CalSIP Remote Water Monitoring - Shasta River and Parks Creek

The Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District plans to enhance water monitoring in the Shasta River watershed by installing and upgrading stream gaging equipment at two locations: Parks Creek at the Highway 99 Bridge and on private land near County Road A-12. The initiative focuses on deploying pressure transducers or radar-based stage sensors, staff plates, telemetry enclosures, solar power systems, mounting hardware, reference points, and data logging equipment to collect real-time streamflow and stage data. These improvements aim to provide more accurate, reliable, and accessible information to support water management decisions, watershed planning, drought response, and future restoration projects. Manual discharge measurements may be performed periodically to refine stage-discharge relationships specific to each site, ensuring data integrity and long-term usability. All work will be conducted at existing or previously disturbed sites, using hand tools or small portable equipment to minimize environmental disruption. The project involves only minor, temporary, and localized ground disturbance for securing monitoring infrastructure, with no alterations to stream channels, flow regimes, or removal of healthy mature vegetation. No new water-control structures will be built. Data collected will be transmitted in real time but labeled provisional until validated through established quality assurance and quality control procedures aligned with CalSIP standards. The effort is designed to support long-term hydrologic monitoring without introducing new impacts to the watershed.