An ecosystem includes all of the living organisms (plants,
animals and microbes) in a given area, interacting with each
other, and also with their non-living environments (air, water
and soil).
Ecosystems are dynamic and are impacted by disturbances such as a
drought, an extraordinarily freezing winter, and pests.
Longer-term disturbances include climate change effects.
Ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services upon which
people depend. Ecosystem management emphasizes managing natural
resources at the level of the ecosystem itself and not just
managing individual species.
The California Legislature was the first in the country to
protect rare plants and animals through passage of the California
Endangered Species Act in 1970. Congress followed suit in 1973 by
passing the federal Endangered Species Act.
Under a shaded refuge adjacent to a still pond in the Central
Valley, dozens of California State Parks officials and
nonprofit leaders assembled Wednesday to laud the first state
park to open in a decade. Among the beaming faces was
Lilia Lomeli-Gil, a community leader representing the tiny town
5 miles away that, thanks to the park’s debut, is being
transformed. If Merced is the “Gateway to Yosemite,”
then Grayson is the gateway to Dos Rios State Park.
The 1,600-acre property lies within the floodplains outside
Modesto and features the intersection of the San Joaquin and
Tuolumne rivers. The park’s proximity to Grayson
offers the town a sense of renewal. Dos Rios will lure visitors
off Interstate 5 and provide residents with a communal backyard
haven. Efforts to restore the floodplain have already shown
signs of success in protecting Grayson from disaster. The
town owes part of its livelihood to restoring the original
habitat and defending itself from flooding.
In an effort to elevate the needs of the environment in water
management, the state of Colorado is convening a new committee
that is scheduled to begin meeting this summer. The
Colorado Water Conservation Board and Boulder-based nonprofit
River Network are creating a pilot program known as the
Environmental Flows Cohort, which will assess how much water is
needed to maintain healthy streams and how to meet these flow
recommendations. The cohort will include not just environmental
advocates, but agricultural and municipal water users, who may
initially feel threatened by environmental flow
recommendations. The goal of the program is to address
the barriers that lead to these recommendations being excluded
from local stream management plans. The cohort was one of the
recommendations in a January 2023 analysis of SMPs by
the River Network.
Dave Bitts can bring in over 100 salmon by himself. “That’s an
exceptionally good day. If I catch 20 fish it’s worth the
trip,” says Bitts. At 76, he still fishes for salmon alone.
Standing in the cockpit on the stern deck of his wooden
trawler, Elmarue, he can keep an eye on all six wires; when one
of the lines starts to dance, he brings the fish in, stunning
it with his gaff while it’s still in the water. Then he uses
the tool to hook the salmon behind the gills and swings it onto
the deck. … The California Department of Fish and
Wildlife cited “ongoing issues associated with drought and
climate disruption” as factors leading to the closure of this
year’s salmon fishery, which generates $1.4 billion in a normal
year. In fact, salmon stocks along the West Coast have been in
steep decline for decades, and along with it, the industry that
relies on them. In its heyday, California issued over 7,000
commercial salmon fishing permits. Now there are fewer than
1,000, and only half of those boats are active.
California is awash in water after record-breaking rains
vanquished years of crippling drought. That sounds like great
news for farmers. But Ron McIlroy, whose shop here sells
equipment for plowing fields, knows otherwise. “I’ll be lucky
if I survive this year,” he said. Illustrating how broken
California’s vast water-delivery system is, many farmers in
Central Valley, America’s fruit and vegetable basket, will get
just 40% of the federal water they are supposed to this year.
Why? Endangered fish. The pumps that transport water from wet
Northern California to the semiarid south have been drastically
slowed to protect threatened migrating smelt, measuring up to 3
inches, and steelhead. That means growers in the U.S.’s richest
farming area are having to plant fewer crops even as they are
surrounded by water.
Less than a decade ago, the largest mid-elevation meadow at
Yosemite National Park, nestled in foothills near Hetch Hetchy
Reservoir, was privately owned rangeland. It was widely
trampled on by cattle, dried up and of little or no interest to
visitors. Today, the area is a whole different place. An $18
million makeover of what’s known as Ackerson Meadow, which was
recently acquired by the National Park Service, is transforming
this dusty tract on the park’s western edge into a vibrant hub
of wildflowers, songbirds and water-loving grasses — an effort
billed as the biggest restoration project in Yosemite history.
… The hope is that the revived meadow, like a
sponge, will hold more water for native plants, wildlife and
downstream communities that depend on the region for water
supplies.
Commercial and recreational salmon fishing off the coast of
California was banned for the second year in a row in April due
to low numbers of salmon. The Chinook salmon, which enter the
Sacramento River system on four runs throughout the year, have
been declining for decades due to pollution, water management,
dams and drought. With salmon decreasing and fishing off the
California coast banned, Save California Salmon is dedicated to
helping restore and protect salmon and rivers. Save California
Salmon is a nonprofit organization built on creating community
power around water issues in Northern California while also
working to save salmon through advocacy for policy change. The
organization is run by Native American people from California
and has an entirely Indigenous board. According to Executive
Director Regina Chichizola, the organization began in 2017 and
was born out of the movement to remove the current dam on the
Klamath River.
The Colorado River and its tributaries—which support 40 million
people, sacred Tribal lands, a $1.4 trillion economy, more than
five million acres of farms and ranches, and thousands of
species of wildlife—are shrinking due to climate change and
overuse. Important habitats exist and have been
intentionally reestablished along more than 400 miles of the
Colorado River as it flows south of Hoover Dam. To raise
awareness of these gems in the desert that support 400 species
of birds, Audubon Southwest launched a visually-appealing
StoryMap website created by Elija Flores and myself called
Lower Colorado River Habitats: Exploring important habitats of
the Lower Colorado River and what they mean for birds and
people.
The Salton Sea is a terminal saltwater lake. It’s a flooded
basin with no natural outlet, similar to the Great Salt Lake or
the Aral Sea. And the Salton Sea is shrinking. One of the
reasons for that is the Imperial Water Transfer deal that has
brought hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water to San
Diego over the last two decades. The deal, signed 21 years ago,
meant the Imperial Valley began transferring excess water from
the valley’s farm fields to San Diego’s water taps. That meant
a lot less farm runoff that had been sustaining the Salton
Sea. San Diego State University economics professor Ryan
Abman said the biggest effects of that conservation plan were
seen about eight years into the agreement. “So really, after
2011, we see a noticeable increase in the rate of decline of
the water level and that leads to an increase in the increased
rate of playa exposure. So more of this dust-emitting surface
is being exposed every single year,” Abman said.
