Standing on the grassy plateau where water is piped onto his property, Josh Davy wished his feet were wet and his irrigation ditch full.
Three years ago, when he sank everything he had into 66 acres of irrigated pasture in Shasta County, Davy thought he’d drought-proofed his cattle operation.
The Sacramento is California’s largest river. It arises near the lower slopes of Mt. Shasta, in the northernmost part of the state, and runs some four hundred miles south, draining the upper corridor of the Central Valley, bending through downtown Sacramento, and, eventually, reaching the Pacific Ocean, by way of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. Erik Vink, the executive director of the Delta Protection Commission, a state conservation agency, described the Sacramento to me as “California’s first superhighway.” By the eighteen-fifties, daily steamboats ferried passengers between San Francisco and Sacramento in as little as six hours.
Fishing groups and water suppliers fighting the Biden administration’s proposed drought rules for California’s water system told a federal judge Friday the emergency plans won’t stop the demise of endangered salmon.
With California trudging through another disappointingly dry winter, the federal government and state officials have agreed upon a set of temporary rules they claim are necessary to preserve enough cold water on the Sacramento River for Chinook salmon this spring and summer. The rules call for new water temperature targets and improved collaboration between federal and state officials on the management of California’s two main water conveyance systems.
In an experiment a decade in the making, biologists are releasing hatchery salmon onto flooded Northern California rice fields, seeking to replenish endangered fish species while simultaneously benefiting the farmers’ business model.
At a time when environmentalists are often pitted against agribusiness in California’s water wars, conservation scientists and rice farmers are working together, trying to reclaim the great flood plains of the Sacramento River for salmon habitat.
Their task is daunting. California’s wetlands have all but disappeared, converted into farms and cities in one of the great engineering feats, or environmental crimes, of the 20th century.
Alarmingly low numbers of baby salmon are surviving their journey down the Sacramento River to the sea, confirming conservationists’ fears that low flows and high river temperatures during the drought would wipe out most of the endangered winter-run salmon born last year.
California is taking steps toward a 2024 start of construction on the 1.5-million-acre-feet Sites Reservoir thanks to new funding.
The California Water Commission in December determined the Sites Reservoir, located on the west side of the Sacramento Valley, is eligible for funding through the state’s 2014 voter-approved Proposition 1 Water Storage Investment Program, thereby opening access to $800 million, about 20% of the project’s $3.93 billion price tag.
Nearly an entire run of juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon cooked in the Sacramento River this past summer, casting doubt as to whether the iconic species can survive the one-two punch of drought and climate change.
As drought conditions persist statewide, officials with the East Bay Municipal Utility District said on Monday the agency has begun tapping into water from the Sacramento River to boost local supplies.
EBMUD, which delivers water to some 1.4 million people across Alameda and Contra Costa counties, typically draws from the Mokelumne River for its water supply.
The agency said the latest move is part of its drought response.
Recent rainfall hasn’t been nearly enough to make a dent in Lake Shasta’s precariously low water levels.
The lakebed where the water has receded still shows cracks where mud has hardened and over the summer, dust devils have swept the fine, dried silt into the air.
The drought has dropped Lake Shasta to its second worst level since the last bucket of concrete was poured for Shasta Dam in December 1945.
The California water board has approved a plan for water releases into the Sacramento River that could kill off an entire run of endangered chinook salmon and put at risk another population that is part of the commercial salmon fishery.
The State Water Resources Control Board has informed the federal Bureau of Reclamation it would accept its final plan for managing water flows from Shasta Lake into the Sacramento River, which is both the main source of water for Central Valley farms and the spawning habitat for chinook salmon. Because the bureau’s plan involves releasing water to irrigation districts earlier in the season, the river will be lower and warmer during salmon spawning season and could result in killing as many as 88% of endangered winter-run chinook eggs and young fish.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
