Category Archives: River Restoration

Human modifications of the river and its flood plain damaged the rivers ability to support fish and wildlife, protect water quality, and the ability of the communities to avoid catastrophic damage from naturally occurring floods. Restoration of a more natural river channel and maintenance of an open flood plain protects private and public infrastructure investments while protecting fish and wildlife and water quality.

Support for the “Nature Park Concept”

Nature Park Concept for Rock-McCarran river restoration and flood project

The Truckee Meadow Floor Management Authority released two park concepts for a portion of the Rock to McCarran flood protection and river restoration project. One provides for a Nature Park Concept and the other a Sports Complex Concept. We believe that there should be a park which would benefit the community and be completely consistent with the “living river” concept that the community has embraced since the early 2000s. You can check out the link above on the project and the park proposals and read our comments on the park selection to the Flood Managers below:


The Club participated in the “living river” design of the Flood Management Project during its early development. The Rock to McCarran portion was quickly envisioned as a large, flood-able park which was essential to help reduce flood flows and to provide a restored, healthy Truckee River connected to its floodplain. The public benefit of a flood-able, open space park was applauded by everyone at those meetings – now 2 decades behind us. The purchase of the property by the Flood Project was the result of the early flood modeling and public involvement.

Nature Park Concept for Rock-McCarran river restoration and flood project
Nature Park Concept


The current restoration plan to reconnect the river to its floodplain and provide a broad public benefit still resonates with the community. Certainly, the Club enthusiastically supports the Rock-McCarran Blvd plan to reconnect the Truckee River to its flood plain as depicted on the Rock-McCarran Reach Project Conceptual Recreational Designs. Our support for the park is also strong; however, we believe that the benefit to the public will be best served by the Nature Park Concept.


The Nature Park offers an opportunity to provide a large, Truckee-River-connected Park, close to thousands of residents for the enjoyment of an outstanding natural area that will not be possible in the future. 


The Nature Park Concept offers opportunities for enjoyment of the river environment that nearly everyone in the community can benefit from. This concept is less structured, less roaded, less paved, and less crowded space – an increasingly rare commodity in a community where many of the existing parks are crowded with sports playing fields – which while needed – are not appropriate to meet the vision of the “living river” concept that the community supported long ago. [From the original Goals and Objectives: “Promote a living river concept by preserving and enhancing fish and wildlife habitat, water quality, and natural geomorphic characteristics of the river.”] We also note that there could be adjustments to the Nature Park Concept that would likely lower the cost for implementation although we support the Concept as proposed.


The Sports Complex Concept with 10.5 flat playing fields and 4 large and 3 smaller parking lots and a significant amount of paved roadways does little to complement the adjacent restored Truckee River. It seems more than likely that the sports fields and extensive parking will detract from the restored river, be less attractive to the those wishing to see a restored river, and crowds of people at games could result in trash – however unintended – throughout the area.

Sports Complex Concept


There are already plans for 10 large soccer fields at Veterans Parkway and Pembroke Lane which allow for a more compact configuration and access for large gatherings and regional events. This land is also in the 100 year flood area, but would likely be much easier to design and protect than the proposed Sports Complex within the Truckee River’s 100 year floodway. While I understand that the Veterans Parkway-Pembroke Lane sports complex plan is funded for its final design with a $450,000 grant from the City of Reno, funding is not available for the estimated cost of $23 million for the project’s construction. Sports complexes are very expensive -both to build and maintain- and there are questions about how they can be funded.


The Club suggests that the main consideration should remain that the TMFMA flood project objective is to “minimize and mitigate” flood damages to the communities and the best way to do that is with a Nature Park to complement the restored Truckee River. We believe Nature Park Concept is more cost effective, has far fewer hardened surfaces, provides opportunities that are now missing in the Truckee Meadows, and has a wider benefit to its citizens. Finally, we believe that it would also be completely consistent with the original “living river” concept which was a design principal of the flood management project to begin with. 