The Klamath Water Users Association, along with the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation and other plaintiff appellants asked a Ninth
Circuit appeals panel Wednesday morning to reverse summary
judgment from a case that confirmed the bureau and other actors
must comply with the Endangered Species Act when operating the
Klamath Irrigation Project. Managed by the Bureau of
Reclamation, the Klamath Irrigation Project supplies water to
over 225,000 acres of farmland and two wildlife refuges in the
Klamath Basin along the Oregon-California border. The project,
however, decimated the local Chinook and Coho salmon
population, which the Yurok tribe rely on to survive. Dams are
currently being removed from the upper Klamath Basin, allowing
the river to flow freely for the first time in 100 years. In a
victory for the fish and the tribe, U.S. District Judge William
Orrick ruled in 2023 that the federal government must follow
its own laws, such as the Endangered Species Act…
Plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit over the Kern River filed a
petition asking the California Supreme Court to review an order
that tossed out an injunction many had anticipated would
guarantee a flowing river through Bakersfield. Specifically,
the petition asks the Supreme Court to direct the 5th
District Court of Appeal to explain why it stayed the
injunction that had required enough water in the river to keep
fish in good condition. The Supreme Court petition was filed
June 11. The 5th District issued what’s known as a “writ of
supersedeas” May 3 setting aside the injunction and staying all
legal actions surrounding the injunction, which had been issued
by Kern County Superior Court Judge Gregory Pulskamp last fall.
Amid the historic removal of dams on the Klamath River, the
Humboldt Area Foundation and Wild Rivers Community Foundation
announced the launch of a new fund to support projects in the
drastically changing Klamath Basin. According to a Tuesday news
release, the fund will support “grantmaking to bolster
community healing, Tribal self-determination, science and
restoration, storytelling, climate resilience, regenerative
agriculture, environmental stewardship, and more.” Starting
with $10 million, the foundations aim to support the health and
restoration of the basin and the communities that live in it.
At least 60% must go to tribes or Indigenous-led organizations,
according to the release, with a focus on climate resilience
and restorative justice projects.
On Wednesday, June 12, the state of California officially opens
Dos Rios, the first new state park in more than a decade. It’s
a riparian forest restoration at the confluence of the San
Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers, in the Central Valley, about an
hour from San Jose—and the subject of Bay Nature’s Spring 2024
cover story, “The Everything Park,” by H.R. Smith. We dubbed
Dos Rios the Everything Park because a modern state park has an
astonishing number of jobs to do—among them groundwater
storage, wildlife habitat, and climate adaptation.
Water diversions can harm aquatic ecosystems, riparian habitat,
and beaches fed by river sediment. But the people who use water
don’t bear the cost of this ecological damage. “The public
pays for it,” says Karrigan Börk, a University of California,
Davis law professor who has a PhD in ecology. He is also
Co-Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy
Center and an Associate Director of the UC Davis Center for
Watershed Sciences. Börk presents a new solution to this
problem in a recent Harvard Environmental Law
Review paper. His idea was sparked by the fact that
developers are required to help pay for the burden that new
housing imposes on municipal services. To likewise link
water infrastructure and diversions with their costs to
society, Börk proposes requiring water users to pay towards
mitigating the environmental harm they cause. … …One
example is in the upper basin of the Colorado River, where
water users pay for their environmental
impacts.
Californians can soon enjoy a new state park at the heart of
the Central Valley, the first in about a decade. The Dos Rios
preserve, about 90 minutes east of San Francisco, is a lush
floodplain filled with green grass, shrubs and native trees
like cottonwood, willows and valley oaks. Visitors can hike
through miles of trail beginning this Wednesday, June 12. The
park is located eight miles east of Modesto near the
convergence of the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers. Until about
a decade ago, Dos Rios was a dairy and cattle ranch owned by
farmers who grew tomatoes and almonds. But year after year,
floods swept through, damaging the crops. In 2012, the owners
sold all 1,600 acres to River Partners, an environmental
nonprofit dedicated to conservation.
California’s water supply could be in trouble, as a new study
has found that the state’s rivers and streams are severely
under monitored, posing serious risks to effective water
management. The study, published in Nature Sustainability,
stresses that while the state relies heavily on its rivers and
streams for water supply, flood control, biodiversity
conservation and hydropower generation, only 8 percent of
California’s rivers and streams are monitored by stream gauges,
devices used to measure water flow. The lack of monitoring
not only makes it difficult to manage water resources
efficiently but also hinders the ability to understand the
effects of climate change and conserve freshwater biodiversity.
… The study found that only 9 percent of California’s
large dams had stream gauges upstream or downstream to measure
water flow. The lack of monitoring hampers the ability to
manage water supply and control floods effectively, the
researchers said.
In the form of a grant described as coming from a “brand-new”
source of infrastructure funding, the group hoping to continue
diversions from the Eel River to the Russian River in Mendocino
County has received $2 million from the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation, federal officials announced during a visit to
Ukiah Friday. “Your success is reclamation’s success, and we
are committed to that,” Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner M.
Camille Calimlim Touton told the group gathered at Coyote
Valley Dam along Lake Mendocino June 7 to hear Rep. Jared
Huffman (D – San Rafael) announce the award of $2 million to
the Eel-Russian River Authority to help the group of regional
stakeholders study how best to approach the possible continued
diversion of Eel River water to the Russian River once the dams
created for the Potter Valley Project have been removed, a plan
being called the Two-Basin Solution.
California officials will formally open the state’s 281st state
park on Wednesday, and it’s an unusual one. Dos Rios is a
riverfront oasis in the San Joaquin Valley that offers a window
into what the region was like before it was transformed into an
agricultural powerhouse. The 1,600-acre property, eight miles
west of Modesto at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San
Joaquin Rivers, for decades housed dairy farms and almond
orchards. It has now been restored to a broad natural
floodplain, where visitors will be able to hike, watch birds
and other wildlife, and have a picnic along the riverbanks.
Officials hope to eventually add trails for bicycling and more
river access for swimming, angling and boating.
Firefighters are battling wildfires in Brazil’s Pantanal, the
world’s largest tropical wetland. The Pantanal is home to
jaguars, giant anteaters and giant river otters. Close to
32,000 hectares have already been destroyed by the fires in the
state of Mato Grosso do Sul, local media report. Climate
experts say this year’s wildfire season has started earlier and
is more intense than in previous years. Firefighters said their
efforts to extinguish the flames were being hampered by high
winds over the weekend. The region has also seen less rain than
in other years, which has made it easier for the fires to
spread.
The second phase of the San Dieguito Lagoon restoration reached
a significant milestone last week. On June 6, a collection of
SANDAG and Caltrans engineers and biologists gathered to
witness the active release of berm at the restoration project
site, opening up the saltwater marsh inlet to the tidal flow.
