This week, the Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted
recommendations for ocean salmon fishing along the West Coast;
for an unprecedented third year in a row, the council has
recommended closing commercial fishing off the California coast
and allowing only limited commercial fishing in Oregon and
Washington. … (Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Associations Executive Director Lisa )Damrosch told the
Times-Standard that commercial fishermen have been feeling the
effects of — and working to prevent — salmon population
collapse in the Sacramento Valley. She stressed the PCFFA’s
long-term goals of returning to a system of production
hatcheries, if Californians want to continue to divert water to
farming interests in Central and Southern California.
California wildlife officials detected an invasive species in
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that threatens numerous
ecosystems in the northern part of the state. On April 16,
officials announced the Golden Mussel Task Force, a statewide
interagency group aimed at curbing the spread of the invasive
species. Agencies include the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, California State Parks, and the California Department
of Food and Agriculture. Here’s what you need to know about
Golden Mussels.
For decades, residents of Bakersfield have lived with a river
that’s little more than a channel of dust. The Kern, which
pours from the snowy peaks of the southern Sierra, descends
upon California’s ninth-largest city and, in all but the
wettest of years, runs dry. A sandy, weed-strewn corridor is
left winding unremarkably through the downtown, beside roads,
beneath bridges and behind businesses. … A group of
residents is trying to change that. Cooper and dozens of others
are fighting to bring water back to the Kern River, hoping to
create a lush, parklike centerpiece in a city best known for
the sunbaked oil fields and farms that surround it. It
isn’t an easy go. The river’s waters are already largely
accounted for, some serving the municipal needs of Bakersfield
and nearby communities, but most drawn for agriculture, the
engine of the regional economy.
In a major twist, the Donald Trump administration is now
reviewing regional appeals to halt PG&E’s plans to
dismantle the Potter Valley Project. … In an April
14 letter, the Bureau of Reclamation responded to an inquiry
from Aaron Sykes, a board member of the Lake Pillsbury
Alliance, which represents the homeowners and stakeholders
fighting to keep Scott Dam, the structure that holds back Lake
Pillsbury. In the letter, which was reviewed by SFGATE, the
federal agency said funding for the project is “undergoing
reviews” to ensure it aligns with an executive order President
Donald Trump signed on his first day in office that directs the
government to explore any “undue burden” on the “use of
domestic energy resources” including, oil, coal and hydropower.
California farmer Aubrey Bettencourt has been appointed as the
Chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS). Bettencourt previously served as the President and
CEO of the Almond Alliance and was the Deputy Assistant
Secretary for the U.S. Department of the Interior during
President Donald Trump’s first administration. … Along
with her roles with the Almond Alliance and the USDA,
Bettencourt comes to the NRCS after working as the Global
Director of Government Relations and External Affairs for
Netafilm, which is an Orbia company.
… The purpose of this letter is to examine the decision made
by the Board on April 8, 2025, denying Ms. Annie Maine’s
petition not to approve a new well permit in the Hungry Hollow
Focus Area. The permit was approved thus consenting to the
continued degradation of the Hungry Hollow aquifer, already
under pressure from hundreds of new deep wells drilled to
supply 100 percent of irrigated water from groundwater sources.
… A group of people in Yolo County are concerned with
the laisse-faire approach to agricultural development during
the past 12 years, transforming the agricultural landscape from
annual crop rotations to perennial plantations. … We
would appreciate that Board members considered a different
future for Yolo agriculture, with greater respect for water and
land resources.
As Trump administration firings at the National Weather
Service continue to impact local offices across the U.S.,
the agency announced Thursday that staffing limitations may
further reduce or suspend the launch of weather balloons. The
announcement follows weeks of legal uncertainty over
widespread staff reductions, and comes the day after the
agency’s Sacramento office announced that it would stop
answering public phone lines and reduce the extent and
frequency of certain forecasting products due to “critically
reduced staffing.” Prior to that announcement, the office
said it would be limiting its weather updates on social
media. The changes are among the first of many that weather
service managers say they are likely to make as they prepare
for an era of “degraded operations” under the current
administration.
