[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 4/06/09

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 6, 2009

 

3. Watersheds –

 

Omnibus Public Land Act Benefits Several Tribes

The Native American Times

 

Quick drop in water level kills coho

Frost protection measures to save crops stranded fish in Russian River tributary

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat

 

Trinity Lake level low, but resorts and Forest Service optimistic

The Eureka Times-Standard

 

Sonoma County's hidden treasure: Estero Americano

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat

 

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Omnibus Public Land Act Benefits Several Tribes

The Native American Times – 4/6/09

By Shelly Bluejay Pierce

 

 

WASHINGTON – The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 was signed into law last week and includes several beneficial provisions for American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes. The bill aids tribes by addressing several key water rights issues, placing land into trust and funding key infrastructure projects.    Specifically, the bill carries an expenditure of $870 million for the Navajo and the Tribe’s water rights to the San Juan River in New Mexico. Federal funds will assess and repair irrigation infrastructures that will impact the entire regions’ efforts at water conservation and includes a pipeline that will serve communities on and off the reservation.   Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., and Navajo Code Talker Frank Chee Willeto of Crownpoint, N.M., were present at the White House for the bill signing. President Obama explained that this new law addresses the future challenges in regard to water issues.   “It’s hard to overstate the real and measurable impact this will have on people’s lives. People like Frank Chee Willetto, a Navajo Code Talker in World War II, who’s joined us today. And because of this legislation, Frank, along with 80,000 others in the Navajo Nation, will have access to clean running water for the very first time,” President Obama stated.   Mr. Willetto attended the bill’s signing as a representative of nearly 80,000 Navajo residents standing to benefit from the water agreements and construction of the Navajo-Gallup pipeline.      The authorization of the San Juan River Water Rights Settlement between the Navajo Nation and the State of New Mexico clarifies the administration of the Navajo Lake reservoir by addressing water quantities and distribution for projects such as the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project.   Depleting ground water supplies in the region have many fearful that the current groundwater supplies will not meet water demands within the next 10 years. Currently, water shortages are severely impacting local Tribes. Existing groundwater supplies are dwindling, but adding to the water concerns are aquifers that have limited capacity, and water supplies that test at poor quality ratings.   More than 40 percent of Navajo households currently transport their water into their homes from outside municipal water outlets. Water shortages have forced Jicarilla Apache members to live and work outside the reservation town of Dulce. Groundwater levels have dropped approximately 200 feet over the past 10 years in the Gallup, New Mexico area.   Domestic water needs for the Navajo Nation, Jicarilla Apache Nation, and the city of Gallup will be aided by the construction of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, a water delivery system for Navajo communities from Shiprock to Gallup.  The project will also serve the City of Gallup, the Jicarilla Apache Nation and Eastern Arizona, including Window Rock.   Prior to signing the bill into law, President Obama clarified, “It would not have happened without the patient and tireless efforts of the people in this room and Americans across the country, hard-working citizens who are saving historic sites in their communities so that we never forget our past; tribal leaders who are forging solutions to complex and long-standing natural resource challenges.”   Also present for the signing of the bill was Tribal Chairman Robert Bear, of the Duck Valley Shoshone-Paiute Tribes who gained a water rights settlement agreement between the tribes, the State of Nevada, and individual water rights holders along the East Fork of the Owyhee River.     Complementing a 2006 federal court order aimed at resolving water rights dispute between the tribes, the State of Idaho, individual rights holders, and the United States, the new legislation settles the tribes’ claims against the United States for failure to protect its tribal water rights and resources. Included in the bill are settlement funds aimed at rehabilitating the Duck Valley Indian Irrigation Project.   The bill also places land in trust for the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians of California, for the Shivwits Band of Paiute Indians of Utah and for the Washoe tribe of Nevada and California. It also provides for a much-needed road for a rural Alaska Native village.      The Tuolumne agreement involves 65 acres in Tuolumne County, Calif.  where land administered by the Bureau of Land Management will be transferred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and held in trust for the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians of the Tuolumne Rancheria.  The bill also acknowledges 350 acres of land to be considered inside reservation boundaries of the Tuolumne Rancheria.   Benefiting the Alaska Native village of King Cove, the Omnibus funding will financially kick-start the environmental assessment process for a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.#   http://nativetimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1369&Itemid=&Itemid=55

