In the next few weeks, the California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) is slated to release its final draft of new regulations governing water pumping for frost protection by the biologically invasive vineyard species of the Russian River basin. A debate concerning the wine industry’s impact on watersheds generally, and on the Russian River basin particularly, has intensified accordingly.
For their part, local environmental organizations have been pressing for much stronger regulations than the perennially agribusiness-friendly SWRCB has been wont to consider. To a large extent, the environmentalists — not to mention the the fish who reside in the river — have been aided by the federal government’s National Marine Fisheries Service, representatives of which have documented numerous fish killings and strandings they say were a clear result of grape growers’ custom of collectively drawing hundreds of millions of gallons of water out of the Russian River to protect new bud growth on their vines on frigid nights.
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