Tules on Twitchell Island in the Delta. (Photo: Josh Cassidy/KQED)

With thousands of acres of rich farmland, the Delta has a long agricultural legacy. But farming there can be a risky business. Dozens of farms have been flooded over the past half century as aging levees have collapsed.

That became a reality for farmer Rudy Mussi on the morning of June 3, 2004. It was clear, sunny day. "You never expect a flood in the summer months," says Mussi.

Mussi was growing corn and asparagus on lower Jones Tract, an island in the Delta, 10 miles west of Stockton. That morning, he got a phone call. Water was flooding onto his farmland.

"Your heart stops for a second or two and then realism sets in. And you just start moving your equipment and get it to high ground," says Mussi.

How did a flood happen a on a sunny day? It's because of a basic rule of physics. Mussi farmed on an island below sea level, like a lot of the islands in the Delta. The Delta used to be a huge swath of wetlands, where two major rivers met San Francisco Bay. Today, earthen levees hold that water back – most of the time.

"Once a break occurs, you know, there's no way you're gonna stop that, not with 10 feet of water on the other side," Mussi says. Draining the island and repairing the levees around Jones Tract cost about $90 million.

The levee break on Jones Tract in 2004. (Photo: CA Department of Water Resources)

It wasn't an isolated incident. Over the last century, more than 150 levees have failed in the Delta.

Delta Infrastructure at Risk

"This is how we get ourselves in kind of an arms race between the water and the land," says Jeff Mount, professor with the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis.

Levee-building began in the 1850s, when settlers came to the Delta for the rich soil. More than a thousand miles of levees were built. "This network of levees through time had to get bigger and bigger for a very basic reason: the land has been steadily lowering," says Mount.

As farmers exposed the rich peat soil, it started decomposing. The land level dropped; "In some places they talked about four inches per year," says Mount. Today, it's less than an inch per year thanks to better farming practices.

Add up all those inches over the past century and some islands are now 30 feet below sea level. That puts a lot of stress on the levees. There are also other concerns: rising sea levels and extreme floods. "And then the big 800-pound gorilla in the room – we're due for a very large earthquake on the San Andreas system."

Add up all these risks and Mount says there's a two-thirds chance of a catastrophic levee failure in the next 50 years. That, of course, affects farmers and communities in the Delta, but it could also impact California's water supply.

"The raindrops that fall in Mount Shasta are consumed by people in San Diego. Water moves a great distance and this is one of the critical hubs in that system," says Mount.

Fixing the Delta's levees is estimated to cost billions. But on some islands, scientists are experimenting with a new fix.

Farming Carbon

Peat soil samples on Twitchell Island. (Photo: Josh Cassidy/KQED)

On a windy day on Twitchell Island in the Delta, ecologist Lisa Windham-Myers of the US Geological Survey pushes her way through a wetland filled with a tall, reed-like plant known as tule.

"The plant grows… some of these are 16 feet tall. They're just huge," she says. That growth is changing the ground we're standing on. Windham-Myers pulls out a sample of the dark peat soil.

The wetland produces soil at a rapid rate – four inches a year on average. That's huge, says USGS scientist Brian Bergamaschi, in a place where the land is sinking. "These islands are like bowls and the way we see projects like this is you want to fill up the middle of that bowl and help level out the whole island."

Planting wetlands like this one could raise the land level and water table on the inside of levees, relieving some of the pressure. But why would farmers want to replace cash crops with tule? Windham-Myers points to the soil.

"This is basically almost 100 percent carbon. These take up far more than a typical forest environment," she says. California is setting up a market for carbon, as part of the state's effort to cut global warming emissions. Early next year, companies that need to reduce their emissions could pay farmers to store carbon in wetlands like this.

USGS scientist Brian Bergamaschi talks with Delta farmer Al Medvitch. (Photo: Josh Cassidy/KQED)

Today, two farmers are here checking out the project: Steve Mello, a Delta farmer on Tyler Island and Al Medvitch, a farmer in the Montezuma Hills.

"The potential has been demonstrated well. You guys are standing in the middle of it. But in order to move from here to market, we need to develop a lot more techniques so people can come and verify that the carbon is stored," says Brian Bergamaschi, describing how wetland farming might work.

