Posted on Categories Land Use, Water, WildlifeTags , , , , , , , , Leave a comment on Close to Home: A plea to North Coast landowners to help coho salmon

Close to Home: A plea to North Coast landowners to help coho salmon

Thomas Howard & Charlton H. Bonham, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
From the moment they hatch, coho salmon fry rearing in the tributaries of Northern California watersheds such as the Russian River face an uphill battle for survival from predators, disease and lack of food in summer months before their migration to the Pacific Ocean.
This year, they face another devastating challenge — drought conditions. The drought is impacting businesses and people living in the Russian River watershed, too. It is impacting us all. But for the coho, there’s a way landowners and water rights holders can help.
In key tributaries of the Russian River such as Green Valley, Dutch Bill, Mill and Mark West creeks, surveys counting juvenile coho salmon in 2014 showed 97 percent fewer fish than in 2013. The loss was staggering. Few of the survivors made it to the ocean to feed, grow and eventually return, keeping nature’s chain of survival tentative but unbroken.
This year it’s critically important to help a new generation of fish survive. Juvenile coho rear in pools on these tributaries, and minimum flows are required to keep oxygen high, water temperatures cool and food production thriving in these streams. When flows get too low to keep pools connected, conditions deteriorate and the juveniles die.
This week, several hundred property owners and water right holders adjacent to these tributaries are receiving a joint letter from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the state Water Resources Control Board detailing how they can help with this challenge. May to December are critical months for these endangered salmon. We are urging property owners and water rights holders to work together in a voluntary effort to take just a minimal amount of water from these tributaries this year to give the coho a greater chance of survival than they experienced in 2014.
Through the governor’s leadership and executive orders, the Department of Fish and Wildlife created a voluntary drought initiative. Last year, we negotiated 22 voluntary agreements with landowners across the state. Fish and Wildlife signed these voluntary agreements and provided the willing partners regulatory coverage under the California Endangered Species Act for a specific time period.
We’ve already seen success when we have informally asked some Russian River water users to assist. In early April, we learned that some coho were trapped in a pool in Porter Creek that had become hydrologically disconnected and was in danger of drying up. E. & J. Gallo Winery agreed to release pulse flows into Porter Creek. Following that, tracking tags indicated that several hundred of those coho furthered their journey down the Russian River and toward the ocean.
We think that we can do this together with willing landowners across this watershed. There is a long-standing and strong commitment to stewardship of natural resources in the wine industry and in this region. We have taken the unusual step of publishing this public plea for help because we want to avoid a worse situation for all of us. In the absence of a sustainable voluntary commitment to not take water, the state water board may be required to act as it did in 2014 and this year with tributaries in the Sacramento River watershed and pass emergency regulations that compel curtailments by water right holders along these tributaries.
We remain hopeful these voluntary agreements will close the gap for this season and provide the juvenile salmon the necessary flow they need — and offer one less barrier to their survival for 2015. We appreciate the time and consideration of any landowners who take action and respond to our plea for help.
Thomas Howard is executive director of the state Water Resources Control Board. Charlton H. Bonham is director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
via Close to Home: A plea to North Coast | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Land Use, Transportation, WaterTags , , , , , , Leave a comment on Sonoma County yard waste compost operation in peril

Sonoma County yard waste compost operation in peril

Kevin McCallum, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Sonoma County’s beleaguered composting program now looks likely to shut down as legal and environmental challenges facing its operation atop the Central Landfill continue to mount.
If the closure that many now see as inevitable happens, thousands of tons of yard debris will need to be hauled to facilities outside the county, with disposal fees rising sharply to pay for the additional shipping costs.
“We’re going to have out-haul. Clearly that’s the writing on the wall,” Supervisor Shirlee Zane said. “It’s a huge disappointment, because ideally we’d like to be able to contain all of these programs and do this ourselves.”
The Sonoma County Waste Agency, a 10-member joint powers authority made up of nine cities and Sonoma County, has been struggling to contain the fallout of a federal lawsuit alleging that wastewater from the 25-acre composting operation has been polluting Stemple Creek for years.
Rainwater falls on open-air rows of compost, leaches through the piles, and is collected in what is now a 2-million gallon containment pond. During heavy rains, wastewater from the pond has spilled into the landfill’s stormwater collection system, which drains to the creek.
The lawsuit, filed by neighbors of the nearby Happy Acres subdivision, names the county, which owns the landfill, the waste agency, which leases the site, and Sonoma Compost, the private company that for more than 20 years has run the compost operation.
Read more via Sonoma County yard waste compost operation in peril | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Forests, Land UseTags , , Leave a comment on Sonoma County seeks assurances from Pomo regarding timber

