Day

October 12, 2022
12
Oct

The Long Haul to Restore San Joaquin Spring-Run Chinook

When a team of fish biologists was tasked with restoring spring-run Chinook salmon in the San Joaquin River in 2006, none of them quite knew where to begin. The thirsty farms that crowd the river on both sides had taken almost all the water out of it most years since the mid-1900s, leaving a nearly 60-mile long stretch below Friant Dam near Fresno completely dry. The riverbed had been parched for so long that someone even built a house in...
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12
Oct

Rocky Road to a Fresh Enough Delta

Nothing reveals just how much the upper Estuary’s seesaw of tides and freshwater flows is micro-managed than prolonged drought, and the resulting fiddling with barriers, gates, and water quality standards to prevent the ocean tides and salinity from intruding too far upstream. Come summer, managers begin to talk fearfully of “losing control of the Delta” and the dreaded outcome: salt water too near the export pumps that supply tap water for millions of Californians. The ominous language is also reflected...
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12
Oct

Science in Short: The Hullabaloo About HABS

Dead fish belly up in Lake Merritt and San Francisco Bay this past August sent scientists like Keith Bouma-Gregson scrambling to pinpoint the cause. A harmful bloom of marine algae had taken up residence in the Bay, and while many of the fish died from the resulting lack of oxygen in the water, toxins produced by the algae could have played some role, says Bouma-Gregson, a biologist with the US Geological Survey and regional expert on HABs. The Delta is no stranger to HABs,...
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12
Oct

Key Facility’s Fuzzy Future

There are 14 marine laboratories in California. Just one of them is on San Francisco Bay: the Estuary and Ocean Science Center (EOS), on the rugged eastern shore of the Tiburon Peninsula in Marin County. EOS has trained generations of leading figures in estuary science and management. It possesses a site and facilities that no possible alternative could match. The research community swears by it. And in two years it might close. In the 1970s, after decades as a U.S....
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12
Oct

South Bay Fish Fight

Two decades after the South Bay’s main water supplier agreed to restore aquatic habitat in the streams that flow from its reservoirs, fish in the region remain in dire straits, and local river advocates say it’s the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s fault. The agency, which serves the taps and toilets of 1.9 million Santa Clara County residents, has made some improvements on fish habitat along miles of stream and increased the amount of water it releases from its reservoirs....
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12
Oct

Resurrecting the Carmel River Floodplain

When the storm hit, it was lucky that my parents had a habit of leaving one car on each side of the Carmel River as they commuted from Big Sur into Monterey each day. The 1995 El Niño rainfall had pushed the Carmel River into hundreds of homes, and destroyed the Highway 1 bridge that connected Big Sur with the rest of the world. Most Big Sur residents were trapped during the week it took the Federal Emergency Management Agency...
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12
Oct

Drought Strains Stormwater Monitoring Endeavors

When it rains, it pours. This old saw passes for an apt description of the new precipitation regime that climate change has wrought for the Bay Area: larger winter storms, but fewer of them. The implications of this shift for ecosystems, infrastucture, and water storage are widespread, and often highly visible. But behind the scenes, it is also complicating efforts to monitor pollution inputs to the San Francisco Bay and other local water bodies from stormwater runoff. The Regional Monitoring...
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About Us

The San Francisco Bay-Delta is named in the federal Clean Water Act as one of 28 “estuaries of national significance." For over 20 years, the San Francisco Estuary Partnership has worked together with local communities and federal and state agencies to improve the health of California’s most urbanized estuary.

San Francisco Estuary Partnership 1515 Clay Street, Suite 1400 Oakland, CA 94612 (510) 622-2304

Association of Bay Area Governments