Both farmers seem open to the idea. But Mello says ultimately, it depends on the bottom line. "It would absolutely need to cash flow. While it could dovetail with levee stability, it would still need to generate enough to amortize your property value."

Still, Mello says assuming carbon prices are high enough, growing patches of wetlands could be a feasible way to improve the levees and to stay farming.

A map of the Delta created by the US Geological Survey in the 1910s.

As detective stories go, this sunny, spring day in the Delta isn't a typical backdrop. In the distance, tractors move slowly through dry fields of row crops.

"Once he got lost, they were wandering all over," says Alison Whipple of the San Francisco Estuary Institute, a non-profit research group based in Richmond. Her colleague, Robin Grossinger, agrees. "They were all over this place." The two are trying to piece together the path of William Wright, a man who got hopelessly lost somewhere nearby.

I should probably mention: it happened 160 years ago. Whipple and Grossinger are historical ecologists. They use sources like old photos, hand-drawn maps and early land surveys to sleuth out what this landscape looked like before it was dramatically remade by Californians.

The Delta's landscape has been dramatically remade over the last 200 years. Today, it's a crucial part of the state's water system, supplying 25 million people and irrigating millions of acres of farm land. But with this re-engineering, the Delta's ecosystem has collapsed, harming the fishing industry and putting water supplies at risk. Little is known about what it once looked like.

Lost in a Delta Marsh

Standing on a levee about 20 miles south of Sacramento, Whipple and Grossinger are discussing what they found a tattered, yellowing notebook uncovered in a state archive. It contains stories from William Wright, a duck hunter who spent a long, cold night lost in the Delta in 1850.

"On all sides stretched a vast wilderness of tules from ten to fifteen feet in height. The driving storm of sleet was bad, but the pitchy darkness was infinitely worse… Our situation was so miserable that no words can do justice to it."

It's not just the dramatic story they're interested in. It's passages this like one:

"The lakes proved to be from one hundred to three hundred yards in width, as near as we could judge. The water was very cold and often waist‐deep."

When Whipple and Grossinger read his account, they knew they’d found a Holy Grail source document. Its detail reveal a landscape that doesn't exist here today and hasn’t existed for some time.

"The Delta is probably one of the most intensively transformed parts of California and it was also changed really early on because of such fertile land," says Grossinger.

As California's Gold Rush boomed, farmers came to the Delta for its rich soil. Land went for a dollar an acre and settlers turned the wetlands into dry, agricultural land. 97% of the historic marshes were lost.

“We have here maybe one of the most important parts of the state's ecosystem and we don’t actually know how it used to work," Says Grossinger.

Alison Whipple and Robin Grossinger examine historic maps in the Delta.

He and Whipple have layered together thousands of historical sources that reveal an ecosystem of incredible complexity. “We would be in trees right here with a couple winding channels that were dry in the summer but had flowing water in the wintertime," explains Whipple.

Yearly floods from the Sacramento River inundated Delta marshes creating habitat for birds and young salmon. Closer to San Francisco Bay, hundreds of miles of small tidal channels branched out like capillaries in the wetlands. Today, most of those channels have been filled in.

Returning the Delta to this pristine state just isn’t possible, says Whipple, and that’s not the goal of the project. But knowing how the ecosystem once worked could improve the habitat restoration efforts that are happening.

Restoring Habitat

Liberty Island is one place in the Delta that looks as it might have 200 years ago. Not long ago, it was a low-lying expanse of farmland, protected by tall levees.

“The levees broke and it wasn’t financially worth reclaiming,” Says Carl Wilcox of with California’s Department of Fish and Game. The landowners gave up when the island flooded 15 years ago. After that, nature took over. Tules and cattails started sprouting and wildlife followed.

Returning vegetation at Liberty Island in the Delta.

Now, “some of the endangered native fishes, Delta smelt, longfin smelt are using this area,” says Wilcox. They're finding endangered Chinook salmon as well. "These are more productive areas for them, they’re more protected, they’re less prone to predators."