Sonoma County seeks assurances from Pomo regarding timber

Clark Mason, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
The Kashia Band of Pomo Indians wants to expand its remote rancheria, and although Sonoma County officials are supportive, they want greater assurance to be able to weigh in on any timber harvest plans for the tribe’s newly acquired property.
The Kashia Pomos two years ago bought 480 forested acres next to their Stewarts Point Rancheria, about 30 miles north of Bodega Bay, with plans to preserve their cultural and spiritual sites and use the land for tribal gatherings.
“We don’t have a lot of really big, long-term plans for it,” Tribal Chairman Reno Franklin said Friday, adding that the tribe dismissed any possibility of a casino or commercial development due to the remote location.
Nor is the tribe’s intent to commercially harvest marijuana, as some tribes are pursuing.
“We take any drug use really seriously and don’t want to perpetuate it into the community,” he said. “We will not be entertaining, or considering in any way, marijuana cultivation on that land.”
The only intent, he said, is to “sustainably harvest timber.”
Because the 860-member tribe has applied to have its new property placed into federal trust — which would remove it from county jurisdiction and local land use and zoning guidelines — county officials want to see more analysis of foreseeable environmental impacts, in particular logging.
Read more via Sonoma County seeks assurances from Pomo regarding timber | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Land UseTags , Leave a comment on Vineyard development levels off on North Coast

Vineyard development levels off on North Coast

Bill Swindell,THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Ending five straight years of expansion, new vineyard development leveled off on the North Coast in 2014 as growers turned their attention to replanting existing vineyards.
Figures released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed there were 132,004 acres of vineyards in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties in 2014, a decline of 0.5 percent from 2013’s record-setting 132,697 acres.
More than 3,000 acres were not producing grapes — the most in three years. The vast majority of these vineyards are being replanted and are not yet mature enough to bear fruit. The flurry of replanting is the result of three consecutive bountiful crops, topped by last year’s record $1.46 billion harvest, which have given North Coast growers the financial resources to reinvest in their vineyards.
“There’s a lot of replanting of vineyards going on,” said Sonoma County Agriculture Commissioner Tony Linegar. “This has happened over the last several years.”
Sonoma County had 59,974 acres of vineyards, a 0.4 percent decrease from the 2013 record, according to the USDA. But non-bearing vineyards increased 13 percent, to 1,014 acres.
Read more via Vineyard expansion levels off on North Coast | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Forests, Land Use, Sonoma Coast, Sustainable LivingTags , Leave a comment on Timber family buys 30,000 acres of forest near Gualala

Timber family buys 30,000 acres of forest near Gualala

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A swath of coveted timberland near the town of Gualala is being sold to a Northern California family whose existing forest product interests include the Redwood Empire sawmills in Philo and Cloverdale, where logs from the site have been processed for some 30 years.
The Roger Burch family, owner of Redwood Empire and its parent corporation, Pacific States Industries Inc. in San Jose, is expected to close escrow on the property in June, taking possession of nearly 30,000 acres of mixed redwood and Douglas fir at the mouth of the Gualala River currently owned by Gualala Redwoods Inc.
Burch, who has long had timber holdings in Sonoma and Mendocino counties as well as the Bay Area, said he intends to continue what he called GRI’s intelligent management of the site.
“We think that property has been managed as well as any property in California — better than any property that we’re aware of elsewhere — and it’s our intention to practice the same forestry that’s been practiced there,” he said.
Reaction to the sale has been mixed, however, with some expressing disappointment the land will remain in the hands of a commercial timber company rather than conservation interests that made an unsuccessful bid for the property.
Chris Poehlmann, president of Friends of the Gualala River, a local nonprofit, said the watershed’s recovery from decades of logging depends on what he called “a lighter hand of somebody who has those kinds of principles and methods and techniques and attitudes toward the forest versus a commercial timber company.”
But many in the environmental community said the fact the buyer is a family-owned company with a local presence is a good omen, especially given the recent rise of timber investment funds and the high-yield pressures that could come into play.
“If you log all your trees you have an empty mill,” said Chris Kelly, California program director for The Conservation Fund, which led a consortium of conservation agencies that also bid on the property. “If you have an empty mill, you can’t sell to the lumber yard of Orchard Supply. So I think there’s an argument to be made that this is a healthy sign of investment in sustainable timber management.
Read more via Timber family buys 30,000 acres of forest near | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Land Use, Transportation, WildlifeTags , Leave a comment on 5-year roadkill effort tracks California's deadliest roads

