Earth
There's a rush of water and hundreds of juvenile salmon swimming through the San Joaquin River near Fresno.
It's that time of year again -- time to mimic spring conditions and learn how salmon react to the river.
As they did last year, federal and state agencies released fish into the river in the experimental stage of reviving of the San Joaquin. A similar fish experiment took place last year.
Salmon runs died off more than half a century ago after Friant Dam was completed. Government scientists need to understand how the fish will react to the river as the restoration continues.
About 700 young fish were put into the river this week to see how many make it 60 miles downstream to Mendota Pool. The fish have been tagged, and some high-tech methods are being used to track their progress.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which owns Friant Dam, has increased water releases from Millerton Lake into the river as part of the experiment. The flow helps the young fish move through the river, as it would in nature, biologists say.
If you're canoeing the river, you'll notice this extra flow. It will continue most of the month, the Bureau says.
By late December, the Bureau is supposed to begin restarting salmon runs. But key projects -- such as a bypasses the Mendota Pool -- have not been completed.
So will the Dec. 31 salmon deadline be delayed?
That subject is being discussed among the three signatories to the 2006 restoration agreement, which ended an 18-year legal fight. The groups include the federal government, environmentalists and Friant Water Association, representing thousands of farmers who have used the river for irrigation over many decades.
Nothing has been announced publicly yet.
Enormous, old trees dominate more than the view in the Sierra Nevada. They are the biggest consumers of climate-warming carbon dioxide, says one researcher.
Just a few towering firs, pines and cedars per acre in a 63-acre plot within Yosemite National Park provide almost half the usual benefits of plants, says James Lutz, a University of Washington researcher.
"In a forest with large trees like the one we studied, if you lose one percent of the trees, you could lose half the biomass," he said.
Lutz is the lead author on a paper described as the biggest study yet on the importance of big trees in forests. The paper was published online this week.
The Yosemite area in the study is among the largest, fully-mapped plots in the world. In other words, scientists have a running count of trees in the 63 acres -- 34,500 live ones.
But the scientific catalogue of the forest is more than live trees. It includes snags, downed woody debris and forest duff -- the carpet of decaying plant matter on the forest floor.
Live and dead biomass totals 280 tons per acre, which is considered a huge load in any forest.
There's a good reason why Yosemite's 63-acre plot of forest is so important for research. It has never been logged.
Yet scientists report the density of large-diameter trees has declined nearly 25% between the 1930s and the 1990s. Scientists suspect climate change could be playing a part.
Next year, the federal government will start checking drinking water for a newly recognized contaminant -- 1,2,3-trichloropropane or TCP.
It's a so-called "garbage" chemical found in a farm fumigant that was widely used decades ago in the San Joaquin Valley. It already has been found in many Valley water systems.
TCP is called garbage because it came from the waste stream of another product, and it had no value as a fumigant. Now it has been linked with cancer.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will monitor the detections of TCP for the next couple of years and use the information to regulate it.
The EPA will pay for the analysis of all samples from systems serving 10,000 or fewer people. The agency also will arrange for the collection of samples from the systems that participate.
The majority of EPA's $20 million budget for this monitoring will go to small water systems, the agency reported. There are hundreds of such systems in the San Joaquin Valley.
EPA will pay for the analysis of all samples from systems serving 10,000 or fewer people and will arrange for the collection of samples from the systems that participate in the Pre-Screen Testing.
The southern Sierra got just enough rain and snow in early April to boost farm water deliveries to 50%, says the federal agency that owns Friant Dam.
That's an increase of 5% from the announcement two weeks ago by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
For those who don't closely follow this stuff, it means the miserably dry winter wasn't quite as bad as it could have been, thanks to storms in March and April. A couple of months ago, the bureau was projecting only 35% deliveries.
The 50% projection means about half of the Class I deliveries will be made. That amounts to 400,000 acre-feet. There won't be any deliveries made for the Class II.
A check of the state government's web site reveals the southern Sierra snowpack is less than a quarter of the size it usually is in late April.
For the third year in a row, the American Lung Association's annual air-quality report is warning folks in San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles that dirty air threatens their health.
And for the third year, I ask: What dirty air? The two cities are among the cleanest in California.
I asked politely about it in 2010. Got no response. I got a little pushy in 2011. Nothing. Now, after asking again this year without a response, we need to just agree to ignore this little part of an otherwise valuable "State of the Air" report.
