Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
August 31, 2009
3. Watersheds –
Grant aims at removing invasive plant along Feather River
Chico Enterprise-Record
Creek cleanup to keep trash from flowing to the sea
Davis Enterprise
Yolo worries about wetlands
Davis Enterprise
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Grant aims at removing invasive plant along Feather River
Chico Enterprise-Record-8/31/09
By Heather Hacking
Invasive weeds are causing big-time problems for resource managers throughout the Sacramento Valley, and the state, nation and globe.
Several weeds are on the hit list for wildlife managers, including Arrundo donax, tamarisk, purple loosestrife and starthistle.
Adding to this growing list is red sesbania. A newly acquired grant through the Butte County Resource Conservation District will be used to try and remove it along the Feather River.
Like many weeds, the plant is attractive, which means people have planted it in their yards.
Red sesbania is also known as scarlet wisteria and the Latin name sesbania punicea. The fast-growing vine has tentacles that wrap around other vegetation, smothering it.
The seed pods are about three inches long and contain many seeds in each pod.
The weed is a problem because it reproduces quickly and the plants form a dense thicket along river banks.
The seed pods drop from the plant then can float down river for a week or more before landing and starting a new problem far from the first.
Being in the water actually helps the seeds sprout, because the outside of the seeds are soaked and dinged up, allowing it to grow easier.
The plants can affect habitat along the river, eventually harming spawning habitat for fish.
Recreation also suffers if the weeds make it difficult to access the river, explained Alexis Vertolli, who is leading the weed program.
It was first surveyed about five years ago and has established itself from Oroville Dam downstream.
Vertolli said there are many reasons it's important to get the plants out locally, including protection of the Oroville Wildlife Area.
Statewide, the Department of Water Resources, State Parks, the city of Oroville and Feather River Park District are also each affected by the weeds, said Pia Sevelius, director of the RCD.
Other partners include the Department of Fish and Game, Butte County Agricultural Commission, California Conservation Corps and Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Already, there has been about $1 million spent to root out red sesbania along the American River.
"In order for the control project to be effective, everybody needs to do something," Sevelius said.
That's why the RCD is a good fit to be leading the charge. Resource Conservation Districts can take the lead when projects involve a variety of different agencies or groups.
Also, private property owners will need to be contacted to give permission for the weed to be yanked out.
The Resource Conservation District applied and received a grant for $50,000 over two years from the California Department of Food and Agriculture and from federal stimulus funding.
The money will be spent to remove mature plants along the Feather River. Vertolli explained that stumps will be treated with herbicide, and overseen by the Department of Fish and Game, to protect sensitive areas.
After the first flush in spring and early summer (when the plant flowers), another round will be needed to find seedlings in the fall.
After the grant funding ends in two years, it will be up to partners of the project to continue maintenance, Vertolli explained.
The grant funding will purchase a quad and trailer for use on the weed projects. Also, a spray tank with a boom will be bought.
A partnership has been made with the city of Oroville to have trucks haul the plants away and burn them up at the cogeneration plant.#
http://www.chicoer.com/advertise/ci_13237205?IADID=Search-www.chicoer.com-www.chicoer.com
Creek cleanup to keep trash from flowing to the sea
Davis Enterprise-8/29/09
The largest landfill in the world is not, in fact, on land. It floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Western Garbage Patch, between Hawaii and California, is twice the size of Texas. Ninety percent of the patch is floating plastic.
What's a local, community-minded person to do? Libby Earthman, executive director of the Putah Creek Council, says volunteering for the Yolo County Creek Cleanup — on Saturday, Sept. 19 — is a great place to start.
“We encourage people of all ages and abilities to come out to our waterways and help pick up trash,” she said in a news release. “It's something tangible that people can do to learn about how little things they do affect life downstream.”
While some of the trash found in local waterways is illegally dumped there, much of it makes its way into creeks by way of stormwater drains.
“When you see a piece of trash in the gutter, floating toward a drain, most people assume that the water and floating trash are heading to the water treatment plant. They are not. They drain
directly into creeks, or in Davis, into stormwater collection ponds,” Earthman said.
A consortium of Yolo County groups, including local government and nonprofit agencies, organizes an annual fall waterway cleanup to help ensure that Yolo County does not contribute to the ocean's trash problem. The local creek cleanup is part of the California Coastal Commission and Ocean Conservancy's International Coast and Creek Cleanup Event, the largest volunteer trash cleanup in the world.
On the third Saturday in September, volunteers throughout the world don gloves and head out to rid waterways of rubbish.
According to the Ocean Conservancy, more than 400,000 people in 100 countries volunteered last year to remove a 6.8 million pounds of trash.
In 2008, a record-breaking 312 local volunteers participated at sites throughout Yolo County, collecting 11,000 pounds of trash and 900 pounds of recyclables. The 2009 cleanup will build on the success of past years.
