Release of Estuary Blueprint and Report on the Freshwater Starved Estuary from the San Francisco Estuary Partnership

After more than two years of planning and collaboration, San Francisco Estuary Partnership announces the release of the streamlined and updated Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan, the 2016 Estuary Blueprint.

The 2016 Estuary Blueprint is a forward-looking, comprehensive, collaborative vision for the San Francisco Estuary and a “next step” for many significant regional planning documents. The Estuary Blueprint goals take a systems approach to protecting habitats and living resources, building resiliency, improving water quality and quantity, and championing the Estuary. Through these cross-cutting goals, the Estuary Blueprint addresses our most pressing estuarine health challenges, embracing and reducing hurdles to innovations in climate resilience planning, and bridging the upper and lower Estuary (the Bay and the Delta) in order to support key natural processes.

Along with the release of the Estuary Blueprint, we have updated the plan website with a number of exciting features. We invite you to take a tour, and check out the project tracking tool, implementation infographic and success stories.

To stay up to date about the Estuary Blueprint, sign up for our quarterly newsletter. It will provide you information on progress tracking, success stories, upcoming events, and more! Sign up by following the link below.

We are pleased to present with you our first milestone from the Estuary Blueprint with the completion of San Francisco Bay: The Freshwater-Starved Estuary, The Bay Institute’s report on the impact of reduced freshwater flows to the Bay. On October 8, this report made front page news in the San Francisco Chronicle.

This report examines the effects of reduced freshwater inflow on key components of the San Francisco Bay’s ecosystems and the viability of fish and wildlife in the Bay and nearshore ocean, as well as impacts to human populations. The Bay Institute synthesized findings from 150 studies to highlight the ways reduced San Francisco Bay inflows are affecting a wide array of ecosystem processes and biological effects, including increased salinity, reduced sediment delivery, increased pollution, the spread of invasive non-native species, reduced food web productivity, and reduced viability of fish species. The full report can be found on The Bay Institute’s website.