Throughout most of the year, the brilliantly colored Sierra newt (Taricha sierrae) lives on land, hunting and eating insects, earthworms, and slugs and hiding from any potential predators in the moist soil beneath rocks and logs. In the winter and spring, however, these members of the family Salamandridae become aquatic, returning to the pond or stream where they were born in search of a good time.
Water Quality

The storm that swept through Nevada County between the 23rd and 25th of October dropped between seven and twelve inches of much needed precipitation. This rainfall has led to, among other things, increased flows in the Yuba River and SYRCL’s ‘first flush’ event.
We sat down with our resident hydrologist, Karl Ronning, to learn more about this ‘first flush’ event and to discuss the results of our water quality monitoring.

In November 2019, Rise Gold submitted a project description to reopen the Idaho-Maryland Mine with the hope of extracting gold on the 119-acre New Brunswick site as well as the 56-acre site on Idaho-Maryland Road.
SYRCL has been researching the project since 2019. Earlier this year, SYRCL’s Board of Directors unanimously voted to oppose the reopening of the Idaho-Maryland Mine.
Shortly after, on July 28, 2021, SYRCL joined ten other local and regional environmental organizations in signing a letter to Mr. Patrick Pulupa, the Executive Officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, to express deep concern over the impacts reopening the mine could have on water quality and flows.

Following the success of this year’s Yuba River Cleanup, in which volunteers hauled out more than six tons of trash and recyclables, we may want to take a moment to consider why cleanup programs are so necessary and why illegal dumping is such a frequent occurrence in the Yuba River watershed and throughout Nevada County.