California Considers Ambitious Restoration Plans

California is using the Liberty Island project as a model for a proposal to restore 65,000 acres of Delta habitat. It's part of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan – a major overhaul of the Delta’s water infrastructure.

Leo Winternitz of the Nature Conservancy says bringing back habitat for declining wildlife could make the state’s water supply more reliable. Restrictions under the Endangered Species Act have limited how much water can be pumped from the Delta in recent years.

There is one big problem with restoration: most of the islands in the Delta are below sea level.

"Just south of here, some of the islands, they're in the 17 to 25 below sea level range. So if their levees broke, what you’d have is a large open body of water. You can’t create tidal marshes in those areas," says Winternitz.

That leaves only a few places where restoration is feasible. Winternitz says in those areas it’s crucial the state look to the past to create the same interconnected habitat that once was.

Governor Jerry Brown's administration is set to unveil the sweeping plan to restore the Delta later this year.

A canal in the Delta, heading to the Central Valley Project.

If you're not familiar with where the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is or why it's so important to the state, you're not alone. Polls show most Californians have never heard of it.

This relatively small part of California plays a crucial role in the state's water supply. And, as might be expected, it's become ground zero for a decades-long water war involving cities, farmers and fish. This year, the state is taking on an ambitious planning effort to break that deadlock.

Re-plumbing California

The reason the Delta has this starring role is thanks to a basic geography problem. Almost all of the state's water is found in the top third of the state. Most of the population lives in the bottom two-thirds of the state.

This issue was painfully obvious to state planners a century ago. The Central Valley promised rich soil for farmers, but had little rainfall. They knew for California to grow, they had to move water to drier parts of the state.

The Delta is where California's two largest rivers come together, carrying runoff from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. To water planners, it looked like the perfect place to tap into. California began building water infrastructure at a massive scale.

Water is exported out of the Delta primarily through two large pumping plants near Tracy, about 60 miles east of San Francisco. Each moves millions of gallons of water a minute. From there, the water rushes into concrete canals that reach Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and millions of acres of farmland.

This 700-mile system has made California the state it is today. But it's come with a cost…

An Ecosystem in Decline

On a boat in the western Delta, environmental scientist Julio Adib-Samii and team from California's Department of Fish and Game pull in a long fishing net.

A Delta smelt.

"Well, we have an adult Delta smelt," he says, holding a small, silver endangered fish that smells distinctly like a cucumber.

Fish and Game scientists have done these monthly fish surveys for decades. But starting in 2002, they noticed something strange. Where they once caught a lot of Delta smelt, now, they weren't catching any. The population had crashed, as well as populations of striped bass, threadfin shad, longfin smelt and Chinook salmon. In 2008, the commercial salmon fishery shut down completely for two years.

"Their decline is an indication of a changing environment and place they didn't evolve to be in," says Adib-Samii.

The Delta was once a massive tidal marsh, full of winding channels that spread out like capillaries. After the Gold Rush, settlers put up levees to create low-lying islands for farming. Ninety-seven percent of the historic wetlands were lost.

Multiple Stressors, One Big Question

"We've converted almost every scrap of habitat in the Delta to farmland and we need to return some of that to habitat," says Barry Nelson, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The ecosystem has also been hit by pollution, invasive species – and by the pumping plants.

"The pumps in the south Delta are so powerful that they literally reverse the direction of flow. It's very easy for those fish to follow that water and get sucked right into the pumps," says Nelson. A few years ago, federal wildlife agencies issued decisions requiring the pumping to slow down during certain times of year to protect fish.

This brings us to the central debate in the Delta: how much water should be pumped out and how much should be left for fish?

"There's a limit to the amount of water you can pump from the Delta ecosystem and in the last decade it's become incredibly clear that we've exceeded that, and we've exceeded it by a lot," says Nelson.

Not everyone agrees. "There is, you know, always going to be shortages. But there's also a lot of years when we have absolutely plenty of water in the system to meet the reasonable needs that are out there," says Jason Peltier with Westlands Water District, an agricultural area in the San Joaquin Valley that depends on Delta water. He says limits on pumping have hurt the district's farmers.

