Sacramento River

Despite a historic shutdown of coastal salmon fishing, the number of salmon returning to the Sacramento River is collapsing, according to preliminary data released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council. Returning fall Chinook salmon numbers have dropped to their lowest level since monitoring began in the 1970s, the report said. The finding means it is unlikely that fishing will resume this year, disappointing fishermen who have eked out the last two years on disaster aid, waiting for salmon fishing bans to be lifted.

SACRAMENTO - Maybe Gov. Jerry Brown has been in China too long. Because some presumably serious comments by him while riding a bullet train were amusing head-shakers. "People here do stuff," the governor marveled, according to an article by Times reporter Anthony York. "They don't sit around and mope and process and navel-gaze. " Compared to California, Brown continued, "the rest of the world is moving at Mach speed. " Time out, governor. Back to reality. First, China is a nation with deep pockets, not a state that until very recently was hemorrhaging red ink. Second, and more important, it is an authoritarian regime that just shoves people off any land wanted for building a rail line, a toxic dump or a massive water project.

The state Department of Fish and Game does not intend to stock the upper reaches of the Sacramento River near Dunsmuir with hatchery-raised trout, officials said Friday. But the department will repopulate a 40-mile stretch of the river with wild rainbow trout in an attempt to restore fish life to the area contaminated by a chemical spill from last summer's train derailment. Under the plan, employees will capture 50 pairs of adult rainbow trout from an unaffected area of the river above Dunsmuir.

In a step that has become more routine over the last decade, water exports to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California have been reduced to avoid killing endangered delta smelt. State and federal water managers said Tuesday that early winter pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has been curtailed because too many of the native fish were dying at the delta's export pumps. At this point it is difficult to say what effect the pumping cutbacks could have on water deliveries.

To many motorists, Interstate 5 north of Sacramento seems to go on forever. Fortunately, relief from California's "ag country" autobahn is possible at two state recreation areas on the banks of the Sacramento River. These small parks--Colusa-Sacramento River and Woodson Bridge--offer an opportunity to tube or swim the river, and to get an up-close look at both the natural and cultivated sides of the great Sacramento Valley.

A derailed Southern Pacific tanker car spilled as much as 19,000 gallons of a toxic pesticide into the Sacramento River 50 miles north of Redding, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of residents, killing tens of thousands of fish and devastating the ecosystem along a 40-mile stretch of the waterway, officials said Monday.

pite mid-January storms, there is only a 10% chance of a normal runoff of water into the Northern California dams that supply much of the state during drought, the Department of Water Resources said in its latest forecast of runoff in the Sacramento River watershed. Most of California's reserve water supply is stored in three large dams on the Sacramento and its tributaries.

Workers say they have nearly finished cleaning up a toxic chemical that spilled into the Upper Sacramento River in a train derailment, killing plant and animal life as it flowed into Shasta Lake. "I would say that the first stage will be over soon," said Dennis Wilson of the state Regional Water Quality Control Board. "Now what we're looking at is restoration . . . of the river. We're away from the toxics problem and into the biological problem of how to restore the ecosystem."

Turtle Bay Museum opens this week as the focal point of a 300-acre park being developed along the Sacramento River in the heart of Redding in Northern California. The museum presents the art, history and natural environment of the region.

In California's worst river disaster ever, the fishery in a 40-mile stretch of the upper Sacramento River to Lake Shasta was wiped out after a derailed tanker car spilled thousands of gallons of metam-sodium--a toxic weed-killer--last weekend. Experts predict it will take 10 years for the upper Sacramento River to completely recover from the catastrophe.

SUTTER ISLAND, Calif. - As a child, Brett Baker learned farming fundamentals from his grandfather, who taught him to drive a tractor and gave him some advice about water. "There may come a time," his grandfather said, "when you have to grab a shotgun and sit on the pump. " The vast delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers east of San Francisco, where Baker's family has lived and farmed since the 1850s, has long been the center of the state's chronic water conflicts. It is the switchyard of California water, the place where the north's liquid riches are shipped to the irrigation ditches of the San Joaquin Valley and the sinks of Southland suburbs.

