This Saturday, September 20, offers opportunities to help the community as well as have fun.
During the hours of 9 am to noon the annual Great American River Clean Up will be held. To volunteer and enjoy the outdoors while helping to keep the American River Parkway clean; details and more information can be obtained at the American River Parkway Foundation website.
Category Archives: Boating
Slow Down At Folsom Lake: Rocks Ahead
Put away those water skis because the speed limit on Folsom Lake is now 5 mph.
Beginning Tuesday, state parks officials lowered the speed limit to 5 mph because the drought has caused the reservoir to be so low that a fast-moving vessel or a skier could hit rocks.
The low water level has also left most boat ramps dry. Rattlesnake Bar, Granite Bay, Folsom Point and Peninsula boat ramps are all out of the water and closed to boat launching.
More at SacBee.com>>>
California Drought: El Niño Chances Fall Again
Hopes of an almighty El Niño bringing rain to a drought-stricken California – with its fallow fields, depleted streams and parched lawns – were further dashed Thursday. The National Weather Service, in its monthly El Niño report, again downgraded the chances of the influential weather pattern occurring in the fall or winter.
The odds were 80 percent in May, but were placed between 60 and 65 percent this week.
Meanwhile, the agency also announced that the much-needed weather event is likely to be weak instead of moderate in strength – another retreat from the more robust projections made earlier this year that fueled speculation that California’s three-year dry spell might be snapped.
El Niños, defined by warming Pacific Ocean waters that release enough energy to shape worldwide weather, have been associated with wet winters in the Golden State. The strong 1997-98 event correlated with San Francisco’s biggest recorded rain year: a whopping 47.2 inches of rain.
But the correlation doesn’t always hold up. While El Niños carry the potential to bring quenching showers, this week’s climate report doesn’t necessarily doom the state to another year of drought.
More at SFGate.com >>>
Folsom Lake Spillway Keeps To Schedule, Budget
The approximately $900 million auxiliary spillway for Folsom Dam, which will increase the dam’s release capacity and reduce flood risk downstream, is “on time and on budget” for its scheduled October 2017 completion.
Also on schedule are the first phase of the project’s control structure, scheduled to wrap up in the summer of 2015, and the second phase, set for completion in May 2017, said Katie Huff, a senior project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“Site restoration will begin in 2016-17,” she said.
The auxiliary spillway’s completion target is four years sooner than the original planned completion date of 2021 — and nearly $416 million below original cost projections.
Construction on the new dam, the control structure, began in May 2012. Crews have been working nearly around the clock, six days a week, to meet the completion deadline of mid-2015.
The third year of California drought hasn’t had an impact on construction of the auxiliary spillway. It’s essentially a second dam that will allow water to be released earlier and more safely from Folsom Lake during large storms.
Rather, with the extended dry conditions, “We’ve been able to do work in the ‘dry,’ instead of the ‘wet,’” said Huff, who lives in El Dorado Hills.
The Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, California’s Central Valley Flood Protection Board and the Sacramento Flood Control Agency are working together to build the auxiliary spillway to increase its release capacity and reduce flood risk downstream.
More at AuburnJournal.com >>>
Folsom Lake High Enough To Fend Off 5 MPH Speed Limit
Folsom Lake levels are high enough to fend off a 5 mph speed limit for Labor Day weekend — and boaters are pleasantly surprised, considering the statewide drought.
“We get to still use the lake. Summer is not over for us,” said Tim Vas Dias, a boater who uses Folsom Lake often. “We thought it would be closed by July 4 with the shortage of water and the drought situation we have here in California.”
Park officials told KCRA 3 on Thursday they will hold off on the 5 mph speed limit until after the holiday weekend.
The 5 mph speed limit is often imposed when the level of the lake is so low that there are many obstructions, like exposed rocks or old tree stumps.
The limit is often seen as the end of the season for boaters. The trigger for imposing the 5 mph speed limit is a lake level of about 400 feet.
Currently, Folsom Lake stands at about 400.54 inches.
People who use the lake frequently thought the drought would have dropped the lake levels much faster.
“Honestly, I thought they were going to have 5 mph in place a long time ago the way the lake was dropping,” said Mark Lerch, who uses the lake almost every day after work by taking out his personal watercraft. “It was dropping so quick, it seemed like a foot or two a day at the start of summer.”
State water officials said the reason the lake level on Folsom has not dropped faster is that this year, they have managed the water systems, upriver and down, even more meticulously than ever.
More at KCRA.com >>>
Lifejacket Thefts Leave American River Drowning Prevention High And Dry
A program meant to save lives is proving too popular, with thieves looting most of the lifejackets meant for children and their families who visit the north and middle forks of the American River.
The Placer Foothills Women’s Club delivered another 48 lifejackets Thursday to the Auburn State Recreation Area, replacing some but not all of 50 to 60 that have gone missing since the start of the summer season.
The lifejackets – free to anyone who needs one – are left on pegs near the river.
The club, which has members from Rocklin to Auburn, buys the lifejackets for $5 each to be placed in several areas of the American River canyon. They can be used for swimming and shoreline activities. Those areas include the confluence, the Quarry Trail leading to the middle fork, near Mountain Quarries Railroad Bridge and Upper Lake Clementine.
Over the past six years, about 600 lifejackets have been donated, with most replacing ones that have been stolen or damaged. On Thursday, club members walked down to a peg board near the confluence that held one remaining lifejacket. On a nearby pole, all hooks were empty. This spring, there were about 20 lifejackets there.