"You can't get a loan to farm unless you can show the banker what water you have. And they don't have a lot of confidence in going to their bankers," says Peltier.

The battle over the environmental rules went to the courts. "There was lawsuit after lawsuit," says John Laird, California's Secretary for Natural Resources. "It got to the point that it made much more sense to look at the entire Delta as a whole."

A New Attempt at Progress

Laird's agency is trying to reach a compromise with the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. The 10,000-page plan calls for a new way to pump water out of the Delta, through what's commonly known as the peripheral canal. Huge tunnels would take water from further upstream, bypassing the Delta, which supporters say would make the water supply more reliable.

This isn't a new idea. In 1982, California voters defeated a similar plan. "The real debate is not the tunnel itself. It's how much water and when can it flow through the tunnel," says Laird.

The massive project could harm the Delta's endangered species, but Laird says they'll restore thousands of acres of wetlands to compensate. California voters would be on the hook for that cost, while the $12 billion tunnel would be paid for by water users.

It's a tough sell but, according to Laird, a necessary one since climate change will make the state's water supply more unpredictable. The agency will release a full draft of the plan in July.

Dickcissel - a grassland bird. Photo Credit: Amy Larson

In an effort to improve the sustainability and health of their land, farmers are increasingly interested in taking a systems approach to farmland management. A systems approach acknowledges the key connections between ecological, economic, and social components. Given the ensuing complexity, measuring the health of a farm system requires good diagnostic tools. In addition, these tools need to be clear and straightforward.

Our current effort at the University of Nebraska Lincoln to develop a set of such indicators for farmers, the Healthy Farm Index, focuses on biodiversity and ecosystem services at the farm scale. One indicator in the index is the presences of a given set of birds on the farm. Birds are a popular indicator because they are sensitive to change in farm practices, found broadly in the environment, and are easy to detect by sight and sound.

The ability to detect birds by sound has spurred our research group to develop resources to aid farmers and other people interested in the songs and calls of farmland birds. As researchers, we use auditory detections of birds as one of our primary monitoring tools. With acoustic recorders, we have recorded the songs and calls of our local bird communities. Back in the lab, we use software to identify and isolate the best songs and calls. These vocalizations have been posted to our website, Farmland Birds of Nebraska, and distributed back to farmers and others interested on CDs. With the acoustic recordings, farmers can select a group of indicator species suitable for their area, learn its call, and listen for the bird while working in the field. This information can be used by the farmer in assessing their own farm or can be shared more broadly with researchers.

The recordings also allow farmers to share with consumers (many of whom are birders) an added environmental benefit of their farm. This spring we were able to take these recorded vocalizations back to one of our participating farms. In partnership with Common Good Farm, we hosted a “Birding on the Farm” tour. Local residents and other farmers spent the morning listening for and identifying the community of birds at the farm. New and experienced birders alike were surprised at the diversity found on the single farm.

In the coming months, we are expanding our network of recorders. This winter we will be monitoring winter bird communities on participating farms and testing the influences that road noise may have on bird vocalization and communication.

While looking for the answers, I found agronomist Bob Shaffer. Shaffer started out as a farmer, but soon realized that he was more interested in the soil than in what grew out of it. That led to a career in making and applying compost. He now works with Recology, the company that composts San Francisco's green waste, at their composting facility in Vacaville and with farmers who want to improve their crops.

One of Shaffer’s clients is Old Hill Ranch in Glen Ellen. As the name suggests, the vineyard is one of the earliest in Sonoma County and has many 100-year-old vines.

When Old Hill was first established, it was planted in the traditional way – a lot of different grape varietals were planted, producing a blended wine. The vineyard has a colorful map that identifies the patchwork of varietals on the property.

The vines are dry farmed, with no irrigation system running between the vine rows. This makes adding compost really important, as it helps with water retention in the soil. Old Hill’s owner, Will Bucklin, is also experimenting with compost tea, in which a small amount of compost is “brewed” into a dark tea to develop beneficial microbes. The tea can be added to a water supply or sprayed onto the leaves directly. It’s another way of making nutrients and protective microbes available to the plant.

Tiny young grapes on a vine at Old Hill Ranch, in Glen Ellen. Photo: Kate Szrom.

