Trout Underground on California’s water wars, fisheries, and the peripheral canal
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 19, 2008 at 4:32 pmTom Chandler of the Trout Underground blog, has posted an article on California’s water wars, where he aptly discusses the murky politics of our state’s water issues. Tom’s post outlines many of the issues and gives a history into why some groups feel as strong as they do. It all boils down to trust, Tom writes:
… the Peripheral Canal would divert Sacramento River water before it even reaches the California Delta, reasoning that it’s far less environmentally damaging than using massive pumps to remove from the south end of the Delta.
Most experts agree in theory, but the environmental and fisheries communities - groups with little faith in those running the Central Water Project - can’t see past the potential for massive diversions of water around the Delta, which - combined with even limited pumping - would lead to the complete collapse of the ecosystem.
In essence, the Peripheral Canal issue could come down to trust - something the state’s water users haven’t exactly earned.
Can We Trust the Water Project?
Enviros - most of whom can’t forget the nightmare of the Trinity River, where a pair of dams - which were “guaranteed” to be operated so as not to damage the Trinity’s robust fishery - immediately began robbing the river of as much as 90% of its water. (The majority of that water was shipped to Westlands Water District - the same politically-connected water district who now want to flood miles of trout streams by raising the Shasta Dam.)
After literally decades of litigation, groups like the Friends of the Trinity got a little water returned to the Trinity River, and the result has been steelhead fishing so good that fishermen can’t find places to park on weekends.
More recently, the water project’s massive pumping from the Delta and apparent disregard for the health of the Delta (and the state’s commercially viable fisheries) has pretty much soured the milk as far as enviros are concerned.
Yet Another Water Grab? Where some see a Peripheral Canal as a solution to the state’s water woes, many environmentalists see yet another water grab, and sadly, history (see above) suggests they might be right.
Read the full text of Tom’s post at the Trout Underground by clicking here.
Commentary: Water scarce or water abundant?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 19, 2008 at 3:03 pmFrom Willits News, a commentary which explains how watersheds, groundwater, surface water and urvan development work together in increasing or diminishing a water supply:
Scientific evidence produced by USGS groundwater studies and a recent detailed watershed analysis by the California Department of Fish and Game presents clear evidence that our watersheds capacity to hold water has been greatly reduced by the accumulation of urban developments, gravel and timber extractions, overgrazing, and reservoir impoundments. These and new developments continue to accumulate and degrade the watershed.
This evidence, in brief, begins in the early 1900s with dewatering of Little Lake and diverting the northern outlet. The lake; a mechanism to absorb floodwaters was the most biodiverse element of our watershed. Relocating, straightening, channelizing, and diverting the six main feeder creeks directly to Outlet Creek, bypassing the lake, increased water flows and prevented full saturation of the valley’s aquifer.
Timber harvesting scared the land and loosened the topsoil. The resulting erosion dumped huge sediment loads into the creeks reducing their capacity rendering them shallow. Shallow water increased flood risks and water temperatures and reduced salmon habitat. Overgrazing impacted the soils further reducing groundwater infiltration and altered plant diversity.
These impacts are neither fully understood nor recognized as having anything to do with water scarcity. Water scarcity is produced by water demands that exceed supplies. Supplies are determined by land use and annual rainfall. Human demands are only part of the equation. If we are to live in a lush, biodiverse environment, then biological requirements will have to be considered.
Read the full text of this commentary from Willits News by clicking here.
How does drinking water get to the Santa Clarita Valley?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 14, 2008 at 7:01 am
From the Santa Clarita Signal, Aquafornia’s home base, part one of a two-part series:
Snow falls on the rocky crest of Kettle Rock in Northern California, 500 miles from Santa Clarita. In this remote and rugged stretch of the Sierra Nevada, carpeted with coniferous trees and skirted with meadows, few hikers ever make it to the 7,300-foot summit or leave their footprints in the snow pack here. But, this is where our story begins - with a single drop of water, melting from the snow pack atop Kettle Rock.