Here's the lowdown:
The San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles area is the ninth worst ozone villain in the country, says the 13th American Lung Association "State of the Air" report.
The last time San Luis Obispo violated the federal eight-hour standard was 2008. Paso Robles hasn't had a violation since 2005.
Bakersfield, which is ranked third worst in the nation, violated twice last weekend. That's what a real ozone problem looks like.
Yet, according to the Lung Association, San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles are worse than Merced, which has violated the standard more than 80 times since 2008.
How could any scientist make such a claim with a straight face?
My theory: San Luis Obispo County has a monitor near the Kern County line. It's at 2,300-foot elevation in the Red Hills. The county also has a monitor at a school on the Carrizo Plain, also much closer to the San Joaquin Valley than Paso Robles or San Luis Obispo. Kern ozone-making gases float to those monitors.
The Lung Association did mention this week that the San Luis Obispo problem is an example of ozone transport. If that's true, why doesn't the monitoring data in San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles support it?
How about a laser light show instead of fireworks on the Fourth of July?
That's the latest brainstorm at the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, which worries about the dangerous shower of particle pollution that often accompanies fireworks on Independence Day.
The district today voted to make $30,000 available to help stage three July Fourth celebrations in the Valley with a laser show instead of fireworks. It's a kind of pilot project. If it helps reduce pollution, the district might expand it next year.
This year, the district will pay for half of three established shows, up to $10,000 apiece. The board wants to divide the money among the Valley's three regions -- north, central and south. The district will seek organizers of established shows to see if there is any interest.
Hanford is reportedly holding a laser show instead of fireworks this year because the cost of the fireworks show has become prohibitive.
The health risks on the Fourth of July have been well-documented, say air quality experts. Between 9 and 11 p.m., particle readings often bounce several times higher than the federal standard. The sky is showered with smoke and metals, such as magnesium, copper and barium.
The metals can cause a range of problems, including skin irritations, muscle weakness and even confusion in people with kidney problems.
Welcome to April in Central California. It was winter last week. Lovely spring this week. And summer by Saturday. Pay attention, because this kind of variety will not last and ozone season is just about to start.
You can drive for 90 minutes in the Sierra and see California poppies, running rivers and snow as you get to higher elevations.
The show started in the early hours of Sunday, April 6, when the mercury dropped to 38 degrees in Fresno. Later in the week, winter storms battered California and left a few feet of snow in the Sierra.
The last several days have been sunny yet breezy, so the air has stayed fairly clean.
But, as I said, we are on the edge of warmer weather. The low 90s forecast for the weekend may bring the first federal ozone violation of the season.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved a cap on ozone-making gases coming from farm pesticides, but it's not going to make air-quality activists happy.
Jared Blumenfeld, EPA administrator for this region, told me the cap is 18.1 tons per day of volatile organic compounds or VOCs in the San Joaquin Valley. VOCs? Think of fumes coming from the chemicals.
Environmentalists have fought this 18.1-ton proposal since the state began using it a few years ago. The Valley's farms are only putting out 16.8 tons right now. So, activists are asking how this makes the air any cleaner.
Turns out, this is more of a bookkeeping action related to the past. The additional pollution reduction could take place in the future as authorities lower the limit.
The 18.1 tons equate to a 12% reduction from the 20.5 tons per day that were emitted in 1990, Blumenfeld said. The 12% reduction was a commitment made in the 1990s, but it has not been part of air quality plans approved by EPA.
So, this rule applies to the1990 level. As Blumenfeld says, it's a baseline.
Here's a good question: If the state already has this cap, why does anyone care if it is enforced by the federal government too?
Because if there is a dispute about any of this -- and, trust me, there is -- activists can sue EPA in federal court under the U.S. Clean Air Act. The act carries sanctions to make sure federal requirements and rulings are carried out. In other words, federal law has a hammer.
In fact, the announcement of the cap this week is the result of a federal lawsuit from activists. People have 30 days to comment about it. A final announcement will come later this year. And it's possible you may see activists go right back to court over it.
It's no March miracle, but April storms have been kind of amazing.
One colleague suggested calling it the April anomaly. It doesn't have the ring of March miracle, the1991 series of endless Pacific storms that hosed the state, but it's pretty accurate.
The April anomaly has boosted the northern Sierra snow back to average for mid-April. I think we could call it amazing April, given the fact that the snowpack was only about a third of average in early March. The northern Sierra snowpack provides water for west Valley farmers.