When QUEST visited Old Hill Ranch, it was a hot, sunny June day. There had just been a full moon and the blooms on the vines had set into tiny green grapes.

As he does in the summer season, Shaffer checked to see if the vines were getting water and nutrients by observing the leaves and tendrils on the vines. He pointed out some of the cover crops he has planted to prevent soil erosion. Through their roots, cover crops like grasses and legumes can also carry carbon deeper into the soil than compost alone would.

In the fall, compost will be applied at Old Hill and on other vineyards like it. Over the winter, rains will help spread the nutrients and beneficial microbes in the compost through the ground to be made available for next year’s growing season.

The Mexican free-tailed bats living beneath the Yolo Causeway, a three-mile bridge near Davis, make up the largest colony of bats in the Central Valley and most likely one of the biggest in California, said Corky Quirk, education associate with the Yolo Basin Foundation.

Corky Quirk helps QUEST producer Gabriela Quiros prepare to film the bat flyout at the Yolo Causeway.
Photo: Amanda Stupi

The Yolo Causeway carries highway 80 traffic over the Yolo Bypass, a flood-control structure that protects Sacramento, West Sacramento and nearby communities from the Sacramento River’s rising waters during the winter.

The bats fly out from under the bridge each evening from two locations. Between June and August, Quirk takes groups of visitors to watch a large group of the bats fly out in the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area, which is managed by the state’s Department of Fish and Game. This year’s bat tours sold out after the Sacramento Bee published a story.

Bats fly out over the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area, in Davis.
Photo: Corky Quirk

But you can watch a slightly smaller group of bats fly out shortly before sunset from the causeway’s bike trail, on the bridge’s west end. Quirk recommends parking on the northwest side of the causeway and walking up onto the levee to reach the bike trail. The bats fly from under the causeway near the levee on the north side.

Scientists don’t know where these bats spend the rest of the year, although they suspect that some of them remain at the causeway and that others live under nearby Central Valley bridges and in the Bay Area. In another QUEST video I produced, bat scientists counted 16,000 Mexican free-tailed bats spending the winter under a small bridge in the town of Galt, 20 miles south of Sacramento.

The bats start to arrive at the causeway in May and make themselves at home in the bridge’s exposition joints, crevices that are one inch wide and 12 inches deep and allow the cement structure to contract and expand.

“In our area we don’t have caves, which would be the normal habitat for this particular species,” said Quirk. “But they’ve adapted to live in the structures that the humans have ended up providing.”

Mexican free-tailed bats have adapted to living under bridges instead of in caves. Photo: Kate Szrom

Mexican free-tailed bats are one of around 16 species of bats in the Bay Area, said Dave Johnston, a wildlife ecologist and an officer of the Western Bat Working Group. While this species is doing well, other Bay Area bats such as the long-eared myotis, the Townsend’s big-eared bat and the pallid bat, aren’t as numerous as they once were.

“What we’re learning is that more and more of these species are more sensitive to urbanization than we previously thought,” said Johnston. “Habitat fragmentation and habitat loss are probably the big suspects.”

And a disease called white-nose syndrome has killed more than one million bats in the eastern United States since it was introduced to New York state in 2006, likely from Europe. The fungal disease attacks bats hibernating in caves and causes them to develop what looks like frost on their snouts and chins.

The disease is expected to reach California, but Johnston said it’s not clear how it might impact the state’s bats.

“Our bats typically do not go into the deep torpor or deep hibernation when this fungus does its worst effect,” said Johnston. “So that’s a wild card out there.”

Adult Mexican free-tailed bats weigh about half an ounce and are three inches long. Their 10-inch wingspan makes them look bigger when they’re flying, which they do at speeds of about 50 miles per hour. Under the causeway, they chatter away in high-pitched, bird-like chirps. But when they exit the bridge at sunset, Quirk holds up a phone-sized machine called a bat detector to hear the high-frequency sounds that help the bats locate their prey. Without the bat detector, these sounds aren’t audible to humans.

