A proposal that could reduce the amount of water the federal government delivers to California salmon fisheries is the latest sign that a decade long effort to manage the state's Delta-based water system is fracturing, environmentalists say. »

When County Counsel Bruce Alpert reported to the Butte County Board of Supervisors on how the relicensing negotiations for the dam were going, he had to say there had been some progress. But they still have a long way to go before the county could accept any deal. »

The Bush administration on Tuesday proposed cutting the federally designated habitat critical to the recovery of threatened and endangered salmon by more than 80 percent in the Northwest and 50 percent in California, focusing protection on rivers where the fish now thrive »

A plan to increase fresh-water pumping from the San Joaquin-Sacramento river delta is pitting Central Valley farmers who want the water for their crops against environmentalists and delta farmers who fear the move will undermine years of fishery and water quality restoration efforts. »

[Editorial]Step by step, the Bush administration is rolling back policies and changing rules to undercut a revival of west coast salmon. The latest is a plan to cut protections for rivers, which are the vital nurseries of the fish to spawn and grow before heading out to sea.  »

According to calculations by Jeffrey Mount, a geologist and director of the Center for Integrated Watershed Science and Management at the University of California, Davis, there is a better than 60 percent chance that a natural event such as a big earthquake or major flooding in the Sacramento or San Joaquin river will cause multiple levees to fail simultaneously in the next 50 years.  »

Grass Valley and the Newmont Mining Corporation remain locked in a legal struggle, neither willing to claim ownership or financial responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of gallons of contaminated water that flow into the city's wastewater treatment plant each day.  »

One of Grass Valley's newest nonprofits, the Wolf Creek Community Alliance, received an unexpected $5,000 to boost its creek monitoring program, a spokesperson said this week. »

Oroville, Butte County at odds over draft relicensing settlement for Oroville Dam as deadline nears  »

The preliminary allocation for water delivery in 2005 to contractors in the State Water Project is 40 percent of requested amounts.  »

A proposed change in how the federal government measures water for fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta has environmental groups alarmed and California officials concerned about potential harm to wildlife habitat. »

Redding has paid a $450,000 fine for letting millions of gallons of muddy water gush from the Big League Dreams sports park during downpours nearly two years ago.  »

Interior Department's folksy Bennett Raley pushed marketing to shift supplies -- and finally got California to go on a water diet.  »

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to review whether four species of lamprey found on the West Coast should be protected by the Endangered Species Act. »

A plan to increase freshwater pumping from the delta is pitting Central Valley farmers who want the water for their crops against environmentalists and delta farmers who fear the move will undermine years of fishery and water qual-ity restoration efforts »

Seeing returning salmon in the greater Sacramento region isn't difficult. There's an impressive hatchery operation at Nimbus Dam on the American River that has been brought back from the brink of extinction. The Sacramento and Feather rivers both have healthy, restored runs as well.  »

River Partners is a nonprofit group doing river restoration, primarily on floodways, to enhance wildlife habitat while maintaining a balance with local economic and recreational needs.  »

Backed-up sewage and storm water had flooded the small fishing pond, seriously depleting the oxygen levels and killing hundreds of fish, according to a report to the City Council. Not disclosed to the council or the public were the results of a test showing that the pond contained levels of bacteria at 80,000 times the region's water quality standard, documents obtained by The Bee show. »

Yuba County could face more than $1 billion in liability and potential bankruptcy if it accedes to permit demands from the state Reclamation Board for Plumas Lake levee work, says County Administrator Kent McClain »

Last week, the Bush administration proposed limiting critical habitat designation to major occupied streams and tributaries, thereby reducing the protected area by 80 to 90 percent. Salt Creek and Canyon Creek are among the dozen or so smaller Sacramento River tributaries in the Redding area that are no longer considered essential for the endangered fish.  »

