Main Article Archive – California River Watch

US-101, Klamath, CA 95548, USA, United States

At last year’s COP26 in Scotland, the United States and more than 140 other countries made an ambitious commitment to reverse global deforestation by 2030 to help combat climate change. President Joe Biden declared that the United States would “lead by our example at home” to conserve and restore forest carbon sinks.

At this year’s COP27 global climate summit in Egypt, Biden takes the world stage as U.S. forest-management agencies are failing to live up to his promise. They’re logging carbon-rich, mature and old-growth trees and forests on federally owned lands undercutting […]

A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Forests and Global Change presents the nation’s first assessment of carbon stored in larger trees and mature forests on 11 national forests from the West Coast states to the Appalachian Mountains. This study is a companion to prior work to define, inventory and assess the nation’s older forests published in a […]

How California Could Save Up Its Rain Water to Ease Future Droughts

By Andrew Fisher, Resilience. January 15, 2023 Instead of watching epic atmospheric river rainfall drain into the Pacific. California has seen so much rain over the past few weeks that farm fields are inundated and normally dry creeks and drainage ditches have become torrents of water racing toward the ocean. Yet, most of the state remains in severe drought. […]

At Thursday’s status hearing for our federal lawsuit against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the neurotoxicity of fluoridation chemicals, the Judge acknowledged that “justice delayed is justice denied,” ultimately ruling against the EPA’s request for additional delay of the trial. The Court also set a timeline for the final phase leading up to a verdict. […]

By Lela Nargi, November 20, 2022 Deepak Palakshappa became a pediatrician to give poor kids access to good medical care. Still, back in his residency days, the now-associate professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem was shocked to discoverthat a patient caring for two young grandchildren was food insecure. “Our clinic had set up […]

theconversation.com Many of the companies promising “net-zero” emissions to protect the climate are relying on vast swaths of forests and what are known as carbon offsets to meet that goal. On paper, carbon offsets appear to balance out a company’s carbon emissions: The company pays to protect trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The company […]

NOAA/NCEI Climate Division Composite Precipitation Anomalies map image

Plot maps from the monthly NOAA/NCEI U.S. Climate Division dataset including means, anomalies, and climatologies. Maps can be created for an average (“composite”) of different years.

PALO ALTO – In a deep muddy creek near Silicon Valley’s busiest freeway, a large furry head pokes up. And then quickly submerges.

The brief sighting, along with a growing collection of video footage, confirms something remarkable:

A drip lawn watering system to make a yard suitable for low water use flora. from https://water.ca.gov/ article

As directed by 2018 legislation, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) today submitted a first report to the State Water Resources Control Board summarizing how urban water districts assess the adequacy of their supplies […]

Below is a graph showing the water use of California crops. As you can see, forage and alfalfa for livestock are the two thirstiest crops. Question in this time of impending climate crisis: Does it make sense to raise these thirsty crops in California at a time when available water is over allocated and our and our streams have substantially impaired flows for fish, wildlife and people relying on […]

BIG NEWS! The Court ruled in favor of our motion, and the lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in federal court is moving forward, bringing us another step closer to a final ruling. The court recorded the proceedings and will release it to the public. I was waiting to include a link to the recording in this bulletin, but it hasn’t been released yet. When it is, the Fluoride Action Network […]

The International Society for Children’s Health and the Environment (ISCHE) has awarded Philippe Grandjean, MD, DMSc, the Herbert Needleman Award in Children’s Environmental Health “for his […]

Researchers looked in the wrong place. Couldn’t find IQ loss that other studies found. In a classic Mutt & Jeff comic a drunk is crawling around on the ground under a streetlight, looking for his dropped coin. A cop asks, “Did you drop it here?” and the drunk replies “No, but the light is better here!” […]

By Janny Choy and Geoff McGhee Groundwater is back in the spotlight. Largely invisible, lightly regulated and used by 85% of California’s population and much of the state’s $45 billion agriculture industry, groundwater is a crucial reserve that helps stave off catastrophe during drought periods like we’ve experienced over the past three years. Unheralded, Underregulated and Overused, […]

October 3, 2022 Wetlands are inextricably connected to lakes and rivers and play a crucial role in maintaining water quality. It seems obvious that you can’t protect one without protecting the other, but the Supreme Court is questioning that wisdom in a case called Sackett v. EPA. The court could use the case to blow […]

Dear Friends, IMPORTANT NOTE: The next status hearing for our federal TSCA lawsuit was originally scheduled for October 20th, however the Court has now pushed it back a week to Wednesday, October 26th at 3:30PM (US Pacific) / 6:30 (US Eastern). We will keep you updated as the hearing approaches and provide Zoom login information so you can watch from […]

Geoff Ellsworth, mayor St. Helena. Background Clover Flat Landfill

Marisa EndicottTHE PRESS DEMOCRATSeptember 23, 2022 The mayor of St. Helena is asking the Napa County District Attorney’s Office to step in and investigate wildfire and contamination risks at a Napa Valley landfill and another dumpsite run by the waste management company Upper Valley Disposal Service. In a consumer complaint, St. Helena Mayor Geoff Ellsworth, […]

Chloe Sorvino Forbes Staff Sep 22, 2022, 06:30am EDT Broiling heat in the middle of the worst drought in 1,200 years has strained the state’s underground water supply, pitting the Central Valley’s $20 billion agriculture industry against many of its own workers. Nature has a way of telling people when their wells are running dry. […]