In California’s Central Valley, Mexican free-tailed bats feed on the moths and moth larvae that attack corn and tomatoes. In Texas, where they’re also known as Brazilian free-tailed bats, they protect the cotton crops and reduce the cost of pesticides for cotton farmers.

“When they’re pregnant or nursing, they’re going to eat about the equivalent of their weight in insects each night,” said Quirk. “They’re very, very important for our pest control.”

Four-day-old bat pup. Photo: Kate Szrom

Each female gives birth to a single pup once a year. The pups, which are born translucent and furless, are large, compared to their mothers.

“I think of it as a human mother giving birth to a kindergartner,” said Quirk. Around July 1, Quirk starts to look for tiny bat placentas and umbilical cords that have fallen to the ground under the bridge – a sign that the bats have given birth.

Because nursing bats need to eat so many insects, once they give birth they fly in thicker groups than during their pregnancy. They fly out from under the bridge in a long, twirling line that Quirk describes as a “ribbon.” Each night, three or four ribbons are visible from the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area.

“I like that they’re so different than their reputation,” said Quirk as she watched a flyout in July. “I like that they’re actually very calm animals for the most part, that they’re hunting insects and not interested in us.”

Applying herbicides to crops helps increase yield—but at a cost. Photo: tpmartins.

Recent headlines have brought to light some of herbicides’ unintended effects. The herbicide Imprelis, primarily used on golf courses and the like, has been linked to the death of conifers throughout the east and the midwest. The safety of the widely used herbicide Roundup has also been called into question. Herbicides can provide farmers and gardeners with advantages over unwanted weeds—but they also come with drawbacks.

When DuPont first introduced the herbicide Imprelis in 2010, it was seen as a pretty environmentally friendly option. It is really effective at preventing the growth of weeds like dandelions and ivy. It affects plants’ hormone receptors, and it works at low concentrations. Unlike other herbicides, hot temperatures or rainfall just after application do not make Imprelis ineffective—a benefit for lawn care professionals, who otherwise have to time the application of herbicides according to the weather report. But Imprelis doesn’t bind to the soil and can leach into groundwater, two reasons why the state of New York has not approved it. (California has not approved it either.) Because of these characteristics, the herbicide being taken up by nearby trees through their root systems. As a result, conifers’ needles turn brown, and some trees die. The chemicals in Imprelis stick around in the grass clippings, creating killer compost that should go to the landfill rather than the compost bin or mulch pile. We haven’t heard the end of the story of Imprelis.

We will likely also hear more about Roundup, a big player manufactured by Monsanto. This story in the Huffington Post describes several studies that indicate that the herbicide causes birth defects. Roundup and other similar herbicides contain glyphosate, which causes reproductive problems in adult animals and birth defects in animals’ offspring. Organisms like rabbits can be exposed when herbicides are applied and when they eat the plants that have been treated. Lab studies have shown that exposure to glyphosate results in malformations in frog and chicken embryos. And, lab studies show that Roundup also poses problems for human embryonic and placental cells. Herbicides that contain glyphosate are hugely popular, because they’re so effective. In the last year for which data are available, 2006-2007, the US agricultural industry applied 180 to 185 million pounds of glyphosate. From 2005 to 2007, non-agricultural use added another 8 to 11 million pounds to the ecosystem. This chemical is increasingly ingrained in the US agricultural system: farmers purchase genetically modified seeds that are resistant to Roundup (such as Roundup Ready Soybeans), and then spray Roundup on the crops. These methods allow for much higher crop yields than organic agriculture, and are cost-effective for big farms. Without the advantages that herbicides provide, farms cannot compete.

Eradicating weeds is a challenge, and herbicides are a big part of fighting that battle. We have a complex relationship with weeds—check out this great conversation about weeds on Science Friday last week. Herbicides give us some key advantages over unwanted weeds. These advantages come with drawbacks. The two herbicides under question are primarily used by industry—lawn care professionals and big ag farmers—rather than individuals. But the average citizen uses herbicides on his or her home lawn, too. Do you use herbicides? Why or why not?

Almond shells at the West Biofuels biomass test plant in Woodland, California.

When you think of where energy comes from, you might picture a power plant or maybe wind mills. You probably wouldn't think of a pile of 12 tons of almond shells.