Thousands of gallons of raw sewage spilled into Little Deer Creek this weekend, the Nevada County Department of Environmental Health announced today. A ball of roots clogged a sewer pipe in Pioneer Park, causing more than 10,000 gallons of sewage to flow into a drainage ditch and then into Little Deer Creek »

Flood officials had initially estimated that the job of clearing water from the 12,153-acre island would be complete by October 15. So far, however, only about three-quarters of the island is above water.  »

A new, 70-mile-long underground pipeline that passes through Solano County is in place and could be transporting fuel sometime next week. The old Kinder Morgan pipe had two well-publicized leaks in Solano County, as well as some smaller ones.  »

An ambitious statewide water plan that was adopted when the economy was soaring more than four years ago would be scaled back by one-third under a new 10-year plan to be considered today.  »

[Editorial]Just because the federal bureaucracy doesn't see fit to protect every trickle doesn't mean we should not respect the waters that course through our home.  »

[Press Release] A 440-acre ranch near the South Yuba River will be preserved under an agricultural conservation easement recorded Dec. 1 by the Nevada County Land Trust.  »

The State Water Resources Control Board has begun new legal efforts to support a private group's plans to flood two Delta islands and sell the water for a profit.  »

Unofficial rain totals ranged from 0.76 inches at the Redding Municipal Airport to 5.28 inches at Brandy Creek near Whiskeytown. That’s good news for water managers at Lake Shasta, where the reservoir inched upward for the third straight day since hitting a 10-year low Friday.  »

A building moratorium in the Plumas Lake area could happen as soon as next summer, Yuba County officials said Tuesday. The state will ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to place a large swath of Sutter and Yuba counties into the 100-year floodplain. The action would effectively halt building in Plumas Lake, where nearly 12,000 homes are proposed.  »

An ambitious statewide water plan that was adopted when the economy was soaring more than four years ago would be scaled back by one-third under a new 10-year plan to be considered today »

Sen. Michael Machado, D-Linden, urged state authorities in a letter this week to scrap the finance plan and rewrite it, though a state board appears poised to approve it today »

Lake Shasta had been at a 10-year low before this week's rains. The lake level climbed nine inches Tuesday alone, though it is still 101 feet beneath the brim. "But if this continues, we'll be in good shape," said Shasta Dam spokeswoman Sheri Harral. The Sacramento River, unusually low as well, rose as much as 10 feet, forcing residents in Tehama to hurriedly pull their boats from the river to protect them from debris charging downstream.  »

Near-record rainfall swamped parking lots, swelled the Sacramento River and flooded classrooms at a Redding elementary school on Wednesday. »

An $8 billion plan to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that serves as both water filter and straw for 22 million Californians was approved Thursday, despite critics' warnings that Congress and the state Legislature would not provide the money.  »

An $8 billion plan to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that serves as both water filter and straw for 22 million Californians was approved Thursday, despite critics' warnings that Congress and the state Legislature would not provide the money. »

The State Water Project and Water Safety publications Web site now includes a catalog for ordering 53 different SWP and water safety publications. Some of these publications are in Spanish and other languages. »

[Viewpoint] Tom Graff, the California regional director for Environmenal Defense, discusses California's water future. »

A confidential settlement has been reached in Yuba County's 1997 flood case, according to a lawyer and court documents »

The EPA proposal shifts the focus of selenium standards from one based on concentrations in the water to one based on accumulations of the toxic metal in the flesh of fish... Selenium makes its way into waterways in the Central Valley when irrigation water percolates through the soil, picks up the metal and runs back into irrigation ditches and then into rivers.  »

The final public meeting to write a comprehensive plan for public lands along the 39-mile stretch of the South Yuba River from Spaulding Reservoir to Lake Englebright will be held from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the Clubhouse at Empire Mine State Park, located at 10791 E. Empire St. in Grass Valley.  »

