As partners in a statewide effort to secure protections for polluted waterways, we ask for your help in letting U.S. EPA know that Californians support strong federal leadership on reducing storm water pollution and restoring the health of polluted lakes, rivers, streams, estuaries and coastal waters. In November 2010, EPA issued a memo (attached) that provided good guidance on establishing numeric effluent limits in permits, and other ways to improve storm water and TMDL programs.  But now EPA is backing away from the memo in response to pressure from industry, and is seeking comments on whether to withdraw or weaken the memo.  EPA’s call for comments is also an attempt to gauge support for a federal storm water rule, which is currently in progress.  You and your organization can help in three ways before the comment deadline this Monday, May 16:

1) Fill out and submit our action alert. Circulate it far and wide to your colleagues and link to it on your Facebook page:http://www.cacoastkeeper.org/take-action/speak-out/9.

2) Sign-on to the attached group letter to EPA, asking them not to weaken or withdraw the November 2010 Memo. Please send logos, name, title, and organization name to sara@cacoastkeeper.org by Friday, May 16 at 10am.

3) Adapt our action alert or letter and send an individual letter to EPA on your organizational letterhead. The more letters the better!

Feel free to email me with any questions.

Thank you!

Sara

Salmonid Restoration Federation will host the 29th Annual Salmonid Restoration Conference in lovely San Luis Obispo, CA, March 23-26, 2011.

Conference registration is now open and is also available online at www.calsalmon.org. Field Tours have limited space and tend to fill quickly. Early registration expires February 23, 2011.

We are pleased to announce the publication of our 2011 Winter Newsletter, which includes the Conference Agenda and Registration Packet. We are very excited about this year’s Conference Agenda and are confident you will be too. The Agenda is available as a PDF on the SRF

website (www.calsalmon.org).

SRF would be very happy to mail you a stack of newsletters to share with your colleagues, clients, constituents or community.

Please let me know how many would you like and where to mail them. We also have conference posters if you would like to post them in your office or community.

I have attached an article (and copied it below) which provides a brief summary about the conference. Please feel free to include this article in your newsletter or let me know if you need a shorter version for a web calendar.

Thank you so much for you help in this matter.

Sincerely,

Heather Reese

Project Coordinator

Salmonid Restoration Federation

(707) 923-7501

www.calsalmon.org

heather@calsalmon.org

On October 26th, the Sonoma County Supervisors voted 5-0 to approve Syar Industries massive 350,000 tons per year 15-year mining permit based on a flawed EIR and information not available to the public. The Syar Project went through county review in record time to ensure outgoing Supervisor Paul Kelley could vote to approve it. Supervisor Kelley has received extensive support in past elections from Syar and the mining industry. The project ignores basic scientific knowledge that excessive mining will degrade or destroy critical habitat for endangered salmon and steelhead and lead to increased erosion downstream that will damage others property. Due to flaws in the EIR and science behind the plan it is likely Riverkeeper will seek legal remedies to address this flawed project.

Description of Proposed Syar Alexander Valley Mining Project

• 15 year permit for mining 350,000 tons per year from 15 gravel bars near Geyserville
• Allows for excavation of majority of gravel accumulated since 1994 using a baseline
• Generate up to 480 heavy trucks between Geyserville and Healdsburg during summer
• Requires ARM amendments allowing 15 year permit rather than 10 and to allow mining in the upper 2/3’s of gravel bars
• Ignores sediment budgets although requires annual monitoring and agency review

On October 26th, the Sonoma County Supervisors voted 5-0 to approve Syar Industries massive 350,000 tons per year 15-year mining permit based on a flawed EIR and information not available to the public. The Syar Project went through county review in record time to ensure outgoing Supervisor Paul Kelley could vote to approve it. Supervisor Kelley has received extensive support in past elections from Syar and the mining industry. The project ignores basic scientific knowledge that excessive mining will degrade or destroy critical habitat for endangered salmon and steelhead and lead to increased erosion downstream that will damage others property. Due to flaws in the EIR and science behind the plan it is likely Riverkeeper will seek legal remedies to address this flawed project.

