shrubs
and trees lined a creek that ran through the walnut farm.
Plants became boundaries between orchards and row crops—i.e.,
hedgerows—and it didn’t take long for the 450-acre organic farm
to come “alive,” says Craig’s son, Sean McNamara, who joined
the operation in 2014. Bees, owls, ladybugs, and many other
creatures still routinely visit the farm. Just a few weeks ago,
a bobcat strolled through the bushes along the creek.
The National Park Service is advancing its plan to remove a
Tennessee Valley dam that has been classified as having a high
risk of failure and threatens public safety at a nearby beach.
The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously Thursday to
endorse the park service’s proposed project, which also
includes restoring acres of wetland habitat that has been
affected by the dam over the decades. … Built in the early
1960s by the former landowner to attract waterfowl for hunting,
the earthen dam was one of the many artificial structures
inherited by the National Park Service after the Golden Gate
National Recreation Area was founded in 1972. The dam and its
holding pond are accessible on the Tennessee Valley Trail and
are about 900 feet from Tennessee Beach.
A coalition of state traffic and environmental agencies
announced Wednesday they will work together to redesign Highway
37, the North Bay’s key east-west route, adding new lanes in
each direction to help unclog traffic and advancing other
near-term fixes to address chronic flooding problems. The
effort, which state and local officials touted as historic,
focuses on the 21-mile state highway linking Marin, Sonoma,
Napa and Solano counties from Interstate 80 in the east to
Highway 101 at Novato in the west. Daily, it is traversed by
40,000 vehicles. Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, one of several local
and state officials who have championed solutions for the
route, hailed the partnership as a “significant milestone” that
will reduce congestion and address climate change.
More than 200 Republican members of Congress introduced
legislation last week to strike down a Biden administration
rule restoring long-standing federal protections for hundreds
of thousands of streams and wetlands across the country —
safeguards that the Trump administration dismantled in 2020.
Among the co-sponsors of the House resolution is Rep. John
Duarte (R-Calif.), who in 2017 paid $1.1 million in fines for
illegally plowing 22 acres of federally protected streams and
wetlands on his farm. The settlement followed a yearslong legal
battle that started when Duarte hired a contractor to “rip,” or
deep till, his entire 450-acre property before planting wheat,
including areas with federally protected waters.
Land and waterway managers labored
hard over the course of a century to control California’s unruly
rivers by building dams and levees to slow and contain their
water. Now, farmers, environmentalists and agencies are undoing
some of that work as part of an accelerating campaign to restore
the state’s major floodplains.
Biologists have designed a variety
of unique experiments in the past decade to demonstrate the
benefits that floodplains provide for small fish. Tracking
studies have used acoustic tags to show that chinook salmon
smolts with access to inundated fields are more likely than their
river-bound cohorts to reach the Pacific Ocean. This is because
the richness of floodplains offers a vital buffet of nourishment
on which young salmon can capitalize, supercharging their growth
and leading to bigger, stronger smolts.
Water is flowing once again
to the Colorado River’s delta in Mexico, a vast region that
was once a natural splendor before the iconic Western river was
dammed and diverted at the turn of the last century, essentially
turning the delta into a desert.
In 2012, the idea emerged that water could be intentionally sent
down the river to inundate the delta floodplain and regenerate
native cottonwood and willow trees, even in an overallocated
river system. Ultimately, dedicated flows of river water were
brokered under cooperative
efforts by the U.S. and Mexican governments.
State work to improve wildlife habitat and tamp down dust at California’s ailing Salton Sea is finally moving forward. Now the sea may be on the verge of getting the vital ingredient needed to supercharge those restoration efforts – money.
The shrinking desert lake has long been a trouble spot beset by rising salinity and unhealthy, lung-irritating dust blowing from its increasingly exposed bed. It shadows discussions of how to address the Colorado River’s two-decade-long drought because of its connection to the system. The lake is a festering health hazard to nearby residents, many of them impoverished, who struggle with elevated asthma risk as dust rises from the sea’s receding shoreline.
This tour guided participants on a virtual journey deep into California’s most crucial water and ecological resource – the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The 720,000-acre network of islands and canals support the state’s two major water systems – the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project. The Delta and the connecting San Francisco Bay form the largest freshwater tidal estuary of its kind on the West coast.