Rather than sending an epic torrent of water into the lagoon,
an excavator simply moved some dirt aside and the water slowly
began to trickle in. Kim Smith, SANDAG senior regional planner,
said while it may have appeared anticlimactic, it was an
incredibly exciting moment for staff to see on a project about
12 years in the making. … Water will flow through the
new inlet as the construction continues in its final months of
a three and a half year process, anticipated to be complete in
September. Eventually water will flow nearly all the way to El
Camino Real, stopping near the SDG&E utility corridor that
runs through the site.
From brown trout becoming “addicted” to methamphetamine to
European perch losing their fear of predators due to depression
medication, scientists warn that modern pharmaceutical and
illegal drug pollution is becoming a growing threat to
wildlife. Drug exposure is causing significant, unexpected
changes to some animals’ behaviour and anatomy. Scientists have
said that modern pharmaceutical waste is having significant
consequences for wildlife exposed to discharges in their
ecosystems, and warned it could have unintended consequences
for humans.
California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) on Thursday
issued a warning about an invasive species damaging the state’s
waterways, including its reservoirs. The warning advises
swimmers and boaters to be on the lookout for the water
hyacinth, a type of aquatic plant that can clog waterways with
its tendency to form a mat as it spreads. In a DWR post shared
on X (formerly Twitter), a mud-covered hand is seen rising from
swampy waters clogged with the water hyacinth. From the
“depths of the darkest swamps and rivers, comes Water Hyacinth.
Watch out for this non-native aquatic invasive species that can
create hazards for boaters and swimmers,” the DWR warns.
Of California’s many tough water challenges, few are more
intractable than regulating how much water must be kept in
rivers and streams to protect the environment. … But now, a
new strategy developed by scientists to end the
stalemate is gaining momentum. … Gov. Gavin Newsom has
already made the blueprint a key element of his plans
to recover salmon populations and build climate
resilience in California’s water systems. Known as
the California Environmental Flows Framework, the
scientists’ strategy shifts the focus of environmental
water management from single species to entire ecosystems.
… The blueprint is already being used for rivers that
wind through California’s famed vineyards and ancient redwood
groves, and streams that feed a Northern California lake of
cultural importance to Native American tribes.
With temperatures spiking across California this week, now
is a great time to reserve your spot on our Headwaters Tour July
24-25 when we’ll explore the role of the Sierra
Nevada snowpack in the state’s water supply and how heatwaves
can accelerate snowmelt. The state’s critical ‘frozen
reservoir’ was slightly above average at the end of
the 2024 snow survey season, following an epic snowpack in 2023
that prompted widespread flooding and the resurrection of
Tulare Lake. During the July tour, we’ll also learn how
snowpack is measured and translated into forecasts of
California’s water supply for the year.
… The 2-day, 1-night
tour with an overnight in Lake
Tahoe travels up the Sierra foothills and into
the mountains within the American River and Yuba River
watersheds. Meadow restoration, climate change, wildfire
impact and more will be discussed as we pass through
Eldorado and Tahoe national forests.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) issued a
comical warning on Wednesday about a “two-faced creature” known
as the nutria, a rodent said to look like a cross between a rat
and a beaver. The nutria—recognizable by its vibrant orange
teeth—is native to South America and was introduced to the
United States in the 1800s as part of the fur trade. However,
once the trade plummeted, nutrias began to wreak havoc on U.S.
coastal environments they populated and have posed a problem
ever since. Maryland spent millions working to eradicate the
species, and other states are considering following
suit. However, the species isn’t just an East Coast
problem. The DWR issued the warning in the form of an
educational poster for California Invasive Species Action Week
depicting two nutrias. One looks sweet and cuddly and sports a
halo with the words “I am so cute” nearby. The other has red
eyes and the characteristic vibrant orange teeth with the words
“But I am a monster.”
… California and the life cycle of salmon have been linked
for centuries, beginning when only indigenous people lived in
the state. California’s rivers and streams benefit from the
nutrients salmon bring with them from the ocean. Salmon create
jobs. Salmon are our shared living heritage. … [S]almon are
on the brink despite California having some of the strictest
environmental laws on the planet. The government’s ability to
regulate this species to safety is dubious at best. Consider
that the state’s primary plan to protect the Delta by balancing
the uses of water has not been updated by the State Water
Resources Control Board since Bill Clinton was in office. It’s
a telling example of water’s political and regulatory
paralysis. There is no shared sense of responsibility to save
the salmon because we have devised such self-centered
regulatory systems. -Written by Tom Philp, reporter with the Sacramento
Bee.
California is a semi-arid state in which the availability of
water determines land use, and in turn shapes the economy.
That, in a nutshell, explains why Californians have been
jousting over water for the state’s entire 174-year history.
The decades of what some have dubbed “water wars” may be
approaching a climactic point as climate change, economic
evolution, stagnant population growth and environmental
consciousness compel decisions on California’s water future. A
new study, conducted by researchers at three University of
California campuses, projects that a combination of factors
will reduce California’s water supply by up to 9 million
acre-feet a year – roughly the equivalent of all
non-agricultural human use. -Written by CalMatters columnist Dan Walters.
The giant sequoia is so enormous that it was once believed to
be indestructible. High in California’s southern Sierra Nevada
mountains, the oldest trees – known as monarchs – have stood
for more than 2,000 years. Today, however, in Sequoia national
park, huge trunks lie sprawled on the forest floor, like blue
whale carcasses stranded on a beach. Many of these trees were
felled by a combination of drought and fire. But among the
factors responsible for the rising toll is a tiny new suspect:
the bark beetle. Along with wildfires and rising
temperatures, scientists fear that the insects could contribute
to the breakdown of Earth’s northern conifer forests, including
the potential dieback of the taiga, the vast ecosystem that
stretches across Canada, Scandinavia, Siberia and Alaska.
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman co-sent a letter to federal
administrators on Tuesday calling for disaster relief funding
to be allocated quicker for the state’s salmon fishery closure
in 2023. A year later and no disaster funds have been
distributed, and fishermen face another closed season.
… Historically, federal disaster aid for fishing
disasters has taken years to reach the pockets of fishermen.
The season was closed this year, the fourth in California’s
history, for largely the same conditions in 2023: low salmon
counts. In press releases, the Golden State Salmon Association
cited the failure of water management to keep fish eggs in 2021
and 2020 cool, while the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife pointed to the multi-year drought conditions the now
adult fish were reared under.
California is one step closer to building its largest water
storage facility in nearly 50 years, after a court ruled in
favor of the Sites Reservoir project following a challenge by
environmental groups. The Yolo County Superior Court issued the
65 page ruling late last week, marking a possible end to the
project’s environmental litigation. The relatively quick ruling
stands in contrast to a typical, multi-year litigation period
under the Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Gov. Gavin Newsom
accelerated the project’s CEQA litigation period in November
under an infrastructure streamlining package passed the
previous summer. He celebrated the court’s ruling in a news
release Tuesday. … The proposed $4.5 billion reservoir would
inundate nearly 14,000 acres of ranch lands in Glenn and Colusa
counties to store water diverted from the Sacramento River
through new a system of dams, pipelines and a bridge.
