Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 20, 2009
3. Watersheds –
Investigators searching for cause of Mammoth fire
Auburn Journal
CA wildfire burns 2,000 acres, forces evacuation
Lompoc Record
'Tennant Fire' burns 1,000 acres, forces Highway 97 closure
Redding Record Searchlight
Nacimiento Lake fire burns 175 acres
San Luis Obispo Tribune
Invasive mussels imperil western water system
Tahoe Daily Tribune
Roy Rook's revival
Work underway, contractor hopes ramp ready soon
Crescent City Triplicate
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Investigators searching for cause of Mammoth fire
Crews held 643-acre fire at Foresthill Road ridge
Auburn Journal-7/19/09
By Jenifer Gee
As fire crews brought a more than 600-acre fire under control, the investigation was underway to determine what sparked the blaze that closed Auburn-area roads and forced evacuations.
The Mammoth Bar Fire started as a 30-acre blaze but grew to 643 acres by Friday. As of Friday, Cal Fire officials reported that personnel contained 95 percent of the fire.
Emergency dispatchers initially reported at about 2:30 p.m. that fireworks were possibly the cause of a fire growing at the Mammoth Bar Recreation Area in the American River Canyon a few miles east of Auburn.
Chelsea Fox, Cal Fire spokeswoman, said investigators are "working very hard" to determine the cause.
"We do believe it started along the river," Fox said Friday.
As the fire spread, it jumped across the American River and burned about five acres of land in El Dorado County. Fox said that portion of the fire was quickly contained.
In its first few hours, the Mammoth Fire was "growing very fast," Fox said. Crews were able to slow the growth of the fire as it approached the ridge top at Foresthill Road.
"It was a very strong effort," Fox said. "They worked on firming up the containment lines, establishing more containment lines and mopping up hot spots in the boundaries."
Old Foresthill Road and Foresthill Road were both reopened by Friday after they were closed Thursday afternoon.
The road closure forced some residents to seek refuge at area hotels, including the Best Western Golden Key off Lincoln Way in Auburn.
General manager Lynn Lundberg said several Foresthill residents checked into the hotel as it grew later and the road remained closed.
Hotel staff was also busy connecting guests with their friends and family members who had come from out of town to whitewater raft on the American River.
Staff received an early morning call from Cal Fire officials asking for any vacant rooms. Lundberg said she called in her housekeeping staff an hour early to clean out rooms as soon as guests left. By about 9:15 a.m. Friday, the first of about 18 rooms started filling up with firefighters.
"We're sorry this happened, but we're very glad that we can be able to accommodate the firefighters and any of the Foresthill residents that couldn't get up there," Lundberg said.
Grizzly Range, the American River Confluence and the Lake Clementine recreation areas were evacuated Thursday as was Mammoth Bar Recreation Area. Scott Liske, state parks rangers said Mammoth Bar trails could remain closed through the weekend so hikers and day users should check with the Auburn office before heading outdoors.
Liske said the Motocross track was not impacted by the fire and was open.
Fox agreed that day-users should be wary of going to areas near the fire this weekend.
"There are still a lot of fire engines and fire equipment on Foresthill Road and Old Foresthill Road," Fox said. "Just proceed with caution."
Mammoth Bar Fire stats:
Location: American River Canyon — Mammoth Bar Recreation Area east of Auburn
Acres burned: 643; 95 percent contained as of Friday
Cause: Under investigation
Total fire personnel: 531
Engines: 40
Fire crews: 23
Helicopters: 1; five air tankers were used Thursday
Dozers: 5
Water tenders: 4
Cooperating agencies: Cal Fire, Placer and El Dorado county fire departments, Placer County Sheriff's Office, State Parks, Bureau of Reclamation
Source: Cal Fire, fire.ca.gov#
CA wildfire burns 2,000 acres, forces evacuation
Lompoc Record-7/20/09
A lightning-sparked wildfire in the Inyo National Forest near Bishop surged to 2,000 acres on Sunday and forced the evacuation of a small community and several campgrounds, authorities said.
The fire _ by far the largest of 23 likely started by lightning in the forest over the weekend _ thrived in hundred-degree heat Sunday after it started on Saturday afternoon, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman John Louth.
"It burned quite aggressively overnight and today," Louth said.
The town of Aspendale _ a collection of vacation homes with about 150 people when all are occupied _ was evacuated, along with nine campgrounds in the Inyo National Forest.