Our story ends in Santa Clarita Valley, where that same drop of water drips from a tap. “This is your watershed. This is the state’s watershed. This is Santa Clarita’s watershed,” said a man who has devoted his life to holding back the forces of climate change threatening the state’s water supply and the supply of water to Santa Clarita. “This watershed is the watershed of the State Water Project, there is no other source.”
Jim Wilcox is the project manager for the Feather River Coordinated Resource Management team in Plumas County. For more than two decades, he and others on his team have been working steadily, and quietly, in the tranquil meadows of Plumas County, trying to reverse a disastrous trend in the changing profile of this landscape. The meadows are disappearing.
Read the rest of this story from the Santa Clarita Signal by clicking here.
Carwashes don’t have to pollute: water collection kits keep runoff out of Bay waters
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 8, 2008 at 8:38 pmFrom the San Jose Mercury News:
The season of the fundraiser carwash is here, and some cities across the Bay Area are quietly pushing schools, churches and scout groups to take up a little-known green measure to reduce the runoff of pollution into bay waters: a carwash water collection kit.
The kit collects dirty, potentially contaminated water from a carwash and pumps it into a sewage drain or a landscaped area. Non-profit groups in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Campbell, Los Gatos and Monte Sereno have been using the kits for years as part of a state requirement that cities reduce runoff to storm drains.
Sunnyvale is the latest Bay Area city to purchase the kits, loaning them to local groups, not just as a way to reduce pollution runoff but also to teach residents an important environmental lesson, said Kristy McCumby, Sunnyvale’s environmental specialist.
“I thought it was a good idea,” said Claire Umeda, 16, a Fremont High School student who helped organize a recent carwash at her Sunnyvale school using the kit. She and her colleagues at the school’s Key Club organized the carwash to raise funds for the American Cancer Society.
The students raised $400, said Umeda, who will be a junior in the fall. City water and environmental officials are hoping that more groups will use the kits, and in the process raise their environmental awareness quotients. “What’s good for charity,” Umeda said, “is good for the environment.”
“Only rain in the drain” is the motto. Find out more from the San Jose Mercury News by clicking here.
Recreational miners threaten struggling fisheries in California
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 22, 2008 at 9:27 pmFrom the California Progress Report:
The Karuk Tribe along with allies in the commercial and recreational fishing communities are calling on Governor Schwarzenegger to restrict the controversial gold mining technique known as suction dredge mining. As we are in the midst of the worst fisheries collapse in California history all groups impacting our fisheries must be called on to make sacrifices.
According to Brian Stranko, CEO of California Trout, “In April, the state and federal government took unprecedented emergency actions to completely close California’s coast to recreational and commercial salmon fishing, something that is causing severe economic harm to businesses and communities. This is why it is inappropriate and unacceptable for state government to allow recreational suction dredge mining operations to continue to harm fish, particularly endangered species like coho salmon.”
Suction dredges are powered by gas or diesel engines that are mounted on floating pontoons in the river. Attached to the engine is a powerful vacuum hose which the dredger uses to suction up the gravel and sand (sediment) from the bottom of the river. The stream bed passes through a sluice box where heavier gold particles can settle into a series of riffles. The rest of the gravel and potentially toxic sediment is simply dumped back into the river. Depending on size, location and density of these machines they can turn a clear running mountain stream or river segment into a murky watercourse unfit for swimming.
Read the full text of this story from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
U.S. & Mexico: Neighbors work together to try and clean up the Tijuana River Valley
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 13, 2008 at 6:24 amFrom IPS:
A sinuous coil of murky water winds through the Tijuana River Valley. On each side of the U.S.-Mexican border, residents eye each other warily, caught in the cross-currents of political intrigue and economic polices that make the floodplain almost seem almost orderly by comparison.