5-year roadkill effort tracks California's deadliest roads

Ellen Knickmeyer, ASSOCIATED PRESS

TOP 5 DEADLIEST ROADKILL HOTSPOTS
1. Interstate 5, the state’s major north-south corridor: Particularly deadly for owls and other birds of prey, for black bears living near Mount Shasta in Northern California, and for all wildlife on the Tejon Pass linking Central and Southern California.
2. State Route 17 between San Jose and Santa Cruz: Deadly for puma, bobcats, deer and other animals.
3. Interstate 280 in the San Francisco Bay Area: Bad for deer.
4. State Route 50 in the Sierra Nevada Mountain area: Lethal for several species.
5: State Route 101 through Northern California redwoods: Lethal to all forms of wildlife.
Worst highway carving up animal habitat: Interstate 80 across the Sierra Nevada.

Busy freeways running alongside park land and marshes make San Francisco Bay Area roads a “ring of death” for wildlife, according to a new statewide roadkill report that tracks the deadliest traffic spots for wildlife.
Fraser Shilling, co-director of the Road Ecology Center at the University of California-Davis, used 29,000 volunteer reports of wildlife roadkill over five years to map the most lethal areas for the state’s 680 native species of bobcats, barn owls, frogs and other vertebrates.
The idea is to identify stretches that need immediate action to try to protect wildlife — and to make clear the overall toll that California’s car culture is taking on native species, Shilling said.
“Just having all the roads and traffic we have is resulting in really big changes in the ecosystem,” Shilling said. “It’s getting worse as you see more traffic and more roads.”
Roadways — which kill not only by collisions with cars but by carving up habitat — are the third-biggest cause of wildlife death, and the biggest cause for some state species, like pumas, he said.
Besides Interstate 80 and California 101 in the Bay Area, where large numbers of wading birds and water birds die, top roadkill spots include San Diego County’s California Route 94, which runs through wildlife habitat, and Interstates 80 and 5 in the Sacramento area under the Pacific Flyway migratory bird route.
One way to lessen deaths is to avoid planting roadsides with berries, blooms or other plants that attract wildlife. Highway crossings for wildlife – land bridges are best, but tunnels are more common — help some species, he said.
California’s move toward such wildlife crossings is “really far too slow,” Shilling said. “We need a 10-year program of 10- to 20 structures a year.”
Read more via 5-year roadkill effort tracks California’s deadliest roads | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Land Use, Sustainable Living, WaterTags , , , , , , Leave a comment on Here's the real problem with almonds

Here's the real problem with almonds

Tom Philpott and Julia Lurie, MOTHER JONES
Almonds: crunchy, delicious, and…the center of a nefarious plot to suck California dry? They certainly have used up a lot of ink lately—partly inspired by our reporting over the past year. California’s drought-stricken Central Valley churns out 80 percent of the globe’s almonds, and since each nut takes a gallon of water to produce, they account for close to 10 percent of the state’s annual agricultural water use—or more than what the entire population of Los Angeles and San Francisco use in a year.
As Grist’s Nathanael Johnson put it, almonds have become a scapegoat of sorts—"the poster-nut for human wastefulness in California’s drought." Or, as Alissa Walker put it in Gizmodo, "You know, ALMONDS, THE DEVIL’S NUT." It’s not surprising that the almond backlash has inspired a backlash of its own. California agriculture is vast and complex, and its water woes can’t hang entirely on any one commodity, not even one as charismatic as the devil’s nut almond.
And as many have pointed out, almonds have a lot going for them—they’re nutritious, they taste good, and they’re hugely profitable for California. In 2014, almonds brought in a whopping $11 billion to the state’s economy. Plus, other foods—namely, animal products—use a whole lot more water per ounce than almonds.
So almonds must be worth all the water they require, right? Not so fast. Before you jump to any conclusions, consider the following five facts:
1. Most of our almonds end up overseas. Almonds are the second-thirstiest crop in California—behind alfalfa, a superfood of sorts for cows that sucks up 15 percent of the state’s irrigation water. Gizmodo’s Walker—along with many others—wants to shift the focus from almonds to the ubiquitous feed crop, wondering, "Why are we using more and more of our water to grow hay?" Especially since alfalfa is a relatively low-value crop—about a quarter of the per acre value of almonds—and about a fifth of it is exported.
It should be noted, though, that we export far more almonds than alfalfa: About two-thirds of California’s almond and pistachio crops are sent overseas—a de facto export of California’s overtapped water resources.
READ MORE VIA Here's the Real Problem With Almonds | Mother Jones.

