Low numbers of adult fall-run Chinook salmon returned to spawn in the Sacramento River in 2021, but the ocean forecast abundance for fall Chinooks is better than last year, according to federal and state scientists at the annual Salmon Information meeting held virtually on March 2. By Dan Bacher The 2022 ocean abundance projection for Sacramento River fall […]
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service yesterday issued a press release about Delta smelt raised in captivity being released into wild for first time. According to the release, the partners’ goal is “evaluate release strategies as part of broad efforts to secure and stabilize Delta smelt wild populations.” By Dan Bacher As I have written in article after […]
The steelhead run on California’s American River is shaping up up to be a relatively good one, though nowhere near the record runs in the past when the hatchery reported trapping 3000 to 4000 adult steelhead in a season. By Dan Bacher “With four weeks of spawning completed, Nimbus already has counted more than 900 […]
Just before the California Department of Fish and Wildlife released a New Year’s Eve letter revealing that 2.6 percent of juvenile Chinook salmon had perished in lethally warm water conditions on the Sacramento River, a petition sponsored by Save California Salmon in opposition to the Sites Reservoir reached 50,000 signatures. By Dan Bacher This milestone also came […]
2021 was a very bad year for Delta smelt and other declining fish populations on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. For the fourth year in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has caught zero Delta smelt in its Fall Midwater Trawl (FMWT) survey on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. By Dan Bacher The […]
The Coleman National Fish Hatchery hatched an additional two million juvenile fall-run Chinook salmon (fry) this past October, successfully releasing 600,000 fish this past week with the remainder scheduled to be released the first week of January, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By Dan Bacher “The Golden State Salmon Association […]
Over the last five years, there has been a growing movement of CCLers, Republican and Democrat, tabling at California’s GOP convention. They are referred to as members of CCL’s Conservative Caucus and Friends of the Caucus. This fall’s convention was an opportunity for a new strategy — a skilled group of right-leaning members of CCL […]
California water utilities could leave families high and literally dry by refusing to apply for nearly $1 billion in water debt relief for their customers before the December 6 deadline, Capital and Main reports. A quarter of California households were behind on their drinking water bill in August and the state’s shutoff moratorium lifts January […]
Anglers, divers and other residents of the Lake Tahoe Basin have reason to celebrate. Under a settlement agreement finalized this month in federal court in Sacramento, AT&T’s PacBell subsidiary will remove eight miles of decrepit telephone cable from Lake Tahoe, where it has been leaching toxic lead into the iconic lake’s water for decades. The cable […]
I have reported every year for over a decade on the results of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey. For the past three years, no Delta smelt, once the most abundant fish in the entire Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, have been found in this survey. None have been found in the […]
The FracTracker Alliance has released a new report on water use by the oil and gas industry in California: www.fractracker.org/… By Dan Bacher “We found that the oil and gas industry consumed over 4.6 billion gallons of freshwater for extraction operations in California during the 3 year period from 2018-2020,” said Kyle Ferrar, author of the report. […]
By Tom Corringham, University of California San Diego The Conversation Ask people to name the world’s largest river, and most will probably guess that it’s the Amazon, the Nile or the Mississippi. In fact, some of Earth’s largest rivers are in the sky – and they can produce powerful storms, like the ones now […]
Officials issued evacuation orders for people living downhill from several of California’s wildfire burn scars on Oct. 24, 2021, as a powerful storm system known as an atmospheric river began to drench the West Coast. While the storm brings much-needed water to a region in the midst of an historic drought, and should significantly lower […]
Californians have been concerned about wildfires for a long time, but the past two years have left many of them fearful and questioning whether any solutions to the fire crisis truly exist. By Susan Kocher, University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Ryan E. Tompkins, University of California, Division of Agriculture and […]
After years of grassroots organizing, protests and political pressure, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced at a press conference today that the Department of Conservation’s Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) has released a proposed regulation that would prohibit new wells and facilities within a 3,200-foot “exclusion area” – or setback – from homes, schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other […]