“If you put marijuana on the agenda, they will come,” whispered the ghosts of old policy makers. And, lo, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board listened. At a packed meeting this afternoon, the board discussed its proposed regulations for Northern California cannabis cultivators. It was the second time this week, following the board … Read more
At the Potter Valley Water Project, owned and operated by PG&E, water is not wasted. It is waste. That’s because the two dams, the manmade lake, the reservoir, the tunnel and the Archimedes Screw, are all parts of a facility that produces between three and 8.4 megawatts of hydroelectric power. The water is just a … Read more
Water supplies for Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin counties this summer could hinge partly on the dwindling storage in a remote, drought-starved reservoir on the Eel River that serves as a cornerstone to the region’s water system. Water managers, fisheries biologists, environmentalists and PG&E have their eyes on Lake Pillsbury, a diminishing Lake County reservoir where … Read more
Pacific Lamprey spawning in Eel River below Tomki Creek, April 18 2015. Footage by Dustin Revel. Pacific Lamprey are the fish for which the Eel River was “mis-named”. Thought by white settlers to resemble Atlantic eels, lamprey actually lack the jaws and paired fins that distinguish other fish. They also have round sucker-like mouths, no … Read more
And Big Weed seems nearly as concerned about the loss of coho salmon as the timber industry was. In the last EcoNews, I wrote about the new federal Recovery Plan for coho salmon, and its warning that water diversions and sediment impacts associated with the booming marijuana industry present grave threats to coho recovery in … Read more
The Pacific Institute just released a report that evaluates how California’s drought has resulted in less energy produced by hydroelectric dams and a greater reliance on the more expensive process of burning natural gas. The current severe drought has many negative consequences. One of them that receives little attention is how the drought has fundamentally … Read more
Op-Ed published in LA Times March 12, 2015 By: Jay Famiglietti Given the historic low temperatures and snowfalls that pummeled the eastern U.S. this winter, it might be easy to overlook how devastating California’s winter was as well. As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall … Read more
Though humans have lived along the bountiful shores and rivers of the far North Coast for tens of thousands of years, the span of our now-dominant civilization’s history here has only begun to exceed a century and a half. Looking particularly at the environmental history of the Eel River, it’s striking that some of the … Read more
SEATTLE — The effects of dam removal are better known as a result of several new studies released this week by government, tribal and university researchers. The scientists worked together to characterize the effects of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history occurring on the Elwha River of Washington State. New findings suggest that dam removal … Read more
Friday, December 12, 2014 Dear Friends of the Eel River, It never rains but it pours. Here on the rainforest coast, the old saw often invokes less the classic series of unfortunate events than the fact that crisis and opportunity sometimes come, like our rain, by the bucket. After three long years of the most … Read more