The San Joaquin River, which helps
drain California’s Central Valley, has been negatively impacted
by construction of dams, inadequate streamflows and poor water
quality. Efforts are now underway to restore the river and
continue providing agricultural lands with vital irrigation,
among other water demands.
After an 18-year lawsuit to restore water flows to a 60-mile dry
stretch of river and to boost the dwindling salmon populations,
the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement is underway.
Water releases are now used to restore the San Joaquin River and
to provide habitat for naturally-reproducing populations of
self-sustaining Chinook salmon and other fish in the San Joaquin
River. Long-term efforts also include measures to reduce or avoid
adverse water supply impacts from the restoration flows.
A mining company wants to dig hundreds of feet down on a site
along the San Joaquin River. With an environmental review of
the project released, the decision now lands on Fresno County
supervisors to approve or deny — and, if the project gets a
green light, decide how deep to allow the company to dig.
Mexico-based mining company CEMEX wants to dig a 600-foot hole
and blast hard rock from its quarry site about 200 feet from
the banks of the San Joaquin River, according to Fresno
County’s environmental impact report. The company already mines
aggregate at its quarry. A permit to operate expires in July
2026. However, a new California legislative bill may decide the
future of mining on the prime river land, bypassing the
supervisors. Assembly Bill 1425 from Joaquin
Arambula (D-Fresno) would ban dewatering from many sites along
the San Joaquin River — effectively killing the CEMEX proposal.
A billion-dollar blast mine planned along the San Joaquin
River’s prime salmon spawning habitat is facing its first major
political challenge after months of diplomatic silence from
Fresno leaders. Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula
introduced new state legislation last week aimed directly at
stopping global mining giant CEMEX from blasting a crater twice
as deep as Millerton Lake along the San Joaquin River’s planned
parkway near Fresno. Arambula’s proposal has the support
of Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer, who called the CEMEX blast mine an
“unacceptable” assault to the region’s river and
roads. … Arambula’s bill would toss the county’s
playbook for developers in the trash, killing CEMEX’s
controversial mining proposal before the county supervisors get
a chance to approve it.
In December 2024, the County of Fresno Department of Public
Works and Planning released the draft environmental impact
report (DEIR) on Cemex’s proposed plan to modify its existing
Rockfield aggregate operation on Friant Road (Modification
Plan) and received public comments through March 10, 2025. …
Inaccurate information about the modification plan has been
broadly communicated by a few project opponents and
unfortunately perpetuated by some local digital channels.
Importantly, Cemex does not propose to mine in the San Joaquin
River. This has been clear throughout the application process
and any suggestions otherwise are disingenuous at best and
appear designed to mislead the public.
California’s most-destructive and least-welcome swamp rodents
have arrived in its fifth-largest city. To be precise, they’ve
arrived in the stretch of San Joaquin River that traces
Fresno’s northwest border. Eight years have passed since a
reproducing population of nutria was found in western Merced
County — their first discovery in the state since the 1970s.
Despite eradication efforts that began in March 2018, nutria
have since spread north into the Delta, east into foothills
along the Merced River and south into the Fresno Slough and
Mendota Wildlife Area. … Since 2023 more nutria have been
taken from Fresno County than any county in California,
according to CDFW data. In the overall tally of 5,493 animals
that dates to 2018, Fresno County (1,140) trails only Merced
County (2,593). -Written by Fresno Bee columnist Marek Warszawski.
The recent Fresnoland article on the proposed CEMEX mining
project in Fresno County raises several important issues but
misrepresents the San Joaquin River Conservancy, its role, and
its capabilities. … I want to clarify that the Conservancy is a
state agency with a clear mission: to develop the San Joaquin
River Parkway, to create public access to the river corridor,
and conserve lands either owned by the Conservancy or through
willing partnerships. Importantly, the Conservancy is neither a
political organization nor a regulatory body. It does not
govern land use decisions outside of its jurisdiction, nor is
it empowered to block private development projects, such as the
CEMEX mine. –Written by Bobby Macaulay, District 5 Supervisor for
Madera County and chair of the San Joaquin River
Conservancy.