 

Quick drop in water level kills coho

Frost protection measures to save crops stranded fish in Russian River tributary

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 4/4/09

By Glenda Anderson

 

Coho salmon migrating toward the ocean this week were killed by a sudden water-level drop in a Russian River tributary near Healdsburg, the result of efforts to protect crops from frost, officials said.

 

The deaths of the endangered sal-mon add urgency to a multi-agency task force meeting, scheduled Tuesday in Sacramento, aimed at finding ways to protect crops from frost while preserving threatened and endangered fish in the Russian River and its tributaries.

 

"We are very concerned about the situation," said Dan Torquemada, a special agent with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

 

His agency's law enforcement arm, the state Attorney General and the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office are investigating this week's fish deaths and are giving no further details, he said.

 

Tuesday's meeting in Sacramento before the state Water Resources Control Board stems from another fish kill under similar circumstances last year, one the federal fisheries agency had predicted would be repeated this year.

 

When freezing temperatures hit the North Coast in April last year, farmers simultaneously pumping water for frost protection caused a sharp drop in the Russian River and some tributaries, stranding and killing a "significant" number of newly hatched salmon "fry."

 

The fish kills were in Felta Creek in Sonoma County and the Russian River near Hopland in Mendocino County, fisheries officials said. Exact numbers of fish deaths were not available.

 

The fish deaths last year spawned the creation of a task force that includes federal, state and local water and fish agencies and farmers. The group has been working since June to find solutions to the problem, which has been worsened by the ongoing drought.

 

"It seems imperative to act now," Steven Edmondson, the agency's Northern California habitat supervisor, wrote in a February letter to the water board.

 

The letter sent shock waves through the farming community.

 

Farmers in Sonoma and Mendocino counties are worried the state will ban frost protection this spring and force additional regulations on Russian River water users.

 

Local water agencies and farmers along the Russian River do not want a frost ban or additional state regulations, which could include a state-appointed "water master."

 

Water diversions from the Napa River for frost protection purposes have been under the control of a water master since the 1970s.

 

The program prevents farmers from pumping from the river all at the same time or individually taking more than their share.

 

The water master program is restrictive to some degree, but "generally I think it's a very good program," said Ross Hall of Swanson Vineyards in Napa County.

 

Sonoma and Mendocino counties farmers and water officials prefer to solve the problem locally.

 

"We don't want to see a water master," said Sonoma County Water Agency spokesman Brad Sherwood.

 

The Sonoma County agency, which controls water releases from Lake Mendocino into the Russian River, has been working with Mendocino County water agencies and farmers to better coordinate frost water demand with water releases from the dam to avoid sudden drops in river levels.

 

The agency also must conserve water in the lake -- which is at a near-record low -- for domestic and farming uses and fish later in the year.

 

The Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District on Tuesday will present proposals for better regulating water at the local level.

 

They include creating guidelines for coordinated action and adding water-sensing gauges closer to Lake Mendocino.

Currently, the nearest gauge to the dam is in Hopland, 14 miles downstream, said district Executive Director Sean White. The district holds the Ukiah Valley's rights to Russian River water.

 

When the Russian River is low, it takes hours for a sudden water level drop near Ukiah to register on Sonoma County Water Agency monitors, White said.

 

Sonoma County needs to be able to increase water flows from the dam as soon as farmers start pumping in order to avoid the sharp water drops that have stranded and killed fish, he said.

 

Increasing the number of off-stream storage reservoirs and the use of recycled water also would help, White said.#

 

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090404/NEWS/904040312?Title=Quick-drop-in-water-level-kills-coho

 

Trinity Lake level low, but resorts and Forest Service optimistic

The Eureka Times-Standard – 4/5/09

By John Driscoll

The state's system of reservoirs is trending toward bone dry, and the popular Northern California summer-time haunt of Trinity Lake is no exception.