Fewer wetlands meant fewer birds in the Central Valley, the most important wintering spot for birds along the Pacific Flyway and one of the most important in the continent. Yet, with some exceptions like the northern pintail, most ducks and geese have kept fairly stable populations in the last three decades  »

The Department of Water Resources is poised to ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to include large sections of Yuba and Sutter counties in the 100-year floodplain, a designation that could increase flood insurance premiums and make it more difficult to build in some areas where structures would have to be raised. Yuba County officials fear the designation, which could come by next summer, would halt construction in the Plumas Lake area, scuttling a $60 million levee-improvement program.  »

A profile of the Sacramento Delta town of Locke, which is inhabited by Chinese Americans. Until recently, the residents were legally barred from owning the land, and regulators threatened to close the town down because of a degraded sewer system.  »

The federal government admits lamprey have been mostly ignored, all but invisible beneath the green waters of Clear Creek and many other channels from Southern California to British Columbia. But after EPIC and eight. other conservation groups sued, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to at least consider studying the lamprey for protection. A decision on whether to initiate a yearlong study is expected next week.  »

[Editorial] The controversy dates back to the extended California drought in the early 1990s, when the federal government held back water from two San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts to protect the Chinook salmon and delta smelt populations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.  »

[Editorial] A sardonic view of the policies around the Sutter Bypass by former State Senator Jim Nielsen. »

An official from the Twitchell Island reclamation district, which maintains the levee, discovered a small depression Friday on the levee about 900 feet east of the first sinkhole, which was found Wednesday.  »

Levee District 1 officials scoffed Monday at the state's concerns about levees along the Feather River. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in a report prepared for the Department of Water Resources, has suggested that much of southern Sutter and Yuba counties along the Feather River be placed in the 100-year flood plain.  »

Both the state and RD 784 agreed to the settlement without admitting any liability for the January 1997 flood caused by Arboga levee failure.  »

The Nevada Irrigation District may sell some water now going to the South Sutter Water District to meet growing demands in the Lincoln area and to get a better price.  »

Placer clears junk above the American River after a complaint »

[Editorial] Federal farm subsidies are a nationwide problem. What began as an earnest attempt to assist family farms has become an indefensible handout of taxpayer funds to some of the largest farming corporations.  »

[The Environmental Working Group's press release announcing its farm subsidy study.] "It's one thing to ask taxpayers to subsidize farming with cheap water. It's another thing when those subsidies top $400 million a year, and still another when the overwhelming majority of the subsidies are going to the largest and wealthiest farms," said EWG Analyst Renee Sharp, principal author of the report.  »

The time has come for thousands of farmers in California to renew their water contracts with the federally run Central Valley Project, the country's largest irrigation system and for many years a major source of friction between the state's powerful agricultural and environmental interests.  »

More than 65 percent of the cheap federal irrigation water in the Central Valley Project is used by just 10 percent of the farms, according to a new analysis of a water system developed six decades ago to grow family farms in the West.  »

A report by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit trying to reform the agricultural subsidy system, shows that farms in Huron and the surrounding area received, by the most conservative measure, $24 million in water subsidies in 2002. That figure does not include millions more in cotton and wheat subsidies.  »

Yuba County supervisors blasted the state again Tuesday as the Reclamation Board prepares on Friday to decide if it will issue a permit for Plumas Lake levee repairs.  »

The report by the Environmental Working Group analyzed federal and state records from 2002 to compile a list of the top recipients of subsidized agricultural water from the Central Valley Project, the huge federal water delivery system that supplies roughly one-fifth of the state's domestic and irrigation water - about 7 million acre feet annually.  »

A Meadow Vista resident's concerns about Placer County Water Agency's disposal of underground pipe and road repair refuse is being investigated by the county environmental health division.  »

"The first time I walked down into the North Fork American River, I made a commitment to acquire the private lands along the river as National Forest, for the American people to own in perpetuity,” stated Johnson. »