This year, engineers in California and Oregon are carrying out
the largest dam removal project in history. For decades, salmon
and trout in the Klamath River have struggled to survive in the
unhealthy water conditions created by four dams and diversions
of water for irrigation. And for more than 20 years, Indigenous
Tribes that depend on the fish have been fighting for dam
removal. In late 2022, after many rounds of litigation to keep
water flowing and the fish alive, federal regulators finally
approved a dam removal plan. As the dams on the Klamath come
down, members of the Yurok, a Tribe whose reservation sits at
the mouth of the river, say they are feeling hopeful about the
Klamath’s future.
There’s a new opportunity for private wetland owners to make
money from their land. The BirdReturns program pays wetland
owners to flood their land and provide habitat for birds in the
Central Valley. The program offers seasonal participation and
is currently accepting applications for fall participation.
Applications close on June 9. The program is funded
through a $15 million grant from the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife which will keep the program running through
2026. The program, “aims to fill in all the other gaps
throughout the rest of the year when, in the natural cycle,
there would be habitat for birds,” said Ashley Seufzer, senior
project coordinator for Audubon California. This is the
second year of the fall program. In the past, there have been
participating landowners in the San Joaquin Valley but the
number changes every season, said Seufzer.
Monitoring salmon and steelhead is like ghost-hunting. Despite
declining population numbers, these spawning salmonids still
run in the memories of communities along coastal California
streams. These fish support the livelihoods of diverse people
including tribes, commercial fishers, and recreational fishing
businesses. Claire Buchanan, Bay Area Senior Project Manager,
captured the sentiment when she said “steelhead are like
ghosts” as she described how they often migrate up and down
creeks undetected under the cover of darkness and murky waters
after storms. In the Santa Cruz Mountains, at the southern edge
of where salmon spawn along the West Coast, sightings of
critically endangered coho salmon are rare and sightings of
threatened steelhead are even less frequent. Conservationists
are working to conjure more of these fish back into the Santa
Cruz Mountains.
City leaders in Los Angeles have announced plans to take a
limited amount of water from creeks that feed Mono Lake this
year, a step that environmentalists say will help build on a
recent rise in the lake’s level over the last year. The Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power said it plans to export
4,500 acre-feet of water from the Mono Basin during the current
runoff year, the same amount that was diverted the previous
year, and enough to supply about 18,000 households for a year.
Under the current rules, the city could take much more — up to
16,000 acre-feet this year. But environmental advocates had
recently urged Mayor Karen Bass not to increase water
diversions to help preserve recent gains and begin to boost the
long-depleted lake toward healthier levels. They praised the
decision by city leaders as an important step.
Ukiah Fire Chief Doug Hutchison knew what kind of hassle the
city was getting into by acquiring some 763 acres of overgrown,
fire-starved forest on the city’s western edge—but it seemed
worth it. There, Doolin Creek’s two forks merge and run through
a steep canyon, eventually heading straight through the city
and emptying into the Russian River. Steelhead trout, which
swim most of the way up the Russian River’s 110 miles to spawn
in its tributaries, and year-round resident native fishes like
sculpins and roaches, are kept cool by big trees shading the
creek. California nutmeg, fragrant like sandalwood, has been
spotted here, and spiky chinquapin. Also, the manzanita and
chamise are so thick in places that it’s hard to walk through.
If a big hot fire rolled through here, it would be very bad for
the wildlife, the forest, and the community. The city has taken
on the property to mitigate those fire risks and protect the
watershed.
… The vast majority of Tricolored Blackbirds spend their
whole lives in California. A handful breed in Oregon,
Washington, Nevada, and Baja California, and at least 20 of the
birds were spotted last year in Idaho. Most, however, nest in
the San Joaquin Valley, and many are known to breed a second
time in the early summer months—often 50 to 100 miles north in
the wetlands and willows of the Sacramento Valley. It’s here,
too, that the birds feed on rice in the fall. They often browse
the paddies alongside other blackbirds—including the very
similar Red-winged Blackbird—that farmers can legally cull as
pests. This has inevitably led to losses of Tricolors over the
years. Although the species’ native
nesting habitat has been almost entirely removed from
California, they’ve adapted with varying success to shifting
land use. Where vineyards and orchards have replaced grassland
and marsh, the blackbirds have mostly disappeared.
California’s Clear Lake has been taken over by so much algae
that its emerald waters are now visible from space, photos
show. The satellite images, taken by NASA in mid-May,
indicate that the eutrophic lake may be infested with
blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria — single-celled
organisms that can become potent enough to poison humans
and animals, according to the United States Geological
Survey. County officials wrote that, overall, algae
is integral to the freshwater lake’s health and aquatic
ecosystem. More than 130 different types of species have been
identified thus far, but three problematic blue-green algal
species have been known to bloom there in the spring and late
summertime. These harmful species can cause skin irritation,
along with gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms,
officials said.
The federal government has released a 584-page document
detailing possible solutions to an invasive species that poses
“an unacceptable risk” to another fish that’s listed as
threatened. When it’s all said and done, officials want to give
smallmouth bass a cold shower — or a cool bath, anyway — to
discourage them from reproducing. Make no mistake, the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation’s plan is a detailed “Cool Mix” strategy
on how to reduce the threat to the humpback chub in the
Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam. Smallmouth bass are
voracious predators, and they’ve started to establish
populations below the dam where the chub is struggling to
survive. Biologists say the bass will feed on the chub, their
eggs, and pretty much anything else that will fit in its mouth.
As we head into summer, don’t miss your chance to explore the
statewide impact of forest health on water resources
on our Headwaters Tour July
24-25! We’ll venture with experts into
the foothills and mountains of the Sierra Nevada to examine
water issues that happen upstream but have dramatic impacts on
water supply and quality downstream and throughout California
on our
Save the dates for:
Northern
California Tour, October 16-18: Explore the
Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic
landscape while learning about the issues associated with a
key source for the state’s water supply. Registration
opens June 12!
Water Summit, October 30: Attend the Water
Education Foundation’s premier annual event hosted in
Sacramento with leading policymakers and experts addressing
critical water issues in California and across the West. More
details coming soon!
In the third week of May 2024, the water temperatures in the
lower Sacramento River recorded at Wilkins Slough increased to
72oF, well above the 68oF water quality standard (Figure 1).