Wedged between the ocean, the border and the southern fringes of suburban San Diego, California, the valley is contested territory. Horse ranchers and bird fanciers make their home here, but the valley also serves as a flashpoint for migrants desperately seeking entry into the United States. A patchwork of state, local and federal agencies with competing interests makes collaboration difficult. Enforcement, conservation, and recreation all vie for top priority.
However, there’s one aspect of border life everyone can agree upon. The region is inundated with trash, the waste of two large cities, illegal dumping, maquiladoras, and the victim of neglect. Much of the 2,700-square-kilometre watershed is located in Mexico but the terminus is an estuary and Imperial Beach, San Diego, the last and southernmost beach town in California.
At the urging of Benjamin McCue, programme manager for WildCoast, a bi-national wildlife conservation and water quality advocacy group focused on Baja, California, 200 volunteers armed with plastics bags, rakes and shovels recently attempted the seemingly impossible — to clean-up a tiny sliver of the valley set aside as a nature preserve, known as the Tijuana River Open Space Reserve.
“Cross-border pollution is the number one border threat,” said McCue. “The threat is not what comes over the fence, it’s what comes under it. Pollution affects the health of everyone.”
Pollution doesn’t respect the border. Each time it rains, a portion of Tijuana’s waste flows through the estuary and into the Pacific Ocean, shutting down local beaches for days at a time and affecting the quality of life for residents. Local residents are seeking common ground to combat the problem.
“To comprehensively deal with the Tijuana River, we need to involve everyone impacted from ranchers to surfers to boarder patrol agents,” said Paloma Aguirre, president of the Tijuana River Citizens Council.
Postcard pretty wetlands hide hidden trash. Beneath beds of wildflowers and lush vegetation, the preserve is a catchall for all manner of debris, tires, bottles, and plastic. By mid-morning, volunteers have accumulated enough garbage to fill a shipping container to haul to the municipal dump.
Read the full text of this article from IPS by clicking here.
PG&E to drill new test wells in Arizona to help monitor toxic plume by the Colorado River
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 26, 2008 at 6:42 amFrom the Mohave Daily News:
In an ongoing effort to clean up a plume of contaminated groundwater near its Topock Compressor Station in California, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will be drilling three to four new test wells along the Colorado River near Topock.
PG&E has been drilling test wells near its compressor station in California since before the plume of hexavalent chromium was discovered at a well near the Colorado River in 2004, but the new wells will mark the first time test wells have been drilled outside of California.
Under the oversight of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, PG&E will install monitoring wells near and beneath the river to collect samples of groundwater and sediments. The samples will be collected for chemical analysis at each site as the wells are being drilled. Once the wells are completed, groundwater samples will be collected on a regular basis and be analyzed for chromium or other contaminants.
“A couple of different wells will be installed in the course of the next couple of months on the Arizona side,” said Jon Tremayne, a spokesperson for PG&E, “To ensure that the contaminated groundwater has not moved onto that side, and has not moved under the river.”
According to the spokesman, the new wells will be able to provide specific information to help create a long-term plan that will be the most effective. The final remedy for the situation is not yet known. “All of this investigation that is taking place is to exactly identify where and what the concentrations are and how best to address them. That’s all taking place now,” Tremayne said.
Read the full text of this story from the Mohave Daily News by clicking here.
Mercury rising: Dealing with the dark legacy of the Gold Rush
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 23, 2008 at 1:47 pmFrom YubaNet:
When gold recently touched $1000 an ounce, the mainstream media ran stories about Sierra gold panning concessions that were experiencing a business boom. The glitter is still glamorous, but behind the shine lies the Gold Rush legacy of darker chemical remnants: mercury, lead, arsenic, and asbestos.
More than 150 years after James Marshall saw a sparkle in the American River that started a worldwide rush to California, the cleanup of those potentially harmful byproducts is just now being addressed. “Stepping back and thinking about how much work there is to be done on this issue, it’s huge,” Dr. Carrie Monohan said. Monohan is a hydrologist consulting on several mercury contamination projects in the Sierra. “It’s mind boggling!”
