blog post Smoothing the Bumps in the Road to Ecosystem Restoration By Lori Pottinger Feb 22, 2021 California’s environmental permitting system was developed to prevent bad things from happening to ecosystems, but it often slows efforts to do good things, too. We talked with a group of experts about how to make the process more efficient and effective.
blog post Making End-of-Life Decisions on Aging Dams By Lori Pottinger Nov 9, 2020 Many of California’s large dams are outliving their functions and even becoming hazardous. We talked to Andrew Rypel of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences about how to address this aging dam population.
blog post Commentary: New Approach Needed to Protect Health of California’s Rivers By Ted Grantham, Jeffrey Mount Sep 14, 2020 In the face of the changing climate, biodiversity loss, and continuing conflict over water, California urgently needs to rethink how it manages water for the environment. Restoring seasonal flows to rivers can help.
blog post Video: Making the Most of Water for the Environment By Lori Pottinger Sep 8, 2020 Ted Grantham—the first PPIC CalTrout Ecosystem Fellow and a cooperative extension specialist at UC Berkeley—and a panel of experts discuss a new approach to river management that would restore seasonal components of river flow to sustain ecosystem health.
event Making the Most of Water for the Environment Sep 3, 2020 Water and land management have greatly altered river flows across California, degrading ecosystems and decimating native species. A different approach to managing environmental flows is needed to arrest the decline.
Report Making the Most of Water for the Environment: A Functional Flows Approach for California’s Rivers By Ted Grantham, Jeffrey Mount, Sarah Yarnell, Eric D. Stein Aug 24, 2020 Water and land management activities have substantially altered river flows across the state, degrading ecosystems and decimating populations of native species. Restoring seasonal components of river flow is key to sustaining the biological, chemical, and physical processes necessary for ecosystem health.
blog post A Faster Track for Ecosystem Restoration By Lori Pottinger Aug 24, 2020 The state’s rivers and aquatic species are in trouble, but restoration projects are often slowed by complex permitting requirements. We talked to Erika Lovejoy of Sustainable Conservation about efforts to simplify the process.
blog post Commentary: Competing Narratives on Delta Outflow Fuel Water Conflict By Jeffrey Mount, Greg Gartrell Jun 2, 2020 The federal government’s efforts to increase water supplied to farms and cities, and a breakdown in cooperation between the state and federal government, have escalated conflict over the Delta. What are they really fighting over?
blog post Commentary: Newsom’s Water Framework Is Imperfect but Necessary. The Alternative Is Further Deterioration of the Delta By Ellen Hanak, Jeffrey Mount Feb 10, 2020 The PPIC Water Policy Center assesses the proposed Newsom framework for managing the Delta and its watershed.
blog post California’s Wild and Scenic Rivers Act Hampers Shasta Reservoir Project By Brian Gray, Jeffrey Mount Jan 6, 2020 A proposal to raise Shasta Dam to increase storage capacity is unlikely to go forward, given the protected status of a tributary that the project would inundate.