These warm water temperatures occurred in a wet spring of an
Above Normal water year that is following a Wet water year. The
water temperature spike occurred between prescribed pulse flow
releases from Shasta Dam in May (Figure 1). Three pulse
flows were prescribed this spring to promote and assist
migration of juvenile salmon into the lower Sacramento River
and the Delta. After the second pulse in early May, the lower
river flow was allowed to drop to a drought-level 5000 cfs,
causing the high water temperatures. Shasta Reservoir was
virtually full at 4.3 MAF during all of May. The Central Valley
Basin Plan’s water quality objective for the lower Sacramento
River is 68oF maximum “during periods when temperature
increases will be detrimental to the fishery.” (P. 3-14).
Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, located in far Northern
California, harbors what remains of a once vast, shallow lake.
On a recent April morning, I toured the area with John
Vradenburg, supervisory fish and wildlife biologist for the
Klamath Basin Refuges. … The Klamath Basin National
Wildlife Refuges are a complex of six refuges straddling the
Oregon-California border — remnants of vast wetlands that once
expanded and contracted with the seasons, breathing an almost
unfathomable abundance of life into the dry region. A century
or so ago, flocks of geese and swans darkened the sky. There
were masses of white pelicans; hordes of grebes, ducks, and
ibises; eagles and hawks in profusion. On Lower Klamath Lake,
which sprawled nearly 100,000 acres, boats conveyed tourists
from the Klamath River to the lake’s southern tip.
Every two years, scientists, legislators, and community members
meet to discuss the health and future of our beloved San
Francisco Bay. At this year’s State of the Estuary
Conference, which is taking place this week at the Oakland
Scottish Rite Center across from Lake Merritt, harmful algae
blooms, wetland restoration, and emerging contaminants are a
few of the items up for conversation. According to event
organizers, the conference will serve as a hub for in-depth,
timely conversations about the concerns, interests, and hopes
of those “who are impacted by and working to improve, conserve,
and monitor the health of the estuary.” … One of
the key topics discussed at Tuesday’s conference was the study
and understanding of harmful algal blooms, often referred to as
HABs within the scientific community.
We often talk about water infrastructure as it relates to
reservoirs, aqueducts, levees, and other means of water storage
and flood protection. But California’s water infrastructure
isn’t just made of concrete. Floodplain restoration is fast
becoming a key part of California’s water puzzle. Dos Rios
Ranch Preserve – near Modesto at the confluence of the Tuolumne
and San Joaquin Rivers – became Dos Rios Ranch State Park in
April, and officially opens to the public in June. It’s
California’s newest state park, and the first since 2014. It’s
what’s known as a multi-benefit project; Dos Rios supports
wildlife from fish to birds, is a place for recreation, and
also a place for floodwater to go during wet winters.
California’s freshwater ecosystems—and the native plants and
animals that rely on them—have been in decline for decades.
Roughly half of California’s native freshwater species are
highly vulnerable to extinction within this century. But
efforts to protect and recover native species now face an
additional serious threat: climate change, which is
accelerating and compounding the impacts of past and current
land and water management issues. Simply working harder, using
the same insufficient approaches to conservation, is unlikely
to be successful. New approaches, including some that are
experimental or highly controversial, are urgently needed.
Although California has recently made important strides in
setting goals for salmon, the state lacks a comprehensive
approach to protecting native biodiversity in the face of
climate change. We have identified a portfolio of actions that
can help California rise to this urgent challenge.
The 5th District Court of Appeal denied a petition Friday to
rehear the court’s earlier decision to put a hold on a Kern
County court’s order that had required the City of Bakersfield
keep enough water in the Kern River for fish to survive. Both
plaintiffs in the action have said they will likely petition
the California Supreme Court to review the 5th District’s
ruling. … Keeping enough water in the river for fish,
Keats noted, would be more cost effective. Bakersfield does
want water in the river, said its attorney Colin Pearce. But it
only has so much to give. “The city has been trying to get
water in the river for decades,” Pearce said. “The fight is
really between the water districts, who have more water than
the city, and the plaintiffs, who want more water in the
river.”
California is recognized as one of the world’s hotspots of
biodiversity, with more species of plants and animals than any
other state. And a significant number of the state’s species,
from frogs to birds, live in habitats that depend on
groundwater. … Spotting threats to vulnerable natural areas
has become a mission for Melissa Rohde, a hydrologist who has
spent years analyzing satellite data and water levels in wells
to come up with strategies for preventing ecosystems from being
left high and dry. … California is the only state with a
groundwater law that includes provisions intended to protect
groundwater-dependent ecosystems. But the law, adopted in 2014,
gives considerable leeway to local agencies in developing water
management plans that prevent “significant and unreasonable
adverse impacts.”
Environmental activists have opened a new front in their
long-running fight against a company that pipes water from the
San Bernardino Mountains and bottles it for sale as Arrowhead
brand bottled water. In a petition to the state, several
environmental groups and local activists called for an
investigation by the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, arguing that the company BlueTriton Brands is harming
wildlife habitat and species by extracting water that would
otherwise flow in Strawberry Creek. Those who oppose the taking
of water from San Bernardino National Forest want the state
agency to assess the environmental effects and uphold
protections under state law, said Rachel Doughty, a lawyer for
the environmental nonprofit Story of Stuff Project.
Federal agencies and California farmers fended off a challenge
by environmentalists seeking greater protections for several
vulnerable fish species, as an appeals court Thursday upheld
the handling of long-disputed irrigation water contracts. In
the latest round of a fight that’s dragged on for decades and
isn’t over yet, a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals determined that the Biden administration
properly considered the impact of the irrigation water
deliveries on the delta smelt and Chinook salmon. Both species
are protected by the Endangered Species Act.
Water quality levels on the Klamath River are continuing to
improve amid dam deconstruction work, according to the North
Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. Concerns about
the presence of heavy metals like lead and arsenic in the river
after several dams were breached were first voiced by residents
and Siskiyou County officials in March. But a new round of
monitoring from early May suggests those metals concentrations,
many of which are naturally occurring, are dropping as decades
of sediment continues to wash down the river.
The Colorado River is flowing again in its delta. While this is
welcome news for birds and people, the long-term progress to
keep the Colorado River alive in Mexico with habitat
restoration and water deliveries depends on high stakes
negotiations currently underway. For the third time since
2021, the United States and Mexico are collaborating to deliver
water to improve conditions in the long-desiccated delta.
Environmental water deliveries began mid-March and will
continue into October …
In recent years a few folks who pay attention to the wild
critters have been whispering of sighting beavers in the Eel
River of Humboldt County and even dams in a few tributaries. In
2015 we even posted about a local wildlife tracker finding
beaver footprints.
