NEWS WORTH NOTING: DWR and Reclamation Recirculate Draft Environmental Document for Fremont Weir Adult Fish Passage Modification Project.
DWR and Reclamation Recirculate Draft Environmental Document for Fremont Weir Adult Fish Passage Modification Project From the Department of Water Resources and the Bureau of Reclamation: The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) are recirculating for public review the Biological Resources portion (Section 3.5) of the draft Initial Study and Environmental Assessment (IS/EA) and proposed Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) for the proposed Fremont Weir Adult Fish Passage Modification Project, located in the northern portion of the Yolo Bypass, approximately 8 miles northeast of Woodland in Yolo County.
The purpose of the proposed project is to improve fish passage at the Fremont Weir and within the Tule Canal.
The project would modify an existing fish ladder at the Fremont Weir and improve fish passage within the channel both upstream and downstream of the Fremont Weir.
Construction is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2017.
The Biological Resources portion of the document is being recirculated to provide public review of changes related to adverse impacts to sensitive species and habitat.
Changes in the draft IS/EA are indicated by underline for new text and strikethrough for deleted text.
Public comments are only being accepted on the Biological Resources portion of the draft IS/EA, which is available for public review from Monday, May 15, through Tuesday, June 13, 2017.
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BLOG ROUND-UP: Bloggers on Oroville Dam, Delta smelt salvage, Water law and drought, Stockton and sea level rise, and more ….
Brown – his son is the current governor for those not familiar with California politics – as a pushy politician looking for a legacy.
Restore the Delta writes, ” … Reporters Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler examined CA’s deep history of irresponsible infrastructure planning—a statewide problem passed down from father (former-governor Pat Brown) to son (current Governor Jerry Brown)—in an article published Sunday.
… ” Read more from the PPIC Blog here: Water law aided ecosystems in drought Abolish private property in water?
… ” Continue reading at the Master Resource blog here: Abolish private property in water?
California needs markets (Stroshane reconsidered) Governor Brown cuts $100 million for drought response in revised budget: Restore the Delta writes, “Governor Brown’s May revision of the California Budget released Thursday slashed over $100 million in funds designated for drought response.
… ” Continue reading at Restore the Delta here: Governor Brown cuts $100 million for drought response in revised budget Where your water goes after it goes down the drain: Bad Mom, Good Mom writes, “Last November, I had the opportunity to chaperone my daughter’s class when they visited the West Basin Water District’s Edward C. Little Water Recycling Facility in El Segundo, California.
… ” Continue reading at the Bad Mom, Good Mom blog here: Where your water goes after it goes down the drain Stockton of the future?
Using less water on the Lower Colorado River: John Fleck writes, “At the end of April, Lake Mead sat at 1,085 feet above sea level, more than eight feet higher than it was a year ago.
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Josh Newton’s Water Jobs & More – 16 May 2017.
All things freshwater: news, analysis, humor, reviews, and commentary from Michael E. ‘Aquadoc’ Campana, hydrogeologist, hydrophilanthropist, Professor of Hydrogeology and Water Resources Management in the Geography Program of the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS) at Oregon State University, Emeritus Professor of Hydrogeology at the University of New Mexico, Past President of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) and Past Chair of the Scientists & Engineers Division of the National Ground Water Association (NGWA).
He is President of the nonprofit NGWA Foundation and the nonprofit Ann Campana Judge Foundation, an organization involved with WaSH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) in Central America.
He serves on the Steering Committee of the Global Water Partnership (GWP).
CYA statement: with the exception of guest posts, the opinions expressed herein are solely those of Michael E. Campana and not those of CEOAS, Oregon State University, ACJF, AWRA, NGWA, GWP, my spouse Mary Frances, or any other person or organization.