Wastewater industry professionals are split when it comes to
President Donald Trump’s performance in office so far. In a
poll conducted by Wastewater Digest following President Trump’s
first few months in office, roughly 50% of respondents felt
“very negative” or “somewhat negative” about his performance so
far as it relates to the wastewater sector. Roughly 44% felt
“very positive” or “somewhat positive,” and around 6% were
“neutral” on the topic. Responses about President Trump’s
performance varied, with some people praising his first few
months in office, while others were concerned about the future
of the country. Hot topics included comments about the economy,
regulations, tariffs and the environment.
Construction has officially begun on a new $267 million water
treatment facility along Navajo Route 36 near Shiprock, New
Mexico. The San Juan Lateral Water Treatment Plant, expected to
be completed by late 2028, will play a vital role in securing
clean drinking water for more than 200,000 people over the next
four decades, including communities in Arizona. … Once
operational, the plant will treat up to 18.8 million gallons of
water daily—meeting Safe Drinking Water Act standards—with the
capacity to double that output to 37.6 million gallons per day
as needed. In addition to delivering long-term water security,
the facility is expected to create 200 jobs during its
development.
A new partnership between three organizations will explore
options for raising the dam at Lake Mendocino to boost the
water supply supporting agriculture and recreation. State and
local politicians, tribal officials and representatives from
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers met this past Friday at Lake
Mendocino to formalize a cost-sharing agreement for the Coyote
Valley Dam General Investigation Study. According to the
Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, Lake
Mendocino provides drinking water for over 650,000 people in
Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties and plays a role in flood
control. The study, led by a partnership between the
commission, the Lytton Rancheria and the Corps of Engineers
will assess the prospects of greater water supply and potential
federal interest in reducing flood risks.
Imperial Beach city leaders are calling for more federal
accountability and legislative actions to address the ongoing
Tijuana River pollution. In a four to one vote, the city
council approved a resolution Wednesday night that lists
several priorities to help solve the public health
crisis. Mayor Paloma Aguirre was the only dissenting vote.
The resolution, spearheaded by Councilmember Mitch McKay, is
largely symbolic as Imperial Beach has no jurisdiction over any
of the actions, but it intends to send a message to the federal
government, as well as state and local partners, about possible
next steps. … The resolution urges Congress to adopt
legislation that strengthens enforcement of international water
and environmental treaty obligations, and hold Mexico
accountable for failing to control transboundary pollution in
the Tijuana River.
While cooler temperatures and more rain in March helped
mitigate drought in some regions in California, drought
conditions aren’t forecasted to improve for large swaths of the
state in the coming months. A seasonal drought
outlook by the Climate Prediction Center released on
Thursday, April 17, valid through July 31, forecasts that
Southern California and a central pocket of the state will see
drought conditions persist with no improvement. It comes as a
National Integrated Drought Information System update issued on
April 10 reported that below-normal temperatures and
higher-than-normal rainfall in March helped mitigate drought in
the Central Valley and San Diego. Yet nearly 40% of
California is in a drought, according to the latest available
data from the U.S. Drought Monitor accessed on April 17.
Last October, an invasive species never before seen in
North America was discovered in the deep waters of the
Port of Stockton, about 92 miles east of San Francisco. No
larger than the size of a paperclip, the seemingly innocuous,
caramel-colored shells of golden mussels clinging to buoys and
monitoring equipment in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — and
subsequently found at O’Neill Forebay in the San Luis Reservoir
near Los Banos — have left California officials scrambling to
stop the spread. On Wednesday, the California Department
of Fish and Wildlife released its plan to address
what it’s calling an “urgent invasive species threat,” with
strategies to prevent further distribution of golden mussels
and to minimize their impact on the environment, recreation,
agriculture and, notably, drinking water infrastructure.
At least one more dose of winter is headed to Utah’s mountains
while the state’s snowpack melts. After previously issuing a
winter storm watch, the National Weather Service issued a
winter weather advisory for Utah’s central and southern ranges,
which could receive up to a foot of snow at its highest points
by Friday night, as an incoming storm will likely impact those
regions the most. Still, other mountain ranges in the state
could pick up decent totals over the next few days. “(It’ll be)
a good dose of water for our state,” said KSL meteorologist
Matt Johnson.