The Bureau of Reclamation supports “the intent” of four bills
moving through the House Natural Resources Committee to shore
up operations of major Western waterways, including the
Colorado and Klamath river basins. The Water, Wildlife and
Fisheries Subcommittee on Wednesday met to discuss the four
bills targeting hydropower and aging water infrastructure. All
four bills received a rosy reception from David Palumbo,
Reclamation’s deputy commissioner of operations. Palumbo said
Reclamation supports Rep. Susie Lee’s (D-Nev.) H.R. 7776, the
“Help Hoover Dam Act,” which would provide an additional $45
million in operating funds for the Hoover Dam.
Just east of the San Francisco Bay, a steel bucket holding 90
gallons of water is strained to rescue precious cargo. The
metal roars as it spins, dispelling more and more water, to
reveal, finally, a wriggling pair of juvenile Chinook salmon.
These young, 2-inch long fish were drawn into danger by giant
pumps that push water south to millions of Californians and
farms. Saving them from likely peril has been the core purpose
since 1968 of the John E. Skinner Delta Fish Protective
Facility. But the facility been the subject of considerable
attention recently for a spike in fish deaths, drawing the ire
of environmentalists and anglers. That’s not to say farmers are
happy either, as pumps deliver less water despite a second year
of drought-busting storms.
For the first time in 80 years, a Northern California river
welcomed an endangered species of salmon to its
waters. Currently, spring-run and winter-run Chinook
Salmon are listed at the state and federal level as
“threatened” and “endangered,” which means they are considered
at critical risk of extinction. Since the 1940s, the winter-run
Chinook salmon have been blocked from accessing the McCloud
River area in California because of the Shasta and Keswick
dams. Because of the restriction, the California Department of
Water Resources, Winnemem Wintu Tribe, California
Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the National Oceanic
Atmospheric Association Fisheries Service said
they partnered together to “save the salmon” and help
the fish [migrate] to areas of the McCloud River.
California has prided itself on its bold leadership on climate
change. In the past twenty years, it has made unprecedented
commitments and investments to reduce emissions and build
climate resilience. Unfortunately, amid a dire state budget
crisis, California leaders are struggling to ensure that the
state will continue its leadership in meeting the challenge of
climate change. Immediate and large-scale climate action is
essential to protect people and birds. Audubon’s Survival by
Degrees report found that 389 species of North American birds
are likely to see significant population declines due to
climate change if global temperature increased beyond 3 degrees
Celsius, which now seems almost unavoidable. As the world’s
fifth largest economy and a global leader on climate policy,
California’s climate action will have direct impacts on birds
and their habitats well beyond the state’s borders.
Stranded for nearly three weeks by record flooding in southern
Brazil, one tiny Indigenous community is determined not to
evacuate what they consider sacred ancestral lands that are in
dispute with real estate developers. The Mbya Guarani people
have been living since 2018 on a peninsula in far southern
Porto Alegre, the state capital of Rio Grande do Sul. The
community has long been at odds with Arado Empreendimentos
Imobiliarios, the firm that has been planning a residential
development on nearly 426 hectares (1,053 acres) in the area
for over a decade, part of which is in dispute. Heavy
rains have battered Rio Grande do Sul since late April, causing
historic floods that have killed over 160 people, while nearly
100 residents are still missing and more than 500,000 have been
displaced. Even with the devastating floods,
community leaders say they would not consider leaving.
Three California companies pushing back against state emergency
regulations and water curtailment orders saw most of their
claims dismissed by a federal judge Tuesday. Los Molinos Mutual
Water Company, Stanford Vina Ranch Irrigation Company and
Peyton Pacific Properties LLC challenged the restrictions,
which were in response to 2021 and 2022 drought conditions. …
However [U.S. District Court Judge Dale Drozd] kept intact the
Endangered Species Act claim against water board members and
staff while tossing all claims against the [state] Department
of Fish and Wildlife.
Demolition of three dams on the Klamath River is currently
underway, as the drawdown phase that emptied massive reservoirs
wrapped up. This month, crews started taking out Iron Gate and
J.C. Boyle. “Frankly, we can see the end of the dams in sight,
literally, as they’re coming down so quickly.” said Mark
Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation reached
by phone Friday. Deconstruction of the earthen part of J.C.
Boyle, a 68-foot-tall concrete and earth fill dam in Southern
Oregon, began last week on Monday. The removal of Iron Gate
began May 1, the largest dam out of the bunch at 173 feet tall.
Thursday, a dynamite blast on Copco No. 1 took off about 30
feet of the dam — removal of which started in March as the
concrete structure allowed for any spring flows to pass over
the top.
A House Natural Resources subcommittee will consider how to
shore up operations of major Western waterways, including the
Colorado and Klamath river basins. The Subcommittee on Water,
Wildlife and Fisheries will meet Wednesday to review four bills
targeting infrastructure and hydropower. Lawmakers will discuss
Nevada Democratic Rep. Susie Lee’s H.R. 7776, the “Help Hoover
Dam Act,” which would provide an additional $45 million in
operating funds for the nation’s second tallest dam.
Pronounced “He La,” the Gila Rivers’ headwaters originate in
New Mexico, where it is a wild and scenic mountain river. The
path of the Gila settles into broad valleys as it enters
Arizona, providing water for rural towns and agriculture along
the way. The Gila’s flow is interrupted by Coolidge Dam and San
Carlos Reservoir on the San Carlos Indian Reservation west of
Safford, Arizona. Water from the reservoir is managed by the
San Carlos Irrigation District for communities, farms, and
ranches downstream. The Ashurst-Hayden and Florence diversion
dams in Pinal County send what remains of the Gila River water
to Central Arizona farms, after which the river is a dry
channel except when there are high flows from rain and snow
melt. The combination of dams, diversions, and
drought earned the Gila River the title of Most Endangered
River in 2019 from American Rivers, a nonprofit advocacy
organization.
California wildfires aren’t the only thing killing the state’s
majestic giant sequoia trees. So is a little-known bark beetle.
Researchers in the Sierra Nevada, the only place where the
giant sequoia naturally grows, have found several of the
world’s largest trees unexpectedly infested with beetles, some
dying from the attacks. While the mortality numbers are small,
especially when compared to the toll of the wildfires that
wiped out as many as 20% of all mature sequoias in 2020 and
2021, the emergence of another lethal threat to the
titans — this one also tied to the warming climate —
is hugely worrisome. That’s why research teams at Sequoia
and Kings Canyon National Parks are climbing into the towering
canopy of the Giant Forest this week and assessing the
condition of the biggest tree on Earth, the 275-foot General
Sherman Tree.
William A. Bennett (1955-2024) was a top-notch
scientist/biologist who spent much of his career improving our
understanding of the ecology and management of native and
non-native fishes in the SF Estuary (SFE) especially delta
smelt and striped bass. Those of us who had the good
fortune to work with him knew Bill as an insightful biologist
who worked hard to retain his objectivity on controversial fish
management issues in the SFE.