@ledgercity BARTOW – Polk County officials on Monday urged residents in Southwest Polk County to stick to watering their lawns no more than twice a week after its 3,400 customers used twice as much reclaimed water last week in the drought-stricken area as the previous one. “If we don’t get rain and don’t get compliance voluntarily, we may have to go to mandatory one-day-per-week watering,” County Manager Jim Freeman said during an agenda study. Marjorie Craig, director of Polk County Utilities, said she and others can’t remember a time in the Southwest area where the county has been required to issue a warning. “We’re…

At the April meeting of the California Water Commission, Trevor Joseph and Steven Springhorn with the Department of Water Resources Sustainable Groundwater Management program gave a high-level overview of how groundwater sustainability agency formation is going so far, along with a preview of new data tools that the Department is working on to provide information to the groundwater sustainability agencies as they are developing their groundwater sustainability plans.
The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act requires local agencies who want to be the Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) for their groundwater basin submit notification to the Department in order to potentially avoid State Water Resources Control Board intervention; it is also a signal to the state that these local agencies intend to prepare groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs).
Mr. Joseph noted that there’s a lot of blue on the map, meaning a lot of local agencies have come together especially in the last few months and have worked out the details to submit GSA formation notifications to the Department.
SGMA and the GSP regulations allow for the public to comment on the alternatives.
Steven Springhorn, Senior Engineering Geologist with the Department’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Program, then updated the Commission on the work that the Department has been doing to provide technical assistance to the newly forming GSAs and their efforts to develop groundwater sustainability plans.
“But we are also hearing and fully expect that locals also need help and assistance through this, so the assistance is what we’re developing now.” Mr. Springhorn’s presentation was focused more on statewide tools, analysis, and data sets, but there are other additional areas that the Department is working on.
“We’ve been providing data, tools, and analysis, the CASGEM program, which is a key piece for groundwater level information; there are different maps and different reports that we’ve done throughout the years,” he said.
SGMA puts an emphasis or premium on having informed decisions over this long planning horizon.” Mr. Springhorn noted that there are a lot of requirements to compile data in SGMA and the GSPs, but that data is distributed in a number of areas and different websites within our agency and other state and federal agencies.
“There are a number of data requirements in the water budget, and we plan to provide the tools necessary to complete those requirements, such as models throughout the state,” Mr. Springhorn said.
Trevor Joseph then concluded the presentation by noting that now that the legislative requirements are mostly behind them, the Department is really focused on providing the financial planning and technical assistance moving forward so that local agencies can complete their plans on time, either by 2020 or 2022.

Reserves slump after 36,000 tons released to grain millers Kenya had insufficient rains in crop-growing regions this year Kenya’s reserves of corn dropped to less than a day’s worth of consumption after stocks of the staple grain were released to millers, the National Cereals and Produce Board said.
The board released about 36,000 tons to millers last week, he said.
The NCPB is awaiting information from the Agriculture Ministry about how the reserve will be restocked, Terer said, declining to comment further.
Most weather stations reported receiving less than 75 percent of their seasonal long-term average, it said.
“The depressed rainfall over most agricultural areas in the country has resulted in poor crop performance and even crop failure in some regions,” it said.
Of that, about 135,000 tons is packaged and sold by millers, CMA Chairman Nick Hutchinson said in an interview on Tuesday.
Reserve corn sold to CMA members for 3,000 shillings ($29) per 90-kilogram bag was enough for only 8-12 days and insufficient to drive retail prices down, the industry body said last week.
Millers are now forced to buy from the market for almost 50 percent more.
While some shipments from Mexico are already at the port in Mombasa, the berthing of the first vessel will only take place on May 17 if the rainy weather permits, according to the statement.
“Do we get maize or not?”

Walker County and northwest Alabama are still officially lingering in a small drought, while southeast and northeast Alabama have essentially returned to normal.
The lowest level, abnormally dry, is seen over central Alabama and other parts of the state.
However, the middle level of drought, severe drought, continues to hang over a tiny fraction of the southeast corner of the state and over extreme west Walker County, east Fayette County and north Tuscaloosa County, as well as the west tip of Jefferson County.
The Oakman and Townley areas appear to be affected in the agency’s map.
At the start of the calendar year 2017, almost 90 percent of the state was in at least severe drought, half of it had reached at least extreme drought, and 19 percent had been in the worst stage, exceptional drought.
Today, no parts of the state are in the two worst stages, with 44 percent of the state not at any drought level.
A total of 56 percent is at least in an abnormally dry state, while 28 percent is at least in a state of severe drought, which appears to be over two-thirds of Walker County.
In surrounding areas, half of Winston and Cullman counties appear divided between abnormally dry and moderately dry, while most of Marion and Fayette counties are in moderate drought.
The National Weather Service in Birmingham posted on May 4 that beneficial rainfall had started falling the previous week, averaging 1-2 inches.
“This has resulted in stream flows returning to near normal levels across much of Central Alabama for the time of year,” the agency said at the time.

