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.
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.
Evidence is stacking up against the state in one of multiple
lawsuits over last year’s devastating floods in Merced County.
One of the most stunning new pieces of evidence is a string of
12 emails from Merced County staff that went ignored by the
state for more than four months before last year’s floods. The
lawsuit was filed against the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife (CDFW) on behalf of the City of Merced, a local
elementary school and 12 agricultural groups. All the
plaintiffs took significant damage from flooding after water
backed up in clogged waterways and broke through, or overtopped
creek banks and levees. The flooding came primarily from
Bear Creek and Black Rascal Creek, both of which have flooded
before. Flooding from Miles Creek also damaged nearly every
home in the small, rural town of Planada.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.”
Though the Delta Conveyance Project was only recently
approved by the Department of Water Resources after completing
the lengthy California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
process, the project faces new obstacles to implementation.
Nine lawsuits challenging DWR’s December 21, 2023 approval of
the Project were recently filed in Sacramento County Superior
Court by a total of thirty-three plaintiffs representing all
the Delta counties, the City of Stockton, environmental and
other nongovernmental organizations, and tribe[s]. Resolution
of that litigation could take several years.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
This tour traveled along the San Joaquin River to learn firsthand
about one of the nation’s largest and most expensive river
restoration projects.
The San Joaquin River was the focus of one of the most
contentious legal battles in California water history,
ending in a 2006 settlement between the federal government,
Friant Water Users Authority and a coalition of environmental
groups.
Hampton Inn & Suites Fresno
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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.