Truckee River Flood from 2005 shown in downtown Reno. The Restoration and Park at Rock and McCarran will help to prevent flooding at the airport, the Reno & Sparks industrial area, and is a critical part of the overall project.
Rock & McCarran a key part of the Truckee Meadows Flood Protection Project. Today, it is largely inaccessible from the south with a trail on the north bank and the river is channelized retaining little connection to its flood plain during extreme flood events.

Truckee River Mural by Indigenous Artist featured at UNR

A vibrant, multi-paneled mural displaying Native American’s deep ancestral connection to the Truckee River, Pyramid Lake, and Lake Tahoe now greet students, visitors, and faculty on the UNR campus. Envisioned and created by Pyramid Lake Tribal member Autumn Harry over a couple of months and dedicated in mid-September 2024, the panels capture the spirit found in the four tribes: NUMU, WÁ-SIW, NEWE, and NUWU.

Located just north of the UNR Quad between the Pennington Student Achievement Center and the Ansari Business Building.

Autumn’s work was selected out of several mural proposals.

One of the four panels depicting Indigenous people’s connection to Pyramid Lake and its Cui Ui and Cutthroat Trout

Quitting the bottled water habit (save $ and the planet)

Cascade of plastic water-filled bottles

Plastic water-filled bottles are everywhere. They line grocery and convenience store isles and wait for you at checkout stands. From ski hills to ocean beaches to executive board rooms, people haul around their no-calorie elixir wrapped in plastic. The stats tell us just how addicted we are to our bottled ounces of the essential liquid in shiny clear plastic containers wrapped helpfully with plastic brand labels – DaSani™, Aquafina™, Fiji™, Evian™, Nestle™, etc. According to a recent analysis in Consumer Reports (https://www.consumerreports.org), water bottled in plastic containers is the #1 consumer beverage – 42 gallons per average American a year or 336 sixteen ounce bottles – at an annual consumer cost of $31 billion and growing.

Why would the average American spend hundreds of dollars for water when it is available at the tap for just pennies? Many people say it is convenience, but 40% of Americans believe that water bottled in plastic is “safer than tap” according to CR. Some of that concern comes from the nationally reported lead-contamination in Flint, Michigan in 2014. Flint, however, is an extreme exception and not the rule. Ninety percent of Americans get their water from municipal suppliers who provide their customers with exceptionally high quality water mandated by drinking water standards set by Federal and state laws. Those municipal suppliers (like TMWA and the Las Vegas Valley Water District) “have no reported health-based quality violations” according to the EPA as reported by CR. 

TMWA's Chalk Bluff Water Treatment Facility can treat 90 million gallons of water a day.
TMWA’s Chalk Bluff Water Treatment Facility can treat 90 million gallons of water a day.

That’s good news for bottled water buyers because 64% of the water sold in plastic containers comes from municipal water systems across the country. Drinking water standards for municipal supply are part of federal law and you can check the quality of your municipal supplied water in annual reports*. Drinking your 8 glasses of clean water a day needn’t include creating plastic waste. Drinking your 8 glasses of clean water a day needn’t include creating plastic waste.

*TMWA customers: https://tmwa.com/article/2019-water-quality-report-now-available/

The US Food and Drug Administration does inspect bottling facilities and requires quality testing by the company selling water in plastic containers. However, the water in plastic doesn’t have water quality standards in federal law and the FDA isn’t required to conduct its own water quality tests. And, there are concerns about the plastic container itself potentially contaminating the water – either prior to sale or afterward once purchased by the consumer.

Its such a waste …

What happens to all those plastic bottles emptied of their water? Unlike an aluminum can that can be recycled indefinitely into another can, plastic water bottles cannot be recycled into more plastic water bottles. Rather, recycled plastic bottles are mostly used for some other “down-cycle” product – like a plastic bag or pen¹. Inevitably, though, nearly all plastic ends up in a land fill (a better outcome) or finds its way into a water body near you. As consumers, we need to kick the plastic water bottle habit to help minimize the impact on the environment from plastic waste.

