When rain storms pummel Sacramento, a city surrounded by levees, crews work all hours of the night to prevent flooding.
They monitor, control and maintain the city’s more than 100 stormwater lift stations, which residents depend on to pump water into creeks, canals, or the Sacramento or American Rivers.
The industry that operates America’s hydroelectric dams and several environmental groups announced an unusual agreement Tuesday to work together to get more clean energy from hydropower while reducing the environmental harm from dams, in a sign that the threat of climate change is spurring both sides to rethink their decades-long battle over a large but contentious source of renewable power.
For the past two decades, dams have been falling across the United States in a bid to reverse a legacy of destruction of fish and their habitat. American Rivers, a nonprofit advocacy organization, estimates that 1,200 dams were dismantled nationwide from 1999 to 2019, including major dams on the Elwha and White Salmon Rivers in Washington State.
The state had been wrestling with the problem for 15 years, and there were hopes it was about to get pinned to the mat. A decade and a half of meetings, lawyerly and political negotiations, and massive public input had led the State Water Resources Control Board to the brink of a momentous decision: California must leave a lot more water in its rivers and streams in order to save the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay.
At its Feb. 26, 2020 quarterly meeting, the Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) approved approximately $33.2 million in grants to help restore and protect fish and wildlife habitat throughout California. Some of the 41 approved projects will benefit fish and wildlife — including some endangered species — while others will provide public access to important natural resources. Several projects will also demonstrate the importance of protecting working landscapes that integrate economic, social and environmental stewardship practices beneficial to the environment, landowners and the local community.
Water scarcity due to global warming could displace 700 million people worldwide by 2030. In the same time frame, 54 million lives globally could be impacted by river floods. In the United States, our climate has warmed by 1.8 degrees in the past century. It’s time to get real about what this means: Forest fires are growing more destructive, cities are struggling to do more with less water, fish and wildlife are struggling to survive and storms are triggering more life-threatening floods.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