Description of Proposed Syar Alexander Valley Mining Project

• 15 year permit for mining 350,000 tons per year from 15 gravel bars near Geyserville
• Allows for excavation of majority of gravel accumulated since 1994 using a baseline
• Generate up to 480 heavy trucks between Geyserville and Healdsburg during summer
• Requires ARM amendments allowing 15 year permit rather than 10 and to allow mining in the upper 2/3’s of gravel bars
• Ignores sediment budgets although requires annual monitoring and agency review

Once again, Sonoma County Water Agency staff and the SCWA Water Contractors remain completely silent on the impacts of gravel mining on our water supply and water quality. This notable absence from the information and approvals process is covered by the usual excuse that the SCWA Board of Directors, aka the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, has not asked them for any formal report or findings.

The gravel and sands of the Russian River are wholly responsible for the natural filtration of our drinking water supply. Removing this extremely effective filtration medium impairs the filtration capabilities, particularly as population, runoff and discharges to the river increase.

The aquifer’s gravels and sands are also 30-50% porous. These spaces are filled with water for free by rainfall runoff every year, becoming an immense natural reservoir. The water is released downstream slowly, becoming the summer’s base flow for dry season river flows, water supply, recreation and fish habitat.

Dr. Bob Curry, UC Santa Cruz, has calculated that over 400,000 acre feet of water storage per year has been lost due to gravel and sand mining of the Russian River’s aquifer since WWII alone. For over a century, water from the Eel River diversions at the Potter Valley Project has been used to mask the over-appropriation and abuse of the Russian River.

How much longer will the Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors, and directors of the water agency, continue the demolition of our water supply, recreation and fisheries wealth?

David Keller, Bay Area Director,
Friends of the Eel River
1327 I St., Petaluma, CA 94952
www.eelriver.org

A controversial plan to resume gravel mining, a practice that has been blamed for wiping out tens of thousands of salmon in the Russian River over the past century, is scheduled for approval next week along an important stretch of the river.

Sonoma County supervisors will vote Tuesday on a permit that would allow Syar Industries Inc. to combine in-stream gravel mining with habitat restoration for 6.5 miles through the picturesque Alexander Valley.

The plan is to mine up to 350,000 tons of gravel annually out of the riverbed near Geyserville over the next 15 years and, while the workers are at it, shore up eroding banks that are eating away land from the adjacent vineyards.

The work, conducted between June and November, would also create oxbows and pools for migrating fish, open up three creeks blocked by gravel bars, remove invasive grasses, and plant willows and cottonwoods.

The supervisors have already expressed support for the permit, which conservationists blasted as an ill-conceived effort to cash in on the one thing that endangered steelhead trout, and coho and chinook salmon need most to procreate and survive.

“There is absolutely no benefit whatsoever to the fish from removing gravel from the river,” said Don McEnhill, the executive director of Russian Riverkeeper, a nonprofit conservation organization. “They want to bring the river back to the way it was in 1994 after 40 or 50 years of unregulated mining.”

McEnhill and other environmentalists claim more gravel than can be replenished by natural processes will be taken out of the river. He said wineries and tourism will be harmed by a perpetual convoy of 480 gravel trucks running every summer day between Geyserville and the Syar processing plant in Healdsburg.

Environmental report OKd

The county has given the green light to the proposal’s environmental report, and many grape growers in the Alexander Valley support the plan.

“Syar has come in with a unique plan that combines in-stream mining with enhancements to restore riparian vegetation, create flood plains and backwater habitat for the fish,” said Jennifer Barrett, the deputy director of planning for Sonoma County. “All together there are 26 acres proposed for riparian restoration over the 15-year life of the permit. That is the most substantial riparian restoration proposal that we have seen on the Russian River.”

The exploitation of the Russian River is a sore subject in Sonoma County, which was a mecca for gravel mining throughout much of the past century.

The river historically meandered over the entire valley, distributing vast quantities of hard gravel over the centuries. The gravel began as rocks and boulders that had washed into the river from nearby mountains and cliffs during storms and was smoothed out by the water as it slowly rolled downstream.

Aggregate companies began pit mining in the river around the 1940s, when a freight train ran along the river carrying the gravel used in the concrete that built the cities of the West Coast.

Aggregate from the Russian River fueled the expansion of Santa Rosa. BART’s transbay tube and the buildings along San Francisco’s Embarcadero have Russian River gravel in them. In some years during the mining peak in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, a million tons of gravel was taken out of the river, mining company officials said.