There are an estimated 47,000 abandoned mine sites on public lands in the Sierra, according to Monohan. “There are years of field work to be done just locating those and assessing what type of hazards they represent.”
One of the more useful elements for collecting gold in the 1800s was mercury. Today it is one of the most prominent mining toxins in the Sierra Nevada. The silvery metal commonly was dumped into Gold Rush creekside sluice boxes where it bound with finer-grained gold into an amalgam more easily removed from the box’s sediments. When hydraulic mining created a great deal more slurry, more mercury was added. Some of the mercury got suspended in the water and transported downstream. Much of it is still with us.
Since we are all hydrologically connected, cleaning up the mercury is a statewide issue:
“The Sierra is California’s watershed, and it affects everybody in the state,” Martin continues. “We want to document the problem. We want people to understand there’s a big problem. We want to move people forward toward solutions. We’re interested in having people understand that we can actually solve this one. We can clean this one up.”
Find out more about left-over Gold Rush toxins in this comprehensive report from YubaNet by clicking here.
Traces of antiseptic soaps and cleaning agents found in the environment, sparking human health concerns
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 21, 2008 at 5:24 amFrom Science Daily:
Parental concerns in maintaining germ-free homes for their children have led to an ever-increasing demand and the rapid adoption of anti-bacterial soaps and cleaning agents. But the active ingredients of those antiseptic soaps now have come under scrutiny by the EPA and FDA, due to both environmental and human health concerns.
Two closely related antimicrobials, triclosan and triclocarban, are at the center of the debacle. Whereas triclosan (TCS) has long captured the attention of toxicologists due to its structural resemblance to dioxin (the Times Beach and Love Canal poison), triclocarban (TCC) has ski-rocketed in 2004 from an unknown and presumably harmless consumer product additive to one of today’s top ten pharmaceuticals and personal care products most frequently found in the environment and in U.S. drinking water resources.
Now, Biodesign Institute at Arizona State Univesity researcher Rolf Halden and co-workers, in a feat of environmental detective work, have traced back the active ingredients of soaps — used as long ago as the 1960s — to their current location, the shallow sediments of New York City’s Jamaica Bay and the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary.
“Our group has shown that antimicrobial ingredients used a half a century ago, by our parents and grandparents, are still present today at parts-per-million concentrations in estuarine sediments underlying the brackish waters into which New York City and Baltimore discharge their treated domestic wastewater,” said Halden, a new member of the Institute’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology. “This extreme environmental persistence by itself is a concern, and it is only amplified by recent studies that show both triclosan and triclocarban to function as endocrine disruptors in mammalian cell cultures and in animal models.”
Read more from Science Daily by clicking here.
Threats to inland seas are detailed at Utah conference
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 13, 2008 at 5:51 amFrom Deseret News:
Climate change and increasing demand for fresh water are two of the biggest threats to saline lakes worldwide, a marine scientist said Monday.
Robert Jellison of the Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, was a keynote speaker at this week’s International Conference on Salt Lake Research and Friends of Great Salt Lake Issues Forum at Fort Douglas/University of Utah.
“It will threaten salt lakes,” Jellison said of the rising demand for fresh water. He noted that issue is particularly grim in developing nations. He said many saltwater lakes have become smaller or desiccated in recent years because of water diversion for agriculture.
Jellison also said saline lakes are particularly sensitive to global climate change. That’s because they respond quickly to climate changes, and global climate models consistently predict decreased precipitation over subtropical land masses. He said some salt lakes will be losers and others will be winners in global climate change. Even the increased use of biofuels will impact saline lakes, by using more water resources.
“The future of many saline lakes will be decided over the next several decades, as the direct economic value of freshwater inflows are weighed against the less easily measured ecosystem goods and services provided by these unique ecosystems,” he said.
Read the rest of this story from the Deseret News by clicking here.