Microplastics-UC-Santa-Barbara-Image
Microplastics-UC-Santa-Barbara-Image

¹ https://www.headstuff.org/topical/science/plastic-bottle-oceans/

Plastic bottles and other plastic too often ends up in our rivers, lakes and oceans. Plastic gradually breaks down, but never goes away. Instead, plastic breaks up into pieces that get smaller and smaller over time eventually forming micro plastics that can be ingested by fish and other wildlife (humans too!). The problems created by discarded plastic containers extends beyond the ocean and also threatens water quality in lakes and rivers. Micro plastic has been found in Lake Tahoe2.

2 https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-08-26/lake-tahoe-microplastic-pollution-detected

So, what is a consumer trying to cut down on plastic going to land fills – or worse to the rivers and lakes and oceans – to do? Yup, buy a non-plastic container for water that you can fill from the tap and use that. Keep one in your car, your pack, and for your bike. Cutting out plastic water bottles makes both environmental and economic sense. 

Check out PBS’s “The Plastic Problem”: https://tinyurl.com/sf8eghk

“The Disappearing West”: NV ranks high in degraded rivers

“The Disappearing West”, a report produced by Conservation Science Partners based in nearby Truckee, documents the dramatic degradation of rivers in an interactive series of maps and animated illustrations. The report appears online at the Center for American Progress website.

Truckee River in downtown Reno trickles under the Virginia Street Bridge in late 2014.

A concrete walled Truckee River trickles through downtown Reno in late 2014.

The report attempts to map 300,000 miles of rivers and streams in the 11 western states and show the human impacts made to their flows and floodplains. The interactive map allows anyone to zoom in on any western state location and identify the extent of damage to large rivers and small rivers and headwater streams in mountain ranges from the Rockies across the Great Basin to the Sierra and Cascades. The map colors range from deep blue to fire red depicting a range from near natural condition to extremely altered or unnatural condition for either stream flow restriction or floodplain modification. Some states have far more severely modified streams and rivers than others. Overall, however, the west appears more red-colored than blue-colored with surprisingly small streams high in mountains suffering from flow reduction and floodplain modification. While the report offers a valuable tool to look at how our rivers and streams are suffering, we’ve discovered that reporting on the Truckee River flows below Reno-Sparks underestimates the severe dewatering of the river at Derby Dam.

A cautionary note: It could be that the report underestimates damage from flow reductions in other states if the Truckee River flow diversions were missed.

The report shows Nevada ranked 2nd in the major rivers and 3rd in the smaller rivers categories that suffer from flow restrictions, 94% and 31% respectively. Utah ranks first in reduced flows in major rivers at 96%. I used the “Disappearing Rivers” information to develop the bar graphs, presented below, ranking states by flow restrictions and floodplain alterations for major rivers.

Ranking of flow restrictions for major rivers by state

Ranking of flow restrictions for major rivers by state (based on information in “Disappearing Rivers” Report-DLG)

Ranking of floodplain alteration for major rivers by state (based on information in “Disappearing Rivers” Report-DLG)

Likewise, the report also shows Nevada 2nd in modification to major river floodplains at 73% and smaller river floodplains at 51%. Colorado ranks first in major river floodplain modification at 77%.

Reducing river flows and developing river floodplains can eventually kill riverine ecosystems by eliminating the riparian forest that grows along the stream, warming the stream from reduced flows, eliminating cold water fish and invertebrates that live in the stream as well as increasing pollution and reducing recreation.

The report separates the rivers and streams into categories: headwater streams with less than 6 cubic-feet-per-second (CFS), smaller rivers and streams between 6 CFS and 163 CFS, and major rivers with more than 163 CFS.² In Nevada, the Truckee, Carson, and Walker Rivers that originate in California’s Sierra Nevada all had historical average flows greater than 163 CFS. The Humboldt River which is entirely within Nevada also had historical average flows greater than 163 CFS. Today, the Truckee River is a mere trickle at Pyramid Lake when US Bureau of Reclamation diversions at Derby Dam take as much as three-fourths of its flow to farms in Lahontan Valley; the Carson River is essentially dry during many summer and autumn seasons before it reaches Lahontan Reservoir due to upstream diversions; and the Walker is often completely dry – sometimes for years – before it reaches Walker Lake. The Humboldt River, likewise, is more frequently dried out before it reaches Rye Patch Reservoir upstream of Lovelock.