California is hungry for renewable energy. Solar and wind power have taken off thanks to the state's ambitious clean energy goals. But there's another way to generate electricity — by using organic material like agricultural and tree waste. It's known as biomass power.

Matt Summers is an engineer with West Biofuels at their test power plant near Sacramento. California, by the way, is the world leader in growing almonds.

"So we've got more almond shells than anybody else. And you know, we know some companies that handle almond shells and they're always looking for somewhere to take them," says Summers.

Listen to the QUEST radio story How Green Is Biomass Energy?

But where some see a waste product, Summers sees an energy source.

"So this is the heart of the West Biofuels process," he says, pointing to a tower of industrial equipment that turns almond shells into electricity. First, the waste, or biomass, is fed into a reactor.

"We call it reforming, so we're re-forming what's biomass, what's almond shells into smaller particles that are gases," says Summers, describing their gasification technology.

The gas that's produced is a lot like natural gas, so it goes to an advanced generator where it's burned to produce electricity.

But this is where biomass is different from other renewables. The generator produces air pollution, unlike, say, a solar farm. So Summers and his team use pollution control technology to meet California's air quality standards.

Still, despite the emissions from biomass plants, many say there are big benefits to using waste as an energy source.

"Waste is pretty green," says Jim Boyd, a member of the California Energy Commission. "There's enough material out there to make thousands of megawatts of electricity."

Matt Summers of West Biofuels stands next to their fuel source.

There are a lot of unused energy sources out there, Boyd says, like construction debris and orchard cuttings. Biomass energy also has one big advantage over other renewables – reliability. Wind and solar power are variable since the sun and wind aren't available all the time.

"And instead of just thinking about building more natural gas plants to fill the void, we could utilize biomass plants because they are seven by 24 once you get them up and running," says Boyd.

But while other renewables are booming, biomass is on the decline in California. After dozens of plants were built in the 1980s, today, only a handful of new plants are being proposed. In 2009, biomass provided about two percent of the state's electricity.

"There's a great infatuation with wind and solar and very rare references to biomass and some of us are trying to turn that around a little bit," Boyd says.

One problem is simply cost. Biomass facilities need tons and tons of material and trucking it in from around the state isn't very economical.

The other issue gets back to the concern of whether biomass energy is really as green as supporters say. There's the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from biomass plants. Another controversy is over one particular fuel source: trees.

All those years of Smokey Bear and fire suppression in California have created very dense forests – which are at high risk for fires. Both private and public land managers have been trying to reduce that fuel load.

"In a lot of cases you'd do thinning operation where you take out some of the trees, usually the smaller trees, the less valuable trees," says Bill Stewart, a forestry specialist at the University of California – Berkeley.

Stewart says most of the material removed from forests is either burned or left to decay. So there's a lot of interest in using forestry waste in biomass plants.

But Debbie Hammel of the Natural Resources Defense Council says, "I think if you're talking about waste, it's important to define what you mean."

"If you take too much of that residue out of the forest, you're going to have an impact on the forest floor, the fertility of the soil, erosion and potentially wildlife habitat."

Hammel says there's a major debate over how much thinning is good for a forest. So, she worries that a larger biomass industry would create incentives to over-harvest forests. That's why Hammel says not all biomass is equal – and why waste like almond shells should be used before forest cuttings.

"There is a role for biomass done right, but it's a smaller role I think than some people imagine," says Hammel.

Looking ahead, Hammel says the next thorny issue is calculating the greenhouse gas emissions from biomass plants, which can be tricky since the fuels come from a number of sources. That's something the federal Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing now.

38.714854 -121.75320

Under Governor Jerry Brown's proposed budget, state funding for the Williamson Act would be eliminated. Photo Credit: Jennifer Rusk

After plenty of winter rain, the hills of the Yolo Land and Cattle Company are especially green this year. That's a good thing, says owner Casey Stone, when you're raising grass-fed cattle.

"We've become more grass farmers than cow farmers. You gotta manage the whole resource and whole package," says Stone.