Water rights and water wrongs in the Sierra Nevada
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 27, 2008 at 6:53 am
From the California Progress Report:
Water law in the state of California can best be described as one of those incredibly complex multiple level chess games, with varying and not necessarily consistent rules for each level. In the crazy California water game different norms control, depending on whether ground water, riparian rights, appropriative rights, or prescriptive rights are involved (and this is short form-there are many other variations), and even whether rights were acquired before or after 1914. Add in all the various water projects, which divert water far away from its mountain origins, and its one-time inevitable flow towards the sea, to provide water for agricultural interests and urban needs, and you get an even more layered, confusing system, with consequent over appropriation of surface waters, and overdraw of groundwater.
There are many who feel the current system of water allocation in California is unfair, inefficient, and sadly broken. This year’s collapse of the salmon fisheries, and the precarious situation of the Delta underscore the need to reassess how California’s water is used, abused, and wasted. The debate promises to be heated, with, on one side, those who are convinced dams, and canals are a magic bandaid, and on the other side, those who favor protection of the environment, and who emphasize conservation and wise use of water over building yet another dam, and who think it’s absolutely profligate to ship water to places like Westlands Water District to grow thirsty crops and forage, when that water is taken at the expense of protection of instream uses, such as keeping endangered fish out of the maws of the vast water project pumps.
There is a basic core of rationality in California’s water system, though. The Public Trust Doctrine requires a balancing of consumptive and instream uses. This doctrine was successfully applied to water appropriation through the vigilance of those who fought for more than 20 years to prevent the siphoning away of Mono Lake to slake Los Angeles’s thirst. Further, the California Constitution prohibits waste and unreasonable use of water. The terms “waste” and “unreasonable use” are a virtual full employment act for attorneys specializing in water law, but I’ll spare you a treatise on “legally correct” usage. What I’d like to talk about is a real-life, shameful waste of water in the Sierra Nevada, up near Donner Summit.
Read the full text of this story from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
Urban wetlands park to be developed in South L.A.
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 24, 2008 at 9:42 pmFrom the Los Angeles Times:
The City Council this week unanimously approved construction of an unusual urban wetland park on an old Metropolitan Transportation Authority maintenance yard in South Los Angeles.
The South Los Angeles Wetlands Park project will cost $19 million in proceeds from bond issues for parks and clean water and will take up to two years to build, city officials said. It will include a small lake, marshes with native plants, footpaths, a community center and a winding waterway.
The nine-acre MTA yard, which stretches from Avalon Boulevard to San Pedro Street in an industrial area on 54th Street, had been used as a transit hub for more than 100 years and was once a train barn for streetcars. The lot is paved and encircled by rusted chain-link fencing and razor wire, “a barren, underutilized concrete pad,” Councilwoman Jan Perry said.
Surrounded by homes and schools, the site will make “an ideal locale for green space,” Perry said.
Read the full text of this story from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
San Diego State University partners with state agency & community groups to protect and restore the San Diego River
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 18, 2008 at 3:36 pmFrom the San Diego Union Tribune:
For years, researchers at San Diego State University have monitored environmental changes around the world. Now, they are turning more of their attention to their own backyard.
This morning, the university will announce a partnership with a state agency and several community groups to protect and restore the San Diego River. Their main goal is to set up a system of monitors that collect and transmit water-quality information about the waterway, which flows near the campus on its 52-mile trip from near Julian to Ocean Beach.
The project is expected to help scientists, students and conservationists gain knowledge of what is sometimes called California’s “first river.” It also will boost the profile of a long-running campaign to improve some of the waterway’s natural function in areas altered by heavy development.
“It’s definitely a turning point in how we envision our role with regard to research, education and outreach. We hope to establish a brand-new model for how we manage and monitor the watershed,” said Matt Rahn, director of the Field Stations Program at San Diego State.
Read the full text of this story from the San Diego Union-Tribune by clicking here.
“Saving the Sierra” radio documentary available online
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 3, 2008 at 4:18 amFrom the Mono Lake Committee website, here’s a radio documentary called “Saving the Sierra” which features three stories: the Sierra Valley near Portola, the Martis Valley near Truckee, and Mono Lake.
