Category Archives: Water

Boating, Rafting, safety, Water

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 >>>

Bike Trail, Boating, Fish, safety, Water, Wildlife

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 >>>

 

Rafting, safety, Water

Search Teams Find Body Of Folsom Man In American River

Search and rescue teams have recovered the body of a Folsom man who disappeared after his inflatable raft sank while floating Saturday.

Thirty-two-year-old Raymond Nocon was pulled from the South Fork of the American River Monday afternoon, according to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office. The county coroner will autopsy the body to determine the cause of death.

Nocon was floating with a friend on the river around 9 p.m. when their raft sank, according to the friend.

The friend, who was walking alongside the river the following morning, told a camper what had happened. The camper notified a neighbor and the neighbor contacted the sheriff’s office around 6:30 a.m. Monday.

Deputies responded and after speaking with all involved parties, learned Nocon had disappeared near an area of the river known as Gorilla Rock.

Personnel from the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office, El Dorado County Search and Rescue, El Dorado County Parks, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, California State Parks and the California Highway Patrol began searching for Nocon.

More at News10.net >>>

Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

American River Water Flows Cut In Half Due To Hatchery Work

Users of the lower American River will notice a significant drop in the water flow over the next few days as workers at the Nimbus Fish Hatchery complete annual work on the fish weir.

At 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, hatchery workers began installing metal pipes that block fish from proceeding any further up river from the hatchery.

The weir is designed to divert fish into the Nimbus Fish Hatchery during the fall run.

To complete the work, crews have to enter the river at the base of the weir.

Water flowing out of the Nimbus Dam was cut overnight from 1,500 cubic feet per second to 800 to make conditions safer for workers.

The Bureau of Reclamation advised anyone using the river to expect water level fluctuations of as much as eight inches along the shore line during the work.

More at KCRA.com >>>

Fish, History, Rafting, safety, Water, Wildlife

American River Metal Debris Study Details Cleanup Costs

Just what to do with hundreds of tons of metal left in the American River after a 1964 bridge washout is still an open question.

But a new report commissioned by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy now has a cleanup plan and an estimated price tag on the work.

The debris from the Highway 49 bridge washout 50 years ago rests downstream from the current Highway 49 bridge – with twisted steel just under the surface of low summer river flows and huge chunks of broken concrete sitting above the shoreline.

Report author David Burns, who is part of a renewed effort to remove dangerous debris from the river, said that while the question of who will pay for the work goes unanswered, the estimated cost to remove all the steel now in the Highway 49 debris field would be about $775,000.

More at AuburnJournal.com >>>

Boating, Fire, Fish, Rafting, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Drought-Busting El Niño Getting Less Likely

Average sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (°C) for the week centered on 30 July 2014. Anomalies are computed with respect to the 1981 - 2010 base period weekly means. Photo: NOAA
Average sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (°C) for the week centered on 30 July 2014. Anomalies are computed with respect to the 1981 – 2010 base period weekly means. Photo: NOAA

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 >>>

Boating, Fish, News from Other Watersheds, Rafting, safety, Water, Wildlife

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 >>>

Events, Fish, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Learn About Aquatic Invasive Species On Aug. 5

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will host the fourth installment of its speaker series with a presentation on Aquatic Invasive Species in the American River at 7 p.m. Aug. 5 at the Nimbus Hatchery Visitor Center, 2001 Nimbus Road, in Rancho Cordova.

Preregistration is not required.

The presentation is part of a program highlighting California Invasive Species Action Week Aug. 2-10. Among other activities being offered that week are field tours to check invasive crayfish traps and opportunities to help remove invasive plants on the American River Parkway near the hatchery.

For more information on the speaker series, go to www.facebook.com/NimbusHatchery. For more information on invasive species week, go to dfg.ca.gov/invasives.

Fish, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Feds Give SMUD 50-Year License For Hydroelectric Projects On American River

The Sacramento Municipal Utility Districtgot a 50-year renewal to operate its hydroelectric projects on the upper American River.

The utility operates 11 reservoirs and eight powerhouses in the upper American, which generate 688 megawatts of electricity, representing about 15 percent of SMUD’s annual power.

Part of the new license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission calls for SMUD to make some changes. The utility will make several recreational upgrades to reservoirs and it will increase the volume of water it releases into streams to benefit natural resources.

“It is gratifying to receive a new 50-year license,” SMUD CEO Arlen Orchard said in a news release. “It allows SMUD to continue to generate large quantities of non-carbon-emitting energy over the next 50 years from our most valuable, lowest-cost power supply.”

The license also allows SMUD to move ahead with the design and potential construction of the 400 megawatt Iowa Hillpumped-storage development, which would pump water uphill during times of light electric use, and generate power during summer peak periods.

The utility is still doing feasibility work on the $800 million Iowa Hill project, which could take three years.

More at BizJournals.com >>>