Club member Gail Remington of Auburn said the group looked for a need in the community six years ago and saw a similar program in the Sacramento area. The club has been making regular donations since then and it seems to be helping, she said.
“We don’t have as many drownings and for me, this is the reason,” Remington said.
Remington and other club members removed bright orange lifejackets from boxes and placed them on the hooks, preparing for an influx of park visitors this coming warm weekend and Labor Day weekend.
The club buys the lifejackets “at cost” for $5 apiece and has worked with contractors and lumber suppliers to erect billboard-type signs to install the pegs and hang the life-saving flotation devices.
More at AuburnJournal.com >>>
Drought Raises Pollution On Folsom Dam Spillway Project This Year
Low water levels at Folsom Lake are causing an increase in air pollution from the $900 million Folsom Dam auxiliary spillway project.
The lake is filled to just 40 percent of capacity, which has allowed construction to proceed without the use of marine excavation equipment this year. The land equipment used instead has emitted more nitrogen oxide, said Katie Huff, spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The corps is working with the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation on the project.
Nitrogen oxide is formed by fuel combustion of automobiles, trucks and non-road vehicles like construction equipment.
Studies have linked short-term nitrogen oxide exposure, ranging from 30 minutes to 24 hours, with adverse respiratory effects, including airway inflammation in healthy people and increased respiratory symptoms in people with asthma.
Increased construction this year will cause the project to exceed federal threshold guidelines for nitrogen oxide emissions.
The annual federal threshold for such emissions is 25 tons per year. In 2014, the Folsom Dam Project is expected to emit 31.2 tons.
More at SanLuisObisbo.com >>>
Drought-Busting El Niño Getting Less Likely
The idea of an El Niño rescuing California from its devastating drought appears to be nothing more than wishful fancy.
Not only have climate scientists recently downgraded the strength of a potential El Niño, but a report released Thursday by the U.S. Climate Prediction Center indicates that the odds of an El Niño happening this year at all are down.
An El Niño is the much-watched warming of the Pacific Ocean that tends to influence worldwide weather and has had many in California hoping it will trigger a wet winter for the rain-starved state.
While Thursday’s climate report suggests that an El Niño is still likely, the chances of seeing one this fall or winter dropped from 80 percent – projected in early reports – to 65 percent.
The change, said climate scientist Michelle L’Heureux, comes as the warmer-than-usual surface temperatures observed this spring in the equatorial Pacific have cooled.
The same underwater swell that pushed heat to the surface, known as a Kelvin Wave, is having its normal counter effect, but that effect has been much stronger than usual and has moved more cold water up than expected, L’Heureux explained.
“We’re still banking on seeing a reinvigoration of El Niño,” she noted. “But with that said, we wanted to lower our projections because there are structural weaknesses that have made this El Niño less likely.”
The federal forecast calls for the El Niño to be weak or moderate. The consensus earlier this year was that the event would be at least of moderate strength – and some believed it would be really strong.
In Northern California, strong El Niño’s have correlated with wet winters. San Francisco’s biggest rain year in the last century came during the big 1997-98 El Niño.
Weak and moderate El Niño’s, however, haven’t translated into significant rain years in Northern California. (Southern California has sometimes seen wetter weather during moderate and weak events.)
The absence of a strong El Niño doesn’t sentence Northern California to a dry winter.
More at SFGate.com >>>
Questions Surfacing On Lake Clementine Hydro Project
Questions are being raised by several Auburn-area residents about a proposal to build a hydroelectric generation facility at the North Fork Dam at Lake Clementine.
Speakers at a public session Monday on the privately funded project wanted to know about its effect on downstream recreation, potential drops in scenic flows over the dam and other potential impacts.
About 25 people attended the session at theCanyon View Community Center, and the number of questions spurred the project proponent to schedule a special meeting at 6 p.m. Aug. 26 to provide an overview of the project and address queries.
Monday’s session was a public one but meant to concentrate on comments by government agencies and stakeholder groups about study plans by Los Angeles-based American Renewables and Kruger Energy of Canada.
Project manager Dan Parker agreed to the question-and-answer session after a request for a separate meeting in the evening to allow Monday’s session with government agencies to move forward on time. The location for the Aug. 26 meeting has yet to be determined.
Answering a question Monday from Helga White of Auburn, Parker said that esthetic flows over and environmental flows to aid wildlife and plant life downstream would take precedent over power-generation flows. The picturesque dam was built in 1939 to hold back mining debris but allow river flows downstream.
The proposed 15-megawatt power-generation facility – designed to produce electricity to serve 3,000 households – is to be operated on a “run-of-the-river” basis. It would take advantage of higher flows in the rainy season and go offline in late July, August and September, when flows along the North Fork American River are low.
“We don’t get our water first,” Parker said. “We get our water last.”
Michael Garabedian of the Friends of the North Fork asked whether a survey was being planned – “not just conversations” – on canyon users’ reaction to the project. He was told a survey was planned on recreational use.
The original survey, conducted in 2006 by State Parks in the Auburn State Recreation Area, “didn’t show interest in this type of development or development of any kind, as I recall,” Garabedian said.
More at AunurnJournal.com >>>
Lake Photos Illustrate Stunning Effect Of Drought
Photos released by the California Department of Water Resources show the stunning effect the drought has had on Folsom Lake near Sacramento.
On July 20, 2011, Folsom Lake was at 97 percent capacity.
On Jan 16, 2014, it was at 17 percent capacity.