Click here for the radio program, click here to visit the Mono Lake Committee website.
Mimicking Mother Nature: Humans just aren’t that good at it, says editorial
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 2, 2008 at 5:37 amFrom the Los Angeles Times, this editorial:
The Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program, a $626-million joint project of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation and several Western states, is designed to offset the environmental impacts of drawing water from the Colorado River. Situated just a few miles north of where California, Arizona and Mexico meet, it looks a bit like a suburban construction site right now, though once completed it will re-create 8,132 acres of habitat: groves of cottonwood, willow and honey mesquite, ponds and marshes. Endangered birds such as the yellow-billed cuckoo and threatened fish such as the razorback sucker and the bonytail should thrive there.
Still, nature it’s not. Its orderly, vaguely kidney-shaped pools look more like the water hazards at a golf course than the random wetlands of wilderness. It will take a system of pipes to drain the ponds, biologists to oversee the species and a $25-million upkeep fund to tend to the project over the years.
There’s usually something a little pathetic about human attempts to mimic nature, or to restore it. Our attempts to save the coastal sage scrub of Southern California are another perennial reminder.
Read the rest of this editorial from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here .
New federal wetlands rules stir debate
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 1, 2008 at 5:35 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
The Bush administration announced requirements Monday that would encourage developers to compensate for the destruction of wetlands or streams by paying for the creation of new ones elsewhere, sometimes many miles away. The approach, which emphasizes linking wetlands destruction and replacement efforts across expansive watersheds, has been a contentious issue since it was proposed two years ago.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced the regulation’s final approval Monday, saying it will help to replace wetlands and streams that are destroyed or severely impacted in construction or other activities. “It will accelerate our wetlands conservation effort by establishing a more effective, consistent mitigation process,” said Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA’s assistant administrator for water.
The regulation encourages expanded use of “mitigation banking,” in which a developer can obtain a permit to destroy a wetland or stream if the developer agrees to invest in wetland creation or enhancement elsewhere. This approach has resulted in creation of businesses that specialize in wetlands creation.
But environmentalists worried the new mitigation policy could encourage wetlands destruction and overall wetlands loss. “There’s nothing in here that says we’re going to improve mitigation. It’s just going to be easier and cheaper,” said Julie Sibbing, a wetlands expert at the National Wildlife Federation. “And the cheaper it is to mitigate, the more economic it is to buy land that has wetlands on it and destroy them.”
Read the rest of this story from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Small oil refinery in Santa Barbara County is the state’s worst polluter
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 28, 2008 at 12:56 pmFrom the San Francisco Chronicle:
When a Firestone Vineyard employee discovered oil trickling down a creek in January in this wine country town, the source of the contamination was no surprise to firefighters.
Of 21 refineries in California, Greka Oil & Gas Inc. is the fourth-smallest producer, but the state’s biggest inland oil polluter, according to state officials. Broken pumps, busted pipes, overflowing ponds and cracked tanks at Greka installations have spilled more than a half-million gallons of oil and contaminated water since 1999, fouling the water, soil and air in the Southern California county many consider the birthplace of the nation’s environmental movement.
Over the past nine years, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department has responded at least 400 times to oil spills and gas leaks at Greka, resulting in fines, citations, federal and local prosecutions and investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency and state Fish and Game. “I’ve been in the hazardous materials business for 20 years and this is the worst oil company I’ve ever seen,” said Robert Wise, who works at EPA’s Superfund division.
The company says it is a victim of sabotage - a claim local and federal authorities dispute - and overzealous regulators. “To say that Greka is a major polluter is a joke,” said President Andrew deVegvar. “To the extent to which we’re being portrayed as some kind of Darth Vader of the oil industry is not appropriate.”
