[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS -8/3/09

 

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

August 3, 2009

 

3. Watersheds –

 

Yosemite officials don't want crowds to make it a mess.

Fresno Bee

 

An Underwater Fight Is Waged for the Health of San Francisco Bay

The New York Times

 

Eye on the Environment: Groundwater an important resource for Ventura County

Ventura County Star

 

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Plan to protect Tuolumne River;

Yosemite officials don't want crowds to make it a mess.

Fresno Bee – 8/1/09

By Mark Grossi

Out of the limelight, Yosemite National Park officials are drafting a plan to keep development and future crowds from making a mess of the pristine Tuolumne River -- the park's "other" major stream.

The Tuolumne has none of the legal problems or public controversy of the better-known Merced River in Yosemite Valley, where millions each year view the iconic panorama of Half Dome, El Capitan and Yosemite Falls.

Since the 1990s, the Merced has been at the center of activist lawsuits. The lawsuits have changed National Park Service policy nationally and forced a complete rewrite of the Merced River protection plan.

In this tale of two rivers, the Tuolumne is all but invisible.

The Tuolumne River gets thousands -- not millions -- of people passing through Tuolumne Meadows, with its lodge, gas station, store, campground, stables, sewage treatment plant and parking problems.

Crowding problems are on a much smaller scale, and the challenge is to keep it that way. That's the expected thrust of a draft Tuolumne protection plan, scheduled to be released this fall for public comment.

"Services are spread out at Tuolumne Meadows," said Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman. "Is there a better way to combine facilities? How should we address the parking around the trailheads?"

Aside from the crowds, the big difference between Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite Valley is elevation. The valley is at 4,000 feet, low enough to keep roads open year-round. Tuolumne Meadows at 8,600 feet is covered with snow and closed from November to May.

The Park Service does not plow the snow during the winter on Tioga Road, the route to Tuolumne Meadows.

In Yosemite Valley, visitors range from international tourists staying in motels to hard-core rock climbers who camp out and climb the sheer face of El Capitan.

Plenty of tourists just drive through Tuolumne Meadows to look at the sights, but it is considered the premier launching point for backpackers and hikers to get into the northern half of Yosemite's alpine backcountry.

Some of the park's largest glaciers at one time filled the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. The alpine landscape features glacially scarred granite domes and spires.

Small glaciers remain near the crest at 13,000 feet, slowly melting into sparkling streams that run to the Lyell and Dana forks of the Tuolumne River.

"A lot of this area is above the treeline," said longtime ranger Dick Ewart. "It's known for the wide-open views and expansiveness. Every step, you have a different view."

Park planning officials have been studying the Tuolumne region for the past few years to prepare the draft. The process could have started more than 20 years ago, when the Tuolumne and the Merced were first designated federally protected rivers under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

The federal law requires that such rivers have a protection plan written. But Park Service policy at the time required that river protections be included as part of general park planning, not a separate plan.

Then an activist lawsuit in the late 1990s over the Merced River changed the Park Service policy nationwide. A federal judge ordered a separate Merced plan under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

Now any national park with a river designated for protection under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act must provide a separate plan.

In a different lawsuit, a federal judge rejected the Park Service's first attempt at making a Merced River plan. The judge decided Yosemite needed a specific limit for the number of people who could visit the river.

As a result, Yosemite must produce a new Merced plan by September 2012. But the Tuolumne was not part of the lawsuit, so there is no deadline for its plan.

Sierra Club official George Whitmore said the Park Service should take advantage of the opportunity to delay the Tuolumne plan until the Merced plan is settled.

Said Whitmore: "My advice always has been to do the Merced first. If they can do that, then the Tuolumne would be pretty straightforward."

Yosemite officials said they are obligated to move forward with both plans. They added that they will not rush the process, giving the public time to get involved. #

 

http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1570785.html

 

 

An Underwater Fight Is Waged for the Health of San Francisco Bay

The New York Times – 8/2/09

By Malia Wollan

 

SAN FRANCISCO — Chela Zabin will not soon forget when she first glimpsed the golden brown tentacle of the latest alien to settle in the fertile waters of San Francisco Bay.

 

“I had that moment of ‘Oh God, this is it, it’s here,’ ” said Dr. Zabin, a biologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “I was really hoping I was wrong.”

 

The tentacle in question was that of an Asian kelp, Undaria pinnatifida, a flavorful and healthful ingredient in miso soup and an aggressive, costly intruder in waters from New Zealand to Monterey Bay.

 

The kelp, known as wakame (pronounced wa-KA-me), is on a list of “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species,” compiled by the Invasive Species Specialist Group. Since her discovery in May, Dr. Zabin and colleagues have pulled up nearly 140 pounds of kelp attached to pilings and boats in the San Francisco Marina alone.

 

Every year the damage wrought by aquatic invaders in the United States and the cost of controlling them is estimated at $9 billion, according to a 2003 study by a Cornell University professor, David Pimentel, whose research is considered the most comprehensive. The bill for controlling two closely-related invasive mussels — the zebra and the quagga — in the Great Lakes alone is $30 million annually, says the United States Federal Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force.

 

Many scientists say that San Francisco Bay has more than 250 nonnative species, like European green crab, Asian zooplankton and other creatures and plants that outcompete native species for food, space and sunlight.