 

Trinity Lake is 94 feet below high water -- 61 percent of the average since 1962. Going into a warm season following last year's wildfire-smoke choked summer with one of the most refreshing assets of the region so depleted has some people worried.

 

”People are just not booking because of that,” said Amy Kasper at Trinity Lake Resorts and Marina.

 

But even with the lake as low as it is, the Trinity County reservoir is still huge. Full, it can store 2.4 million acre feet -- enough water to cover 2.4 million acres one foot deep. At its current level, it is holding 1.2 million acre feet.

 

That means that six of seven boat ramps on the lake are well out of water and are likely to stay that way this season. The Minersville boat ramp has plenty of leeway, usable to about 200 feet below high water, said Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area Recreation Resource Officer Mary Ellen Grigsby.

 

Grigsby added that the 17,000-acre lake still has 8,000 to 10,000 acres of surface water even at its low stage -- plenty to fish, swim and boat.

 

”Once you get out on it, it's still a big lake,” Grigsby said.

 

Those concerned about Trinity Lake's levels can also hit the smaller Lewiston and Whiskytown lakes, Grigsby said, both of which are kept full to serve hydropower operations.

 

The state Department of Water Resources last week released the results of its snowpack surveys, which found California little better off than when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a drought state of emergency at the end of February. The snowpack average is 81 percent of normal, not nearly enough to replenish the state's reservoirs after two years of drought.

 

Some of those storage facilities are perilously low, like Lake Oroville at 56 percent capacity, which has prompted water conservation measures in many areas.

 

While the Trinity River watershed's snowpack measurements were being completed Friday, it appears that they will come in at between 75 and 80 percent.

 

”It's certainly in that ballpark,” said Frank Gehrke, chief of California's Cooperative Snow Surveys Program.

Gehrke said that up to 10 percent of the runoff from that snowmelt will likely be absorbed by soils parched from the dry fall.

 

That means less water to fill the lake. While the forecast used to determine how releases from Lewiston Dam into the Trinity River will be managed is still being drawn up, the amount of water sent to the river for salmon -- and how much is diverted to the Sacramento River for Central Valley farms -- can also affect the level of Trinity Lake. That schedule should be finalized in mid-April.

 

The year is so far being considered “critically dry,” in which the least water is let down the river, said Pete Lucero, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. But the river flows and diversion to the Sacramento could also draw down the reservoir to some 720,000 acre feet, dropping the elevation of the lake even farther.

 

However, Lucero said, February and March wet weather may push that to a slightly damper forecast which would come close to maintaining the lake level through the season.

 

”Things could change if April brings us major weather events,” Lucero said. “I've looked at the long-term forecast and I haven't seen anything like that.”

 

It's almost certain that, barring big storms, Trinity Lake will remain low. Grigsby said, however, that she expects campgrounds to be more full than they were during last year's smoky summer. Without wildfires, and with gas prices far below last year's, Grigsby said, people will undoubtedly show up.

 

”We still have plenty of water to go boating and all that other stuff,” Kasper said.#

 

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12076620

 

Sonoma County's hidden treasure: Estero Americano

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat – 4/4/09

By Robert Digitale

 

Two decades ago Tom Yarish set out to visit a hidden and largely untouched estuary on the Sonoma-Marin border, a tidewater downstream of what was to be a vast wastewater storage and irrigation system proposed by the city of Santa Rosa.

 

An environmentalist and lifelong Marin County resident, Yarish had never heard of the Estero Americano. But he was stunned when he first looked on its beauty and the abundance of life there.

 

“I cherish it because it is like a frontier,” said Yarish, a co-founder of Friends of the Esteros, a group that helped keep urban wastewater out of the watershed.

 

The Estero Americano today remains a place that most North Bay residents have never seen, even though it lies within a short drive of Santa Rosa. The estuary is one of the few in California that has escaped development.