Last year, 73,461 volunteers participated in California's Coastal Cleanup Day, a 20 percent jump over 2007 and a 46 percent increase over the past two years. These volunteers collectively removed a record 1.6 million pounds of debris, of which almost 200,000 pounds was recycled, both record numbers, Earthman said.
“We want Coastal Cleanup Day to be an opportunity for every Californian to feel their connection to our coast, no matter where they may live,” said Eben Schwartz, outreach manager for the California Coastal Commission. “By pushing the cleanup into every corner of the state, we can clean up a lot of trash before it has a chance to reach our ocean, and in doing so, bind every Californian to one another through our collective stewardship.”#
http://search.davisenterprise.com/display.php?id=53281
Yolo worries about wetlands
Davis Enterprise-8/28/09
By Jonathan Edwards
Outside developers trying to meet state environmental requirements could turn huge tracts of Yolo County farmland into wetlands over the next 20 years.
It could be as many as 20,000 acres, said Phil Pogledich, senior deputy county counsel, and Yolo's supervisors worry that unchecked wetland conversion could jeopardize farming, endanger public health and threaten local wildlife.
“It's something we need to start thinking long and hard about,” said Pogledich, who's working on an ordinance that would give the county a stronger hand in regulating such projects.
Transforming farmland into wetlands is one way developers in the Sacramento Valley and Bay Area satisfy environmental laws. Before getting approval to develop wetlands, developers must offset the effects to vulnerable wildlife. Creating habitat for the affected species in another area is one way to get state approval.
With a lot of cheap land that's home to many of the same at-risk species found in more developed areas, Yolo County is attractive to state-licensed “mitigation bankers” who preserve, manage and create habitat, and then sell “credits” to developers looking to meet their legal obligations.
The county is not out-and-out against wetland restoration, Pogledich said. In fact, the county supports those efforts. Uncontrolled, however, wetlands could undermine rice farming and create breeding grounds for disease-carrying mosquitoes.
So Pogledich, with a head nod from Yolo supervisors, crafted an ordinance over the past few months that would give the county a say in where and how much land gets converted.
Environmental groups — including Ducks Unlimited, Audubon California and the Yolo Basin Foundation — denounced the effort as bureaucratic meddling in an Aug. 2 opinion column in The Enterprise.
People have developed more than 95 percent of the Central Valley's wetlands over the years, according to the column, and battles to turn back the clock were hard-won.
And now the county, a strong supporter of wetlands restoration in the past, according to the column, is proposing an ordinance that “represents another layer of government that will intrude on individual landowner rights.”
“Draconian” and “vague,” the ordinance would delay further wetlands projects and increase costs, driving away grant money and discouraging landowners from starting projects, the authors claimed.
“If there's one more hurdle to get through, you might just say, 'Screw it. It's my land and it's too much hassle. All I want to do is move some water around,' ” said Brendan O'Hara, director of development at the California Waterfowl Association.
Small, local efforts are not the aim of the ordinance, Pogledich said. The county is concerned with bigger efforts pushed by people beyond the county's borders.
Supervisor Mike McGowan echoed the sentiment back in October when the issue first came before the board. Relations between the county and local groups have been “relatively harmonious,” he said. Locals aren't the problem.
The ordinance, McGowan added, is about exercising control over projects led by large, private water districts outside Yolo County who just want to “turn the pumps on” in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and send water south.
The Yolo Ranch, just west of Clarksburg, is one of the largest those projects. The Westlands Water District, which supplies water to farmers in Fresno County, owns the 3,400-acre ranch. According to Pogledich, Westlands intends to make the ranch tidal wetlands for the beleaguered delta smelt and other fish.
The Bay Delta Conservation Plan dwarfs them all. The project is a broad consortium of state and federal agencies, water groups and big-time environmental groups, including the California Resources Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
By 2010, proponents want to start implementing a host of the plan's projects to create habitat for numerous fish species, including the delta smelt, Chinook salmon and Sacramento splittail. One of the biggest projects on the table would flood the Yolo Bypass.
Flooding at high enough levels for fish would inundate between 8,000 and 16,600 acres of the 55,500 acres in the bypass, according to a study from a San Diego environmental consultant hired by the Yolo County Natural Heritage Program.
Water would cover as much as 11,400 acres of farmland, much of it planted in rice. If water sits in the bypass from January through April, as proposed, it would delay rice planting, forcing farmers grow different crops or fallow their fields.
Flooding in the bypass, the report adds, would help fish, but at the expense of animals already in the bypass, including the giant garter snake, the northern harrier and the tricolored blackbird.
The projects might fall outside county's jurisdiction, however. The ordinance would not apply to state- and federal-level projects, Pogledich admitted, but, he added, nobody yet knows if either will control the project.#
http://search.davisenterprise.com/display.php?id=53244
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