What is Wild and Scenic?
(Make sure you scroll down to the "What Wild & Scenic Work is Happening?" section below to find out what is happening now.)
Simply put, “wild and scenic river acts” refer to special laws to protect rivers and ensure their free-flowing state. Rivers protected by such laws are usually included in “wild & scenic river systems.”
Just as there are national park and state park systems to protect land or areas of importance, there are wild and scenic systems to protect and preserve rivers. These systems are created by the U.S. Congress or state legislatures by law. Individual rivers or river segments are added to these systems by designating them by acts of Congress or legislatures (or, in rare circumstances, the Secretary of the Interior or Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency). Friends of the River has been a part of every wild and scenic river designation campaign in California since our founding in 1973! We look forward to protecting more rivers through both the state and national wild and scenic river systems!
In California, we have two distinct but similar wild & scenic river systems.
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- The national wild and scenic river system
- The state wild and scenic river system.
Both systems are used in the state of California and offer varying levels of protection and management. We've got a handy memo on rivers protected by California's Wild & Scenic River Act, the history of the statute, and how the Act works. We also compare the state act to the National Wild & Scenic Rivers Act and provide some origin stories of the state and the national wild & scenic rivers in California. The memo is now an 89-page referenced memo with more than 400 endnotes, most containing URLs to the references you might need to dive deep into this important part of California's and the nation's efforts to protect our rivers from dams and diversions. The memo is emerging as the definitive first stop for wild & scenic river information in California. It is updated frequently, and you can count on this webpage to have the latest version. For this version and an introduction, check out the latest below:
2024-10-25 Wild & scenic river history in California - an introduction.pdf
2025-2-7 FOR CAWSRs w&s river referenced memo.pdf
2025-2-7 FOR CAWSRs w&s river referenced memo.docx
Why Does Wild and Scenic Matter?
Wild and Scenic designation for a river is one way that we can help preserve a river system's very existence
Preservation is done through different methods, and the means available depends on which system the river is designated under or the provisions of the statute that protects the river. Both national and state statutes prohibit dams, diversions, or other impoundments on designated reaches of a river — and sometime more. Wild and Scenic designation can also serve to protect the water quality and river ecosystem from pollutants and other threats.
California has 189,454 miles of river. Of that, only 2,076 miles are protected in the national wild and scenic system. The state system protects 1,485 miles. Together only 1% of our state’s rivers are protected.
What Wild and Scenic Work is Happening?
Critical work to defend our state wild & scenic rivers act
On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2005, President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California” “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.” Four days later, President Trump signed an executive order directing “[t]he Secretary of the Interior…[to] utilize his discretion to operate the CVP to deliver more water and produce additional hydropower, including by increasing storage and conveyance…to high-need communities, notwithstanding any contrary State or local law…. He also directed the Secretaries of the Interior & Commerce that…“[w]ithin 30 days from the date of this order, each designated official shall identify any regulatory hurdles that unduly burden each respective water project, identify any recent changes in state or Federal law that may impact such projects from a regulatory perspective…and shall develop a proposed plan, for review by the Secretaries, to appropriately suspend, revise, or rescind any regulations or procedures that unduly burden such projects and are not necessary to protect the public interest or otherwise comply with the law.”
The Secretaries are expected to recommend signing the Record of Decision for Reclamation’s Shasta Dam and Reservoir Expansion Project (SDREP) supplemental environmental impact statement, recommending that construction funding be included in the federal appropriations bills, and recommending that federal statutes to preempt the California Wild & Scenic Rivers Act be introduced and enacted.
In the 118th Congress (2023-2024) the GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representative measures purporting to overturn (preempt) the California Wild & Scenic Rivers Act. Fortunately, the U.S. Senate rejected the House-passed measures. The 119th Congress, with both Houses of Congress controlled by the GOP, is expected to renew that effort.
For more information about these measures, scroll on below.
California's two U.S. Senators will be the key to stopping this.
California's two U.S. Senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff can be reached here:
U.S. Senate
Washington D.C. 20510
The snail-mail address for members of the U.S. House of Representatives is similar:
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington D.C. 20515
118th Congress (2023-2024) (Failed river protection efforts)
Friends of the River wants you to know about some wild & scenic river designation coalition efforts in California and in bordering Oregon. Some coalition members have been working for many, many years on specific region-based bills, while others are working on the entire package. Together the three California bills have the potential to help protect over 650 miles of rivers and creeks! We expect that these bills will be introduced in the 119th Congress, although their prospects to achieving final passage by the GOP-led U.S. Congress and signature by the President are not good. For some background, we developed the following information during the previous (2024-2024) Congress.