Louth said the blaze was on a ridge above the homes and no structures were in immediate danger of burning.
About 200 firefighters with help from five air tankers, two helicopters and a spotter plane fought the fire that burned in difficult-to-reach terrain amid heavy vegetation, Louth said.
The fire was about 10 miles west of Bishop, a central California city of about 3,500, but Louth says the blaze was burning northward toward less populated areas.#
http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2009/07/20/ap-state-ca/us_california_wildfire.txt
'Tennant Fire' burns 1,000 acres, forces Highway 97 closure
Redding Record Searchlight-7/20/09
A Sunday afternoon fire has charred 1,000 acres of forest northeast of Weed, forcing the closure of Highway 97.
The blaze, about 20 miles northeast of Weed near the Mount Hebron summit, sprang up around 3 p.m.
California Highway Patrol officer Larry Brown said the highway has been closed throughout the night. The road may reopen to one-way traffic around 11:30 a.m. today, but motorists should nonetheless expect two to three hour delays, he said.
Meanwhile, traffic is being stopped in Weed and diverted to Interstate 5. Southbound traffic is similarly halted at Highway 140 in Klamath Falls, Ore.
The fire is 25 percent contained this morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
It's dubbed the "Tennant Fire" because it's near the turnoff to the town of 82 residents, surrounded by Klamath National Forest land.
There are no structures threatened.#
http://www.redding.com/news/2009/jul/20/tennant-fire-burns-1000-acres-forces-highway-97-cl/
Nacimiento Lake fire burns 175 acres
Blaze started by carbon particulates from a vehicle's exhaust system, investigators say
San Luis Obispo Tribune-7/20/09
By Antonio A. Prado
A brush fire blackened at least 175 acres in the Nacimiento Lake area on Sunday, burning into the night but with containment expected by early this morning, according to county fire officials.
Dubbed the Lake Fire, it was reported at 1:35 p.m. near the North County resort and camping area's Nacimiento Lake Drive entrance, according to County/Cal Fire.
The temperature reached 106 degrees, but driven by the hilly topography, the fire spread even as winds were about 8 mph, Cal Fire reported.
The fire was burning in what fire officials described as medium brush and oak woodlands, and they said it had the potential to spread to about 500 acres.
As of late Sunday evening, the blaze was reported to be about 70 percent contained.
Investigators determined that carbon particulates from a vehicle's exhaust system started the blaze, Cal Fire spokeswoman Laura Brown said. The vehicle was on Nacimiento Lake Drive at the time and was accelerating while traveling uphill, she added.
About 200 firefighters, as well as four air tankers and two helicopters, were called to fight the fire. The helicopters could be seen getting lake water to drop on the blaze.
About 325 campers were evacuated from campsites to the Lake Nacimiento Resort's boat launch ramp area, Cal Fire reported.
The main road into the area, Nacimiento Lake Drive, remained closed at Heritage Ranch Loop Road near Cappy Culver Elementary School, where a command post was set up.
There was no estimate as of Sunday night on when the road would reopen. By early evening, campers at the resort who had been moved to the launch ramp area were able to leave to Highway 101 along Nacimiento Lake Drive to the north via Jolon Road near Bradley in southern Monterey County, according to Cal Fire.
About 8:45 p.m., campers who remained were allowed to return to their campsites, Cal Fire reported.
The fire continued to burn late into the night as the National Weather Service extended its weekend heat advisory for inland areas through 8 p.m. today.
The warning means that "a prolonged period of dangerously hot temperatures will occur," according to the Weather Service.
A strong upper-level high-pressure system centered over the desert Southwest that had been expected to dissipate will continue to provide a hot air mass for inland areas today, the Weather Service reported.
Forecasters expect temperatures to top 100 degrees in the North County.
The blaze caused significant smoke in the area because of isolated pockets of fire, Brown said.
It also led to numerous power outages in the area, she added, and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. crews were summoned to work toward restoring service.
One firefighter was being treated for heat exhaustion at Twin Cities Community Hospital in Templeton, Brown said.#
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/story/788511.html
Invasive mussels imperil western water system
Tahoe Daily Tribune-7/19/09
Felicia Fonseca (Associated Press)
Two years after an invasive mussel was first discovered at Lake Mead, the population has firmly established itself and gone on a breeding binge, with numbers soaring into the trillions.
