Endangered fish found in Salton Sea
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 29, 2007 at 7:43 pmFrom the U. S. Geological Survey:
Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have discovered a population of the endangered desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius)in constructed ponds along the southeastern shore of the Salton Sea, in south-central California. Preliminary estimates of more than 1,000 pupfish will need to be evaluated by a detailed survey that will be conducted as soon as the appropriate permits are obtained. Dr. Douglas Barnum, scientist with the USGS Salton Sea Science Office, called the discovery a “scientific windfall” that will provide a unique opportunity to learn more about this endangered species. Dr. Michael Saiki, fisheries biologist with the USGS Western Fisheries Research Center’s Dixon Duty Station noted, “What’s significant about this discovery is the large number of pupfish we are seeing!”
The four constructed ponds are part of an experimental shallow habitat complex, completed in the Spring of 2006, in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Imperial Irrigation District, and California Water Resources Control Board. The experiment is primarily designed to assess ecological risk from selenium on migratory birds using artificially created habitat blending water from the Alamo River and the Salton Sea.
To see the full text of this USGS Press Release, click here.
Delta pumps trigger killing zone in the Delta
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 29, 2007 at 10:36 amThis just in from Yuba.net, a press release from the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance:
Resumption of massive water exports from the Delta by the State Water Project (SWP) and federal Central Valley Project (CVP) has caused a massive killing zone of low dissolved oxygen to develop in the San Joaquin River at Stockton California. Adequate levels of dissolved oxygen are crucial for the survival of aquatic life.
Read more
Today’s news in brief
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 29, 2007 at 10:19 amIt’s been a slow couple of days for water news!
But a few things have been happening, mostly regional issues. Here’s a smattering of them:
Hetch Hetchy: Congress has done away with President Bush’s $7 million proposal to further study draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Bush had included the money in his proposed budget for the 2008 fiscal year. The decision to ax the funding came as no surprise to leaders of Restore Hetch Hetchy, a Sonora-based group pushing to tear down the 312-foot O’Shaughnessy Dam. “We really didn’t think that it had much of a chance,” said Sonoran Jerry Cadagan, chairman of Restore Hetch Hetchy’s board of directors. For the full text of the story from the Union Democrat, click here.
Salton Sea Authority running tight on funds: The group has a roughly $5 million annual program and operations budget. But an audit presented to the authority during a meeting Thursday in Thermal shows the agency has dipped into its cash savings and investments to cover expenses. It had $37,709 in net assets at the end of fiscal year 2006. If nothing changes, next year’s numbers are “not going to be good,” Executive Director Rick Daniels said. “That’s how thin this has gotten,” he said. “I’m scared to death by it.” To read the full text of this story from the Desert Sun, click here.
Read more
San Diego’s 20 gallon challenge: Water authority asks everyone to reduce water use
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 28, 2007 at 1:56 pmFrom the North County Times:
Officials with the county agency will officially announce today what they are calling the “20-gallon challenge,” calling on every resident to reduce by 20 gallons the amount of water they use. Most people use about 180 gallons a day, an authority spokesman said.
The water agency serves as the wholesale water supplier for 24 member water agencies in the San Diego region. The water authority appeal follows calls from other water agencies in the state for their customers to reduce their water consumption as the region faces the prospect of future water shortages, an authority spokesman said Wednesday.
Read more
Clean boating practices promoted in the Delta
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 28, 2007 at 11:40 amThere are a few other possible factors contributing to the decline of the Delta smelt, and one of them is pollution. There is a campaign underway to promote clean boating practices in the Delta, as highlighted in this article from Stockton’s Record.Net:
As crowds of boaters delight in the Delta this Fourth of July, county and state officials are making final plans to decrease boater-generated pollution - be it a few drops of fuel that accidentally escape, or batteries or oil filters dumped into the drink. “That’s just wrong,” said Bower, a Southern Californian making his first trip to the Delta.
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The fight to keep toxic plume out of the Colorado River
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 27, 2007 at 7:42 amI found this last night while searching the internet. This is an article from the Las Vegas Sun about a toxic plume of Chromium IV which is seeping underground towards the Colorado River, in the area between Lake Havasu & Lake Mead. The damage was done in the 1960’s, and is still being dealt with today:
… far from the sunshine, deep below ground, slumbering on the California side, a monster lies. Nobody is quite sure how big it is. Maybe 2,400 feet long and at least half that wide. At some points it is shallow, not far beneath the gravel. In others it is so deep that its tongue creeps along prehistoric bedrock. The only way to tell what shape it is taking, when it stretches or contracts, is drill deep and test. To those whose job it is to vanquish the thing, it is known simply as “The Plume.” The Plume is a vast cloud of ground water contaminated with Chromium VI, an industrial chemical made famous by the film “Erin Brockovich.”
