As a follow-up to Friends of the Eel River’s May 14 press release, we are providing you with access to the key documents on closed door Eel River dams deliberations that we acquired through Public Records Act requests. Some of the notes were handwritten and difficult to read/understand. For these, we have transcribed the notes … Read more
A federal judge today ruled that federal regulators must push more water down the Klamath River in order to combat a deadly parasite that kills juvenile salmon in the springtime. Specifically, Judge William H. Horrick ruled that the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dams and diversions on the river, must provide two sorts … Read more
Tommy Williams—a fisheries biologist whose enthusiasm bubbles forth so swiftly, he’s often interrupting himself mid-sentence—is pacing on the banks of the Carmel River. “Amazing,” he says, snapping pictures of newly formed sandbanks and twigs wedged in between white alder, black cottonwood and willow trunks. It’s not the trees or twigs that delight him. It’s the thundering flow … Read more
According to a widely held belief, you can’t squeeze water from a rock. But researchers from UC Berkeley who are trying to better understand where water is stored in nature are challenging that old adage. By Amy Miller November 10, 2015 After nearly ten years of studying a steep, 20-square-mile area near the South Fork Eel … Read more
Water supplies for Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin counties this summer could hinge partly on the dwindling storage in a remote, drought-starved reservoir on the Eel River that serves as a cornerstone to the region’s water system. Water managers, fisheries biologists, environmentalists and PG&E have their eyes on Lake Pillsbury, a diminishing Lake County reservoir where … Read more
Summer 2014 Dear Friends I need to ask for a few minutes of your time to tell you about developments in our work to protect our wild and scenic Eel River. We are making real progress, though the challenges have in many ways never been greater. The North Coast has not been spared by the … Read more
%%wppa%% %%slide=3%% %%size=0.9%% %%align=center%% Photos taken during trespass grow cleanups in Mendocino county in May, 2014.
Federal regulators said they squashed Redwood Valley’s emergency request after weeks of negotiations because they are prohibited from doing anything that might further harm threatened and endangered fish in the Eel River. “It did not fit into our description of an emergency,” said Dick Butler, supervisor of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s North Central … Read more
Irrigation districts provide water that’s key to agricultural prosperity in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, but some of those districts also have been cashing in on the region’s water resources. … Concerns about falling groundwater levels persuaded Stanislaus County supervisors to outlaw groundwater mining last fall, but their ordinance exempted irrigation districts from the ban. … Read more
Veteran marijuana farmers say newcomers to Northern California’s pot hotbed use toxic, harmful methods to cash in “We need to (fully) legalizemarijuana and regulate it as we would any other industry,” he said. “Policymakers need to tell farmers, ‘Go ahead and grow if you comply with environmental standards and with public-health requirements.’” “No one wants to … Read more