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Dear Russian River Supporter:
New year opens with a bang… This mailer provides snippets of information on the most active of these issues, but you can also read our articles in the West County Gazette and Russian River Times.
West County Wastewater: new septic regulations on the way… A wastewater tsunami exploded in mid-January. There were four intense meetings in three days, and sheer coincidence that they all happened around the same time.
May, 2008
Dear Russian River Supporter:
Santa Rosa’s river discharge plans just keep coming…..
Santa Rosa has come a long way since we first started tracking their wastewater discharge plans after the 800 million gallon sewage spill in 1985, 23 years ago. For about twelve years after that illegal dump, they ignored all pleas to diversify their system, increase conservation, repair leaky collection pipes, and greatly cut back on river discharges. Instead, they pursued numerous river discharge options that would allow them to greatly increase their dumping of treated sewage into the Russian River.
Then around 1997 two big events occurred. Three fish species (Coho and Chinook salmon and steelhead trout) were listed as “threatened” on the Federal Endangered Species List and Coho was listed as “endangered” on the State list. This forced the Regional Water Quality Control Board to develop new water quality regulations that would improve conditions for the fish. (Up to that point, they had simply declared that the river was in fine shape, while conducting very little monitoring to indicate actual conditions.) At the same time, the Sonoma County Water Agency began consultation with the Army Corps of Engineers and their water supply system came under close scrutiny. Ultimately, this resulted in greatly diminished supplies in the summer season.
July, 2008
Dear Russian River Supporter:
The Russian River’s running very low…..
Have you been to the river this summer? We visited Steelhead Beach recently (in Forestville) and watched a medium-sized dog standing in the middle of the river with the water coming only to his shoulders. That was in late June, when flows are generally much higher than in late summer. Between June 15th and July 3rd, 2008, flows at the Hacienda Bridge averaged about 125 cubic feet per second (cfs), which is the minimum required. (Average June flows for the last 45 years was 315 cfs, with 23 cfs the lowest average flow occurring in draught year 1977 and 1,418 cfs the highest in 1998.) In this very hot summer, we wonder if flows will go much lower during the recreation season?
The Sonoma County Water Agency recently held public meetings at three locations to explain this situation. Unfortunately, only about ten people attended the Guerneville meeting. Pam Jeane, Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) Deputy Chief Engineer of Water Operations, explained, “The dry weather, coupled with reductions in diversions from the Potter Valley Project, means we are experiencing a water supply situation very similar to last year. The Agency’s goal is to save 12,000-15,000 acre-feet in Lake Mendocino by the end of October, 2008. Water supply projections show water levels in Lake Mendocino falling to about 20,000 acre-feet by early fall, a time when the Agency would like to see at least 30,000 acre-feet in Lake Mendocino to release into the upper Russian River for three species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.” (Steelhead, Coho salmon and Chinook salmon)
September, 2008
Dear Russian River Supporter:
Water and wastewater issues are all converging now, some more imminent than others. Our little mailer letter can’t begin to address them all, let alone in depth. But we take pride in our ability to squeeze the essence of many local water issues into a compact two pages. We are always available to provide more detail to those who request it, but for now we will give you the rundown on a few of the most important developments.
Santa Rosa’s wastewater decisions coming up…..
The latest in Santa Rosa’s wastewater saga includes serious and imminent consideration of direct discharge facilities to release as much as 69 million gallons a day in the Russian River at Forestville or Healdsburg. The Healdsburg location is above the City’s own drinking water supply, and because of much lower flows there, would cause greater water quality impacts. Therefore, we do not think Healdsburg is the preferred option. The Forestville location would be at Steelhead Beach and is the location we have suspected for many years as being the City’s preferred discharge site.
November, 2008
Dear Russian River Supporter:
Demands for Russian River resources have proliferated over the last several years at the same time all signs indicate that its impairments are getting worse. RRWPC is a very small group, but we do our best to maximize our influence through our consistent presence on these issues. We can’t cover all of them, we have to pick and choose carefully, so we usually go where we think the greatest need exists, often where few others are paying attention. This final mailer of the year gives a partial review of our work and also gives some projections of next year’s watershed challenges.
New group forms to protect Steelhead Beach…
2008 saw the formation of the ad hoc group, Friends of Steelhead Beach. Because of their efforts, and because of your very strong response to our last mailer, we collected over 4300 signatures on our petition to save Steelhead Beach (and not all signatures are in yet). We are extremely grateful to all who helped and we are sorry that we don’t have space to list all of your names. The petition will be turned into Santa Rosa’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) on Dec. 4th at 1:30 in the City Council Chambers, when they will make their final river discharge project selection. The public is welcome.
Dear Russian River Supporter
Water, here and there and now you see it and now you don’t….
Critical water shortage alerts have bombarded us in the media lately. The County Water Agency misses no opportunity to alert everyone to the critical need for stringent conservation. They will soon request the State Water Board to declare a temporary state of emergency that would allow the Agency to limit lower river flows to as little as 35 cubic feet per second, (normally at least 125) for the coming summer. Those flows would put an end to recreation this year and significant environmental harm could occur. There will be a big meeting on this topic the day after we have to print this mailer.
We can almost predict what will happen, however. The Agency will show up with about 8-10 staff people and lots of maps and graphs showing how low Lake Mendocino is and how they don’t have enough water to get through the season even as they release way more than needs to be used at this time, trying to make the point that they are being forced to waste water now against their will in order to meet minimum flows! They will tell us that PG&E has cut diversions from the Eel River by 33% and the current means for determining minimum flows needs to be changed. Some cut back in flows may be warranted, but not to the critical dry levels of 35-50 cubic feet per second (cfs) that they intend to request. RRWPC believes that 100 cfs would be much more appropriate.