When the modern infrastructure of the American West was being constructed in the mid-20th century, it was based on a vision consistent with the contemporary zeitgeist of American exceptionalism and lingering Manifest Destiny (the idea…
Posts published by “Will Parrish”
A few weeks ago, I assessed the possibility of a massive 2015 fish kill in the Trinity and Klamath Rivers (“Impending Fish Catastrophe On the Klamath-Trinity”) owing to drought-induced lack of cold water storage in…
Wild salmon have splashed their way up the Klamath River and its tributaries — including the largest of those tributaries, the Trinity River — for at least 12,000 years. Owing to a geological peculiarity, the…
There is no escaping the inexorable judgment of weather and time. Every year, the rain renders its verdict on the decisions industrial humans have made on the land. During the last 150 years, those decisions…
In roughly three weeks, the relatively slim percentage of Californians who vote in the Nov. 2014 election will decide on a politically contentious (is there any other kind of water politics in California?) $7.5 billion…
The problem began in earnest in the late-1920s, when heavy earth-moving equipment set about filling and re-sculpting Clear Lake's shoreline wetlands to “reclaim” them for agriculture, Bradley Mining Company inaugurated an era of intensive open-pit…
A few miles east of Mt. Shasta, in an area called Coonrod Flat, a McCloud River tributary called Ash Creek winds its way through this uplands meadow, which is dotted with ponderosa pines and incense…
For the Winnemem Wintu people of the McCloud River watershed (a mighty tributary of the Upper Sacramento River, formed by the southeastern drainage of Mt. Shasta and its stately foothills), the weapon of mass destruction…
The year 2013 was California's driest on record. The first six months of 2014 were the hottest half-year on record. Reservoirs are drying up. Groundwater basins are diminishing at an alarming rate. Yet, the water…