 

“Here you’ve got a veritable smorgasbord of habitats from shallow and muddy to deep water,” said Lars Anderson, a lead scientist with the United States Agriculture Department. The Oakland port ranks as the fourth busiest in the nation, and ships bring in tiny hitchhikers from across the globe to take up residence in the bay.

Most invasive aquatic species arrive stuck to hulls or as stowaways in ballast water. Wakame first arrived at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in 2000, Dr. Zabin and other scientists said. A year later it had moved south into Baja California and north as far as Monterey Bay, where scientists in scuba suits yanked it off boat hulls and marina moorings.

 

“It’s just like gardening, you can pull out all the weeds you want, but there will always be that little dandelion seed that will sprout and recolonize,” said Steve Lonhart, senior scientist at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The kelp, which can grow an inch a day, could spread as far north as Canada before the water becomes too cold to sustain it, Dr. Lonhart said.

 

Native to the Japan Sea, wakame has now spread to the Mediterranean and elsewhere along European coastlines, and to New Zealand, Australia and Argentina, where the fetid smell of rotting kelp has kept beachgoers from parts of the coast.

 

Wakame harms native kelp, mucks up marinas and the undersides of boats, and damages mariculture like oyster farming.

 

Money to help eradicate invasive species is difficult to come by on both state and federal levels, particularly in a state facing an unprecedented financial crisis and cuts to programs. “When there is a big wildfire, no one stops and asks, ‘Who is going to pay for this?’ They just fight the fire,” Dr. Anderson said. “We don’t have that kind of automatic response with invasive species.”

 

On weekends, Dr. Anderson trolls Tomales Bay, 50 miles north of here, in a sea kayak, looking for wakame’s wide leaves.

 

John Finger is owner of Hog Island Oyster Farm, which has beds in 160 acres of Tomales Bay. His beds yield 2.5 million oysters per year, worth $6 million, Mr. Finger said. Of wakame’s approach, he said, “It seems inevitable that it will show up here.”

 

Though wakame has not yet been spotted in the bay, Mr. Finger said he was pre-emptively training his staff on how to identify and remove the kelp. “This is just another sign of how small the world is,” he said.

 

Back in San Francisco, Dr. Zabin and colleagues from nonprofit groups and state and federal agencies have been pooling resources and volunteers, donning scuba and snorkeling equipment and filling black plastic trash bags with the kelp.

 

But before trucking it to the landfill, Dr. Zabin plans to ship some to Texas. “I got an e-mail from a guy who wants to use it to make biofuel,” Dr. Zabin said. “Maybe he could just come and vacuum it up.” #

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/science/earth/02seaweed.html?_r=2&hpw

 

 

Eye on the Environment: Groundwater an important resource for Ventura County

Ventura County Star – 8/2/09

By Rick Viergutz, Guest writer

The Ventura County Watershed Protection District’s Groundwater Section recently released its annual Groundwater Conditions Report, and while neither the section nor the report is particularly high profile, they are both important to those who keep an eye on the environment.

The Groundwater Section is staffed by two hydrographers, a hydrologist and a part-time employee who collects groundwater data. The section issues permits for water wells and inspects sanitary seals for new wells and the destruction of old ones. The county’s well ordinance, enacted in 1970, requires this. Seals protect groundwater by keeping contaminants near the surface from entering it.

We collect and compile basic data from 32 groundwater basins. This information is useful to anyone who needs to know the depth to groundwater, or how the depth varies over the years. Such information may be needed for building permits, new wells, studies for liquefaction, or studies on how much groundwater is in storage. In fact, our staff gets a half-dozen phone calls a week seeking such information.

Groundwater comprises about 60 percent of the water used by Ventura County residents, so the resource is critical to our way of life. The data we collect provides a good long-term record of groundwater quality. Tracking trends in water quality helps the county to be proactive instead of reactive. Along these lines, this year we are looking more closely at the state’s database on leaking underground storage tanks and at where in the county they have caused groundwater pollution.

In some cases, we are the only resource for historical data on water elevations and quality, and we provide it to anyone who asks.

Did you know that groundwater in the western part of the Simi Valley basin is really shallow, so much so that the city operates wells to lower the water table artificially? The water there is also salty and is pumped out and discharged to Arroyo Simi to keep the high water table from affecting building foundations and other things.

Farther west, other aquifers have the opposite problem. Groundwater withdrawal over the years has caused levels to fall below sea level (negative elevations) in parts of the West Las Posas and Pleasant Valley basins north and south of the Camarillo hills. Closer to the coast, sea water has intruded aquifers in some locations near Port Hueneme and Point Mugu.

Ultimately, increases in groundwater conservation, coupled with additional water supplies, will help reduce aquifer overdraft.

Some aquifers contain higher concentrations of salts than we would like, causing “hard water.” Others contain nitrates, which come from fertilizers and septic systems. If there is too much nitrate, the water has to be blended or diluted before we can drink it.

Aquifers are not underground rivers or lakes. One of the better analogies is that an aquifer is like a bathtub filled with sand and partly with water. The water fills in the tiny spaces between the sand grains, and together they form the aquifer.

The annual report on groundwater conditions in the county was produced in March using a lot of the data described above. We would be happy to share it with you. You can see if your neighborhood is near a certain groundwater basin and explore the water conditions. To get an electronic copy, visit http://www.vcwatershed.org and click on “Groundwater Services.”

Rick Viergutz is a licensed geologist and groundwater manager for the Ventura County Watershed Protection District. #

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2009/aug/02/groundwater-an-important-resource-for-ventura/

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