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Water bank location vigorously opposed in Antelope Valley
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 26, 2007 at 9:15 pmResidents showed up in force to oppose the location of a proposed water bank in Rosamond, a city on the outskirts of the Palmdale & Lancaster area. An Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency official discussed the need for the water banking project, citing continued drought in the Colorado River Basin & ongoing problems in the Delta area. He also discussed how voters rejection of key water development proposals in years past has led to the present difficulties with the Antelope Valley’s water supply.
“The State Water Project does not work without local banking,” he said.
This year, because of the drought, the Department of Water Resources allocated 60% of the entitlement to State Water Contractors, including AVEK, PWD and Littlerock. But with half a year to go, Fuller said he wasn’t certain that the state will even deliver that much. And next year will be worse, he speculated, with possibly as low as a 30% allocation.
Read more
North San Diego County growers prepare for water cutbacks
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 26, 2007 at 9:04 pmFrom the North County Times:
Local water officials said they were dusting off plans that could put month-by-month caps on agricultural customers’ water use and penalties for exceeding the caps. “We are doubling our prayer efforts for a wet winter,” said Chuck Badger, a lemon and orange grower in the Encinitas/Rancho Santa Fe area and president of the San Diego County Farm Bureau. Supply reductions of at least 30 percent, compared with a still-undetermined reference year, could go into effect in January, barring exceptional weather before then.
The official call for cuts from Southern California’s main water supplier, the Metropolitan Water District, is not expected until August or September, local water officials said.
Water can be one of a San Diego County grower’s largest expenses, including labor. Some North County operations have yearly bills of several hundred thousand dollars. “If we have 30 percent less water, we’ll have to cut our crop by 30 percent,” said Donnie Dabbs, manager of Briggs Tree Company in Vista. “Less product means hiring fewer people, from field workers to salespeople.”
To read the rest of this article from the North County Times, click here.
Soot from Tahoe fire threatens long-term damage to the lake’s clarity
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 26, 2007 at 8:52 pmFrom the Associated Press/Press Enterprise:
Regarding the fire in south Lake Tahoe:
All parties have long agreed that the amount of fuel in Tahoe’s forests had reached critical levels, but little was done to address the problem during years of wrangling among environmentalists and government agencies over a plan to thin the forests and reduce the fire threat. Environmental groups were wary of causing air pollution through controlled burns or jeopardizing the health of the forests by logging. Meanwhile, public officials argued among themselves over how best to address the wildfire threat without harming fragile forest ecosystems. Even homeowners wanting to cut trees on their own land were hamstrung by strict local planning rules regarding care of the forest.
In April, the U.S. Forest Service finally settled on a 10-year plan to thin and burn 38,000 acres of forest to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. But it was too little, too late, local leaders say.
To read the rest of this article from the AP/Press-Enterprise, click here.
“Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea” begins tonight
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 26, 2007 at 7:10 pmThe documentary film, “Plagues & Pleasures of the Salton Sea” will begin airing on the Sundance Channel tonight. The documentary generally has been getting positive reviews from other bloggers and critics. It follows the story of the Salton Sea and the characters who live in the area, and is narrated by John Waters.
Here is the Sundance schedule:
Tuesday, June 26th at 9:35 pm
Friday, June 29th at 12:35 am
Friday, June 29th at 10:35 am
Saturday, July 1st at 3:35 pm
I believe these times are PST, but double check your local listings. The movie lasts about one hour.
LA Times Editorial: Conservation should be mandatory
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 26, 2007 at 6:45 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
This editorial points out that the Mayor should have mandated a 25% reduction in water use, instead of requesting the 10% that he did. The editorial notes how drought has impacted the regions where we draw our water from, and that other cities, such as Las Vegas, are doing much more.
Our waste is so chronic and vast in Southern California that it amounts to a fresh water supply. The MWD and its member agencies, such as the DWP, provide nearly 4.4 million acre-feet of water to the region’s cities. Roughly half that is used outdoors, where more than a million acre-feet a year — enough to meet the needs of 2 million families — is wasted by over-watering with hoses and badly programmed sprinklers and by car washing and driveway hose-downs. In our gardens, the most common cause of plant death is over-watering; an estimated 100 million gallons of runoff flows through L.A. storm drains into the Pacific every day.
Instead of making a serious bid to capture this outdoor waste, after the drought of the late 1980s and early ’90s, the MWD instituted industrial water-recycling projects and ground-water recovery programs and encouraged indoor conservation in the form of low-flush toilets and rebates for front-loading washing machines. Sixteen percent of the water we use now comes from recaptured water. But only 2% of that comes from what’s called “active conservation” — you and I watering less.
