VA Agreement Highlights Habitat Questions

Policy - Legal - Regulatory



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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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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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. Chinook salmon and steelhead in Coyote Creek, Stevens Creek, and the Guadalupe River remain as scarce as ever.
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Reorienting to Salmon Recovery

California’s disappointing history of salmonid recovery programs has motivated a group of scientists from public water agencies and environmental conservation groups to step back, dream big, and take a new path forward. This group wants to abandon familiar heated dialogues and litigious relationships and try a new approach toward fish recovery based on collaboration, common interests and science.
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14
Jun

Cutting Green Tape

A novel exemption lawmakers passed to California’s landmark Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in late 2021 has helped fast-track at least four habitat restoration projects so far, with more to follow in the next couple years. The Statutory Exemption for Restoration Projects, or SERP, offers a rare reprieve from California’s stringent environmental review and permitting process — and a clear indication of the urgency the state’s leaders feel in advancing ecological restoration work. “When [SERP] passed, it was a little bit controversial,” says Sara Johnson, executive director of the fledgling California Ecological Business Association. Sluggish regulatory approval timelines are the top grievance member organizations of the association share, she said at the Society for Ecological Restoration’s conference in Carmel Valley in...
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13
Jun

Flow Deal: Peace Treaty or Trojan Horse?

Promising up to 825,000 acre-feet a year of new water to protect endangered fish and thousands of acres of habitat improvements, the Newsom administration and others hailed the March announcement of a proposed voluntary agreement on Bay-Delta flows as the beginning of the end of California’s water wars, and a boon to the Bay-Delta ecosystem.  “We think this has the promise to give us more benefit for ecosystems because we would be combining both flow and habitat assets,” says California Natural Resources Agency spokesperson Lisa Lien-Mager. And by providing an alternative to government mandates already in the works, proponents say the deal will head off litigation that could delay guaranteed environmental flows for years. Following a decade of stop-and-start negotiations,...
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Will Salmon Simmer Again?

After two critically dry years that coincided with Trump-era rollbacks to environmental protections, some iconic Delta fish are closer than ever to the point of no return. Last fall, the fall midwater trawl found zero wild Delta smelt, while a coalition of environmentalists and fishermen is asking a federal court to help prevent a repeat of 2021’s near-obliteration of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon. Their lawsuit is just one of several projects....
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Hatchery Delta Smelt Released to Wild

On a mild day between rainstorms in mid-December, wildlife biologists outfitted in rubber boots and orange lifejackets load drum after drum of precious cargo onto a small boat docked in Rio Vista, a town on the Sacramento River in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. There is little fanfare but the occasion is nonetheless momentous. The shiny silver drums contain thousands of Delta smelt — finger-size imperiled fish unique to the Delta — that were raised in a conservation hatchery. Today marks the inaugural release of captive smelt into the cold, murky waters of their native home. “For the first time, we’re seeing if it’s possible for hatchery-raised Delta smelt to be released into the wild, survive, and successfully reproduce,” says Katherine...
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The Coast Whisperer

Sam Schuchat, outgoing chief of the California State Coastal Conservancy, is perhaps one of the most dapper state officials I’ve ever met. He often wears an elegant hat with a brim and band, no Giants bill cap or REI wooly for the leader of a powerful state agency, one that has done more to ensure that the coast is accessible to all Californians than any other. Of course, Schuchat would say he had a lot of help — partners everywhere, lots of folks willing to give any project involving the Conservancy their best. Schuchat is quite the politician: he likes to work the room, shake hands, bend ears, and make deals. I can’t say I know him personally. But I...
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moss ball oregon USFWS
21
May

Invasions

Almost two months after invasive zebra mussels were discovered in imported “moss balls” (actually algae) in a Seattle PetCo store, federal and state agencies are still trying to track the Trojan moss balls and keep the mussels out of vulnerable water bodies, including California’s. So far, contaminated moss balls have been found in 46 states (Virginia, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Hawaii are the exceptions) and most of Canada’s provinces. The US Fish & Wildlife Service has issued detailed guidance for getting rid of the moss balls, summarized as “Destroy, Dispose, Drain,” and the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council has followed suit.  The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Customs and Border Protection, and the US Geological Survey are also...
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05
Aug

Although the Covid-19 pandemic and attendant economic cataclysm have tripped up some ambitious plans for funding climate resilience in California, other measures to integrate adaptation and planning are still on track.

In July, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments released the draft of Plan Bay Area 2050, a 30-year plan to guide growth in the nine-county region. “The biggest new integration in the plan is a set of investments to protect our Bay and ocean shorelines from rising sea levels,” says MTC’s Dave Vautin. The plan calls for just under $20 billion in investments ranging from seawalls and traditional levees to horizontal levees and wetland restoration to protect communities and infrastructure. “The draft showcases how that system of infrastructure improvements could protect 98% of all homes at risk over the next 30-years, as well as all major highways, railways and the vast majority of offices and...
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18
Jun

