R24AC00670

1. Award purpose - The Floodplain Forward Program is advancing a landscape scale vision of early implementation projects that will improve habitat conditions for fish, birds and other wildlife and advance actions to aid with their recovery.

The recipient, Reclamation District 108 (RD108) will assemble the team necessary to develop and evaluate options, and produce an implementable plan to create wildlife benefits on historic floodplains.

The Floodplain Forward Program will help advance a collection of projects in the Sacramento River Basin, generally grouped in five (5) categories:

River connections projects that reconnect rivers to their historical floodplains.

In-river function projects that enhance, restore and create in-river function habitat.

Floodplain flow corridors and reactivation projects that improve create flow conveyance infrastructure needed to reactivate floodplains and improve fish passage projects that create fish rearing habitat.

Fish food flood and drain cycles that provide nutrients to support fish in the river corridor.

Science data acquisition, outreach education efforts that improve the knowledge base through research, experimentation, data collection and advanced analytics.

2. Activities to be performed - Objective categories:

1. Technical assistance - River connections, floodplain flow corridors reactivation.

2. Habitat restoration - In-river function.

3. Fish food - Fish food.

3. Expected deliverable or outcome - Technical assistance (Objective 1):

A. Program and project management.

B. Planning, coordination outreach.

C. Technical analyses.

Habitat restoration (Objective 2).

Food for fish (Objective 3):

A. Flood-drain cycling.

B. Monitoring reporting.

4. Intended beneficiary(ies) - The recipient has proposed to Reclamation to develop and evaluate options and produce an implementable plan to create fish and wildlife benefits on historic floodplains.

Today, 95% of the California Central Valley's historical floodplains are cut off from the river by levees.

Built in the early 1900s to combat devastating floods, levees and bypasses were constructed to corral mighty rivers and push water quickly through the flood control system.

Salmon populations started to dramatically decline with the construction of the levees.

Simply put, the levees prevented out migrating juvenile Chinook salmon from accessing floodplains, which are their primary rearing habitat and food source.

A multi-year study led by UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, Department of Water Resources, Department of Fish and Wildlife, Delta Stewardship Council and California Trout found that zooplankton (which fish feed on) densities were up to 149 times higher in floodplain bypasses compared to tested sites in the adjacent Sacramento River.

Juvenile salmon rearing on the bypasses grew 5 to 12 times faster compared to fish that only ate in the Sacramento River.

This rapid growth among juvenile salmon is vital for the salmon's overall health, ability to evade predators and the strength required for the species to reach the Pacific Ocean for the next phase of their lifecycle.

The bigger and stronger they are as juveniles helps improve the chances the salmon come back to the river to spawn as adults.

To address the problem of salmon access to floodplain habitat, a diverse group of government agencies, conservation groups, growers and water suppliers came together to advance a landscape scale vision of early implementation projects that will improve habitat conditions for fish, and also for birds and other wildlife, and advance actions to aid with their recovery.

This effort is now referred to as the Floodplain Forward Program.

5. Subrecipient activities - There are no subrecipients for this agreement.

Reclamation District 108

THIS PROGRAM WILL HELP ADVANCE A COLLECTION OF PROJECTS IN THE SACRAMENTO RIVER BASIN

15.512 - Central Valley Improvement Act, Title XXXIV

USBR California-Great Basin Region, Sacramento CA (MP) [DOI - USBR]

California United States

State-Wide

R-R-CGB-24-031