…
The questions before Southern Californians now are: Can we afford for water security to be elective? Can we continue to drain the two most important river deltas in the West and leave dustbowls in the mountain ranges while we poison the Pacific with runoff?
The answers have to be no and no. The mayor of the largest city in the Southland shouldn’t be asking Angelenos to conserve but should be moving to mandate it. And he should start at City Hall, where the lawn is so over-watered that mushrooms could grow.
To read the rest of this Los Angeles Times editorial, click here.
What can we do to fix the Delta?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 25, 2007 at 11:27 pmAn Aquafornia Exclusive: There has been a lot in the news lately about the Peripheral Canal. Governor Schwarzenegger has spoken out in favor of it. While environmental groups seem to be lining up in opposition to it, I haven’t really heard anyone else proposing any other option. Besides the Peripheral Canal, just what are the other options for fixing the Delta?
In February of this year, the Public Policy Institute of California issued a detailed report, entitled “Dealing with the Delta: Envisioning Futures, Finding Solutions”. This report studied a variety of long-term solutions for solving the problems facing the Delta. The following article summarizes information taken from that report.
Antelope Valley: Residents must cut back water use by 15%
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 25, 2007 at 10:00 pmFrom the Antelope Valley Press:
Only conservation will get us through the summer, Palmdale Water District officials told residents Saturday at an open house. Every household must cut 15% out of their water usage in order to keep the faucets from running dry, they said.
“If we get that, we can make it through the year without water rationing or other measures,” said Greg Dluzak , production manager for the district. If residents cannot cut back voluntarily, mandatory rationing will have to be instituted with fines as high as $1,000 for breaking regulations, officials said.
To read the rest of this article from the Antelope Valley Press, click here.
Desert communities need to rethink landscaping decisions
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 25, 2007 at 9:56 pmFrom the Desert Sun:
The lush, green Coachella Valley many have come to know may soon be forced to change, due to an increasingly dire water reality in the West.
Ongoing drought with no let-up in sight. Global warming. Court battles with environmentalists and levee problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta that supplies much of California with water; coupled with diminishing supplies of Colorado River water that supplies most of the rest. An ever-increasing water demand from a growing population. The factors have all come together to create what Cantú called “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
But the alarms many Western water experts are sounding haven’t yet resonated in most desert neighborhoods.
…
Most homes use well more than half their water on their lawns and outdoor landscaping. That has many worried. “We need to stop pretending we live in someplace else,” said Palm Desert resident Buford Crites, vice president of Friends of the Desert Mountains, a land conservation group.”We don’t live someplace with a bunch of water,” he said.
To read the full text of this story from the Desert Sun, click here.
San Diego prepares for global warming
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 25, 2007 at 9:49 pmHere is an article from the San Diego Union Tribune which discusses what San Diego and other coastal communities in the U.S. are doing to prepare for the potential changes global warming will bring:
Global warming is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and hurricanes. Rising temperatures likely will damage fisheries, increase heat-related deaths, hasten the spread of infectious diseases and alter where crops can grow. Government agencies, politicians and activists are slowly ramping up their efforts to adapt to these projected changes. No national program exists to coordinate such a monumental mission, so the work largely has fallen to state and local governments.
Like most of the country, the San Diego region has yet to create a comprehensive plan for coping with global warming. “We are just seeing so many areas at the local level that we probably would need to do some sort of serious rethinking about,” said Linda Giannelli Pratt, a climate change expert for the city of San Diego. “It’s still a little fuzzy.”
To read the rest of this article from the San Diego Union Tribune, click here.
Purchase of better fish screens delayed due to cost
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 24, 2007 at 8:09 amFrom Stockton’s Record.Net:
TRACY - The fish screens guarding south Delta water- export pumps are old, out of date, and ineffective at protecting the most vulnerable of species: the Delta smelt. Replacing those facilities was discussed long before smelt were pushed to the edge of extinction. But any action has been indefinitely delayed because of a price of more than $1 billion and, some say, reluctance by those who receive Delta water to pay for fish protection.
“In my opinion, installation of a fish screen is part of the cost of doing business,” said Tina Swanson, a biologist with conservation group The Bay Institute.
..
There is no way to divert smelt - or other sensitive species such as salmon and steelhead - around the state and federal pumps. They’re at a dead end in the far southern Delta. Fish that escaped getting sucked into the pumps are funneled into trucks and driven to release points elsewhere in the Delta. Predators are known to congregate in these areas for a free lunch. In short, the current salvage and release is a flawed system, some say, one that new fish screens wouldn’t solve.
