Creek Week 2020

Creek Week 2020 was cancelled because of COVID-19, but…

You can still help clean our creeks and other natural areas this fall and beyond! Whether you want to venture out with a small team on your own or join in an organized clean-up, please read and follow the clean-up guidance.

Join an Organized Clean-Up

A few organized clean-ups are offered in October. Check dates and locations on the Creek Week website. Registration for these organized clean-ups is open. Receive your Creek Week thank you memento at the clean-up location.

Random Acts of Clean-Up

Dates: Any morning in October you choose. Check creekweek.net pages for suggested creek spots or choose somewhere near your home that could use some trash clean-up. Registration not required. Report your clean-up results and receive a Creek Week thank you!

What’s a Groundwater Sustainability Plan?

August 2020

The Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS) is pleased to announce a new page on our website that is all about Groundwater Sustainability Plans! Look forward to more information to be posted from the water subcommittee of ECOS’s Habitat Committee.

Click here to view our new page and learn all about groundwater sustainability in the Sacramento region!

Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels

E. Coli Measurements in Lower American River still very high

May 28, 2020 | By Ryan Sabalow and Theresa Clift | The Sacramento Bee

As the summer weather begins to hit Sacramento, thousands of families head to the American River to cool off. That was the case over Memorial Day weekend.
Yet, recent measurements of E. coli bacteria in the river have reached the highest limits the testing equipment could detect.
Will Sacramento ever clean up the beautiful American River to a point where it’s safe for all to enjoy?

Click here to read the article.

Water Forum II Update Effort

Updated January 5, 2020

ECOS and Habitat 2020 are part of the Water Forum update effort.

The year 2021 will see a lot of activity including discussions and formulation of new Water Forum Agreement language. The following chart prepared by the Water Forum staff lays out the issue topics and the Water Forum Agreement update schedule for the coming year. The foundational learning sessions conducted in 2020 were recorded and can be viewed by accessing the Water Forum website. This year, the issues focused Work Groups (WG) will be developing any specific language changes to the existing Water Forum Agreement. Proposed changes will be discussed in Caucus and Plenary sessions before their eventual ratification by the Water Forum Agreement Signatories. You can follow the progress of the potential modifications to the Water Forum Agreement on the Water Forum website.

To support deliberations, a series of learning sessions were held in July and August 2020 to provide current and potential Water Forum signatories with information to promote a shared understanding of several cross-cutting topics: climate change, fisheries, habitat, groundwater management, and urban water management planning (including demand management, water use efficiency and conservation). An additional educational session on the management of the American River Watershed was held in the fall of 2020. Summaries of these sessions can be found on the Water Forum web site.

The year 2021 will see a lot of Water Forum update activity including discussions and formulation of new Water Forum II Agreement language. The Water Forum II Draft Timeline, prepared by the Water Forum staff, lays out the issue topics and the Water Forum Agreement update schedule for the coming year. This year, issue focused Work Groups (WG) will be developing specific language changes to the existing Water Forum Agreement. Proposed changes will be discussed in Caucus and Plenary sessions before their eventual ratification by the Water Forum Agreement Signatories. You can follow the progress of the potential modifications to the Water Forum Agreement on the Water Forum Web site link above.

The document The Water Forum Past, Present, and Future provides a cogent summary of the history of the Water Forum Agreement, what has happened over the course of the past 20 years that may result in the need for the Agreement’s updating, and what future impacts the region is likely to face and how an updated Agreement will help the region adapt to these changes.

The Water Forum is composed of four caucuses – Environmental, Public interests, Water Purveyors, and Business. ECOS and Habitat 2020 members as well as other environmental groups are represented on the Environmental Caucus. As a prelude to the learning sessions and upcoming negotiation discussions, each caucus developed a Statement of Interests to clarify its intentions and interests in a renegotiated Water Forum Agreement. Access to the Environmental Caucus Statement of interest is possible through this link.

There are a significant number of ECOS members who are actively involved with the Water Forum and this renegotiation effort. If you have questions about the Water Forum or its programs, please contact the Water Forum’s Executive Director, Jessica Law. Questions about the Environmental Caucus Statement of Interests can be directed to Habitat 2020.

Never mind those earthquakes: Atmospheric rivers could put Sacramento 30 feet under water

July 9, 2019
Candice Wang
The Sacramento Bee

The biggest freshwater rivers on Earth don’t flow along the planet’s surface.

Instead, they surge and whip through the atmosphere thousands of feet above our heads, carrying 2½ times the amount of water that gushes through the Amazon River at any given time.

They’re called atmospheric rivers, or, more aptly, rivers in the sky.

These rivers are capable of burying Sacramento under 30 feet of water.

A research team led by Sasha Gershunov at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego published a new study on atmospheric rivers in Nature Scientific Reports this week that places atmospheric rivers under scrutiny as the driving cause behind California’s increasingly extreme, infrequent bouts of precipitation.

Gershunov’s team used 16 global climate models to analyze the expanding role of atmospheric rivers as contributors to precipitation in California. The results show that atmospheric rivers are getting stronger and wetter, and catastrophic events like the Great Flood of 1862 could happen again.