San Francisco Bay's beleaguered shoreline will once again teem with rare shorebirds, harvest mice and native grasses under an ambitious, 50-year restoration plan announced Wednesday.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein ignited a firestorm among fellow California Democrats on Thursday as word spread of her proposal to divert Northern California water to Central Valley farmers.

One of the best ways to help the Estuary is by creating more permeable, resilient watersheds. This can be done by restoring streams and wetlands while at the same time retrofitting our cities with "green stormwater" or "green infrastructure" projects, also known as low impact development, or "LID." On April 9, the North Bay Watershed Association sponsors its "Greening Our Water Infrastructure" conference. On April 11-14, 2010, San Francisco will host the American Society of Civil Engineers Low impact development conference in San Francisco.  Private property owners, too, can make a difference, by converting turf to native, drought-tolerant gardens and rain gardens. Download a presentation by the State Water Resources Control Board's Eric Berntsen on water-efficient landscaping.

Pyrethroids, among the most widely-used home pesticides, are winding up in California rivers at levels toxic to some stream-dwellers, possibly endangering the food supply of fish and other aquatic animals, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Southern Illinois University (SIU).

Click here to download audio recordings of some of the forum's key speakers. Click here to view biologist Bruce Herbold's presentation about the state of Delta fish.

The scenic drive along Highway 160 that winds through the Delta will look dramatically different in the upcoming decades, biologists, conservationists and other experts said at Thursday's Delta and California Water Forum in Oakland. Speakers throughout the event hosted by the San Francisco Estuary Partnership said the 80 islands and 1,600 miles of levees in the Central Valley are reaching their breaking point, and action needs to be taken. Experts throughout the day took the podium and offered bleak outlooks on the future of the Delta, and their respective views on the recent water package passed by the state legislature. Multiple speakers said the Delta cannot and will not be restored to the way it was in the mid-1850s or even several decades ago and California's water system needs to be overhauled and climate change must be accounted for when deciding future Delta projects. The speakers also warned against the ecological breakdown the Delta is experiencing.

You are invited to submit a proposal to provide assistance to the San Francisco Estuary Partnership (SFEP) for implementation of the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) by providing multi-media consulting services as outlined in this RFP.

The San Francisco Estuary Partnership (SFEP), a project of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), a joint powers agency, formed under California Government Code Sections 6500, et seq., invites qualified organizations (such as a consultant or team of consultants) to respond to this Request for Proposals (RFP) for developing Best Management Practices (BMPs) to reduce or prevent discharge of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from release during building demolition/remodeling, as part of the PCBs in Caulk project managed by SFEP. This project is funded by the State Revolving Fund under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and is subject to federal stimulus terms and conditions.