Water conservation messaging effectiveness during California’s ongoing drought.
Chapman University has published the results of a state-wide study on the communication campaigns California has been employing to address its ongoing drought.
"What we learned was counterintuitive to what we expected," said Jake Liang, Ph.D., assistant professor in Chapman’s School of Communication, and lead author on the study.
"Conservation campaigns, regardless of the strategy — in general — led to participants having an attitude change in a negative direction — meaning they were less inclined to take action to conserve water after seeing the messages.
The first phase identified 12 strategies of ongoing water conservation messages in California.
The most common strategies were conservation tips, which refer to messages that directly provide the individual with any type of content, tips and/or strategies to save water; and referrals and redirection, which refers to messages that aim to direct a person to another source of information about conservation.
In phase 3 participants’ attitudes were assessed before reading a water conservation message and again afterward.
In this phase the researchers focused specifically on three strategies: loss aversion, evidence of drought, and conservation tips and how effective they were individually and used in combinations.
Given this finding, campaign practitioner may need to reconsider using these strategies or at least monitor if their use indeed leads to the well-intended results.
Although their study did not test directly for the specific reason for the negative effect, they discussed some possibilities: People feel that conservation messages threatened their freedom to choose, Which message strategy is used, The possibility that an individual simply cannot conserve water, The source’s credibility is questioned.

Drought may be over but challenges remain.
Given the amount of rain we’ve had over the past few days, it likely comes as no surprise to Essex County residents that the state’s months-long drought has officially ended.
That’s a stark contrast to the end of last year, when 98 percent of the state was under some sort of drought status, according to the monitoring agency.
“There are still some indicators of long-term dryness in the region, but the most recent wet pattern has eliminated all drought concerns for the time being,” Brian Fuchs of the National Drought Mitigation Center wrote in his Monitor report last week.
While we should be thankful those conditions have abated, we should also be aware they can return with another stretch of dry weather.
(The river normally supplies 32 million gallons of water to local cities and towns every day.)
“Under natural conditions, a river like the Ipswich River would be able to withstand a few drought years, but now so little water was getting into the groundwater that the river would die during a drought year like 2016 and it would take at least a decade for it to fully recover.
And that would be if no more droughts occurred, an exceedingly unlikely event.” Clearly, we should be doing more to conserve water, drought or no drought.
The average Massachusetts resident, however, uses anywhere from 75 to 167 gallons of water a day.
Adding low-flow appliances and cutting back on watering the lawn can reduce per-capita water consumption to 20 gallons a day, the Watershed Association estimates.

Year-long drought declared over in Seacoast.
bearly@seacoastonline.com @briantemprano DURHAM — The drought is over.
The latest report from the U.S. Drought Monitor released last Thursday shows all of New England, except for a band in Connecticut, as fully recovered from the drought that has, at times, challenged water resources in the area in the past year.
A year ago, much of Southern New Hampshire and Southern Maine were classified by the Drought Monitor — a partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — as abnormally dry.
By the end of September, the southern half of Strafford County, all of Rockingham County, most of York County, Maine, as well as half of Massachusetts, was classified by the Drought Monitor as being in extreme drought.
Even last month, much of the southern half of the New Hampshire was considered abnormally dry.
“This is good going into the summer.
The region will use more water in the summer, as the heat will evaporate some of the water and people will use more of it, like in gardens and washing vehicles.
The recharge of the ground water should also help those with wells.
Last month, Brandon Kernen, the manager of hydrology and conservation at the state department of environmental services, said at least 500 wells have failed since 2016, “and that (estimate) is low.” Kernen urged any homeowner or business owner who has experienced a well failure last year to complete the “Drought Economic Impact Survey,” which the state will use in “identifying the location and severity of drought impacts for assessing drought response needs,” according to the survey form.