Any measure of flowing water can take a little getting used to, but remember, the flow in a river or stream is measured by how much water (volume) is moving downstream over a period of time. It can be in gallons-per-minute or cubic-feet-per-second or acre-feet per year. The US standard way to measure flowing water in a river is CFS or cubic-feet-per-second.¹

Lower Truckee River flow restriction much worse than shown in “Disappearing Rivers” Interactive Map

The Disappearing Rivers analysis shows the lower portion of the Truckee River as having only 8% flow restriction in the lower River between Derby Dam and Pyramid Lake. Unfortunately, this is not accurate. The screen capture from the interactive tool shows the diversion at Derby Dam, but inaccurately says it is only 2,500 acre-feet. It isn’t clear where that number comes from.

Disappearing Rivers: screen capture of river tool's depiction of flow restriction of the Truckee River below Derby Dam is incorrect.

Disappearing Rivers: screen capture of river tool’s depiction of flow restriction of the Truckee River below Derby Dam is incorrect.

In fact, tens of thousands of acre-feet of water are diverted from the Truckee River most years and hundreds of thousands have been diverted in the 21st century alone. So, the representation in the online tool for the Truckee River flow restriction downstream of Derby Dam³ isn’t correct. The problem appears to be that the data used to model the restricted flow caused by Derby Dam doesn’t accurately reflect how much water is diverted on average over an entire year. Derby Dam itself, doesn’t store much water, but the effect of its diversion is the most significant loss on the entire Truckee River below Lake Tahoe.

Example display from the Disappearing Rivers Project interactive map (click for full sized example)

Example display from the Disappearing Rivers Project interactive map

Despite the problem I’ve identified where the Disappearing Rivers Map underestimates restricted flows for the lower Truckee River below Derby Dam, the tool remains valuable to show how our rivers have suffered from loss of flows and modification to the floodplains in Nevada and throughout the 11 western states. The tool affords even the casual user a stark window into the damage inflicted on our rivers from continually taking too much floodplain land for development and too much water from river flow.

In broad terms, the summary provided for the state of Nevada is sobering:

“In Nevada, 53 percent of all rivers are altered. That’s equal to 3,593 unnatural river miles— enough to cross the state more than 11 times. Of the 11 Western states in the Disappearing Rivers analysis, Nevada had the 5th most altered rivers in the West. When broken down by size, 96 percent of all major rivers, 64 percent of all smaller streams and rivers, and 36 percent of all headwaters are altered.”

How can we reverse continual losses of river flows and floodplain lands? Can society embrace increasing natural river flows and restoration of floodplain lands? Increasing population and climate change is making the job of fixing what ails our rivers harder. This report makes clear that in a little over a century, we’ve diverted at least 61% of the flow of our western rivers and negatively modified 63% of river floodplains. And, additional impacts to river flows and floodplains occur daily from the direct effect of development but also from climate change which is making the west warmer – and possibly drier as well. Few people want to have a dry Truckee River surrounded by parking lots and warehouses, but our representatives in federal, state and local governments seem to be taking us to just such a future. It is time to ask politicians to find ways to reduce the amount of water we take from our rivers and aquifers, protect our remaining floodplains, and restore our overdeveloped floodplains.

Restored oxbow of the Truckee River at the Nature Conservancy's McCarran Ranch.

Restored oxbow of the Truckee River at the Nature Conservancy’s McCarran Ranch.

There have been some restoration successes on the Truckee River over the past couple of decades. We have seen the restoration of several floodplain reaches of the Truckee River below Reno from Lockwood to the McCarran Ranch. The Nature Conservancy’s McCarran Ranch represents one of the earliest successful efforts to show how a degraded river can be transformed with a vibrant riparian corridor of wetlands and forest that can support spawning trout and a valuable recreational fishery and recreation. The Truckee River Water Quality Agreement between the Cities of Reno and Sparks and the Pyramid lake Tribe called for the cities to purchase water rights for the Truckee River to increase river flows during low flow. The Cities have purchased more than 11,000 acre-feet of water which can mean the difference between having a dry river and a wet one. The water purchased stays in the river all the way to Pyramid Lake.