Adaptation Complexities Spur Innovation

By Cariad Hayes Thronson Driving over the Bay flats toward the Dumbarton Bridge’s western approach in San Mateo County it’s easy to imagine how a few feet of sea level rise could submerge the roadway. The bridge touches down only 750 feet from the shoreline, and the approach skims just above the fill it’s built on. At least three to six feet of sea level rise are a virtual certainty by the end of the century. Countywide, a vulnerability assessment found that in a mid-range sea level rise scenario, property worth $34 billion would be flooded on the bayshore and the coast north of Half Moon Bay. Facing that reality, San Mateo County’s leadership has undertaken some of the Bay...
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19
Mar

Taking a Break from the Corps

By Robin Meadows Corte Madera creek is an outsized problem for people in Ross and other towns built right up to its banks. “Our peaceful creek turns into a rushing torrent in winter,” says Chris Martin, who grew up in the small Marin County town. Finding a fix has been contentious since 1971, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers put a mile-long concrete flood control channel through Ross. “It disconnected the creek from the floodplains, wrecked the Coho salmon fishery, and didn’t accomplish its purpose ― it’s a failure any way you look at it.” The local community has repeatedly rebuffed the Corps’ attempts at redoing the project, so the County and the Corps terminated the 2014 agreement.
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19
Mar

Rebooting the Klamath

In 2002, more than 70,000 adult salmon died on the Klamath River when U.S. Bureau of Reclamation diversions caused water temperatures to spike. In February, the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, including the Yurok and Karuk Tribes, filed to take over management of four hydroelectric dams in the upper watershed. “There’s never been a project that has considered removing four dams at the same time on the same river...
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19
Mar

Regulatory Teams Coordinate

By Cariad Hayes Thronson In March the San Francisco Estuary Partnership released its Wetlands Regional Monitoring Program Plan, which lays out the science framework for a long-term program to monitor tidal wetlands around the Bay. “The focus of the plan is how we’re going to answer five guiding questions about the status and trends of our tidal wetlands,” says the Partnership’s Heidi Nutters. The framework is only the first phase of what will ultimately be a four-year planning process. Nutters says the team planning for wetlands monitoring is also working closely with the Bay Restoration Regulatory and Integration Team (BRRIT), which comprises representatives from each of the agencies that permit projects.
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05
Dec

Flows and Ecosystem Function Dominate Delta Plan Amendment

With the Delta lagging behind the Bay on four of the State of the Estuary Report’s five indicators, the last long-range plan for restoring its ecological health abandoned, and the threats from climate change becoming ever more alarming, the need for a new regulatory vision for the region may never have been greater. A pending amendment to the Delta Plan, shared by Ron Melcer at the State of the Estuary Conference as part of a policy update session, is meant to provide that vision and the strategies to achieve it. The amendment — to Chapter Four of the Delta Plan, which focuses on the Delta ecosystem — was developed in response to the state’s pivot away from the 2013 Bay-Delta...
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05
Dec

Big Picture Review of Regional Science and Governance

Offshore, kelp forests were dwindling. Outside, hillsides were burning. Inside the Scottish Rite Center in Oakland, scientists and policy people were sharing the latest findings concerning the vital shallows in between: the San Francisco Estuary. The patient pursuit of knowledge, essential to smart action in a changing world, had chalked up a fruitful two years. Of the action itself, there was rather less sign. Felicia Marcus might speak to that better than anyone. As chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, she had coaxed along a nine-year process, mandated by law, to raise minimum flows in the major rivers that sustain the Estuary. The Board took the first of several wrenchingly hard decisions 12 months ago. Result: the process...
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State Plan Doubles Down on Alignment

The California Water Plan Update 2018—released by the Department of Water Resources in July—is meant to guide state policy and investment over the next 50 years to maximize the benefits squeezed out of every drop of the water supply. The timing of Update 2018 is fortuitous: In April, Governor Newsom ordered the California Natural Resources Agency, California Environmental Protection Agency, and California Department of Food and Agriculture to develop a portfolio of water resilience strategies.
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19
Sep

New Regional Rainmaker

By Joe Eaton Environmental issues were important to Michael Montgomery as a young man. Montgomery’s career path led to 33 years with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, where he gained a wealth of experience in navigating complex regulatory landscapes to protect water resources, and ultimately to the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, where he is now executive officer. “The Bay Area has a strong tradition of coming up with collaborative solutions,” he says. That’s how he intends to address the range of issues the Regional Board handles. As for the evolving roles of federal and state regulators, Montgomery sees a mixed picture. “There’s always going to be a relationship between the state and U.S. EPA,” he...
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08
Aug

Coyote Valley, an important wildlife corridor connecting the Santa Cruz and Diablo Mountain ranges, would receive new protections under state legislation introduced in April.

AB 948 would create a new Coyote Valley Conservation Program, to be administered by the Santa Clara Open Space Authority. The bill would expand the existing protected area from 7,400 acres to 17,000 acres, and boost new efforts to preserve its resources. Coyote Valley, which drains the ecologically rich upper watershed of Coyote Creek, has long faced development threats as surrounding South Bay communities expand. The area provides critical habitat for critters large and small, which use the valley—especially its waterways—to move between more remote areas in the two mountain ranges. The Valley also includes 2,500 acres of floodplains and sits atop half of Silicon Valley’s undeveloped aquifer recharge areas, making its protection even more important. “Coyote Valley’s very shallow...
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