… We tend to take the San Joaquin River for granted except for
when we take forays to fish and play in its waters or are
loading up the car with valuables to be ready to flee on a
moment’s notice should one of the levees inching toward failure
during high water flows break. The 1,760-square-mile San
Joaquin River Basin that the San Joaquin River and its web of
tributaries provides with snowmelt helps support what is
arguably the most productive agricultural region on earth. The
bulk of California’s nearly $59 billion farm production, more
than $20 billion of that of the nearest state, is produced in
the San Joaquin Valley. The valley grows more than 400
commodities as well as two-thirds of the nation’s fruits and
nuts. The ability to feed people has come at a great cost to
the San Joaquin River that is among the most heavily dammed and
diverted rivers in the West. -Written by Dennis Wyatt, editor of the Manteca
Bulletin.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
327 E Fir Ave
Fresno, CA 93720
This tour ventured through California’s Central Valley, known as the nation’s breadbasket thanks to an imported supply of surface water and local groundwater. Covering about 20,000 square miles through the heart of the state, the valley provides 25 percent of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables consumed throughout the country.
Land and waterway managers labored
hard over the course of a century to control California’s unruly
rivers by building dams and levees to slow and contain their
water. Now, farmers, environmentalists and agencies are undoing
some of that work as part of an accelerating campaign to restore
the state’s major floodplains.
Voluntary agreements in California
have been touted as an innovative and flexible way to improve
environmental conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
and the rivers that feed it. The goal is to provide river flows
and habitat for fish while still allowing enough water to be
diverted for farms and cities in a way that satisfies state
regulators.
California is chock full of rivers and creeks, yet the state’s network of stream gauges has significant gaps that limit real-time tracking of how much water is flowing downstream, information that is vital for flood protection, forecasting water supplies and knowing what the future might bring.
That network of stream gauges got a big boost Sept. 30 with the signing of SB 19. Authored by Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), the law requires the state to develop a stream gauge deployment plan, focusing on reactivating existing gauges that have been offline for lack of funding and other reasons. Nearly half of California’s stream gauges are dormant.
One of California Gov. Gavin
Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade
Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within
weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that
Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing.
That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach”
on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded
floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
Bruce Babbitt, the former Arizona
governor and secretary of the Interior, has been a thoughtful,
provocative and sometimes forceful voice in some of the most
high-profile water conflicts over the last 40 years, including
groundwater management in Arizona and the reduction of
California’s take of the Colorado River. In 2016, former
California Gov. Jerry Brown named Babbitt as a special adviser to
work on matters relating to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and
the Delta tunnels plan.
The San Joaquin Valley, known as the
nation’s breadbasket, grows a cornucopia of fruits, nuts and
other agricultural products.
During our three-day Central Valley Tour April
3-5, you will meet farmers who will explain how they prepare
the fields, irrigate their crops and harvest the produce that
helps feed the nation and beyond. We also will drive through
hundreds of miles of farmland and visit the rivers, dams,
reservoirs and groundwater wells that provide the water.
The whims of political fate decided
in 2018 that state bond money would not be forthcoming to help
repair the subsidence-damaged parts of Friant-Kern Canal, the
152-mile conduit that conveys water from the San Joaquin River to
farms that fuel a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy along
the east side of the fertile San Joaquin Valley.
The Sacramento and San Joaquin
rivers are the two major Central Valley waterways that feed the
Delta, the hub of California’s water supply
network. Our last water tours of
2018 will look in-depth at how these rivers are managed and
used for agriculture, cities and the environment. You’ll see
infrastructure, learn about efforts to restore salmon runs and
talk to people with expertise on these rivers.
New water storage is the holy grail
primarily for agricultural interests in California, and in 2014
the door to achieving long-held ambitions opened with the passage
of Proposition
1, which included $2.7 billion for the public benefits
portion of new reservoirs and groundwater storage projects. The
statute stipulated that the money is specifically for the
benefits that a new storage project would offer to the ecosystem,
water quality, flood control, emergency response and recreation.
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.
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.
