Month

February 2018
07
Feb

A wide-ranging Habitat Conservation Plan that could eventually protect up to 4800 acres of endangered species habitat in the Bay Area is the linchpin of a November agreement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

Under the agreement, FWS issued the utility a 30-year incidental take permit for operations and maintenance activities in the nine Bay Area counties. The HCP includes strategies to avoid, minimize, and offset potential direct, indirect, and cumulative effects of PG&E’s O&M and minor new construction activities on 32 threatened or endangered species. The parties are hailing the landscape-scale plan as an improvement over the project-by-project process they previously operated under, as it will enable PG&E to complete projects more quickly while protecting more land for mitigation and increasing opportunities for passive recreation such as hiking and bird watching. However, some environmental groups are concerned that the plan does not cover several species that should have been included. In addition, says...
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07
Feb

The kind of flooding and mudslides that recently devastated the town of Montecito could also happen in the Bay Area, thanks to the more intense atmospheric rivers that—along with more frequent droughts and longer, fiercer wildfire seasons—climate change is expected to bring to California.

These swathes of water vapor from the tropics can be hundreds of miles wide and thousands of miles long, and bring with them enormous quantities of water; the one that arrived in early January dropped more than 30 inches of rain statewide. In Montecito, which had just been ravaged by December’s Thomas Fire, half an inch of rain fell in a matter of minutes and caused deadly flooding and mudslides. In the Bay Area, atmospheric rivers already cause more than half of the major floods, and more than 70 percent of those in the North Bay. But predicting when and where flood waters will rise is difficult. While the National Weather Service has radars that track storms regionally, the current...
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07
Feb

Despite some unnerving trends, Bay Area landowners and open-space authorities may be able to reduce the potential for another calamitous wildfire by modifying their land-management practices.

According to a worrisome article in the January issue of Bay Nature, the region’s future is increasingly fire-prone, thanks to climate change, population trends, and a legacy of strict fire suppression. Yet while the first two are beyond the scope of a single city or agency to manage, reducing fuel loads in forests and shrublands more actively, through prescribed burns and mechanical thinning, may help mitigate future catastrophes. At a gathering organized by the Bay Area Open Space Council last November, attendees seemed receptive to the idea. East Bay Regional Park District general manager Bob Doyle implored others to use the recent North Bay fires as motivation to re-examine their fuels and forest-management practices. Cyndy Shafer of California State Parks said that while...
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07
Feb

An easily overlooked slough is pointing a finger of uncertainty at Oakland’s plans for ballpark redevelopment, transit safety and resilient neighborhoods.

From the pedestrian bridge between the Oakland Coliseum and the BART station, the view of Damon Slough–a 25-foot-wide canal of muddy, litter-choked water–belies its increasing prominence in the flood-futures of east Oakland. A study by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission did the math, adding the impacts of rising sea levels on these Oakland flatlands to predictions of more frequent, more extreme storm events and urban runoff. “That’s when water starts coming out of manholes,” says Kris May, a coastal engineer who worked on the study. Redevelopment plans for the Coliseum area take some sea level rise into account, but not the water added by storms to aging drainage systems and swollen sloughs. For the area around the Coliseum, the extra effects...
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07
Feb

In Humboldt County’s coastal dunes, a multi-agency partnership is restoring the native plant community to build resilience to sea level rise.

The project, along with four others in the Bay Area and Southern California, is featured in a new report, Case Studies of Natural Shoreline Infrastructure in Coastal California. Much of the state’s dunescape was built over or hauled away before its value as habitat for unique species and a buffer against climate change was recognized. San Francisco’s dunes are long gone, and with them the endemic Xerces blue butterfly. Humboldt’s 32-mile stretch still shelters endangered plants like the Menzies’ wallflower and beach layia. Invasive European beachgrass not only chokes out natives; it pins the dunes in place, constraining their ability to move inland as the sea encroaches.  Led by US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Andrea Pickart, federal and state...
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07
Feb

The battle of Point Buckler Island isn’t over yet.

In January the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board appealed decisions by a Solano County Superior Court Judge voiding $3.6 million in fines and cleanup and restoration requirements that the agencies imposed on the island’s owner for dumping excavation spoil in Suisun Bay and draining tidal wetland without authorization. The agencies held that due to the failure of previous owners to maintain levees, the interior of the island had become tidal marsh and could no longer be treated as managed wetland. In December, Judge Harry S. Kinnicutt accepted the contention of owner John Sweeney, who bought the 39-acre island in 2011, that the Regional Board was “hostile to duck clubs and...
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07
Feb

And also…

Nearly Half of California’s Vegetation at Risk From Climate Stress https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/nearly-half-california-vegetation-risk-climate-stress USACE Releases Yuba River Floodplain Restoration Plan http://www.spk.usace.army.mil/Missions/Environmental-Projects/Yuba-River-Eco-Study/ http://www.chicoer.com/general-news/20180108/feds-release-yuba-river-floodplain-restoration-plan Report Recommends Adding 37 Miles of the Mokelumne to Wild and Scenic River System https://mavensnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/AB-142-study-NR_joint.pdf Contributors: Joe Eaton, Robin Meadows, Ariel Rubissow Okamoto, Nate Seltenrich, Cariad Hayes Thronson
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