Flows in the Truckee River can be greatly improved by reducing diversions from the river, improving farm practices, and increasing water conservation in cities and towns along the river.

Now is the time to make sure our rivers will not continue to disappear.

¹   [For people who like to think in gallons, there are 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot. For example, during February 2018, the Truckee River has been running between 350 and 450 CFS through downtown Reno or between 2,618  and 3,366 gallons per second.  You can check out the flow of the Truckee River every day in the RGJ newspaper on the weather page or look on the TROA website under daily report] 

²   6 CFS for one year is 11.9 acre-feet or 3.88 million gallons; 163 CFS over a year is 188 thousand acre-feet or 38.5 billion gallons. To offset the effect of evaporation from Lake Tahoe requires about 350,000 acre-feet of water each year above what flows out into the Truckee River; likewise, it takes more than 400,000 acre-feet of water each year to maintain Pyramid Lake’s water level.

³    Derby Dam on the Truckee River is the largest diversion on the Truckee River. The dam, completed in 1905, was the first project of the US Bureau of Reclamation called the Newlands Reclamation Project. While most people in Reno and Sparks have never heard of the project, it is responsible for the greatly reduced flows of the lower Truckee River downstream of the cities. The dam allows Truckee River water to be put into a 112 year-old canal, permanently removed from the Truckee River basin, and sent to farms on the lower Carson River’s Lahontan Valley. Once diversions began, Pyramid Lake and the lower Truckee River were sent into a steep decline. Flows in the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Reservation‘s portion of the Truckee River were reduced to just a trickle. Any time during many years (flood years being the exception), a substantial portion of the water in the Truckee River as it flows through Reno-Sparks will end up in Lahontan Valley and not Pyramid Lake due to the diversions at Derby Dam. The dam at Lake Tahoe is also part of the Newlands Reclamation Project and the water stored in Lake Tahoe by the dam benefits farmers in Lahontan Valley. The Lake Tahoe dam can store over 700,000 acre-feet of water by raising Tahoe’s water elevation by up to 6.1 feet.

Derby Dam on the Truckee River diverts water to Lahontan Valley

US Bureau of Reclamation’s Derby Dam on the Truckee River diverts water to Lahontan Valley

Lake Tahoe Dam at the outlet to the Truckee River February 2015

US Bureau of Reclamation’s Lake Tahoe Dam at the outlet to the Truckee River

Brodhead Park east end goes to Riverside Park Apartments LLC

Brodhead Park is on the left side this image taken from the "old" Wells Ave bridge.
The Reno City Council unanimously approved using a 10,660 square foot portion of Brodhead Park adjacent to the Truckee River for an apartment complex (see our earlier post with maps and photos here). Below is today’s announcement from the City of Reno.

“Council approves Brodhead Park Boundary Line Adjustment and Improvement Agreement

“J.10.1 – Council unanimously approved a Boundary Line Adjustment and Improvement Agreement to convey a vacant and undevelopable 10,660-square-foot portion of Brodhead Park between Wells Avenue and Park Street south of the Truckee River Bike Path to developer Riverside Park Apartments LLC, an affiliate of Hokulia Holdings LLC. The agreement requires the developer to use the property only for an infill apartment complex and convey to the City a 1,868-square-foot parcel adjacent to the Truckee River Bike Path and spend up to $75,000 for trailhead and bike path improvements.”

– January 25, 2017 Reno City Council Highlights 

Brodhead Park is on the left side this image taken from the "old" Wells Ave bridge.

Brodhead Park is on the left side this image taken from the “old” Wells Ave bridge.

Overhead view of property (right-most parcel outlined in black-white) to be transferred to developers for a new apartment complex.

Overhead view of property (right-most parcel outlined in black-white) to be transferred to developers for a new apartment complex.