Posted on Categories Land UseTags , Leave a comment on Santa Rosa City Council denies Oakmont ridgeline appeal

Santa Rosa City Council denies Oakmont ridgeline appeal

Kevin McCallum, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
The Santa Rosa City Council declined a development firm’s request to remove its property from a ridgeline map in the city’s General Plan Tuesday.
On a 5-2 vote, the council rejected the request by Oakmont Senior Living to amend the map, which was added in 2002 in response to concern about rampant hillside development marring scenic views.
OSL representatives said the change, or alternatively the approval of a related environmental document declaring no negative visual impacts from a partial preliminary plan, would give the firm the confidence it needed to move forward with a seniors-only community on 68 acres off Elnoka Lane north of Oakmont.
But a majority of council members couldn’t see fit to make the general plan change before a full project was submitted, and city staff said approval the environmental document under those circumstances was inappropriate.
Mayor John Sawyer said he understood the developers wanting a “level of comfort” about the approvals process before moving forward. But he said he couldn’t see fit to back the “very unusual request” without “a fairly high level of compromise of our city project approvals process.”
via Santa Rosa City Council denies Oakmont ridgeline appeal | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Agriculture/Food System, Land Use, WaterTags , , , , , , Leave a comment on Study shows pot is sucking the Eel River dry

Study shows pot is sucking the Eel River dry

Linda Williams, WILLITS NEWS
California Dept. of Fish & Wildlife Study
Researchers from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife published a study in March on the impacts of marijuana growing on several Eel River segments including the Little Lake Valley’s Outlet Creek.
The researchers concluded pot growing has become so prolific in this region it is literally sucking the streams dry. The study found the quantity of unregistered water abuse was many times the registered water use in the areas studied.
Unlike regulated forms of agricultural, livestock, home and municipal diversions, the clandestine nature of Emerald Triangle marijuana cultivation means that growers have been free to drain the Eel River with few controls in place to prevent it.
Water hungry marijuana plants need maximum watering just as California’s Mediterranean climate enters its dry period and normal flows in area streams drop naturally.
By regulation, the Brooktrails and Willits water reservoirs, located on tributaries of Outlet Creek, can only store water for human use during the wet season, allowing all dry weather flows to pass through the dams to benefit the fish. For much of the last 10 years it appears these water releases have gone, instead, to support marijuana operations.
Read more via Study shows pot is sucking the Eel River dry.

Posted on Categories Land Use, Transportation, WaterTags , , Leave a comment on Large winery proposal on Highway 12 to undergo full environmental review

Large winery proposal on Highway 12 to undergo full environmental review

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A Napa County winemaker whose plans for a large-scale winery and distillery on Highway 12 between Sebastopol and Santa Rosa have sparked significant dispute since they were unveiled earlier this year has decided to subject the project to a full environmental impact report in hopes of addressing the public’s many questions and concerns.
Joe Wagner, a member of the Caymus Vineyards winemaking family, said it’s been clear for weeks that the breadth of opposition to his Dairyman project demanded greater effort on his part to demonstrate its potential for improving the site’s appearance and productivity without substantial environmental harm.
He said he confirmed his decision to engage in a full-scale independent environmental review for the project after meeting last week with 5th District Sonoma County Supervisor Efren Carrillo, who agreed it was the right approach.
“Obviously, it’s expensive and lengthy,” Wagner said Friday, “but it is something that allows the community the opportunity to join in and chime in and become part of the process.”
But it’s not clear additional study will assuage Wagner’s critics, some of whom are holding a community gathering Saturday in Jenner to discuss the larger winery backlash that organizer Shepherd Bliss said has coalesced around the Dairyman plan and other recent winery proposals.
Read more via Large winery proposal on Highway 12 to undergo | The Press Democrat.