The Delta King riverboat traveled from Sacramento to San Francisco on the Sacramento River in the early 20th century. It has been permanently docked in Old Sacramento, the hub of the city's historic heart. Groupon Getaways is offering an overnight stay on the floating hotel that comes with nice extras for $129 a night -- a savings of more than $150 -- for a limited time. The deal: The Groupon coupon costs $129, which includes a room for two aboard the boat with a view of the river (excluding tax)

Jeff Hart is a scientist who knows the history of the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta better than most. He explains its emergence from the Ice Age, traces it through the arrival of the Spanish, recalls the figures of the California Gold Rush and points out the reeds that give shelter today to its wild fowl and fish. Last week, as we skimmed across the breezy waters of Steamboat Slough, a rivulet of the delta just south of Sacramento, he reflected on all that and argued for a "water ethic" that would re-envision humanity's relationship to its most basic substance.

A drilling rig bit into the bed of California's biggest river, hauling up sage-green tubes of clay and sand the consistency of uncooked fudge. The rig workers rolled the muck into strips, dried it in sugar-sized cubes and crushed them under their palms. They packed slices into carefully labeled canning jars for testing at an engineering lab. They were taking the river bottom samples for a $13-billion project that would shunt water around ? or under ? the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the big aqueducts that ferry supplies south.

Despite a historic shutdown of coastal salmon fishing, the number of salmon returning to the Sacramento River is collapsing, according to preliminary data released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council. Returning fall Chinook salmon numbers have dropped to their lowest level since monitoring began in the 1970s, the report said. The finding means it is unlikely that fishing will resume this year, disappointing fishermen who have eked out the last two years on disaster aid, waiting for salmon fishing bans to be lifted.

Pet projects More than $1 billion of the proposed $11-billion water bond is earmarked for projects including: $250 million to remove dams in the Klamath River watershed, mostly for environmental purposes. $120 million for Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy projects, including connecting wildlife habitats and possible purchase of land for open space. $60 million to improve salmon passage in the Sacramento River watershed. $50 million for the state Coastal Conservancy for coastal salmon restoration projects.

During the Gold Rush days, steamboats with names like Martha Jane and Benecia chugged up and down the Sacramento River carrying passengers and freight from San Francisco to Red Bluff and back, stopping off at loading docks and ferry stations along the banks. The transcontinental railroad, with its speed, efficiency and relative low cost meant the end of the upper Sacramento River as a commerce center. Bridges replaced the ferries. Today, only pleasure boats or houseboats ply the river.

Fifteen years ago, when a train operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad derailed along a stretch of rugged river canyon and spilled its noxious cargo into the Sacramento River, company officials promised to take steps to prevent any future ecological disaster. But another spill occurred last Sunday, along the same stretch of track, with even more catastrophic results. Nearly 20,000 gallons of metamsodium, a pesticide used as a soil sterilizer, spilled into the Sacramento River.

Thomas J. Graff Lawyer shaped state water policy Thomas J. Graff, 65, a lawyer and environmentalist who helped influence California water policy as regional director of the Environmental Defense Fund for 37 years, died Thursday at an Oakland hospital of complications from thyroid cancer. Graff, of Oakland, opened the California office of the Environmental Defense Fund in 1971 and helped it become one of the most powerful voices on environmental issues such as climate change, oceans and water policy.

The chances that Sacramento will break the stalemate on California water policy this summer grew dimmer Tuesday when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would not sign legislation that didn't include bonds for new reservoirs and dams. The declaration signaled Schwarzenegger's dissatisfaction with a package of water bills Democrats are hoping to move through the Legislature before the mid-September adjournment. "I will not sign anything that does not have above-the-ground, below-the-ground water storage," the governor said at a news conference on the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento.