Worst Salmon Season in Eight Years Projected in California

California fishermen are bracing for the worst salmon season in eight years, one so grim that many will likely sit the season out completely. Years of drought and unfavorably warm ocean conditions that existed when this year’s potential crop of king salmon was young...

Risks Soar, Bills Come Due as 20th-Century Dams Crumble

First part of a series. For nearly 50 years, Oroville Dam has been the linchpin of a sprawling state plumbing system that draws water from wet Northern California to 25 million people and thousands of acres of farmland in the arid south. That changed Feb. 7 when a...

What do Stream Fish do During Flood Flows?

My local stream, Putah Creek, looks like a river these days.  Water is pouring down the Glory Hole of Lake Berryessa and rushing in muddy turmoil from the ‘dry’ creeks that are its main tributaries.   The creek’s deeply incised and leveed channel is containing the...

Riverbanks Collapse after Oroville Dam Spillway Shut Off

When state water officials scaled back their mass dumping of water from the damaged Oroville Dam this week, they knew the riverbed below would dry up enough to allow the removal of vast piles of debris from the fractured main spillway. But they apparently did not...

President Trump Attacks Clean Water

Today, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to begin repealing the Clean Water Rule, a landmark measure many years in the making. Likewise, new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt recently...