Category

E-News Magazine
24
May

Cariad Hayes Thronson

In 1996 I began a five-year stint as Estuary News’s first assistant editor; I’ve been writing for the magazine on and off ever since. Many of the stories I’ve written have focused on the laws, lawsuits, policies, and regulations that have affected the Bay and Delta over three decades, and it has certainly been fun to navigate these ever-choppy political waters in stories like last June’s Flow Deal: Peace Treaty or Trojan Horse. But the stories I think I’ve enjoyed reporting the most were the profiles of people who work to protect and improve the Estuary’s environment and communities, such as the late San Joaquin River activist Carla Bard and Delta farmer Alex Hildebrand, as well as those that let...
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24
May

Kathleen Wong

My favorite writing for Estuary News has enabled me to witness firsthand people’s heroic efforts to enable humans, plants, and wildlife to thrive alongside one another again in the San Francisco Bay-Delta. I rose in the dark to traipse through Mowry Marsh behind biologists conducting the first region-wide survey of endangered salt marsh harvest mice. I peered into bubbling tanks at the UC Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Laboratory to admire Delta smelt whose futures are murky if efforts to revive their habitat aren’t successful. I’ve quashed pervasive seasickness to accompany scientists into the Delta to track the passage of migrating Chinook in real time. These immersive reporting experiences helped me to evoke the reality of conservation work, and the...
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24
May

Jacoba Charles

Writing for Estuary News has been a pleasure and a privilege. Each article has deepened my relationship with the San Francisco Bay Area. Although I was born and raised here, my relationship with this landscape is constantly evolving. My reporting is rooted in gaining a fresh perspective on the place each story is set in. When I put my “reporter hat” on, I interact with place in a way that is very different from in my off-duty life: both more detailed and more intimate. And the moments in time in the landscapes I move through become a vivid part of my life experience. One dramatic example of that is reporting on the aftermath of the 2017 Tubbs fire. I can...
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24
May

John Hart

I’m thinking of the bookends of my Estuary News article shelf. The first story I wrote, “Filling Up on Empty,” asked just how much water might practically be stored in Central Valley aquifers. Could groundwater be our insurance against super-droughts ever more likely to come?  I relished the deep dive into hydrology, but had to surface with bad news: vital though aquifer recharge is, the potential isn’t big enough to support our current water use habits through a really Big Dry. On the positive side, it was nice to finish the run this spring with “Taking the Measure of Success at the South Bay Salt Ponds,” a story about accelerating progress in converting former ponds to marsh and other dandy...
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24
May

Michael Adamson

Writing for Estuary News was a years-long lesson in connectivity. Much like the Estuary links watersheds from across the state, the reliance on and protection of that water links otherwise disparate communities. I particularly enjoyed covering the effort to pass AB 2501 in 2018, where residents of rural San Joaquin Valley gathered in Sacramento’s Capitol to fight for access to clean drinking water. They succeeded, and in doing so cast a poignant light on the precarious future of water in the west years before it was a frequent headline in national news. Humans aren’t the only stewards of California’s waterways, and in 2021 I reported on the California Beaver Summit and “Beaver Queen” Heidi Perryman’s efforts to champion beavers’ critical...
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24
May

Joe Eaton

After a long stretch as a federal bureaucrat, Estuary News was a big part of an all-too-brief but rewarding second act as a freelance writer. While this gig had its aggravations, I generally enjoyed doing the research (Charles Darwin once said research was a lot more fun than writing, and I'm with him on that), talking to scientists and restoration professionals, and trying to make their work intelligible to a general audience; hope I got most of it right. In the process, I learned a lot about obscure species, out-of-the-way places, and hopeful projects. Hard to single out individual pieces but on balance I'm proudest of the articles (like one on smelt and one on Buckler) that irritated the right...
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Photo of Ariel Rubissow-Okamoto
24
May

Ariel Rubissow Okamoto

When I was becoming a writer I had a fire in my belly for saving the planet. What I imagined doing with my life was mainly protesting,  and calling out all the ways in which we were being unfair to the birds, bees and truffula trees that share our space here on planet Earth. But where I ended up in my writing was not in activism but in observing, describing, and celebrating the people at the frontlines taking care of our one special Estuary, not the planet. Whether the scientists themselves, the experimental projects, the complexities, the beauties, these things all fueled my flame and made me feel involved. The scientists and managers became my heroes; the landscapes my challenge...
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Alastair
24
May

