San Joaquin River

Historically, the San Joaquin is one of California's major rivers. It begins its 370-mile journey in the pristine waters of Thousand Island Lake in the Sierra near Mammoth Mountain. The stream courses down the western slope of the mountains onto the billiard table-flat San Joaquin Valley, takes a sharp right turn and then flows north up the valley to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay.

The Bay Delta Conservation Plan has the potential to untangle some of the expensive and inefficient knots in California's water supply system while repairing some of the damage done over the decades to the landscape and wildlife of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Gov. Jerry Brown's "preferred alternative" of tunnels around the delta may work - or it may not, and Californians still need to know more before committing the state to a new water diversion project. Analysis and environmental review are ongoing.

A judge has delayed a U.S. district court hearing on restoring flows in the San Joaquin River until after federal officials submit a record of decisions involved in building Friant Dam. The record dates back to the 1930s when federal officials began construction, which saved agriculture on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley but destroyed a chinook salmon run. Environmentalists sued the federal government in 1988 seeking restoration of the river.

Federal biologists have concluded that another native fish of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is headed toward extinction, underscoring the region's severe environmental problems. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday that it has determined that longfin smelt in the delta deserve Endangered Species Act protections. But the finding won't expand restrictions on the delta's water operations because the agency is simply designating the fish a candidate for listing.

Something is about to happen on California's second-longest river that hasn't happened this time of year since Harry Truman was president. Water is going to start flowing down two stretches of the San Joaquin that have been sucked dry since Friant Dam began diverting most of the river into two giant irrigation canals. Today dam managers will crank up releases of water into the San Joaquin as part of an ambitious restoration program intended to return chinook to the once salmon-rich river by late 2012.

A new state report on selenium contamination in the San Joaquin River says cleanup efforts could put marginal farms out of business and cut the river basin's farm-related income by 13%. Hardest hit communities would be Los Banos and Dos Palos in Merced County and Firebaugh and Mendota in Fresno County, the study released Friday by the State Water Resources Control Board concluded.

A flesh-eating piranha--considered the most dangerous of fish--has been found in the San Joaquin River in western Fresno County, far from its native South America, state Department of Fish and Game officials said Tuesday. Officials were dispatched Tuesday to see if any more piranhas are in the water along a stretch of river where one was found north of Kerman near California 145 and Modoc Avenue.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the piranha-infested waters of the San Joaquin River . . . it was. State Fish and Game officials said Wednesday they are convinced that two exotic fish caught last weekend in a fishing hole near the central San Joaquin Valley farm town of Kerman do not represent a dangerous onslaught of South American piranhas, the furious, flesh-eating pit bulls of the deep.

The placid San Joaquin River erupted in a rampage Saturday that burst through farm levees and threatened towns along its length as state disaster officials braced for new flooding. Elsewhere in Northern California, the surging rivers that have forced evacuation of more than 100,000 people began to level off. But along the normally tranquil San Joaquin, the crisis may be just unfolding. "It's actually getting worse," said Bill Draper, spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources.

In the latest ruling in a long-running court case, a U.S. judge has found that the federal government violated environmental laws when it renewed long-term contracts for a group of irrigation districts that get water from the San Joaquin River. The 78-page opinion, issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento, found that the U.S.

A judge ordered a federal agency Tuesday to rewrite protections for migrating salmon that have reduced water shipments from Northern California, concluding that some of the pumping curbs were based on "equivocal or bad science. " But in a mixed ruling, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger also said that the National Marine Fisheries Service was justified in finding that government water operations that export supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta jeopardize dwindling populations of chinook salmon and several other fish on the endangered species list.

A group of San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts is demanding that the federal government close the just-revived commercial salmon season off the Oregon and California coasts, a move bound to further inflame relations between farmers and salmon fishermen. In a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed Thursday, the San Joaquin River Group Authority contends that federal fishery managers acted improperly when they recently reopened the commercial salmon season after two years of unprecedented closures.

A proposal to build a large water tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is incomplete, confused and plagued by a number of scientific gaps despite years of study, according to a National Research Council report. The document bolsters criticisms that the agencies overseeing the project are not seriously evaluating alternatives and are instead pursuing a preordained outcome without examining the effects. "The lack of an appropriate structure creates the impression that the entire effort is little more than a post-hoc rationalization of a previously selected group of facilities," write the authors, an independent panel of scientists and other experts.

State officials Wednesday recommended construction of a $13-billion tunnel system that would carry water under the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to southbound aqueducts, a project that would replumb a perpetual bottleneck in California's vast water delivery network. The proposal is far from final. It faces a new administration, lengthy environmental reviews and controversy over how much water should be exported from the Northern California estuary system that serves as a conduit for water shipments to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.

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.

Californians need to take significantly less water from the state's single largest supply, according to a state report that could lay the foundation for more limits on water shipments to the Southland. The State Water Board document provides new ammunition in the intensifying battle over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a source of water for roughly two of three Californians and a long-time victim of the state's great thirst. The draft report, released Wednesday, acknowledges that the delta's many environmental problems extend beyond water diversions.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has drawn up legislation that for the next two years would loosen Endangered Species Act restrictions on pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to increase irrigation deliveries to San Joaquin Valley growers. Feinstein has not released details of the proposal, which she is calling the Emergency Temporary Water Supply Amendment and which is expected to be attached to a jobs bill. In a statement Thursday she said that the language had not been finalized and that she was open to "alternative ways" of boosting water supplies for the valley's west side, which has been hit hard by delivery cuts caused by the state drought and the pumping limits.

Something is about to happen on California's second-longest river that hasn't happened this time of year since Harry Truman was president. Water is going to start flowing down two stretches of the San Joaquin that have been sucked dry since Friant Dam began diverting most of the river into two giant irrigation canals. Today dam managers will crank up releases of water into the San Joaquin as part of an ambitious restoration program intended to return chinook to the once salmon-rich river by late 2012.