Ducks swimming on algae bloom at Spring Lake in Santa Rosa, CA

Questions swirl as carcasses rot at Lake Merritt and beyond. We talked to experts and explored 100 years of local fish-kills. by Natalie Orenstein and Darwin BondGrahamSeptember 2, 2022 Scientists are hard at work trying to home in on the cause—or likely causes—of the algae bloom that’s led to mass death for marine life. Credit: Amir Aziz “Mystery epidemic kills […]

What do GMO mosquitoes, GMO apples and GMO salmon have in common? One guy. Who happens to be a billionaire. Catch “GMO Mosquitoes: The Deception Drinking Game” on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/qHq3PjM-Cx4 This episode of Fork the System is part 1 of 2 in a series on the issue of GMO mosquitoes. How did a […]

SmartWaterMagazine.com reports that as climate change increases extreme weather events, such as megadroughts, groundwater management is key for sustaining water supply. But current monitoring tools are either costly or insufficient for deeper aquifers, limiting our ability to monitor and practice sustainable management. Now, a new paper bridges seismology and hydrology with an application that uses seismometers […]

What is the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)?The IRA bill is a massive $740 billion piece of legislation, funded primarily through increased corporate income taxes, to address issues like the national deficit, tackling the rising costs of prescription drugs, and shoring up the Internal Revenue Service’s enforcement capacity. It also provides Medicare with the ability to […]

“Climate change ecology studies the interactions between climate change and natural ecosystems.” New research links the amount of carbon dioxide taken in by land ecosystems, such as forests, to the availability of water, which is in short supply during droughts. Our climate is rapidly warming with rising temperatures affecting the physical environments that support entire […]

Exciting news! Rangers Josh Crosbie and Keith Gray recently observed a beaver dam at Maxwell Farms Regional Park. Beavers are important “ecosystem engineers” that help create habitat for other species. Beavers are also a “keystone species,” which means they have a disproportionately positive influence on the species and environment around them. Beavers help sequester carbon […]

A lawsuit accusing Vacaville of endangering its residents with tap water polluted with hexavalent chromium — the cancer-causing chemical made infamous in the film “Erin Brockovich” — was dismissed Friday by a federal appeals court, which said the city merely carried the water in its pipes and isn’t responsible for contamination caused by others. The city was […]

Panoramic view of Lagoon Valley Park in Vacaville, California.

River Watch chose to apply RCRA in the Vacaville case simply because the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) provided little protection for drinking water. The SDWA includes limits for only 94 water contaminants. The EPA has not added any chemicals to the list since 2006, and only added 4 chemicals between 1998 and 2006. In […]

Drought cracked mud around receding lake

After three years of drought, the massive state and federal water projects that serve California’s cities and farms have less water to distribute, forcing water managers to increasingly ration supplies. This year, squeezed extra tight by the prolonged drought conditions, both the state and federal […]

New research links the amount of carbon dioxide taken in by land ecosystems, such as forests, to the availability of water, which is in short supply during droughts. Our climate is rapidly warming with rising temperatures affecting the physical environments that support entire ecosystems. Humans and animal species both face daunting challenges for survival because of climate change. During […]

Burning Forrest - Klamath National Forrest, Yreka, California

The timber industry and the U.S. Forest Service aggressively market the idea that reducing fuels through logging/thinning programs will result in a significant decrease in acreage burned, firefighting costs and the number of high-severity fires. However, it is climate/weather, not fuels, that drive all large wildfires. The factors responsible for all large wildfires are drought, low humidity, high temperatures and, most importantly, wind. If you have those ingredients […]

WATER Institute Co-Directors Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman are excited to announce the initiation of the California Process-Based Restoration (Cal PBR) Network. The goals of the Cal PBR Network are to promote process-based (aka, beaver-based, ecological, low-tech, nature-based) restoration approaches to increase the capacity of degraded river and stream ecosystems to retain water, support biodiversity, […]

Category: Main Article Archive

America’s Vanishing Climate Forests:

Mature Federal Forests Play an Outsized Role in the Nation’s Climate Strategy

How California Could Save Up Its Rain To Ease Future Droughts

Court Rejects EPA’s Attempt To Delay Fluoride in Drinking Water Case

Why America’s food-security crisis is a water-security crisis, too

Satellites Detect No Real Climate Benefit from 10 years of Forest Carbon Offsets in California

The Snow Deficit is Not Good for Streamflows

The re-beavering of the Bay Area

New Report Shows Continued Water Conservation Is Key to Enabling Suppliers to Meet Demand

Water Use of California Crops

The TSCA Fluoride Lawsuit Update

Scientist Who Defied Intimidation From Harvard Colleagues Wins Award For Work and Integrity

Australian study of fluoridation neurotoxicity: Streetlight Effect Fallacy

Groundwater: Ignore, and It Might Go Away

Sackett v. EPA: Health of American Waters Hangs in the Balance

The Fluoride Phosphate Connection

Clover Flat Landfill: St. Helena mayor alleges wildfire and contamination risks at Napa Valley landfill

California’s water emergency: satisfying the thirst of almonds while the wells of the people that harvest them run dry

Toilets? Cannabis grows? Rising temps? We looked into theories and history behind the Bay Area algae bloom

GMO Mosquitoes: The Deception Drinking Game

Mapping Groundwater for Sustaining Water Supply

The Ins and Outs of the Inflation Reduction Act

Forest Research Links Carbon Uptake and Water Use

Beavers are Here!

Vacaville can’t be held responsible for polluted water, court rules

California River Watch’s Response

California’s drought means less water to go around. Who is winning the pursuit for water — and who is losing?

Forest research links carbon uptake and water use

The Causes of Forest Fires: Climate vs. Logging

WATER Institute Launches New California Process-Based Restoration Network

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