Flash back to March 1991. Fresno got 7.24 inches of rain -- the city's average for a full year is only 11.5 inches. That one month was the only bright spot in a very dry winter.
So far this month, Fresno has 1.87 inches of rain, which is still a long way from the top 10 wettest Aprils here. But it's 1.33 inches more than average and slowly developing into a bright spot in the rainfall year. Fresno went rainless in December.
The question now: Is it over? I have no idea. But back in 1991, Fresno got a combined .05 of an inch of rain for April and May, following the March miracle. We're getting to dusty windshield time again.
With more than 1 million acres east of Fresno, the Sierra National Forest was a big, quiet part of California's environmental wars during the 1990s and early 2000s.
Nevertheless, like the rest of the mountain range, environmentalists and federal agencies have clashed here over the thinning of overgrown forests, protection of dwindling species and preserving large, older trees.
Now the Sierra National Forest will be among the first forests in the country to take a new approach in revising its plans to restore the resiliency of the thick forest, which is now susceptible to catastrophic wildfire and insect infestations.
If you're not familiar with the Sierra National Forest, think of such landmarks as Southern California Edison's Shaver and Huntington lakes. The forest surrounds these private lands.
Starting next month, the U.S. Forest Service will ask for help in revising its management plans. Leaders will ask lots of folks -- environmentalists, the timber industry, recreation enthusiasts, tribal leaders, surrounding communities and private landowners, such as Southern California Edison.
Continue reading "Sierra National Forest brings foes together for restoration" »
Robot squirrels are infiltrating rattlesnake country near San Jose in the name of research -- a research method that apparently is scathing on.
The robosquirrels help scientists record encounters with rattlesnakes, which researchers say are the main predators of squirrels.
University of California at Davis scientists say one of the videos shows a rattler biting the head of a robosquirrel.
The animal behavior research was funded in 2010 with a $390,000 from the National Science Foundation. Other animal robot research has been done with lizards and sage grouse hens.
When researchers have found a foraging rattler, they set up the robosquirrel and a video camera. From behind a blind, researchers watch. Snakes appear to accept the robosquirrel as real.
Maybe a new state law will have to be passed to get a study that could save taxpayers millions of dollars and healthy drinking water for two small Fresno County towns.
That's the conclusion Assembly Member Henry T. Perea, D-Fresno, reached after months of talking with the California Department of Public Health about the two small towns and their problems.
The towns in southwest Fresno County are Lanare and Riverdale. Side by side, only a few miles apart, they both have problems with naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water.
Lanare has a water treatment plant built several years ago, but townfolk can't afford to run it. So it's closed. Riverdale is working with state public health leaders to get funding to build its own treatment plant.
Wouldn't it make sense to see if the two towns could get together and solve both problems with one fix?
That's what Perea wants the state to study. But the public health department says funding grant rules won't allow that, he says.
"It makes no sense," Perea said. "All we're asking for is a thorough study."
So this month he is beginning to push Assembly Bill 2208, which provides the funding to study the fix and build it if it is feasible. The bill specifically mentions Lanare and Riverdale.
Perea also will be pushing Assembly Bill 2238, a more general law requiring the public health department to promote consolidation of small water systems serving disadvantaged communities.
He still holds out hope that he can persuade public health department leaders to push consolidation for Lanare and Riverdale. But he will pursue the bills if his talks prove fruitless.
"There's no reason it shouldn't be done," he said.
Raise your hand if you have strong feelings about cap-and-trade. Now, raise your hand if you really don't understand what it is.
My hand went up both times.
I have strong feelings -- mostly anxiety about explaining cap-and-trade in stories, like Bee reporter Tim Sheehan did on Sunday in a story about funding for high-speed rail. State authorities are talking about using cap-and-trade as a possible source of money for high-speed rail.
It's quite a load of cash -- an estimated $1 billion in the first year of cap-and-trade program aimed at reducing climate-warming carbon emissions, such as carbon dioxide.
I can describe the program, but people ask me a lot of questions I can't answer. How does this compare with Europe's cap-and-trade program? How do California's carbon reductions help the rest of the planet? Who counts the gases? Who verifies the counts? Who will catch the cheaters? Is this really just some kind of scam?