Get the rest of this story from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Rains leave behind water, fairy shrimp, and flowers as vernal pools are reborn
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 24, 2008 at 5:56 am
From the North County Times:
After a winter of near-normal rainfall, vernal pools —- those watery relics of Southern California’s more natural past —- have once again sprung to life.
The springtime ponds were a disappointing no-show last year, thanks to one of the driest rainy seasons on record in San Diego and Riverside counties. But the recent rain spawned a rebirth of the pools, and of the tiny, almost-magical fairy shrimp that inhabit them.
As the pools begin to dry out in the spring sun, they are leaving behind thick carpets of grass that are expected to explode with color as wildflowers burst onto the scene in April.
“This was a good year for them,” said Wayne Armstrong, a retired Palomar College professor of biology and botany who has studied the vernal pools in San Marcos extensively.
According to the National Weather Service in Rancho Bernardo, it has been much wetter this rainy season. Meteorologist Dan Atkin said Ramona has received nearly 16 inches of rain since July 1 compared to slightly more than 11 inches in a normal season. Vista has received more than 13 inches since July 1 compared with nearly 10 inches in a normal rainy season.
Once clustered throughout Southern California, only a few of the original seasonal ponds are left today. Jane Hendron, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Carlsbad, said 95 percent of the pools have been paved over in favor of freeways, tract homes and shopping malls.
“What we are left with now are scraps,” Hendron said.
Read the full text of this story from the North County Times by clicking here.
Photo of Vernal Pool by the North County Times.
Need something to do this weekend? Get out and see the wildflowers (now, while you can!)
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 20, 2008 at 10:58 pmFrom the Riverside Press Enterprise:
The sweetness of spring has arrived in the form of abundant, blooming wildflowers in the Inland region.
Thirsty plants in the region have embraced the rain this year, and the result: fresh chocolate lilies, ground pinks, California poppies, Farewell-to-Springs, Johnny-jump-ups, baby blue-eyes, lupine, shooting stars, blue-eyed grass and fiddleneck.
“It’s fabulous. It’s just a good year everywhere, not just in our park,” said Alissa Ing, environmental scientist for Chino Hills State Park. “It’s just a wonderful thing that people get to enjoy flowers this year because we had such a severe drought for a while, and it’s good that we had a decent rainy season.”
Carole Anne Bell, manager at Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve in Murrieta, remembers how few wildflowers there were last year. “You could almost count them on one hand,” she wrote via e-mail. “With the rainfall of almost 19 inches so far this season, the flowers are providing us with a display that rivals those in the past.”
Like familiar relatives, the wildflowers have returned this year to coat mountains, trails and hillsides, and with a lovely fringe in area parks.
For the rest of this article from the Riverside Press-Enterprise, which includes a rundown of where you can go, click here.
Picture of the California poppies by the Riverside Press-Enterprise. More pictures included with the article.
California groups urge mining reforms, including funds for clean-up of toxic mining pollution
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 19, 2008 at 12:43 pmFrom the California Progress Report:
Last Thursday at the State Capitol, the Planning and Conservation League joined with Assemblymember Lois Wolk, Environment California, the Environmental Working Group, and the Sierra Fund, to call upon the U.S. Congress to make significant environmental reforms to the outdated 1872 Mining Act.
Specifically, the group urged Congress to ensure that the reforms of the 136 year old law include a key provision requiring prospectors to pay a royalty for mining activities on public lands. This would provide desperately needed money to clean up the pollution caused by mining.
Mining is currently the number one source of toxic pollution in the country and is having a devastating effect on California’s natural environment and public health. In particular, as polluted rivers and creeks wind their way down to the Bay Delta, toxics are poisoning fish and fouling the food chain. Currently, one-fourth of all the fish sampled in the Delta have “high” or “very high” levels of mercury in their tissues, including the large striped bass, largemouth bass, catfish, and sturgeon which are popular among anglers in the Delta. These toxins bio-accumulate, traveling up the food chain, where they can harm humans as well.
Read the rest of this article from the California Progress Report by clicking here.