Tuesday January 9, 2024
Farm Progress —
Thirty years after Congress required California provide more water for fish and wildlife through the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA), a popular wildlife refuge amidst rice fields will get what was promised, and this time not at the cost of farmers.
Late last year Ducks Unlimited and a host of collaborators including the Biggs West Gridley Water District, and several state and federal agencies, heralded the culmination of six years of work costing more than $52 million to improve over five miles of canals, install seven new water control structures, raise numerous county and private bridges, and build a tunnel under a railroad. All with the goal of complying with the 1992 CVPIA, a law dedicating 800,000 acre-feet of water annually for fish and wildlife.
The Biggs West Gridley Water District serves 28,000 farmable acres, of which about 22,000 acres is typically planted to rice. The district serves Gray Lodge Wildlife Area, a California-owned and managed wildlife refuge just north of the Sutter Buttes in the Sacramento Valley, with water it gets from Lake Oroville and the State Water Project.