With the summer tourism season on the horizon, a bipartisan
group of Western Slope state lawmakers is warning of “serious
risk” to Colorado’s public lands if U.S. Forest Service cuts
aren’t reversed. In an April 2 letter to United States
Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, lawmakers
called for thousands of recently-fired Forest Service staff to
be rehired. … The letter states that mountain snowpack
runoff — the majority of which flows from national forest lands
on Colorado’s Western Slope — supplies three-quarters
of the water supply for the state’s four major river
systems. “The surface water from these national
forestlands supports drinking water needs, agriculture,
industrial uses, recreation, and habitat for aquatic life
throughout the West,” the letter states. “The potential is
great for national forest management to positively or
negatively influence the reliability of these water supplies,
both in quantity and quality.”
This week, a public federal process determined there will be no
commercial salmon fishing off California’s coast for the third
year in a row. It’s a grim milestone for our state. While
we will see some recreational ocean fishing, we’re at the
low-water mark. … For the salmon lovers among us, these
are dark times. But I see glimmers of hope. … Two weeks ago,
the California Department of Fish and Wildlife revealed the
progress on California’s “Salmon Strategy for a Hotter, Drier
Future.” It was an update on the strategy Gov. Gavin Newsom
released last year, which outlined dozens of key action items
the state must take to better support healthy salmon
populations. In the last year alone, state fish and
wildlife and its partner agencies have made critical headway on
nearly 70% of the action items set by Gov. Newsom. Another 26%
are already done. –Written by Charlton H. Bonham, director of the California
Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Marin Municipal Water District took another step this week
in pursuit of what the agency says is its largest supply and
drought resiliency project in 40 years. The district board
voted unanimously on Tuesday to authorize spending $9.7 million
to design a pipeline that would tap into an existing aqueduct
system to get Sonoma County water to Marin reservoirs. The
pipeline project was selected in February as the district’s
priority effort to boost supply. If completed, it would be the
largest water supply project since Kent Lake was expanded in
1982, according to the district. … Estimated at $167
million, the proposed project would construct a 13-mile,
36-inch pipeline and a pump station to redirect some of that
(excess) water into the Nicasio Reservoir for storage. The
pipeline could yield 3,800 to 4,750 acre-feet of water a year.
A team of researchers at the University of Oxford have
uncovered crucial evidence for the origin of water on Earth.
Using a rare type of meteorite, known as an enstatite
chondrite, which has a composition analogous to that of the
early Earth (4.55 billion years ago), they have found a source
of hydrogen which would have been critical for the formation of
water molecules. Crucially, they demonstrated that the
hydrogen present in this material was intrinsic, and not from
contamination. This suggests that the material which our planet
was built from was far richer in hydrogen than previously
thought. The findings, which support the theory that the
formation of habitable conditions on Earth did not rely on
asteroids hitting Earth, have been published in the journal
Icarus.
… Today, more than 27 million people in the three states rely
on water from the Colorado River—roughly two-thirds of the
total population that the river serves. Yet even as that
dependence on the river grew, a collision between human and
environmental needs was brewing. … For municipal and
agricultural water managers who depended on the Colorado, the
growing list of endangered species was a wakeup call. It
spurred a decade-long effort to craft a multi-party agreement
that allowed water agencies to continue delivering water to
their users while staying ahead of the mounting endangered
species issues. That effort has largely proven successful, but
as the program now crosses the 20-year mark, new questions are
arising about how to keep it strong for the next three decades
in the face of grinding drought, contentious negotiations over
the river’s future, and new uncertainties about the federal
government’s role in its continued implementation.
The proposal advanced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
National Marine Fisheries Service would limit the meaning to
taking direct action to kill or injure endangered or threatened
wildlife — removing the prohibition against habitat destruction
that leads to those ends. It fits with White House officials’
intent to spur economic growth by slashing regulations. If
adopted, the change could significantly curtail the reach of
the Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973 under former
President Nixon. It would also flout a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court
ruling that upheld the definition of harm to encompass
“significant habitat modification or degradation.” …
(T)he previous definition prevented acts like cutting down
swaths of old-growth forests in Northern California and the
Pacific Northwest where federally threatened northern spotted
owls nest and roost. Or filling in a wetland inhabited by
red-legged frogs, California’s state amphibian also listed as
federally threatened.
