Rep. Huffman Calls for Immediate Action to Preserve Water Levels in Trinity Lake Ahead of Anticipated Drought
Trinity River running between snowy banks in 2019. [Photo by Brian Romanoff]
[February 22], Representative Jared Huffman (CA-02) sent a letter to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) Commissioner Camille Touton requesting the BOR work to preserve enough cold water to sustain threatened fish populations in the Trinity River ahead of what is expected to be a severely dry summer. Additionally, Rep. Huffman called for significant infrastructure investments to the Trinity River Division to improve its ability to adjust the temperature of water released to the river.
“Northern California is likely headed into another severely dry summer with grave consequences to tribal and coastal communities and the fisheries they rely on. Without drastic measures to address overallocated flows from the Trinity River to the Central Valley Project (CVP), the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) risks depleting the cold-water threshold in the Trinity Reservoir necessary to sustain fish populations through the fall,” Huffman wrote in the letter. “Conditions in the Trinity and Klamath river watershed are too dire to risk business as usual for the Central Valley Project. I ask that you quickly and carefully weigh all available options to preserve the Trinity River’s cold water and the fish and communities that depend on it.”
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
Be good news to start to fix this issue. Central Valley takes way too much of Trinity’s water and they only want more. It’s compounded by the need to maintain a steady stream of water through the reservoirs to prevent overheating. This slowly drains the lakes all summer and is how whiskeytown is full (or more so) than the Trinity’s upstream impounded waters. Sure hope the BOS continue to fight the Sites reservoir thirst for Trinity water.
I thought the dams ARE the problem. Without the dam, there would be no water to let flow downstream in any direction during the summer droughts to cool off the waters downstream. Which is it Mr. Huffman? Dams are good or dams are bad? Same question to all of the “UNDAM” people out there.
Damns are bad. With restoration of the river itself, large pools provide habbitat for fish. The fish evolved without the dams.
EXACTLY no dam = no water later in the summer doesn’t take rocket surgeon
Damn Dams!!!
About time. Now what about the Eel, Jared?
Thanks Huff. 👍
Spellcheck needed on the headline 🙂
Fixed. Thank you.
This asshat (Huffman) focuses on all the fluff.
Fix the frigging homeless problem, get needles and bums off of our streets and out of our public areas, and get our roads fixed. And do it while you’re lowering taxes!
Get that shit done, then you can jump in the lake.
Water is life. The Trinity dam was put in place to provide water to the central valley farmers where we and millions of people get our food from. It might not be ideal that farmland has had to move out of more alluvial soils because of urban development but here we are. Farms have had to move away from water and thus have to get water to the crops.
It is great to have healthy fish populations but to be real we have had healthy fish long after the dams went in.
All this postering is getting old and it seems pretty disingenuous when the Eel river diversion feeding Huffs big donors is off the table but the farmers in the Klamath and central Valley get a bulls eye on their livelihoods.