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.
The Merced River and the San Joaquin River will be closed for
recreational use throughout Merced County, announced the Merced
County Sheriff’s Office on Monday. Sheriff’s officials say the
snow melting the Sierra Nevada Mountains, is provoking
more water to be released into the county’s waterways and is
making conditions very dangerous in the rivers. The
announcement comes after Sheriff Vern Warnke says they have
encountered tragedies along the river recently, including
people going missing after going to the river. Sheriff Warnke
says it is okay to go fishing in the river, but activities such
as kayaking, swimming, and any other activities that have
anything to do with getting into the water are prohibited until
further notice. “The water’s running fast, running cold,
running deep. So please, stay out of the water,” Warnke
said.
[Tuolumne River Trust's policy director Peter] Drekmeier’s beef
with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission goes back
years and rests on the premise that the agency stores far more
water than it needs in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, on the upper
Tuolumne, at the expense of the river downstream. The
commission’s water management plan is based on the unlikely
possibility of an 8.5-year drought—a theoretical disaster
dubbed the “design drought” that critics consider overkill. …
Environmentalists insist the agency could take a more
fish-friendly approach, releasing more water through
O’Shaughnessy Dam into the Tuolumne River while still providing
adequate supplies for its 2.7 million customers.
When Dos Rios Ranch opens to visitors next month in the San
Joaquin Valley, California will have 280 state parks — making
it one of the nation’s largest systems, as well as one of its
most popular, with about 70 million visitors a year. Who knew?
The short answer is: hardly anyone. Over the past 20 years
I’ve asked several thousand Californians to name five state
parks. Fewer than 5% can do so. And most of these baffled
respondents are outdoorsy folks — the kind of people I meet on
the trail or at my talks about hiking. This lack of awareness
is more than surprising right now. It’s dangerous. If
Californians can’t name a handful of state parks, they won’t
recognize the threat when Sacramento defers investment in the
system or — as is inevitably happening again — attempts to cut
funding. -Written by John McKinney, author of “Hike
California’s State Parks” and two dozen other hiking-themed
books, has visited all 280 state parks.
Further legal action on the Kern River was put on pause
Thursday morning following an order by the 5th District Court
of Appeal that stayed a local injunction mandating enough water
be kept in the river for fish. … The underlying lawsuit was
filed in 2022 by Bring Back the Kern and several other public
interest groups along with Water Audit California, against the
City of Bakersfield for dewatering the river. … That 2022
lawsuit demands the city study the impacts of its river
operations on recreation and the ecosystem under the Public
Trust doctrine, which states all natural resources are held in
trust by the state for the greatest beneficial use by the
public. That was once automatically considered to be farming,
industry and municipal uses. But in recent years, recreation,
aesthetics and the environment have gained equal footing.
Nearly 1,600 acres of land used as rice fields north of
Sacramento could one day become public land, after a huge
restoration project funded partly by
big tech. Apple is among the donors to the Dos
Rios Norte project, an effort to restore a floodplain located
where the Sacramento and Feather rivers meet that’s crucial to
wildlife, the Sacramento Bee first reported.
California conservation nonprofit River Partners is leading the
efforts, with the goal of repairing the area habitat for the
state’s native Chinook salmon population, threatened bird
species and other wildlife species. The project aims to save
around 7,000 acre-feet of water each year, among other
environmental benefits. Apple would not disclose how much the
company contributed to this project, but confirmed to SFGATE it
has pledged more than $8 million since 2023 to California
watershed projects, including this one.
Kern River combatants are headed back to court where a local
advocacy group hopes to force the City of Bakersfield to goose
up flows, which were cut to a trickle leaving piles of dead
fish west of Bakersfield. The hearing is set for May 9 at 8:30
a.m. in Division J before Kern County Superior Court Judge
Gregory Pulskamp. “Nobody should be happy with the condition of
the Kern River right now; the people deserve and the law
requires a flowing river, not a couple of stagnant pools with
gasping and cooking fish,” wrote Attorney Adam Keats in an
email. Keats represents Bring Back the Kern and a coalition of
other public interest groups in a lawsuit with Water Audit
California against Bakersfield that seeks to have the city
study how its water diversions impact the environment. The city
owns water rights to the Kern as well as the river bed and six
that it operates in from about Hart Park west to Enos Lane.