Today, Rep. Harder called out Sacramento politicians and the
California Department of Water Resources for trying to ship the
Central Valley’s water south while causing “significant and
unavoidable” impacts on Delta communities. In a benefit-cost
analysis released yesterday, the state admits the cost of the
project has grown to over $20 billion and would devastate Delta
communities with $167 million in damages. The project would be
a disaster for Delta communities by destroying farmland and
worsening air quality. “This new analysis acknowledges what
we’ve known all along: the Delta Tunnel is meant to benefit
Beverly Hills and leave Delta communities out to dry,” said
Rep. Harder. “This $20 billion boondoggle project wouldn’t
create a single new gallon of water for anyone. I’m sick and
tired of politicians in Sacramento ignoring our Valley voices
and I will do everything in my power to stop them from stealing
our water.”
Last year was notably wet, raising Mono Lake five feet—and
creating a conundrum. Under rules written three decades ago,
the lake’s rise over the 6,380-foot elevation threshold means
that on April 1, 2024, the maximum limit on water diversions
from Mono Lake increased nearly fourfold. Yet decades of
evidence show that increasing water diversions will erode the
wet year gains, stopping the lake from reaching the mandated
healthy 6,392-foot elevation. This flaw in the water
diversion rules, now obvious after 30 years of implementation,
has real-world results: Mono Lake is a decade late and eight
feet short of achieving the healthy lake requirement. The
California State Water Resources Control Board plans to examine
this problem in a future hearing.
A coalition of Northwest Colorado governments has come out in
opposition to designating the Dolores Canyon region as a
national monument. The board of the Associated Governments of
Northwest Colorado this week approved a resolution urging
“President Biden, federal agencies and legislative bodies to
consider the adverse impacts such designation would have on
local governance, economy, access, and national security.” The
board’s action came the same week Mesa County commissioners
passed a resolution opposing the monument designation. … [The
AGNC] worries about potential impacts to things such as
farming/ranching and recreational access, and to potential
mining of uranium and lithium in the region that “represents a
critical matter of national security, particularly considering
the current state of global affairs.”
Almost the entire staff of a 43-year-old Bay Area environmental
group has resigned over a dispute about the publication of a
book and management of the nonprofit that runs it. Six out of
seven members of the staff of the Bay Institute, which does
research and advocacy work to protect the San Francisco Bay and
delta, announced their resignation last week to the board of
Bay.org, the umbrella organization that runs the Bay Institute
and also runs the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco and
several other entities. According to a May 16, statement
by the group that resigned, which included four senior staff
and two junior staff members, the action was prompted in part
by the decision by Bay.org CEO and President George Jacob to
publish a book authored by the staff before they had a chance
to finalize their own revisions and before it received a peer
review.
Without their knowledge, they are tracked. There are little
transmitters in their bodies, slipped inside when they were
groggy, unknowing. The tracking goes on 24 hours a day, every
day. Sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months. It is, though,
all for the good. This surveillance is done so fish in the
Mokelumne River – and fishes all over Northern California and
beyond – might survive and thrive. Acoustic tracking, it is
called. At any given time, there are hundreds of fishes
swimming about with tiny implanted transmitters. As they swim,
they ping out signals to an array of 400 receivers throughout
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay. -Written by Rich Hanner, special to the News-Sentinel.
Explore the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning 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.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries through a scenic landscape while learning 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.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape while learning 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.
Water Education Foundation
2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205
Sacramento, CA 95833
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 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.
Radically transformed from its ancient origin as a vast tidal-influenced freshwater marsh, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem is in constant flux, influenced by factors within the estuary itself and the massive watersheds that drain though it into the Pacific Ocean.
Lately, however, scientists say the rate of change has kicked into overdrive, fueled in part by climate change, and is limiting the ability of science and Delta water managers to keep up. The rapid pace of upheaval demands a new way of conducting science and managing water in the troubled estuary.
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.
High in the headwaters of the Colorado River, around the hamlet of Kremmling, Colorado, generations of families have made ranching and farming a way of life, their hay fields and cattle sustained by the river’s flow. But as more water was pulled from the river and sent over the Continental Divide to meet the needs of Denver and other cities on the Front Range, less was left behind to meet the needs of ranchers and fish.
“What used to be a very large river that inundated the land has really become a trickle,” said Mely Whiting, Colorado counsel for Trout Unlimited. “We estimate that 70 percent of the flow on an annual average goes across the Continental Divide and never comes back.”
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.
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.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
In the universe of California water, Tim Quinn is a professor emeritus. Quinn has seen — and been a key player in — a lot of major California water issues since he began his water career 40 years ago as a young economist with the Rand Corporation, then later as deputy general manager with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and finally as executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. In December, the 66-year-old will retire from ACWA.
In 1983, a landmark California Supreme Court ruling extended the public trust doctrine to tributary creeks that feed Mono Lake, which is a navigable water body even though the creeks themselves were not. The ruling marked a dramatic shift in water law and forced Los Angeles to cut back its take of water from those creeks in the Eastern Sierra to preserve the lake.
Now, a state appellate court has for the first time extended that same public trust doctrine to groundwater that feeds a navigable river, in this case the Scott River flowing through a picturesque valley of farms and alfalfa in Siskiyou County in the northern reaches of California.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned 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. Tour
participants got an on-site update of Oroville Dam spillway
repairs.
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.
Water means life for all the Grand Canyon’s inhabitants, including the many varieties of insects that are a foundation of the ecosystem’s food web. But hydropower operations upstream on the Colorado River at Glen Canyon Dam, in Northern Arizona near the Utah border, disrupt the natural pace of insect reproduction as the river rises and falls, sometimes dramatically. Eggs deposited at the river’s edge are often left high and dry and their loss directly affects available food for endangered fish such as the humpback chub.
An hour’s drive north of Sacramento sits a picture-perfect valley hugging the eastern foothills of Northern California’s Coast Range, with golden hills framing grasslands mostly used for cattle grazing.
Back in the late 1800s, pioneer John Sites built his ranch there and a small township, now gone, bore his name. Today, the community of a handful of families and ranchers still maintains a proud heritage.
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.
For more than 100 years, invasive
species have made the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta their home,
disrupting the ecosystem and costing millions of dollars annually
in remediation.
The latest invader is the nutria, a large rodent native to South
America that causes concern because of its propensity to devour
every bit of vegetation in sight and destabilize levees by
burrowing into them. Wildlife officials are trapping the animal
and trying to learn the extent of its infestation.
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.
As we continue forging ahead in 2018
with our online version of Western Water after 40 years
as a print magazine, we turned our attention to a topic that also
got its start this year: recreational marijuana as a legal use.
