Bike Trail, safety, Wildlife

Sacramento Officials Seek Opinions On Proposed 12th Street Bike Path

Sacramento city officials are soliciting public opinions about reducing 12th Street from four lanes to three as it enters downtown from Highway 160.

The far west lane on the street would be turned into a two-way bicycling path, separated 5 feet from cars by a crosshatched area with bollards as far south as F Street.

If built, it would be the first full, exclusive bike path directly into downtown, giving bicyclists a safer way in and out of downtown from the northern neighborhoods and from the Two Rivers Bicycle Trail along the American River. City traffic officials say it also will force drivers coming off of Highway 160 into downtown to slow through an area where there are numerous pedestrians.

The city has published a Web page – http://n12street.com – offering details of the project concept and asking for comments.

More at SacBee.com >>>

Events, Fish, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Nimbus Hatchery Salmon Ladder To Open

The public will have a chance next week to witness the annual spectacle of the American River salmon run.

About 10:40 a.m. on Nov. 3, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife will open the fish ladder at Nimbus Hatchery on American River. This allows fall-run Chinook salmon migrating upstream from the Pacific Ocean to enter the hatchery, and it also provide an excellent viewing opportunity for the public.

Nimbus Hatchery was built in 1958 as mitigation for the construction of dams that prevented fall-run salmon from accessing their historic spawning habitat upstream. Instead, fish swim into the hatchery, where their eggs are harvested to produce several million salmon each year. The hatchery will collect more than a half-million eggs in the first week alone.

More at SacBee.com >>>
Fish, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

California Department Of Fish And Wildlife Launches Improved Fishing Guide

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has launched an improved online Fishing Guide to help novice and experienced anglers plan successful fishing trips. The new guide is faster and provides detailed information about fish plants and fishing locations.

The map-based Fishing Guide allows users to research information about specific fishing locations by selecting from a drop down menu, clicking directly on the map or by searching for a specific address, city or zip code. Specific information about each location includes planting schedule, historical fishing information and comments about the terrain, local amenities, fish known to the location and links to lodging, camping and dining options.

Other information displayed includes a link to driving directions, locations known to have quagga mussels and links to other pages, including fish planting information, regulations, license sales, boat launch facilities and a ‘safe to eat’ portal. The safe to eat portal displays advisories about contaminants known to the fish in a specific location.

In the coming year, CDFW plans to expand the Fishing Guide to include direct access to fishing regulations, license sales locations and boating facilities.

 

The new version of the guide can be found at www.wildlife.ca.gov/Fishing/Guide.

Bike Trail, safety

Bumpy Negro Bar Bike Trail To Get Fix

Portions of the bike trail through Negro Bar will be undergoing some much-needed smoothing thanks to a non-profit group and California State Parks.

Walkers, bike riders and joggers will appreciate the trail fix along the north shore of Lake Natoma when the work on the trail is completed. Much of the area suffers from bumps from tree roots, potholes, poor drainage and sand build-up.

Friends of Lakes Folsom and Natoma (FOLFAN) and state parks will repair about 1,300 linear feet of trail in three areas. Work will be done on both trail pavement and shoulders.

Dirt shoulders alongside the pavement will be built up again for pedestrians and joggers to safely pass.

New striping will be painted on the trail pavement and some new bollards installed.

“The damage to the trail in many cases is so extensive that is has become a real safety issue,” FOLFAN spokesman Jim Cassio said on the group’s website.

The project, which is scheduled to begin Nov. 3, will focus on three areas of the main trail: along the main Negro Bar parking lot, the slope and low point east of the parking lot and a set of drainage culverts near the main picnic area.

The trail will be closed through portions of Negro Bar. Signs will offer detours.

More at SacBee.com >>>
Boating, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

A Surprise From Folsom Lake: Conservation Is Helping

Folsom Lake now has slightly more water than it did one year ago, despite the third year of drought conditions across Northern California.

The lake elevation was 390 feet on Thursday.

One year ago, it was 389 feet.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Folsom Dam, credits extensive regional water conservation for allowing lake levels to remain somewhat steady.

“You’re getting a greater decrease in use, so it’s really saving water on a personal level,” said Luis Moore, of the Bureau of Reclamation. “Through those conservation efforts, we’ve been able to stretch this water supply.”

Water agencies that draw from Folsom are taking less because residential and business demand has fallen.

It’s one of the few positive developments in an otherwise dismal state water picture.

More at KCRA.com >>>

Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Study: 181 California Dams Key For Fish Survival

UC Davis researchers have identified “high priority” dams for fish survival in California.

In a study, the scientists evaluated 753 large dams in the state. Researchers said 25 percent, or 181 California dams, may need to increase water flows to protect native fish downstream.

Lead study author Ted Grantham said providing more water for fish during the drought may not be popular, but a strategy is needed to keep rivers flowing below dams. Otherwise, he said flows will be too low to sustain health fish populations for the dams on the “high priority” list.

He said those include the Folsom Dam on the American River, the Trinity Dam on the Trinity River and the New Melones Dam on the Stanislaus River.

A 2013 UC Davis study showed that salmon and other native freshwater fish in California will likely become extinct within the next century due to climate change if current trends continue.