 

A government report touts the dramatic, “fjord-like” estuary and its steep slopes and weathered cliffs on the Pacific Ocean between Dillon Beach and Bodega Bay. The waters often lie shut off from the ocean’s waves by a wide, secluded beach. On a calm day, the estuary can seem as still as a lake.

 

In its bottom reach, the tidewater meanders wide and open between the cliffs and rolling hills. But upstream the estuary becomes a narrow ribbon, at times a “muddy ditch” amid cow pastures, as one kayaker’s guide describes it.

 

The Estero Americano has stayed remote because there is no access overland, no public road or trail to it. It lies surrounded by privately owned grazing land.

 

The only way for the public to draw near is by water. Kayakers and other boaters have done so for years, most of them putting in near an unadorned highway bridge west of the ranching community of Valley Ford.

 

About 20 years ago the paddlers began the annual Cow Patty Pageant race, originally spawned to build opposition to the Santa Rosa wastewater plans. This winter local landowners wrote a letter objecting to the race, saying it was too disruptive.

 

The event went on anyway, though one neighbor parked trucks in an unsuccessful attempt to block access to the estuary. The two sides continue to disagree about the appropriateness of the race and whether it disturbs wildlife in and near the water.

 

“We want it to be quiet and serene and beautiful, and people to enjoy it as we do,” said Nichola Spaletta, a Point Reyes dairywoman and the leader of 42 landowners who, a few years ago, formed the Estero Preservation Association. She insisted that the association supports kayaking in the estuary, but that “it’s not suitable for races.”

 

John Dye, who oversaw this year’s race, said the event attracted only 50 paddlers, and the participants were instructed beforehand to stay off private property and to pick up any trash they came across.

 

“It’s interesting for me to think that the kayakers have such an impact out there,” said Dye. He maintained the only thing the paddlers left behind them was a small wake.

 

Like the Laguna de Santa Rosa, another Sonoma County waterway, the Estero Americano has been reshaped by the works of man.

 

“You used to be able to navigate a boat to the town of Valley Ford,” said Lisa Hulette, executive director of the Gold Ridge Resource Conservation District, the Occidental-based agency working with landowners to restore the watershed.

 

But after the land was cleared for potatoes and other crops in the late 1880s, large amounts of topsoil washed into the waterway. Between 1850 and 1953, an estimated 1 million cubic yards of sediment entered the estuary and its tributaries, according to the conservation district’s 2007 Estero management plan.

 

The estuary today is a tiny channel when it passes the village of Valley Ford. It is also a water body that the state says has been degraded by too much sediment and too many nutrients, most of which come from agriculture.

 

The conservation district, with whom the landowners work voluntarily, has improved water quality in the estuary and has received an award for its work there from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said Luis Rivera, assistant executive officer of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

 

The conservation district already has spent $2.5 million on various restoration projects, Hulette said, and hopes to spend $1.5 million more when the state’s budget woes allow the funds to be released.

 

The watershed includes 16 beef cattle ranches, eight sheep ranches and 12 dairies, according to the management plan. The dairies lie upstream, while the lower reach is surrounded by grazing land.

 

Environmentalists and ranchers alike speak of the uniqueness of the estuary and the demands of nature placed on those who have spent their lives along it.

 

“You have to love the wind,” said Joe Pozzi, a rancher whose cattle roam the grasslands on the Sonoma Land Trust’s 127-acre Estero Americano Preserve. “You have to love the cold, foggy, damp weather.”

 

The land trust occasionally allows public access at the preserve for kayak trips and other guided visits.

 

On a calm, sunny morning last week, Shanti Wright, the preserve’s manager, took two visitors to a bend in the estuary where the hill on the opposite bank resembles a gecko’s head. Deer grazed on a nearby slope, and a cormorant leapt from an offshore piling, its tail feathers skimming the water before the black bird took flight.

 

The estuary, said Wright, is “one of the areas that defines Sonoma County.”

 

“It’s dazzling,” she said, “and anyone who comes out here knows this place is rare and incredible.”#

 

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090404/articles/904049935

 

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