Alastair Bland

I enjoyed the opportunity to write my kayak salmon fishing story, because it allowed me to portray what I believe is a sustainable means of acquiring seafood while also highlighting the perils faced by Chinook salmon in California, where climate change and inland abuse of their habitat threatens to wipe them out. The shark fishing story presented a very different type of fishing—one that serves egos and killing for thrills. It’s my hope that readers of Estuary News who don’t fish themselves can see from reading these stories that some forms of recreational fishing are respectable ways of communing with nature, while others are merely brutish bloodsports. — Alastair Bland My Picks More stories by  Alastair Bland
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24
May

Daniel McGlynn

I’ve written for Estuary News for a little more than a decade. I always liked the opportunity to write about stories close to home—and particularly about the Richmond shoreline. In many ways, covering water and science issues for Estuary News has made me slow down and look at local issues differently. I wish everyone could have the opportunity to call experts, attend special meetings, and cultivate sources over the span of years. It made me understand that building new infrastructure—even if it’s something as simple as cutting some curbs to let stormwater enter a rain garden—can be complex. Reporting on local environmental issues has made me realize there are a lot of people working behind the scenes to make our...
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24
May

Aleta George

I live near the Suisun Marsh and love exploring the Bay-Delta. My favorite stories for Estuary News took me to new places in our wonderful part of the world. The heart of the Delta feels like stepping back in time to a slower-paced way of life, one that beckons whenever I’m overwhelmed. Seeing salmon return to Putah Creek, which is where my water comes from, makes me happy that my water agency is part of this effort. And standing in the middle of a surprising Walnut Creek restoration site—squeezed between a landfill and a refinery—gives me hope that there’s always a way to bring nature back. — Aleta George My Picks The Grande Dames of the Delta June 16, 2022...
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24
May

Robin Meadows

Among all the stories I've written for Estuary News, what makes two stand out in my mind? Location, location, location.
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24
May

Lisa Owens Viani

I’m proud of the reporting I did on oil spills in San Francisco Bay. During the Cosco Busan and Dubai Star spills, I experienced the damage firsthand while volunteering to rescue birds on the Bay shoreline; I later became involved in Estuary Partnership-sponsored legislation that would have required ships to double boom during refueling. I found writing about contaminants like selenium and flame retardants (to name just a few) fascinating and scary. I enjoyed writing about green stormwater treatment because at the time, California was lagging behind the Pacific Northwest and I hoped to inspire our readers and decision-makers to do more. I also liked writing about freeing up rivers for fish by taking down dams, and about restoring rivers...
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Nate
12
May

Nate Seltenrich

Among all the stories I’ve written for Estuary News, what makes two stand out in my mind? Location, location, location. The first, which ran in December 2017, involved a visit to one of my favorite Bay Area wildernesses, Henry W. Coe State Park. In my 20s and 30s I made many memorable backpacking and hiking trips throughout this vast, little-known park. The opportunity years later to return to a remote corner of the park with scientists studying wildlife in pristine Coyote Creek made for a very meaningful experience—and an interesting article, Coyote’s Cache of Intermittent Riches. The second, by contrast, represented my introduction to a whole new place: San Rafael’s waterfront Canal neighborhood. Through numerous visits to the area, both by foot...
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28
Mar

Restoration Reflections: A Hundred Ways to Cherish the Estuary

Restoration is a powerful concept. Physically it entails putting something back, making it right again; emotionally it requires hope for the future, a sense of something worth doing.  In the Estuary, restoration is no longer about recreating some pristine ecosystem that once was. The vast marshes that carpeted the Delta and circled the Bay before Europeans arrived out West are long gone; the great rivers spilling fresh water and salmon downstream are a shadow of their former selves; the myriad creeks and sloughs offering migratory paths and habitats for so many estuarine creatures are now laced with obstacles and lined with concrete.  But for some time now, the call to restoration work has been growing. People in all walks of...
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VA Agreement Highlights Habitat Questions