Grantham said how dams are managed will determine the survival rate of many native fish species.

More at CapRadio.org >>>

Bike Trail, Boating, Fire, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Winter Rains Not Likely To Ease California Drought

Drought conditions will likely ease in much of the West this winter, but not in most of California, according to a new climate report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The report, released Thursday, indicates that conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which include a developing El Niño weather pattern, may prompt above-average rainfall for the southern third of California over the next three months.

The Bay Area, however, as well as most of the rest of the state, stands only a one-third chance of seeing above-average rain — and equal chances for below-average rain and a normal amount.

“There’s just not a strong enough climate signal to make a prediction,” said Mike Halpert, acting director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

The forecast bodes poorly for Northern California, where residents are hoping a wet winter erases some of the costs of the state’s driest three-year period on record, including tight drinking-water supplies, fallowed agricultural fields and damaging wildfires.

But even a wetter-than-average winter would provide only a modicum of drought relief.

“It will take significantly above-average precipitation to fill reservoirs and recharge groundwater,” Halpert said.

The only good news for California, according to federal climate experts, is that the stubborn ridge of high-pressure air that consistently formed off the coast in recent years, blocking storms from making shore, won’t be nearly as prevalent.

The probable El Niño, which forms when the jet stream reacts with warm ocean surface waters, will likely push enough moisture across the high sea to keep the ridge from settling in, Halpert said.

More at SFGate.com >>>

Fire, safety, Wildlife

Rains May Bring Danger In Aftermath Of King Fire

ike Murphy is fearing the worst in the aftermath of the King Fire that nearly burned his home last month.

“I’m worried about the big rocks rolling down the hill and into this property and perhaps into my structures that I have here,” Murphy said, as he stood under darkening skies Tuesday afternoon.

He has reason to worry.

“There’s a large risk still of mud slides and debris flows when we start getting rain,” cautioned El Dorado National Forest District Ranger Richard Thornburgh, as he stood beside his headquarters building just a couple of miles southwest of Mike Murphy’s home.

Thornburg said a significant rain event could cause serious damage to the ecology of the 160 square miles of charred national forest land left by the King Fire.

“There’s nothing to really stop the water once it starts flowing over the bare earth once it’s all been burned off,” Thornburgh said. “Inside or even downstream of the fire, there can be flash flooding.”

Flames charred the soil, leaving it powdery white, incinerating tree and plant roots that once held it in place. In some areas, the fire burned so hot that it baked the soil into a water-resistant layer.

“It makes them what we call hydrophobic in some areas and so it actually makes a layer that the water just sheds off,” Thornburgh said.

Above Murphy’s place on the north side of the American River’s south fork, there are loosened boulders that could be sent toppling down onto his property.

“They will come down the hill. There’s just nothing gonna stop ’em,” Murphy said, looking up at the steep hillside above his property.

More at News10.net >>>

Boating, Fish, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Boat Dwellers Can Be A Problem On Our Rivers

There’s a guy the cops call Mr. Smith who lives on a boat tied to a log in the Sacramento River,just a short skip downriver from the Tower Bridge. He’s rarely seen, but he’s out there, hunkered down in a Bayliner named Takee One that’s barely afloat.

Traci Trapani and Jason Warren have been coming across people like this guy a lot. They’re officers with the Sacramento Police Department’s marine unit, and a big part of their daily routine is monitoring a subculture of boat people living on our rivers.

The cops have pulled about 10 wrecked boats out of the rivers this year alone, many of them from the American River over by Camp Pollock. In just over an hour on a sunny Thursday afternoon last week, Trapani and Warren came across four more old vessels moored in the Sacramento River, plus a makeshift raft of tied-together Styrofoam that someone is living on.

“Some of these boats are about to sink,” Trapani said, skippering a police boat past Old Sac.

More at SacBee.com >>>
Fire, Fish, safety, Water, Wildlife

Vast Landscape Charred By King Fire Will Receive Emergency Treatment

Rugged and isolated, the Rubicon River Valley on the border of El Dorado and Placer counties was for many years an idyll of old growth trees and icy swimming holes. Then the King fire roared through last month, turning a 20-mile stretch of the canyon into a vast dead zone of ashen earth and smoldering stumps.

Experts now worry that the devastation and the extreme temperatures of the fire, which scorched much of the soil and reduced its ability to hold together and absorb runoff, could lead to floods and mudslides when winter storms arrive. The same conditions affect parts of the south fork of the American River near Pollock Pines, where an arsonist allegedly started the 98,000-acre King fire on Sept. 13.

Members of the U.S. Forest Service’s Burned Area Emergency Response team, or BAER, swooped in last week, as the fire was finally contained, to assess the immediate dangers remaining in its aftermath. Members include botanists, hydrologists and geologists. Their job is to deal with such immediate threats as falling trees and crumbling roads.

BAER coordinator Eric Nicita said possible mudslides are a major concern, because when the top layer of soil cooks, it looses the fungi, bacteria and other organic material that hold it together and allow it to absorb water. In these conditions, rain runs through soil and tears it down instead of percolating into the earth.

“The only thing the water can do is roll downslope,” said Nicita, a soil scientist with the Forest Service. “All of a sudden, your flow is increasing incredibly.”

More at SacBee.com >>>