Out of sight and out of mind to most
people, the Salton Sea in California’s far southeast corner has
challenged policymakers and local agencies alike to save the
desert lake from becoming a fetid, hyper-saline water body
inhospitable to wildlife and surrounded by clouds of choking
dust.
The sea’s problems stretch beyond its boundaries in Imperial and
Riverside counties and threaten to undermine multistate
management of the Colorado River. A 2019 Drought Contingency Plan for the
Lower Colorado River Basin was briefly stalled when the Imperial
Irrigation District, holding the river’s largest water
allocation, balked at participating in the plan because, the
district said, it ignored the problems of the Salton Sea.
Deep, throaty cadenced calls —
sounding like an off-key bassoon — echo over the grasslands,
farmers’ fields and wetlands starting in late September of each
year. They mark the annual return of sandhill cranes to the
Cosumnes River Preserve,
46,000 acres located 20 miles south of Sacramento on the edge of
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
For the bulk of her career, Jayne
Harkins has devoted her energy to issues associated with the
management of the Colorado River, both with the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and with the Colorado River Commission of Nevada.
Now her career is taking a different direction. Harkins, 58, was
appointed by President Trump last August to take the helm of the
United States section of the U.S.-Mexico agency that oversees
myriad water matters between the two countries as they seek to
sustainably manage the supply and water quality of the Colorado
River, including its once-thriving Delta in Mexico, and other
rivers the two countries share. She is the first woman to be
named the U.S. Commissioner of the International Boundary and
Water Commission for either the United States or Mexico in the
commission’s 129-year history.
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
Farmers in the Central Valley are broiling about California’s plan to increase flows in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems to help struggling salmon runs avoid extinction. But in one corner of the fertile breadbasket, River Garden Farms is taking part in some extraordinary efforts to provide the embattled fish with refuge from predators and enough food to eat.
And while there is no direct benefit to one farm’s voluntary actions, the belief is what’s good for the fish is good for the farmers.
Deep, throaty cadenced calls —
sounding like an off-key bassoon — echo over the grasslands,
farmers’ fields and wetlands starting in late September of each
year. They mark the annual return of sandhill cranes to the
Cosumnes River Preserve,
46,000 acres located 20 miles south of Sacramento on the edge of
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
California voters may experience a sense of déjà vu this year when they are asked twice in the same year to consider water bonds — one in June, the other headed to the November ballot.
Both tackle a variety of water issues, from helping disadvantaged communities get clean drinking water to making flood management improvements. But they avoid more controversial proposals, such as new surface storage, and they propose to do some very different things to appeal to different constituencies.
Along the banks of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Oakley, about 50 miles southwest
of Sacramento, is a park that harkens back to the days when the
Delta lured Native Americans, Spanish explorers, French fur
trappers, and later farmers to its abundant wildlife and rich
soil.
That historical Delta was an enormous marsh linked to the two
freshwater rivers entering from the north and south, and tidal
flows coming from the San Francisco Bay. After the Gold Rush,
settlers began building levees and farms, changing the landscape
and altering the habitat.
As vital as the Colorado River is to the United States and
Mexico, so is the ongoing process by which the two countries
develop unique agreements to better manage the river and balance
future competing needs.
The prospect is challenging. The river is over allocated as urban
areas and farmers seek to stretch every drop of their respective
supplies. Since a historic treaty between the two countries was
signed in 1944, the United States and Mexico have periodically
added a series of arrangements to the treaty called minutes that
aim to strengthen the binational ties while addressing important
water supply, water quality and environmental concerns.
This 28-page report describes the watersheds of the Sierra Nevada
region and details their importance to California’s overall water
picture. It describes the region’s issues and challenges,
including healthy forests, catastrophic fire, recreational
impacts, climate change, development and land use.
The report also discusses the importance of protecting and
restoring watersheds in order to retain water quality and enhance
quantity. Examples and case studies are included.
This 30-minute documentary, produced in 2011, explores the past,
present and future of flood management in California’s Central
Valley. It features stories from residents who have experienced
the devastating effects of a California flood firsthand.
