Snow Goose Festival Registration Now Open

Join us for our BIG YEAR at the 13th Annual Snow Goose Festival of the Pacific Flyway this coming January 26-29 in Chico, California. Register online today!

• Over 70 exciting field trips, including over 20 NEW excursions!
• Wide variety of informative indoor workshops & presentations
• Banquet featuring Keynote Speaker, Greg Miller, famed Big Year birder
• Pacific Flyway wildlife and habitat artwork featured at our Art Reception
• FREE EVENTS for all ages to enjoy...especially the kids!

Visit our website and register now for best availability.

Have a wonderful holiday season, and we'll see you in January!

Deconstructing the Drought

Who were the winners and losers in California's recent three-year drought? Impacts of the California Drought from 2007-2009, a new report from the Pacific Institute, provides some counterintuitive answers.

"The data show actual impacts that were significantly different from expectations," says Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick, who co-authored the report. "The total value of California's agricultural products actually broke records in all three years of the drought. Overall, California farmers proved themselves to be flexible and resilient."

Despite complaints that the agricultural sector was water-starved during the drought, California's farmers and ranchers adapted by increasing groundwater use, arranging for temporary water transfers, fallowing, and changing cropping patterns and types. The sector grossed $38.4 billion in 2008, an all-time high, and $34.8 billion in 2009, the third highest year on record. Trends toward reductions in farmed acreage slowed during the drought years, and yields remained high.

Based on census and employment data, the Pacific Institute report found no disproportionate loss in agricultural jobs in areas where water supplies were restricted. Actual job losses in the three-year period were worse in sales and construction. Agriculture-related jobs in the Central Valley rose by 2% from 2003 to 2009; construction jobs fell by 44%. "These data show that unemployment in the San Joaquin Valley is a long-term problem, not simply the result of the recent drought," says lead author Juliet Christian-Smith. "Hunger, homelessness, and other signs of poverty are real and happening, and they are happening in wet years and dry ones."

The environment took a major hit. Even if other factors may have been implicated, the report makes the case that the 2008 and 2009 salmon fishery closures, which cost 1,800 jobs and $118.4 million in income, were drought-related. Decreased river flows led to the highest Bay-Delta salinity records since 1992. The San Joaquin Valley's average groundwater depletion rate doubled between 2006 and 2010. Groundwater pumping by the Westlands Water District alone increased nineteen-fold from 2006 to 2009.

"A key conclusion," says Gleick, "is that we need to put in place strategies capable of addressing the risks of inevitable longer and more severe water shortfalls."

Contact: jchristiansmith@pacinst.org
Written by: Joe Eton
Reprinted by permission of the ESTUARY NEWS, published by the San Francisco Estuary Partnership

Public Scoping Report Available For Proposed Long-Term Water Transfers

The Bureau of Reclamation and the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority (SLDMWA) has made available a Public Scoping Report for proposed Long-Term Water Transfers (LTWT). This report provides information on LTWT and public comments during January and February 2011.

Reclamation, the lead federal agency under the National Environmental Policy Act and the SLDMWA, the lead state agency under the California Environmental Quality Act, will be preparing an Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report for LTWT later this year on the effects of proposed water transfers from willing sellers in northern California to buyers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and in the San Francisco Bay Area. Updates will be announced through press releases and the website as additional information becomes available.

The Public Scoping Report is available online at Reclamation's LTWT website: http://www.usbr.gov/mp/cvp/ltw. For additional information, or to request a copy of the report, please contact Mr. Brad Hubbard, Reclamation, by email bhubbard@usbr.gov or 916-978-5204 (TTY 916-978-5608); or Ms. Frances Mizuno, San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, at frances.mizuno@sldmwa.org or 209-832-6200.