With temperatures in the 90s Tuesday, the water was raging along the North Fork of the American River thanks to fast-melting snow.
The raging waters are good news not only for rafters and boaters, but also for Northern California reservoirs, which are filling up fast.
Lake Shasta is 93 percent full Tuesday, thanks to a healthy snowpack. Lake Oroville is 96 percent full while Folsom Lake is 86 percent full.
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For the first time in three years, the rafting industry has a chance to make a comeback. Water flow on the South Fork of the American River has returned to normal levels.
Drought seriously reduced the amount of water on the South Fork in previous years. Chili Bar Dam controls the water flow on the South Fork. Three years ago water released from the dam was reduced. Rafters could only float the South Fork five days out of the week for only three hours a day. This year Chili Bar Dam is releasing a steady flow of water seven days a week.
The higher water flow is also boosting business along the South Fork of The American River. Sierra Whitewater Rafting says when there is steady flow of water coming out of the dam, the company can now book multiple trips every day. This reduces crowding and allows flexible raft trip times for travelers looking to do a day trip.
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As swimming weather arrives, local officials say they’re hoping to avoid a repeat of last summer, when more than a dozen people drowned on the American and Sacramento rivers – twice the average yearly toll.
Rescuers said the drought and dropping water levels opened up new sections of beach, luring some people farther out into river channels and toward sudden drop-offs, where strong currents swept them to their deaths.
That was especially true at a small section of Tiscornia Beach, a popular swimming area at the confluence of the region’s two big rivers.
Now, after seasonal rains and water releases from Folsom Dam, the Sacramento and American rivers have surged, running deeper and faster than last year. That poses a threat, too, said John Mohamed, a training officer and team leader for the Drowning Accident Rescue Team, commonly called DART.
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A woman drowned Friday morning in the American River near Sacramento State, fire crews said.
Sacramento firefighters tried to rescue the woman from the water about 10:25 a.m. between the H Street Bridge and the Guy West Bridge, officials said.
However, she was pronounced dead at the scene.
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The rivers are rushing, and the snow pack is high, which means it’s going to be a great year for white water enthusiasts.
It already is.
“This is the best year we’ve seen in a long time,” said Deric Rothe, owner of Sierra Whitewater Rafting in Auburn.
Rafting tours are already filling up, he said, with big trips planned for this weekend and next.
People come from all over the world to experience the wonder of water in our little neck of the foothills.
His company took about 2,500 people on rafting tours last year, and that was during a drought.
More at AuburnJournal.com >>>
A new pedestrian bridge across the American River is still a big, bright bold idea.
And nearly 15 years after initial funding of $500,000 was pledged, the idea of spanning the river belowAuburn is gaining some renewed momentum.
Auburn’s environmental group Protect American River Canyons (PARC) is taking a lead.
A letter-writing campaign to State Parks officials has generated hundreds of pleas for consideration of a bridge and improved public access to the China Bar area.
Located off Auburn’s Maidu Drive, the China Bar area is in the Auburn State Recreation Area on land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and operated by State Parks.
It’s part of the site of the long-delayed Auburn dam and was once a river crossing, when the stretch of the waterway was underground, flowing through a diversion tunnel built during construction in the 1960s.
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Years of rumbling dump trucks and backhoes placing 2.75 million tons of rock “armor” along nearly a dozen miles of riverbank is an unpleasant thought for many who bike, jog, fish, bird-watch, golf, boat and swim along the lower American River Parkway.
But to demonstrate why officials currently are planning for some version of that scenario, Rick Johnson, the executive director of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency, points to a striking aerial photo taken after one of the worst deluges ever recorded in this region.
The photo was snapped in February 1986 after an extraordinary Pineapple Express storm filled reservoirs and rivers and pushed Sacramento’s flood infrastructure to its limits. The image shows an area near where the Capital City Freeway crosses the American River; it looks as if several giant bites had been taken out of the massive levee there.
