The San Francisco Bay Estuary and the rivers that feed it face an existential crisis. The signs of impending collapse include six endangered native fish species, shrinking wetlands and beaches, and more frequent cyanobacteria blooms that generate neurotoxins powerful enough to kill pets and sicken people. Just outside the Golden Gate, Orca whales feeding on Chinook salmon go hungry, while commercial fishermen cope with another shortened fishing season.

Cloud seeding has resumed over the Sierra Nevada in hopes of increasing the winter snowpact, but La Nina might have other plans for the central California rainfall season. The Northern California Power Agency, which has conducted cloud seeding every year since 2006, has begun seeding a 74-square-mile watershed above New Spicer Reservoir in Tuolumne County above 6,500 feet, according Randy Bowersox, hydroelectric facilities manager for the power agency. The cloud seeding project, which commenced on Nov. 1, hopes to augment the winter snowpack runoff by at least 2 percent.

California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is a productive agricultural area and a vital linchpin in the state’s complex water supply system. It’s also a highly unique ecosystem, which was a hotbed for endemic species, many of which are now under stress and some facing extinction. As various agencies and other stakeholders work on ways to balance the economic and environmental demands on the Delta, a new report released today attempts to build a framework to help locally driven restoration efforts.

 

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California failed to get an independent appraisal of Delta islands that they bought earlier this year, prior to the time of purchase, as required under the District’s own Administrative Code, says Restore the Delta, an environmental group that opposed planned water tunnels under the Delta. The water district bought four water-filled “islands” and a portion of a fifth in the California Delta from a unit of Zurich Insurance Group of Switzerland.