State regulators, in the last few years, already had been beefing
up their workforce to tackle the glut in marijuana crops and
combat their impacts to water quality and supply for people, fish
and farming downstream. Thus, even if these impacts were perhaps
unbeknownst to the majority of Californians who approved
Proposition 64 in 2016, we thought it important to see if
anything new had evolved from a water perspective now that
marijuana was legal.
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.
Despite the heat that often
accompanies debates over setting aside water for the environment,
there are instances where California stakeholders have forged
agreements to provide guaranteed water for fish. Here are two
examples cited by the Public Policy Institute of California in
its report arguing for an environmental water right.
Does California need to revamp the way in which water is dedicated to the environment to better protect fish and the ecosystem at large? In the hypersensitive world of California water, where differences over who gets what can result in epic legislative and legal battles, the idea sparks a combination of fear, uncertainty and promise.
Saying that the way California manages water for the environment “isn’t working for anyone,” the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shook things up late last year by proposing a redesigned regulatory system featuring what they described as water ecosystem plans and water budgets with allocations set aside for the environment.
This tour explored the Sacramento River and its tributaries
through a scenic landscape as participants learned 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. Tour
participants got an on-site update of repair efforts on the
Oroville Dam spillway.
Estuaries are places where fresh and
salt water mix, usually at the point where a river enters the
ocean. They are the meeting point between riverine environments
and the sea, with a combination of tides, waves, salinity, fresh
water flow and sediment. The constant churning means there are
elevated levels of nutrients, making estuaries highly productive
natural habitats.
Zooplankton, which are floating
aquatic microorganisms too small and weak to swim against
currents, are are important food sources for many fish species in
the Delta such as salmon, sturgeon and Delta smelt.
A tributary is a river or stream
that enters a larger body of water, especially a lake or river.
The receiving water into which a tributary
feeds is called the “mainstem,” and the point where they come
together is referred to as the “confluence.”
With a holding capacity of more than 260 billion gallons, Diamond
Valley Lake is
Southern California’s largest reservoir. It sits about 90
miles southeast of Los Angeles and just west of Hemet in
Riverside County where it was built in 2000. The offstream
reservoir was created by three large dams that connect the surrounding
hills, costing around $1.9 billion and doubling the region’s
water storage capacity.
Headwaters are the source of a
stream or river. They are located at the furthest point from
where the water body empties or merges with
another. Two-thirds of California’s surface water supply
originates in these mountainous and typically forested regions.
In wet years, dry years and every type of water year in between,
the daily intrusion and retreat of salinity in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta is a constant pattern.
The cycle of ebb and flood is the defining nature of an estuary
and prior to its transformation into an agricultural tract in
the mid-19th century, the Delta was a freshwater marsh with
plants, birds, fish and wildlife that thrived on the edge of the
saltwater/freshwater interface.
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.
20-minute version of the 2012 documentary The Klamath Basin: A
Restoration for the Ages. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues related to complex water management
disputes in the Klamath River Basin. Narrated by actress Frances
Fisher.
For over a century, the Klamath River Basin along the Oregon and
California border has faced complex water management disputes. As
relayed in this 2012, 60-minute public television documentary
narrated by actress Frances Fisher, the water interests range
from the Tribes near the river, to energy producer PacifiCorp,
farmers, municipalities, commercial fishermen, environmentalists
– all bearing legitimate arguments for how to manage the water.
After years of fighting, a groundbreaking compromise may soon
settle the battles with two epic agreements that hold the promise
of peace and fish for the watershed. View an excerpt from the
documentary here.
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.
30-minute DVD that traces the history of the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation and its role in the development of the West. Includes
extensive historic footage of farming and the construction of
dams and other water projects, and discusses historic and modern
day issues.
California’s little-known New River has been called one of North
America’s most polluted. A closer look reveals the New River is
full of ironic twists: its pollution has long defied cleanup, yet
even in its degraded condition, the river is important to the
border economies of Mexicali and the Imperial Valley and a
lifeline that helps sustain the fragile Salton Sea ecosystem.
Now, after decades of inertia on its pollution problems, the New
River has emerged as an important test of binational cooperation
on border water issues. These issues were profiled in the 2004
PBS documentary Two Sides of a River.
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 the
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 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Water Rights Law, recognized as
the most thorough explanation of California water rights law
available to non-lawyers, traces the authority for water flowing
in a stream or reservoir, from a faucet or into an irrigation
ditch through the complex web of California water rights.
The Water Education Foundation’s second edition of
the Layperson’s Guide to The Klamath River Basin is
hot off the press and available for purchase.
Updated and redesigned, the easy-to-read overview covers the
history of the region’s tribal, agricultural and environmental
relationships with one of the West’s largest rivers — and a
vast watershed that hosts one of the nation’s oldest and
largest reclamation projects.
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.
As part of the historic Colorado
River Delta, the Salton Sea regularly filled and dried for
thousands of years due to its elevation of 237 feet below
sea level.
The most recent version of the Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when
the Colorado River broke
through a series of dikes and flooded the seabed for two years,
creating California’s largest inland body of water. The
Salton Sea, which is saltier than the Pacific Ocean, includes 130
miles of shoreline and is larger than Lake Tahoe.
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.
The construction of Glen Canyon Dam
in 1964 created Lake Powell. Both are located in north-central
Arizona near the Utah border. Lake Powell acts as a holding tank
for outflow from the Colorado River Upper Basin States: Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The water stored in Lake Powell is used for recreation, power
generation and delivering water to the Lower Basin states of
California, Arizona, and Nevada.
This issue of Western Water looks at the BDCP and the
Coalition to Support Delta Projects, issues that are aimed at
improving the health and safety of the Delta while solidifying
California’s long-term water supply reliability.
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 issue of Western Water examines science –
the answers it can provide to help guide management decisions in
the Delta and the inherent uncertainty it holds that can make
moving forward such a tenuous task.
This printed issue of Western Water provides an overview of the
idea of a dual conveyance facility, including questions
surrounding its cost, operation and governance
This printed copy of Western Water examines the native salmon and
trout dilemma – the extent of the crisis, its potential impact on
water deliveries and the lengths to which combined efforts can
help restore threatened and endangered species.
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.
In the world of water, biology and engineering often clash -
especially when it comes to resolving the Delta dilemma. How do
we manage such an altered system to ensure water supply
reliability while restoring the ecosystem? How do we measure the
results of efforts to restore endangered species and habitat? Why
is biodiversity important?
Balance between ecosystem restoration and water supply
reliability is key to a Bay-Delta solution. Everyone agrees on
this concept. But the demands of the competing interests can tilt
the scales. So, too, can the member agencies’ conflicting
missions. For more than three years, the joint state-federal
CALFED Bay-Delta Program has been searching for equilibrium among
the Delta’s complex problems and its contentious stakeholders. In
December, it released its latest blueprint for resolving the
Delta dilemma — the Revised Phase II Report.