Despite efforts to stop their spread, scientists say it's only a matter of time before quagga mussels appear throughout the West's vast system of reservoirs and aqueducts, raising operation and maintenance costs by untold millions.
Water agencies and wildlife managers in California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah have put in place aggressive measures to try to prevent their spread, including mandatory decontamination or quarantine of boats traveling from infested areas or chlorinating some water inlets to try to kill off the mussels.
But as their counterparts in the northeast and Great Lakes region have found, eradicating the mussels is virtually impossible. The thumb-sized mollusks attach to almost anything and can clog drains and pipes, freeze up cooling systems, kill off native species and render power boats inoperable.
"Over time, maybe not this decade or the next, I would think eventually they'll be almost around the country," said Amy Benson, fishery biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Florida.
Quagga mussels, and their close cousin, zebra mussels, were introduced to the Great Lakes in the ballast of ships from eastern Europe and the Ukraine in the 1980s. Since their arrival at Lake Mead in 2007, their numbers have multiplied exponentially.
Populations of the mussels still are expanding in the East into the quadrillions, and there's no sign the growth is slowing, said Tom Nalepa, a research biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Michigan. But he said the population can't expand forever.
"The populations are going to stabilize at some point, and they're going to become adjusted to the system or the system is adjusted to them, but we're not at that point yet," Nalepa said.
"We're still trying to figure out what the ultimate consequences are going to be."
In the West, the mussels have colonized the lower Colorado River that 27 million people rely on to irrigate crops, produce drinking water and operate businesses.
Lake Mead is just one of a string of huge reservoirs on the Colorado that store and divert water into aqueducts and pipelines feeding parts of California, Arizona and Nevada. Sharp shells now litter the lake's beaches, and boats docked in marinas can't leave without being decontaminated for fear a mussel might hitch a ride to another waterway.
The warmer weather in the West has allowed the quagga mussels to reproduce much more quickly than in the East. One adult female quagga can release up to a million eggs in a single year, and their microscopic larvae float freely downstream.
Water managers say the best way to prevent their spread is making sure boats traveling from one waterway to another are mussel-free. Lake Powell requires mandatory boat inspections, and California has trained dogs to sniff out the mussels at inspection points. Boats also can be quarantined at the California border if a single mussel is spotted on them.
"They can be prevented, and this is what people have to get into their heads," said Wen Baldwin, a National Park Service volunteer who confirmed the quagga mussels at Lake Mead. "Unfortunately there are some people who say, 'they are going to get here no matter what.' Maybe they will, but every year you hold them off, you're dollars ahead."
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California expects to spend between $10 million and $15 million a year to address quagga mussel infestations in its 242-mile Colorado River aqueduct and reservoirs. The agency delivers water to 19 million people in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
Ric DeLeon, the district's quagga mussel control coordinator, told U.S. lawmakers last year that the price tag for controlling the invasive species and their impact on business, the power industry, water companies and communities in the East is in the billions, and likely will soar in the West.
The increased costs are likely to drive up utility rates for consumers as systems are upgraded, divers spend more hours scraping mussels and researchers try to figure out just how the mussels behave and the impact they're making.
"Who is going to pay for that?" Baldwin said. "It ain't going to be Santa Claus; it's going to be the consumer."
At Hoover Dam, mussels first colonized intake towers and other structures. What started off as one or two mussels every square foot has increased to 55,000 mussels in the same space, said Leonard Willett, the lower Colorado River mussel coordinator for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The mussels also are in pipes that cool generators, compressors and transformers, which could disrupt operations.
One of the infestation's side effects has been that the mussels can affect water quality and clarity. That's a major concern at Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada.
Some 6,300 boats have been inspected at the lake known for its pristine waters from May 1 to July 8. Of those, 470 were decontaminated, and 10 found to have mussels never were launched.
Jeff Cowen, a spokesman for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, said an infestation of mussels at the lake would mean an economic loss of $22 million a year.
Recreation areas are focusing on educating boaters, using slogans such as "Don't move a mussel," "Stop aquatic hitchhikers," and "Drain, clean and dry." Bryan Moore, a biologist at Lake Mead, said most boaters are cooperative.
"They definitely don't want to be the person who spread it to another lake," he said.#
http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20090719/NEWS/907199994&parentprofile=search
Roy Rook's revival
Work underway, contractor hopes ramp ready soon
Crescent City Triplicate-7/17/09
By Nicholas Grube
Mark Warner knows he's being watched.