Stone and I are driving through his 7500-acre ranch in Yolo County, about 30 miles west of Sacramento. "These are some of our fall calvers out here," he says, pointing to just a few of his 700 Black Angus cattle, who, right now have fuzzy winter coats.

"There have only been a few families that have owned this ranch over the years since it was homesteaded back in the 1860s," he says. Stone's father started their cattle operation in the 1970s and he took advantage of the Williamson Act.

Listen to the QUEST radio story Land Preservation on the Chopping Block

Here's how it works: in exchange for agreeing not to develop their land, the Stones pay lower property taxes on their ranch. The program was created in 1965 to preserve open space in California. Today, it covers more than half of the state's farm and ranchland.

Under Governor Jerry Brown's proposed budget, state funding for the Williamson Act would be eliminated. "I think people have taken it for granted up until recently cause it's always been something that's out there," says Stone.

Stone says the program helps keep many ranchers afloat, given the volatile cattle market. "It's a very cyclical business. Eight years ago we were down in the dumps." Without the program, Stone expects his property taxes to jump 38 percent on the ranch. For his neighbors, he says, it could be higher and that creates pressure to subdivide the land. "In this type of area, everyone wants a ranchette in the country."

John Young, Yolo County Agricultural Commissioner, agrees. "The ranchers are gonna by far be hit the hardest here. The pressure on them is going to be to cut this acreage apart and start to sell it off chunk by chunk."

There may not be much development pressure today, but Young expects it to come back as the economy rebounds. And since ranchers need a lot of land to raise cattle, higher taxes will hit them hard. "Most farmers can't afford to pay those kind of taxes when it takes 40 acres for one cow/calf pair."

Counties will also be in a tight spot, if the legislature passes Brown's budget. Since counties collect lower property taxes under the program, the state usually reimburses them for the lost funds. In Yolo County, that's supposed to be 1.3 million dollars a year.

Of course, these days, all of California is facing some tough cuts, as Governor Brown said a few weeks ago. "Do I like the choices we face? No, I don't like them. But after serious study of the options left by a 25 billion dollar deficit, the budget I proposed is the best that I can devise," he said in the State of the State address.

John Young says it would fall to the counties to decide if they can continue the conservation program without state support. "Williamson Act is one of the best land conservation acts that's ever existed anywhere. So really this is a statewide issue. It shouldn't be on each individual county to decide that."

But the Williamson Act isn't just something that ranchers care about. On Howard Ranch, a 12,000-acre cattle ranch in eastern Sacramento County, Jaymee Marty is standing next to what looks like a small pond. Marty is an ecologist with the Nature Conservancy.

"A vernal pool is basically a season wetland and this is sort of a little hotspot of native diversity," she says.

These small wetlands may not seem like much, but every spring, they only appear in California's grasslands. By summer, they're completely dried up. "So you have you know hundreds of plant species that are found nowhere else in the world except in California in vernal pools." They're also home to species like ferry shrimp and tiger salamanders.

Two different vernal pools in Jaymee Marty's research. On the left is a pool that's been fenced off from cattle, while the pool on the right was left open. The fenced pool is choked with thatch and invasive weeds like Medusahead. Cattle have kept those plants down in the open pool, which Marty says is a more productive environment for tiger salamanders and other species that depend on these seasonal pools. Photos: Jaymee Marty and Jennifer Buck.

Ten years ago, Marty began a study to see if cattle were harming these tiny communities. "I thought that I was going to find that some species were really going to lose out in a grazed grassland."

Instead, Marty found that cattle help create a better environment for vernal pools. There are types of grazing that are not good for the ecosystem, says Marty, but studies have shown that rangeland is an important habitat for raptors and other wildlife.

That's why the loss of more than 500,000 acres of California ranchland over the last quarter century is a concern. "It's pretty shocking. Some counties have a lot more loss than others."

And that, says Marty, is where the Williamson Act comes in. "Really the only reason that this grassland is in existence today is because it has been ranched, because people have been able to make a living off of it."

That's why she sees the Williamson Act as an important conservation tool in California. But in Sacramento, the act is competing with schools and health care for limited funding. Legislators are now holding budget hearings that will decide the future of the program.

38.623317 -122.02352