California national wild & scenic rivers bills introduced once again (for the third and four time): On April 10, 2023, Rep. Carbajol (D Santa Barbara) reintroduced his Central Coast Heritage Protection Act, H.R. 2545. On May 10, Rep. Judy Chu (D Monterey Park) reintroduced her now renamed once again San Gabriel Mountains Protection Act, H.R. 3681. On May 24, Rep. Jared Huffman (D San Rafael) reintroduced the Northwest California Wilderness, Recreation, and Working Forests Act, H.R. 3700. On May 31, Senator Alex Padilla (D CA) reintroduced his now renamed Public Lands Act, S. 1776, including the provisions of the three House bills.
Padilla Introduces Bill to Protect 1 Million Acres of California Public Lands
https://carbajal.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=1413
These House lands and national wild & scenic river bills failed to achieve passage the previous three Congresses (one bill for four Congresses). Senator Padilla’s bill failed to pass the U.S. Senate in the previous Congress, as had Kamala Harris’s bills in the previous two Congresses.
The Smith River NRA bill introduced once again: On January 31, Oregon U.S. Senator Merkley, with Oregon U.S. Senator Wyden and California U.S. Senators Feinstein, and Padilla as co-sponsors, reintroduce the Smith River National Recreation Area Expansion Act, S. 162, a measure to expand national wild & scenic river and NRA coverage of the Smith River into the state of Oregon. Most of the Smith River watershed is in California and protected by wild & scenic river designation and an NRA. This measure would provide for similar protections within the state of Oregon (adjacent to California), adding 58,000 acres in the North Fork Smith River watershed in Oregon to the Smith River National Recreation Area already existing in California and adding 74 miles of river to the national wild & scenic river system along with a mining withdrawal (new mining claims on federal lands would not be allowed). The bill was reported out of Committee (marked up) on May 17.
The bill has failed in the two previous Congresses, but every two years there is always hope that this Congress will pass this bill. Here's some more information about the bill:
2023-1-30 News Release Smith River NRA expansion introduction
smith_river_nra_2023_proposed_map
smith_river_nra_2023_bill_text
118th Congress (2023-2024) (disrespecting California's Wild & Scenic Rivers Act) (None of these bills passed, but the effort will begin in 2025 with the 119th Congress)
Attack on the California Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, McCloud River: On January 9, 2023, in the opening days of the 118th Congress, U.S. Congressional Representative David Valadao (R Hanford) introduced H.R. 215, the Working to Advance Tangible and Effective Reforms (WATER) for California Act (the WATER for California Act). The measure was co-sponsored by former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R Bakersfield) along with the members of the California Republican delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives.
H.R. 215 §305(a) would, apparently without the previous restrictions, make available unspent appropriations for reservoir storage projects under Senator Dianne Feinstein's 2016 "drought" bill (the WIIN Act) from 2017–2021 to Reclamation’s Water and Related Resources Account. These appropriations bills prohibited construction funding for Reclamation’s Shasta Dam raise, and the WIIN Act prohibited violation of state law. In addition, H.R. 215 §301 amends the IIJA (the bipartisan infrastructure bill) to allow for Congressional appropriations for the construction of the Shasta Dam raise under the IIJA, which had prohibited construction funding for the Shasta Dam raise.
Also, H.R. 215 §305(b) purports (for CVP contractors) to override the California Wild & Scenic Rivers Act provisions (CA PRC §5093.542(c)) that prevent public agencies of the state of California (agencies of the state and many political subdivisions of the state) from assisting Reclamation in the planning and construction of the Shasta Dam raise.
The bill was passed out of (marked up by) the House Natural Resources Committee on March 28, 2023. In June 2023, the House Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee added the text of H.R. 215 to its markup of the Energy and Water Appropriations bill (see page 64, Title V “Water for California” Sec. 501). On October 26, the U.S. House of Representative passed H.R. 4394, the “Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2024.” H.R. 4394 included H.R. 215. However, that 118th Congress first-session effort was defeated with the passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 on March 8, 2024.
Importantly, the second session of the 118th Congress has not yet passed appropriations for the federal government, the national debt extension, or other key must-pass bills. Thus, the Congress must return for a lame-duck session after the November 2024 general election. It could be a wild session, and efforts to pass provisions of H.R. 215 are sure to be part of the lame-duck drama! Let's hope that they can be defeated.
Attack on the California Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, the American River: On September 6, 2024, the House Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee held a field hearing in Santa Nella, California. Among the subjects discussed was Rep. John Duarte’s (R Modesto) idea to extend the Folsom-South Canal from its present terminus at the closed nuclear power plant in Sacramento County to the Stanislaus River or the state and federal pumps. The point of diversion would be just upstream of the state and federally designated lower American River. The extension had stopped fifty years earlier because of an incompletely resolved lawsuit against the extension of the canal (and the Auburn dam). The extension of the canal to outside the watershed is contrary to the wild & scenic river management plan for the lower American River.