Continue reading "Cap-and-trade: One, two, pick up the cash" »
 In spring 1993, I was among a media horde following Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt up to magnificent Mist Falls in Kings Canyon National Park where he uttered his version of a comment I've hard many times.
"I'm never going to think of the Sierra as Yosemite anymore, " he said. "This is an awesome experience."
Awesome, yes. But, believe me, it did not change the Yosemite equation. A lot of folks still think of Yosemite as the Sierra. According to most tourism experts I know, it's still the biggest reason they come from all over the globe to see the Sierra.
And all that love is among the reasons why the National Park Service is trying for the third time to write a protection plan for Yosemite Valley, the tourism heart of the park. It's hard to get everyone to agree when there are so many people watching closely.
Continue reading "As 3rd planning attempt kicks off, Yosemite still in public's eye" »
 The snowpack is nearing 70% of average in the important Northern Sierra, which has California's largest reservoirs. It's a hopeful sign in spring after a dreadful dry winter.
But here in the Southern Sierra -- roughly bounded by the San Joaquin River watershed on the north -- it's still pretty grim. The Department of Water Resources web site shows the snowpack is 39% of average down here.
I got an email this week from a friend who works on snowpack measurement in the Southern Sierra. He said a helicopter crew flew over one area this week where the pilot could see the snowshoe tracks from the previous month's survey.
Let's hope the next storm will cover those tracks completely and provide better news next week. Because of the unsettled weather in the last week or so, snow measurement has been delayed in some places until next week.
Two other notes:
-- April 1 -- this Sunday -- is the unofficial end of the precipitation season. But we've had some decent snowstorms in spring before. Let's hope for a white April.
-- Thanks to the Yosemite Conservancy for those fabulous web cam photos, like the one above.
Last week, I wrote a blog about the local air agency giving commercial gardeners free electric leaf blowers and other lawn tools, triggering outrage among some readers who saw it as a government giveaway.
Environmental activists didn't like the idea either, saying it was just a distraction from the real task of cleaning up the air.
The $500,000 in freebies from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District are part of a one-year experiment to see how the tools stand up in daily use.
It's for private gardening businesses, public agencies, school districts and hospitals within the eight-county boundaries of the district, which range from Stockton to Bakersfield.
The experiment is a step toward cleaning up high-polluting equipment that operates around homes, schools, hospitals and other places where there are a lot of people.
If the experiment goes well, maybe the commercial gardening industry will turn to electric tools, and the air will be healthier in places where people live, attend school and work. That's the reasoning.
The $500,000 is basically public money. Half comes from state sources and the other half from Valley air district sources.
Said one blog commenter: "Are tax dollars being used to get gardeners to try electric leaf blowers? If yes, then baloney to this program, and I will stop and shame every gardener using one!"
A few callers challenged the idea that leaf blowers and other landscape maintenance equipment are even a big source of pollution.
They are right. The ozone-making gases from lawn equipment do not rank with diesel trucks, cars and farm sources, such as dairies.
Even so, gasoline-powered leaf blowers, lawnmowers and other tools run much dirtier than newer vehicles, the air district says.
Air leaders also bring up the noise factor, though it's not something they regulate. Electric lawn and garden tools are quieter.
I have not seen a survey that says a majority of Fresno residents oppose noisy leaf blowers. Some readers have told me they have no problems with the noise from a leaf blower.
But many folks around here have called me over the last decade, complaining about leaf blowers and suggesting they should be banned. And they're not alone in California.
Many cities have blower regulations and bans, including Berkeley, Del Mar, Los Angeles, Menlo Park, Mill Valley, Carmel and others.
Let's move beyond the noise, public money and pollution-making gases. Let's talk about the issue that seems to get the most attention from my callers and emailers -- the dust clouds from leaf blowers.
The tiny particle pollution is dangerous, particularly to the workers who breathe it all day. The microscopic specks get into the lungs and trigger asthma. The tiniest specks can pass into the blood stream and get into the heart and other organs.
There are precautions, such as wearing masks when using the blowers. Air district leaders have told me they advise gardeners not to blow the debris into the street. There are other ideas to reduce risk, such as pausing when people walk by.
Bottom line, powered by electricity or gasoline, a leaf blower needs to be used wisely and courteously, say the readers who call me.
Any gardeners out there looking for a quieter, air-friendly leaf blower? The local air-quality police are offering you quite a freebie. And it's not just for leaf blowers.