Interviews with long-time Central Valley water experts from
California Department of Water Resources (FloodSAFE), U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, Central Valley Flood
Management Program and environmental groups are featured as they
discuss current efforts to improve the state’s 150-year old flood
protection system and develop a sustainable, integrated, holistic
flood management plan for the Central Valley.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
15-minute DVD that graphically portrays the potential disaster
should a major earthquake hit the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
“Delta Warning” depicts what would happen in the event of an
earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter scale: 30 levee breaks,
16 flooded islands and a 300 billion gallon intrusion of salt
water from the Bay – the “big gulp” – which would shut down the
State Water Project and Central Valley Project pumping plants.
Water truly has shaped California into the great state it is
today. And if it is water that made California great, it’s the
fight over – and with – water that also makes it so critically
important. In efforts to remap California’s circulatory system,
there have been some critical events that had a profound impact
on California’s water history. These turning points not only
forced a re-evaluation of water, but continue to impact the lives
of every Californian. This 2005 PBS documentary offers a
historical and current look at the major water issues that shaped
the state we know today. Includes a 12-page viewer’s guide with
background information, historic timeline and a teacher’s lesson.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, features
a map of the San Joaquin River. The map text focuses on the San
Joaquin River Restoration Program, which aims to restore flows
and populations of Chinook salmon to the river below Friant Dam
to its confluence with the Merced River. The text discusses the
history of the program, its goals and ongoing challenges with
implementation.
This beautiful 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, displays
the rivers, lakes and reservoirs, irrigated farmland, urban areas
and Indian reservations within the Klamath River Watershed. The
map text explains the many issues facing this vast,
15,000-square-mile watershed, including fish restoration;
agricultural water use; and wetlands. Also included are
descriptions of the separate, but linked, Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Agreement,
and the next steps associated with those agreements. Development
of the map was funded by a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
A companion to the Truckee River Basin Map poster, this 24×36
inch poster, suitable for framing, explores the Carson River, and
its link to the Truckee River. The map includes Lahontan Dam and
Reservoir, the Carson Sink, and the farming areas in the basin.
Map text discusses the region’s hydrology and geography, the
Newlands Project, land and water use within the basin and
wetlands. Development of the map was funded by a grant from the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Mid-Pacific Region, Lahontan Basin
Area Office.
This 24×36 inch poster, suitable for framing, explains how
non-native invasive animals can alter the natural ecosystem,
leading to the demise of native animals. “Unwelcome Visitors”
features photos and information on four such species – including
the zerbra mussel – and explains the environmental and economic
threats posed by these species.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to the Delta explores the competing
uses and demands on California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Included in the guide are sections on the history of the Delta,
its role in the state’s water system, and its many complex issues
with sections on water quality, levees, salinity and agricultural
drainage, fish and wildlife, and water distribution.
Wetlands are among the most
important and hardest-working ecosystems in the world, rivaling
rain forests and coral reefs in productivity of life.
They produce high levels of oxygen, filter toxic chemicals out of
water, sequester carbon, reduce flooding and erosion, recharge
groundwater and provide a
diverse range of recreational opportunities from fishing and
hunting to photography. They also serve as critical habitat for
wildlife, including a large percentage of plants and animals on
California’s endangered species
list.
The Pacific Flyway is one of four
major North American migration routes for birds, especially
waterfowl, and extends from Alaska and Canada, through
California, to Mexico and South America. Each year, birds follow
ancestral patterns as they travel the flyway on their annual
north-south migration. Along the way, they need stopover sites
such as wetlands with suitable habitat and food supplies. In
California, 90 percent of historic wetlands have been lost.
In the Central Valley, wetlands—partly or seasonally saturated
land that supports aquatic life and distinct ecosystems— provide
critical habitat for a variety of wildlife.
This printed issue of Western Water examines how the various
stakeholders have begun working together to meet the planning
challenges for the Colorado River Basin, including agreements
with Mexico, increased use of conservation and water marketing,
and the goal of accomplishing binational environmental
restoration and water-sharing programs.
This printed issue of Western Water examines the issues
associated with the State Water Board’s proposed revision of the
water quality Bay-Delta Plan, most notably the question of
whether additional flows are needed for the system, and how they
might be provided.
This printed copy of Western Water examines the Colorado River
Delta, its ecological significance and the lengths to which
international, state and local efforts are targeted and achieving
environmental restoration while recognizing the needs of the
entire river’s many users.