Between 1980 and 1995, 42 million tons of gravel came out of the Russian River, according to county figures.

As a result, the river bed dropped as much as 6 feet in places, according to the environmental report. The steep banks sped the flow of water and separated the river from both tributaries and the vast Alexander Valley flood plain, which historically provided food and rearing habitat for fish, an extremely important aspect of survival.

Degraded habitat

The entire river suffered from the loss of riparian forests and a lack of large woody debris, and the banks began eroding at an alarming rate. The river was twice as wide in the 1940s as it was in 1995, experts said.

Predictably, the vast schools of squirming fish that once migrated up the river and its tributaries began to suffer.

As many as 80,000 coho salmon thrashed their way from the ocean up the Russian River until the early 1900s. Coho are now functionally extinct in the Russian River basin. There were 100 coho in the late 1990s. By 2001, fewer than 10 fish returned to spawn in the watershed.

Steelhead proved a heartier species, but only about 5,000 a year now spawn in Russian River tributaries compared with between 50,000 and 60,000 in 1965, biologists said. About 3,500 chinook spawn in the river each year.

It is not an isolated problem – coho now make up only about 1 percent of their historic population in Central California – and experts acknowledge there are many other problems, including logging, overgrazing and the degradation of ocean habitat, that have affected fish.

Government standards

John Perry, the vice president of the engineering department for Syar, said the company is following guidelines established by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The permit, he said, would not allow mining below the summer water line that was established in 1994, when the county adopted its aggregate resource management plan.

“All we do is skim off the excess gravel above the water level in the summer,” Perry said.

McEnhill said that, by his calculations, is too much, especially given the dire circumstances of the fish population.

“We were prepared to accept an appropriate level of mining, but this project looks to us like it will be four times what the river can provide, what is called a safe yield,” McEnhill said. “If they approve this, it is very likely that we will be going to court to overturn it.”

About the Workshop

The Sierra Club, Sonoma County Water Coalition
and League of Women Voters are sponsoring a
workshop to inform interested parties about
groundwater planning currently under
consideration.

Workshop Date and Location

The workshop will be held on November 17, 2010,
from 6:30-9:00 p.m. located at the Santa Rosa
Veterans Memorial Building, 1351 Maple Ave, Santa
Rosa CA.

Workshop Goals

· Provide in-depth information about the
groundwater basin and groundwater planning
options.

· Identify concerns and solicit feedback
regarding possible groundwater management
planning.

Where is the Santa Rosa Plain

The Santa Rosa Plain groundwater basin, covering
an area of approximately 80,000 acres, is located
within the larger Laguna de Santa Rosa Watershed
and is home to approximately half the population
of Sonoma County, including the Cities of Santa
Rosa, Rohnert Park, Cotati, Town of Windsor,
portions of the City of Sebastopol, and
unincorporated areas of Sonoma County.

For More Information

Visit the website:
<http://www.scwa.ca.gov/srgroundwater/>http://www.scwa.ca.gov/srgroundwater/ ]]> http://www.ncriverwatch.org/wordpress/2010/11/11/santa-rosa-plain-groundwater-basin-planning-workshop-nov-17/feed/ 0 http://www.ncriverwatch.org/wordpress/2010/10/17/roblar-road-quarry-to-go-before-supervisor/ http://www.ncriverwatch.org/wordpress/2010/10/17/roblar-road-quarry-to-go-before-supervisor/#comments Mon, 18 Oct 2010 07:19:17 +0000 Larry http://www.ncriverwatch.org/wordpress/?p=2138 Continue reading →]]> Roblar Road quarry to go before supervisors
October 17, 2010.

The Sonoma County Board supervisors will take on a controversial industrial project Tuesday, October 19, at 2:00 pm when it reviews the proposed Roblar Road rock quarry west of Cotati.

The project would produce about 11 million cubic yards of construction-grade rock worth about $60 million over at least 20 years.

Opponents, including a vocal group of area residents, say the quarry could contaminate ground water and release airborne toxins because it’s located adjacent to a shuttered, uncapped former county landfill.

The issue is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. in the board meeting room, 575 Administrative Drive, Santa Rosa.

— The Press Democrat