A lawsuit over a 1997 Yuba County flood that killed three people and destroyed 850 homes will cost the state and county $47 million to settle, said the Appeal-Democrat of Marysville-Yuba City.  »

A remarkable new Web site helps modern explorers plan pilgrimages to the Sacramento's green riparian groves, sandy banks, floodplain grasslands and cobbled shoals. Find it at www.sacramentoriver.org.  »

[Editorial] Yuba floodplain project needs reform »

Emergency repairs to a gaping cavern in the Sacramento River levee near Miller Park are finished. The crisis was worse than engineers believed. But they kept the project almost within budget and saved Sacramento from potential disaster. »

AKT Development Corp. has agreed to pay $591,000 to settle state allegations that it violated clean water rules by allowing dirt and chemicals to run off a Rancho Cordova construction site. Much of the money - $300,000 - will go to the Sacramento Valley Conservancy, a local nonprofit that owns the 4,060-acre Deer Creek Hills open space preserve north of Rancho Murieta.  »

The Galt City Council examined 15 ways to solve their immediate sewage disposal problems during a workshop Thursday night. The council narrowed its options to five. The council, trying to comply with new Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board regulations, will focus on options ranging from not discharging any treated wastewater into any waterway to discharge into the Sacramento River. »

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is more than just a recreational paradise, a wildlife haven and the source of two-thirds of California's drinking water. The delta's thousands of miles of waterways and 55 islands are also littered with rusty abandoned boats, barges and just about every kind of debris imaginable. »

Sacramento Valley irrigators are on the verge of selling billions of gallons of water to Southern California, although details are being kept under wraps until negotiations are done. »

A series of e-mails and telephone calls related to two high-profile environmental decisions in California has prompted criticism that business interests may be gaining too much influence over the U.S. Interior Department. According to court records, Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Julie MacDonald tried to change scientific recommendations related to protecting wetland species and endangered fish.  »

Future levee improvements in the Plumas Lake area were thrown into doubt Friday when the state Reclamation Board approved a permit with conditions Yuba County officials say they can't meet.  »

Yuba County officials are allowing thousands of new homes to be built in a flood-prone area with deficient levees, and state levee regulators don't like it. »

Producers who want to apply conservation practices to their land may submit applications for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which reimburses 50 percent of installation costs to qualified growers. Priorities for cost-sharing contracts this year are water quality and integrated pest management.  »

Federal officials overrode their own scientists this fall when they decided that diverting more water to farmers and residents of parched Southern California would not harm fish populations in Northern California rivers.  »

The Placer Land Trust has purchased the Cisco Grove site, located on the banks of the south fork of the Yuba River, about 45 miles northeast of Auburn. »

The water-rich Conaway Ranch, which Yolo County leaders have been working to buy through eminent domain, was purchased last week by a private business partnership with possible ties to a Sacramento developer. The sale took county leaders by surprise and raised concern among local environmentalists who fear the new landowners will develop portions of the sprawling ranch or sell its water to out-of-state buyers.  »

In the three decades that there's been an Endangered Species Act, a single principle has reigned supreme: If a critter is heading toward extinction, protect where it lives so that it has a chance to recover. But just as critics rev up for a major rewrite of the act in Congress next year, environmentalists see in a new plan for West Coast salmon and steelhead trout sure signs from the Bush administration that it wants out of the recovery business.  »

The first raw draft of a plan to manage the South Yuba River in Nevada County ponders everything from nude sunbathing to visitor limits to a glass bottle ban.  »

County officials may say the state water department is being tough-nosed in negotiations, but stakeholders in the Lake Oroville re-licensing project say the state has gone above and beyond to cut all involved a good deal.  »

The settlement strengthens the claim of water users that they own property rights to billions of gallons of water from the Delta, meaning that whenever water deliveries are curtailed to protect imperiled fish, taxpayers could be forced to pay for the shortages.  »