After a decade in the works, California is getting a new state
park this summer. Dos Rios Ranch, a 1,600-acre plot west of
Modesto where the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers converge, has
long been slated to become the next state park. On Monday, the
Department of Parks and Recreation announced it would open June
12. … Department of Parks and Recreation Director
Armando Quintero has characterized Dos Rios as a needed
public investment in a “a park-poor region.” The site for
Dos Rios was donated by the Chico conservation group River
Partners, which spent $40 million restoring the
area from its previous incarnation as a dairy farm to its
more natural state as a floodplain, a transition that state
leaders have touted as climate-resilient. In Monday’s
announcement, Gov. Gavin Newsom called the Dos Rios restoration
“a key asset to fighting the climate crisis.”
Frustrated with the amount of water dribbling down the western
reach of the Kern River, plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit over
the river filed a motion Tuesday asking the judge in the case
to intervene. The motion says the City of Bakersfield has
not maintained flows required to keep fish in good condition,
particularly in the areas of the river from Allen Road
westward. “Fish have died and habitat has dried up and
the Bakersfield community has lost much of the living river
that it had enjoyed for almost all of 2023,” it says. The
motion seeks to compel the city to keep the flow at a specified
level based on water levels where the river enters the city’s
jurisdiction. The city’s water attorney Colin Pearce said
the motion is being reviewed and the city will respond
accordingly.
The governance of San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta water quality falls under the authority of the State
Water Quality Control Board. Among other duties, the Water
Board is responsible for adopting and updating the Bay-Delta
Water Quality Control Plan for the San Francisco
Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary (Bay-Delta
Plan). The Bay-Delta Plan’s purpose sets forth measures
and flow requirements to safeguard various water uses within
the watershed, including municipal, industrial, agricultural,
and ecological needs. Comprising five political appointees with
extensive powers, the Water Board plays a pivotal role in
shaping California’s water management policies. -Written by Cary Keaten, the general manager of
the Solano Irrigation District.
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) begins
construction this month to install a trash capture device along
northbound State Route 99, preventing trash in storm water
runoff from entering the Tuolumne River at Zeff Road. The trash
capture system will be located at the inlet of two existing
culverts on the southeast side of SR-99 and the Tuolumne River,
a location identified as a significant trash generating area.
The project will help the department achieve zero trash from
stormwater discharge into the lower reaches of the Tuolumne
River. It is consistent with the Caltrans’ Statewide Trash
Implementation plan and in compliance with the State Water
Resource Control Board water quality objectives for trash
pollutants.
After 12 years of planning, gathering funding then completing
and re-doing – and re-doing again – environmental studies, the
City of Bakersfield has finally gone out to bid for the
northern extension of the Kern River Parkway Trail. “I’m very
excited, it’s been a long time coming,” Councilman Bob Smith
said of the 6-mile long addition to the nearly 40-mile-long
path that runs the length of the Kern River from Gordon’s Ferry
on the east all the way to the Buena Vista Lake Aquatic
Recreation Area on the west. This extension will take runners,
hikers and cyclists north at Coffee Road along the Friant-Kern
Canal up to 7th Standard Road, about a half mile west of the
Gossamer Grove development.
Though the Delta Conveyance Project was only recently
approved by the Department of Water Resources after completing
the lengthy California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
process, the project faces new obstacles to implementation.
Nine lawsuits challenging DWR’s December 21, 2023 approval of
the Project were recently filed in Sacramento County Superior
Court by a total of thirty-three plaintiffs representing all
the Delta counties, the City of Stockton, environmental and
other nongovernmental organizations, and tribe[s]. Resolution
of that litigation could take several years.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
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.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.