Just on the other side of the levee sits the River Park neighborhood. If the rushing river – which at one point was surging with more than a million gallons per second – had eaten away just a few more feet of the barrier, Sacramento would have been awash in floodwater that would have rivaled what swamped New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Tens of thousands of homes could have been flooded.
But it wasn’t until the American River receded that anyone knew how close the city had come to disaster.
“The scary part is you couldn’t see (the damage to the levee). It was all underwater,” Johnson said. “We didn’t even know that was happening until after the water came down. They should have evacuated, quite frankly.”
Prompted by recent changes in state and federal flood control policy – largely in reaction to Katrina – local officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are in the initial phases of planning a $375 million project that would add a layer of rocky erosion protection along up to 11 miles of the lower American River.
The levees under consideration stretch along segments of the American River, starting where it meets the Sacramento River near downtown and ending upstream near the Butterfield neighborhood, which is about 4 miles east of the Watt Avenue bridge.
The project has presented flood control officials with a major challenge: How do they balance the need to armor the levees against erosion while at the same time protecting – or restoring after construction – the stream-side riparian habitat, as well as the trails and river access that make the lower American River Parkway a local treasure?
More at SacBee.com >>>
Placer Land Trust announced today a large public land donation and the largest endowment donation ever donated in Northern California to the California State Parks, ensuring the popular area for recreational use.
Placer Land Trust donated 417 acres of permanently protected land for public recreational use along the North Fork of the American River.
Each year, about 1 million visitors enjoy the American River’s 100-plus miles of trails, world-class river recreation and the raw natural beauty of the river canyons within the Auburn State Recreation Area.
The land – about the size of the Disneyland Resort in Southern California — is a popular spot for rafting, swimming, fishing and hiking among other outdoor recreational activities. The property is called the “Big Bend North Fork Preserve” due to its location across from Sore Finger Point at Big Bend.
“The American River continues to be an area of special interest for Placer Land Trust due to its unique value to our region,” said Placer Land Trust Executive Director Jeff Darlington. “We’re pleased to protect another stretch of the river through ongoing community support and statewide partnerships.”
The land was acquired through a partnership between The Trust for Public Land and the locally based Placer Land Trust in 2014, and has been managed by Placer Land Trust until California State Parks could accept ownership and management responsibilities as part of the Auburn State Recreation Area. The protection of the land permanently prohibits any residential development into the river canyon, while at the same time protecting the public’s access to the river along Ponderosa Way. In addition to the property’s value as recreational land, it provides beautiful scenery, wildlife habitat and water quality benefits to the public.
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Cyclists are finding it difficult to navigate the American River Bike Trail thanks to road blocks created by mother nature and flooding from rising rivers.
“I see the sign that says detour, but we didn’t know it was going to be like this,” said cyclist Pros Hang.
The section of trail that travels along Northgate Boulevard and underneath Highway 160 remains flooded in two areas, and the flooding continues through most of Discovery Park.
The flooding has left those who commute back and forth to work on two wheels choosing to either brave the standing water or find a different way home.
“One cyclist told me, ‘don’t go that way you are not going to make it through there,'” said cyclist Michael Goldstein. “They better take a different route if they are coming through Discovery Park, because I don’t think so.”
While cyclists try to navigate the trails, boaters will find it dangerous navigating the waterways. Along the Sacramento and American Rivers debris of trees and logs continue to flow with the swift moving currents.
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The Eldorado National Forest has received $5.1 million in special supplemental funding this year to support efforts to reduce the threat of wildfire and the risk of insect and disease in the South Fork American River Watershed (SOFAR). “The values to be protected in this watershed are critical to the local and regional economy and to ecosystem health,” said Forest Supervisor Laurence Crabtree. “Most importantly, this is where we have the largest number of people living near the forest, the most recreational use, and a recurring pattern of difficult to control wildfires.”
The 2016 supplemental funding will be used to accomplish work on five major multi-year, multi-phase projects.
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