He's the owner of Performance Excavators and is the contractor behind the Roy Rook Boat Launch reconstruction on the Klamath River.
As part of the project he must comply with several permits from state and federal agencies that are designed to protect the waterway's resources.
Del Norte County, which owns the public boat ramp, has hired a consultant to track how he's doing and ensure that whatever disturbances occur while working on the project they don't diminish water quality or negatively impact fish and other wildlife species.
But Warner said he's also the subject of a different kind of scrutiny.
He lives in the tiny community of Klamath Glen, which means he's practically doing the work in his backyard.
He's also an avid fisherman, and the treasurer of the American Fishing Foundation that puts on the annual Klamath Fishing Derby, so he understands the importance of having the boat launch up and running by the Aug. 15 start of the fall-run chinook salmon sport season.
"I've got to save face here," Warner said with a chuckle. "I'm not going to look good if this doesn't happen. The pressure's on."
What's more is that his friends and neighbors — many of them anglers themselves — have been watching him closely, asking for updates and jokingly telling him that he better meet his Aug. 15 deadline.
"Right now it's all jovial," Warner said. "But should I not get this thing done it might not be as jovial."
The Roy Rook Boat Launch is one of only two public access points on the Lower Klamath River that were damaged in December 2005 by flooding and mudslides. While Roy Rook was still usable after that bout of severe weather, the other launch, the Klamath Townsite Boat Ramp, was completely destroyed.
This left boaters with only one public launch site on the lower part of the Klamath.
"It's the only boat ramp that's available to us, especially to get upstream," said Paul Crandall, the president of the Klamath Chamber of Commerce. "The best fishing is up in the Glen from the (U.S. Highway 101) bridge from a steelhead and salmon perspective
"There's more of a diverse environment up there. There's lots of lazy slow running water as well as some choke points."
But even though Roy Rook gave boaters a way to get into the river, it's still a hazardous option.
The lower segment of the boat launch was washed out in 2005. This meant that during low water, as someone backed a trailer down the ramp, the wheels would drop off the ledge and get stuck.
Continual use of the ramp and constant weathering by the currents of the Klamath River further exacerbated this problem.
"It was just nearing the end of its life expectancy," Del Norte County Assistant County Administrative Officer Jay Sarina said. "The Klamath is a big river and it's tough on structures."
Performance Excavators plans to install a new ramp using concrete articulated matting that will conform to the river bank and allow the water to flow over the launch, Sarina said, thus making it more resistant to the river's currents.
The project is estimated to cost around $330,000, and will be paid for with disaster relief money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the California Emergency Management Agency.
Those entities will also pay for the replacement of the Klamath Townsite Boat Ramp, which is expected to begin next summer and cost between $600,000 and $1 million.
Construction was supposed to start on the Roy Rook Boat Launch last year. However, because the Klamath was one of the only rivers in the state to have a large allocation of chinook salmon available for sport fishing the Board of Supervisors delayed the project to allow local businesses to capitalize on the increased number of anglers that were expected to migrate to the area.
"We have catered to the people of Klamath the best that we can on this," Sarina said. "The bottom line is that everybody was happy that we were going to come out with a better ramp."
The reason there has been such a conflict with the fall fishing season is the presence of endangered coho salmon in the Klamath River. Because this species is present, there are restrictions that only allow work in the river to take place from June 15 to Oct. 15.
Warner knows his window of opportunity is much smaller. Even though fishermen can still use the Yurok Tribe's Requa launch site, he wants to provide greater access to the Klamath River.
"The goal right now is for us to complete this project as fast as possible," Warner said. "The impetus here is, because it's a high use public facility, to make a decision that is best for the public."
He's trying to keep closures of the facility to minimum, and keep at least one lane open to allow boaters to get to the river.
This week, however, the entire ramp has been closed, and might be shut down into early next week as an excavator works in the river to grade the embankment.
Warner said this should be one of the last full closures of the ramp until the project is completed, and he expects to have one lane open starting next week.
"With the allowance for the full closures," he said, "we're hopeful that we're able to stay on schedule and get the work done in early August."
If not, Warner might have some explaining to do with his fisherman friends in the Klamath.#
http://www.triplicate.com/20090717106491/News/Local-News/Roy-Rooks-revival
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