Commercial gardeners can get electric tools, such as blowers, mowers and trimmers, from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District this year. It's a $500,000, one-year experiment to see how the tools stand up in daily use.
It may not sound like a major campaign, but the district's experiment is a response to a big hassle in many neighborhoods.
Many residents don't like gasoline-powered leaf blowers, which are loud and dirty, though they are not a major villain in the Valley's nationally known air problems. Many opponents think they should be banned.
Electric leaf blowers cut out the ozone-making gases, oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds, as well as tuning down the noise.
Tiny particle pollution from leaf blowers would still be an issue but there are practices that can make it less of an air-quality problem. For instance, workers could avoid leaf-blower use around schools when children are outside or in the area.
The district has $500,000 to buy electric lawnmowers, edgers, trimmers, bush cutters, blowers and chainsaws. These zero-emission tools are not widely used in the commercial gardening business, say air district leaders.
Any commercial gardener can apply here. Or call (559) 230-5800.
The category includes private gardening businesses, public agencies, school districts and hospitals within the eight-county boundaries of the district, which range from Stockton to Bakersfield.
Environmentalists and some residents have long complained that leaf blowers are loud, dirty and a low priority for air-quality cleanup in the Valley.
After a decade-long lawsuit and $15 million legal costs, Yosemite National Park is going the extra mile to get folks involved in its third Merced River protection plan.
Park planners this week put out five preliminary options and asked the public to take a look. The options included something I've never seen before -- a limit to Yosemite Valley visitors. It's 20,500, the National Park Service says.
The number is important because people flock to the valley in warmer months to see the amazing panoramic of Yosemite Falls, Half Dome and El Capitan.
More than 4 million people visit the park each year, and a majority pass through the valley to gaze at the soaring, granite cliffs.
But the capacity of the valley also is important because it at the heart of the lawsuit that stopped two previous plans. Until now, the Park Service preferred not to specify the limit. Instead, crowds were managed by guiding people to other parts of the park.
In settling the lawsuit, park leaders agreed to set a capacity.
Read the five management concepts for yourself. In the first one, the concept includes permits to come into the valley for the day. The permits would be checked at entrance stations.
None of these concepts are alternatives in a formal draft Environmental Impact Report. That will come in September or October. Right now, the Park Service wants people to know what ideas are out there.
There will be workshops and site visits for the public, starting next week. If you don't want to be surprised by the alternatives this fall, I suggest you attend of these meetings.
Winter arrived over the weekend. Spring will arrive Tuesday. Some winters are like that in California.
Some parts of the Sierra got more than four feet of snow during the blizzard on Saturday. Santa Rosa in Northern California had more than four inches of rain.
But it only made a little dent in a dry season. The Sierra snowpack still is below 50% of average.
I checked the National Weather Service to see if any city has seasonal averages. I didn't find any.
Even with 1.78 inches of rain in three days, Fresno still has only 5.48 inches of rain. On average, the city usually has most of its 11.5 inches of rain by April 1.
The storm probably rescued the season from being a contender for the driest on record. Another wet weekend or two might not hurt. Either way, it looks like a pretty grim picture for snow runoff this spring and summer.
But as I and others have been saying all winter, the reservoirs are still pretty full of water from the big winter in 2011-2012.
In California, the scariest part is contemplating a second, consecutive dry year.
In the tiny Tulare County town of Seville, it's pretty a dramatic event when the only well puts out tainted water. This farmworker community can't afford to overhaul its water system.
We don't hear much about the same problems in Fresno, Bakersfield, Visalia and other larger San Joaquin Valley cities. Is their water quality better? Not really. But larger cities can financially cope with the problems.
Nitrates from fertilizers, septic tanks, sewage treatment plants and animal waste show up in many places around the Valley, including Fresno.
I'm mentioning it now because I just wrote a story about a University of California study focusing on the Valley's nitrate problems.
Fresno doesn't get a lot of ink in these kinds of studies. If one of its 250-plus wells goes bad, the city might shut it down. Or the bad water could be blended with cleaner water from another well. And the city could always drill a new well.
When you spread the costs in a city of a half million, the nitrate problem becomes almost invisible.
But the contamination is still taking a toll on resources, says Laurel Firestone, a lawyer who works for the nonprofit advocacy group Community Water Center in Visalia.
"This is a problem that affects more than just the disadvantaged communities," she said. "There are hidden impacts for Fresno and other cities. We need to address these problems."
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