Restoring marsh and wetland habitat can have significant benefits for dozens of species throughout the Bay and Delta—that’s beyond dispute. But when it comes to saving the Estuary’s most imperiled fish, how much habitat improvements can help in the absence of dramatically increased freshwater flows is a question that has dogged and divided scientists and policy makers for years. As the State Water Resources Control Board considers the latest proposal from the State and water agencies for a flows agreement that would restore thousands of riparian and wetland acres—while dedicating less water to the environment than proposed under an alternative regulatory framework—critics argue that science doesn’t support its underlying assumptions. The debate highlights how much there still is to learn about...
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Ducks. Photo: Rick Lewis
21
Mar

Delta Restoration Baseline Revealed

When the Delta Stewardship Council amended its Delta Plan and established a goal of restoring 60,000 to 80,000 acres of wetland above a 2007 baseline by 2050, it raised some fundamental questions: How much of that goal has already been met, and where? A recent study, presented at the Delta Plan Interagency Implementation Committee Restoration Subcommittee’s first-ever Delta Restoration Forum in February, provides some answers. The amendments to Chapter Four of the Delta Plan, which focuses on protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Delta ecosystem, synthesized 14 existing agency reports and other documents in establishing the 2050 targets, which are deemed necessary to achieve the larger goal of restoring a functioning ecosystem by the end of this century. However, “there wasn’t...
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Construction of groins and headlands at Heron's Head in November 2022. Photo: Port of SF
21
Mar

Eroding Bayview Park Gets Heavy Lift

Carol Bach, who oversaw the restoration of a sliver of tidal wetlands on San Francisco’s industrialized shore in 1999, was alarmed to see her work eroding away decades later. Waves crossing the Bay from Hayward to Heron’s Head steadily carved away at this small peninsula of tidal habitat and public park favored by locals with few other options for waterfront recreation. The erosion was hard to miss: steep escarpments developed along the shore; the size of the marsh shrank; a tidal pool favored by shorebirds breached and became an embayment. “We wanted to stop the erosion, restore the tidal pond, and protect the whole landscape using natural infrastructure,” says Bach, who stuck around long enough at the Port to fix...
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American Avocet on managed, former salt ponds in the South Bay. Photo: Roopak Bhatt, USGS
21
Mar

Riding the Restoration Waves: My Estuarine Journey

After 16 years of working in the San Francisco Estuary, including serving as a manager for key regional agencies, I have ridden several waves of restoration. I’ve seen big changes in how restoration is done, who does it, and who benefits—whether it’s a fish or bird on the verge of extinction or a young person from an urban community learning green job skills on the shoreline. Our view of what matters continues to expand as connections that were once cloudy—between habitat restoration and environmental justice, between upland and bay habitats—come into focus. We’re not just trying to create small patches of tidal marsh but to piece together a huge mosaic of habitats from working lands to wetlands. We now know...
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21
Mar

Taking the Measure of Success at the South Bay Salt Ponds

It is two decades now since some 23 square miles of South Bay salt evaporation ponds became public property. Eighty-eight old impoundments were to be remade into habitat for birds and other creatures—and into a superior flood-control buffer for communities beside the rising Bay. Progress since then has been slow, and fast. Slow, because relatively small swathes of territory have been visibly, obviously changed. Slow, because a whole set of basic questions had to be answered before the work could pick up speed. And fast, because those questions have now been answered, by and large, and the news is pretty good. As sea-level rise makes the project ever more urgent, the way seems open to a rapid transformation in the...
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Creek snorkel survey. Photo: Rick Johnson
21
Mar

A Steelhead Renaissance in San Mateo Creek

Rich Johnson steps through an inconspicuous gate between two backyards not far from the downtown San Mateo Caltrain station and points down a steep, overgrown streambank to a piece of PVC piping, barely visible beneath the tumbling water. “That’s our furthest downstream PIT array,” says Johnson, an aquatic biologist with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC). The Passive Integrated Transponder array is one of four stations along San Mateo Creek that capture signals from tagged steelhead as they migrate up and down the creek.  More than a month after a series of atmospheric rivers deluged the Bay Area in January, San Mateo Creek is still running high, fed by unusually large releases from Crystal Springs Reservoir. The high flows...
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