It had long been the worst of times.

The sand and gravels torn out of the Gold Rush Sierra had raised the Yuba River channel and increased flooding in the Yuba River Basin below…

They were troubled times.

Large parts of the City of Sacramento had nearly flooded. A big urban water district had recently won an ambiguous court decision to divert water from the City’s cherished American River and down the massive federal canal slated to snake down the east side of the San Joaquin Valley to Tulare County…

As a relatively new volunteer with FOR, I decided the best way to get familiar with policy was to jump into the deep end and get involved. I recently had the honor to represent FOR during the Green California - Environmental lobby day at the State Capitol on August 30th…

Friends of the River and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), along with a coalition of tribes and environmental organizations submitted a formal protest against the water rights application of the Sites Project Authority for the proposed Sites Reservoir. This protest is part of a legally required process to ensure public concerns are addressed when granting water rights in California…

In addition Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s desire for the federal and state taxpayers to rebuild, expand, and build more infrastructure to supply water to his Congressional District (he is achieving some success there), he wants to help the giant Westlands Water District expand Shasta Reservoir…

I am pleased to report that the Congressional sponsors of California-related wild & scenic river bills show no signs of growing weary. Three bills have been reintroduced in the House to grant federal protection for rivers in California and Oregon…

Getting dams built nowadays requires taxpayer subsidies — and easing the regulatory path to getting them built also seems to be necessary. Needless to say, this is an interest of the speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy…

Like many toddlers, Governor Newsom has a patience problem. He can’t understand why the 2014 Proposition dams (deadbeat or not) haven’t been built yet…

Senator Feinstein has long been a friend of dam builders in the state, and her perch in the Senate Appropriations Committee gives her a powerful say in federal dams and taxpayer subsidies for dams in general…

From its founding in 1902, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built a lot of dams, especially during the Great Depression and the post-World War 2 years. Think Hoover, Shasta, Grand Coulee, and Friant Dams. Although Reclamation has stated that “the West essentially has been reclaimed,” the political movement for taxpayer subsidized dams has not stopped…

Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has made quite a name for herself in the U.S. Congress with a number of claims that seem untethered to reality. However, that does not prevent her from introducing bills that in reality are favored by wealthy Reclamation water service contractors…

Bob Hackamack passed away at age 90 in late April of this year. I always called Bob Mr. Tuolumne River for his decades of pioneering work to protect the Tuolumne River…

Several pending dam projects throughout the state have had some slight movement recently. Read Senior Policy Advocate Ron Stork’s report out on current dam happenings.

From bad bills to bad rhetoric, there’s the “traditional bad stuff” happening in Congress right now…

We’ve been talking about the importance of the Clean Water Act in Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hydropower dam licensing for years. The Clean Water Act gives states and certain tribes substantial influence related to operations of hydroelectric dams…

Governor Newsom’s Administration continues to push forward Voluntary Settlement Agreements in lieu of updating the decades-late SF Bay/Delta Water Quality Control Plan…

A group of environmental organizations active in hydropower relicensing (including Friends of the River) in collaboration with hydro industry players (collectively, the “Uncommon Dialogue”) have arrived at a set of reforms to the Federal Power Act…

For decades, the Klamath has been severely impacted by a sequence of four PacifiCorp dams near the California-Oregon border. And finally, after decades of work…

Friends of the River, along with a coalition of environmental groups have been beating on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to recognize that the federal draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was fundamentally flawed…

2022–2023 has shaped up to be one of the better high-water water years in California history. Specifically, it felt like 1983 — a high snow pack year.