Featured Stories
California is at yet another critical point in its struggle toward a sustainable water future, and yet we’re still talking about the wrong solutions.
Sites Reservoir is the latest in a long line of proposed dams that promise to end our cycle of water insecurity. However, Sites will add very little to California’s water portfolio, and its harm to the Sacramento River, Delta ecosystem, and communities that rely on them will be irreversible and ongoing…
We who have loved and lost wild rivers like the Stanislaus live with memories of their moods. In our hearts the living waters still flow high and exciting or murmur by in perfect peace. And we suffer, knowing we’ll not experience such intimate places again in this life.
It is our hubris that has made some of us vulnerable to the challenges of this wet year. It is our hubris that has permitted many to experience the trauma of having their lives upended by floodwaters. It is our hubris that has left so many of our floodplain neighbors without flood insurance and the real ability to recover from flooding.
In a February 8, 2023 op-ed, the president of the Board of Directors of Nevada Irrigation District (NID) writes that an appeal to the US Supreme Court by NID could have “severe impacts” to NID and the community it serves. The op-ed omits the key facts on which the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled last August. It also exaggerates the impacts to NID and obscures the issues.
On February 13, 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that waives the rights of the environment in favor of agriculture. This executive order follows the shortsighted claims that come every year there is a flood in California, that water is being wasted by letting it flow through its natural riverways and out to sea.
Laura is a passionate outdoorswoman and artist. Her love for the Sierra Nevada Mountains and her home in the foothills is infectious. Her photography captures the essence of the natural world’s beauty, majesty, and changing moods.
California’s senior U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein recently passed away after 31 years in the U.S. Senate. To say that she was influential on California water matters would be an understatement. I’ve prepared some personal recollections for Friends of the River.
Senator Feinstein’s introduction to high-stake water and rivers games came when she was still the mayor of San Francisco. In 1987, the year that I joined the FOR staff, President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior Don Hodel floated the idea of restoring Hetch-Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. She soon paid her first visit Yosemite and was calling O’Shaughnessy Dam and Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir “San Francisco’s birthright….”