In a closely watched and controversial move, the Bush administration agreed Tuesday to pay San Joaquin Valley farmers $16.7 million as compensation for undelivered irrigation water.  »

The Bush administration announced Tuesday that it has agreed to pay $16.7 million to a group of Central Valley farmers and irrigation districts whose water deliveries were cut to protect endangered fish... The U.S. Department of Justice settled the case despite widespread warnings that it would lead to a flood of similar claims. The California attorney general's office, the Schwarzenegger administration and attorneys for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration all wrote the Justice Department in the last year, asking the Bush administration to appeal a U.S. Court of Claims ruling in favor of the farmers.  »

An order directing about 2,200 customers to boil their tap water or use bottled water was lifted late Tuesday morning by the California Department of Public Health Services.  »

Levee District 1 directors said Tuesday that a proposed $250,000 levee investigation was too costly. They declined to act on the proposal submitted by MWH Americas Inc. to do core borings along 6,000 feet of levee at the north end of LD1 and into LD9.  »

[Press release] One of the first commodity groups in the Sacramento Valley to form a new water-quality program has received confirmation that its plan has been approved. The California Rice Commission won approval for its water-quality program last week.  »

The Placer County Water Agency will seek a low-interest state loan of $9 million to help expand and upgrade its Auburn Water Treatment Plant. »

Western Canal Water District is poised to drill three wells to help study groundwater levels. The goal is to create a conjunctive use program, which means using a combination of surface and groundwater »

Western Canal Water District is poised to drill three wells to help study groundwater levels. The goal is to create a conjunctive use program, which means using a combination of surface and groundwater. Currently, Western Canal provides water primarily to rice farmers, but it is all delivered via the surface through an irrigation canal.  »

Environmental groups are rallying against a plan to cede some operations of the massive State Water Project to local water wholesalers as part of a broad restructuring of state government being considered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.  »

The plan calls for preserving grasslands in Merced County and blue oak woodland in Tulare County, and snatching long-sought Sutter Buttes - California's smallest mountain range - and up to 50,000 acres of the Tehachapi Mountains in Kern County. Parks officials also want to greatly expand recreational activities along the Sacramento, Cosumnes, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced and San Joaquin rivers.  »

The North Yuba River flood of 1937, in which destroyed 15 buildings and four bridges in Downieville. Yet, thanks to the goodwill of outsiders, Christmas came all the same. »

A California Performance Review proposal to let water wholesalers run part of the 1960s-era State Water Project is also on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2005 agenda. Environmentalists believe it will tilt state policy toward farmers and urban developers.  »

The rain has been welcomed by officials with the Bureau of Reclamation at Shasta Dam. "We have plenty of room for it," spokeswoman Sheri Harral said. "We want it to rain." The water level at Lake Shasta has risen nearly 11/2 feet since Sunday but was still 50 feet lower than on the same day a year ago, Harral said Tuesday. At the dam, precipitation from Sunday to Tuesday was 6.19 inches, she said.  »

Nearly every microscopic particle of brown dust on top of your refrigerator is a sign that the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta is doomed. That doom is also present -- though invisible -- in the Delta breeze that sways treetops most summer afternoons in Stockton, scientists say.  »

A history of the Delta, examining where the peat moss came from, and where it's going. »

Despite the recent rains and predictions of more on the way by the National Weather Service, local rivers and reservoirs are not near capacity, according to experts.  »

The existing dam traps a large amount of sediment carried in winter floodwaters rather than allowing it to flow downstream. Crews have to remove between 800 and 1,000 yards of sediment from the pool each year. Letting the sediment flow through will help fisheries in the creek and prevent erosion.  »

A small group of wealthy farmers receive the vast majority of water and subsidies from the federal Central Valley Project, concludes a groundbreaking report issued on December 15 by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).  »

Farmers in the Yuba-Sutter area who use environmental safeguards in growing crops may be eligible for financial incentives offered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's environmental quality incentives program.  »