For the rest of this article from Stockton’s Record.Net, click here.
Kings County: State of Emergency declared due to drought
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 24, 2007 at 8:02 amFrom the Fresno Bee:
Gov. Schwarzenegger on Saturday declared a state of emergency in Kings County, where drought conditions are expected to cause millions of dollars in crop damages this year. The declaration came at the request of the Kings County Board of Supervisors, county administrative officer Larry Spikes said.
Rainfall has been well below average, and the county also has been affected by a reduction in irrigation water, Spikes said. “We’re in a bad situation with so little rainfall this year,” Spikes said.
For the full text of the article from the Fresno Bee, click here.
Recommended Reading: a Northern California perspective on the Peripheral Canal
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 23, 2007 at 8:28 amHere is an editorial article posted on Redding.com regarding the peripheral canal:
The voters gunned it down 25 years ago this month, but like a swamp monster from the movies, the Peripheral Canal keeps rising from the brackish waters of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week invoked the need for a canal to safely run water around the delta to meet California’s — read: Southern California’s — water needs.
For decades, the State Water Project has pumped water through the giant estuary west of Stockton. All along, the water engineers have argued that millions of people and millions of acres of farmland cannot forever depend on the leveed sloughs as a reliable pipeline. California needs something more engineered, they say.
This article has generated several comments, which give a glimpse into how southern Californians are viewed by our neighbors to the North:
Terry says: It would be amusing to watch the eco-Nazis cheering the Caterpillars gouging a trough through housing developments, farmland and sensitive wildlife sanctuaries so that the wealthy movie stars, hedge fund managers and land speculators can keep their swimming pools full, fountains flowing and lawns growing so that their Guatemalan gardeners will have something to do.
DPW says: The people in Southern California and the Coastal areas of SF, Santa Barbara etc. do not give a rip about anything except themselves. To them, we are a resource to be raped for their own gain and kept in a perpetual state of “ecological purity”. Sort of their own personal natural recreational preserve, where they can come and recreate and gawk and make fun of the picturesque natives (silly rednecks).
My posted response to DPW: I don’t think that Southern Californian’s view the northern part of the state as a resource to be raped. Unfortunately, I think southern Californians are profoundly disconnected from water issues. I would say most of my neighbors are blissfully unaware of where their water comes from, the efforts it takes to get it there, and the impacts of the areas where the water is drawn from. Part of this is that water issues are given very little press in the southern portion of the state, and water agencies do not do nearly enough to require and/or encourage conservation. My blogsite, Aquafornia, seeks to educate my neighbors on these issues, and present the varying viewpoints of all sides of the issues.
To read the full text of the Redding Record Searchlight Online, including the comments, click here.
Wanger ruling: won’t shut down pumps, at least for now
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 23, 2007 at 7:58 amIn a ruling disappointing to environmentalists and a relief to water agencies, Judge Wanger denied the emergency request to shut down the pumps, but indicated he is still willing to listen to further scientific evidence.
From Inside Bay Area website: The immense economic damage such an order would cause to the state of California outweighed the possibility that continuing to pump water out of the Delta might kill the last remaining Delta smelt, said U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger. Still, Wanger, who ruled in May that the federal permit to operate the huge pumps near Tracy under the Endangered Species Act was illegally lax, said he was willing to listen to further scientific evidence that could lead to a shutdown order later.
… During the more than three-hour hearing on the emergency motion Friday, Wanger expressed frustration with the government’s inability to manage California’s water without putting fish at risk of extinction. “What can we do to remedy that in a way that won’t cause a whole swath of destruction?” he said. “We have allowed the governments to address these issues and it simply hasn’t worked.”
To read the full text of this Inside Bay Area article, click here.
Smelt studies look for answers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 22, 2007 at 9:34 pmFrom the Contra Costa Times:
Out on a sun-baked lot near the state’s massive Delta water pumps sits a cluster of nondescript buildings where researchers are decoding the mysteries of a tiny fish at the center of a statewide water supply crisis. It is here that researchers have learned how to hatch and grow Delta smelt, discovering all sorts of details about the imperiled fish along the way. They have raised and studied thousands of Delta smelt during the past 15 years since biologists first started worrying about the fate of the native fish.
Who knew, for example, that Delta smelt will not feed in clear water, preferring a more turbid environment? Or that its eggs are very sticky and tend to glue themselves to hard surfaces, like rocks, on the channel bottom? Those little insights have taken on added meaning in recent years as Delta smelt have plunged dramatically toward extinction and could lead to changes in how the Delta is managed.
To read the rest of this article, click here.
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