If you have traveled I-5 between Woodland and the Sacramento River or I-80 between West Sacramento and Davis in the last week, you have witnessed something not seen in over a decade: an “inland sea” of water where seasonal wetlands and riparian vegetation usually dominate the winter landscape. As this California Office of Emergency Services … Continue reading “Flood Control Weir’d”

On January 2, Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, the Bureau of Reclamation, Western Shasta Resource Conservation District, California Department of Water Resources, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife completed the Cypress Avenue Bridge North – Side Channel Habitat Restoration and Enhancement Project in Redding.  This project, which created rearing habitat to benefit fish including the endangered … Continue reading “Partners Ring in the New Year with the Completion of a New Sacramento Valley Salmon Recovery Project”

There is a new and exciting conversation underway in the Sacramento Valley about how functional flows can serve multiple beneficial purposes, including water for fish, farms, birds, cities and recreation. Importantly, this is a different conversation than the discourse over the past several decades to continually add additional water to sterile, inhospitable river channels in the Delta. The more modern conversation–spreading the water out and slowing it down throughout the Valley–is showing promise to improve the food-web and habitat necessary to recover salmon and other fish in both the Sacramento Valley and the Delta; while the old discourse has led to fish declines and frustrated water users.