Russian River & Water Rights
Alexander Valley Association partners with the Russian River Property Owners Association (RRPOA) in supporting their association as an environmentally sensitive stewardship organization protecting river, tributary, and watershed property rights.
Today the Alexander Valley Association supports The Russian River Property Owners, along with other organizations, proposed creation of a Water District in the Alexander Valley made up of parcels overlying the Alexander Valley groundwater basins to safeguard a reliable and sustainable water supply and ensure water management that includes sufficient water for the protection of all recognized beneficial uses.
The property owners of the RRPOA are of equal members of our Alexander Valley Association.
History of Water in the Alexander Valley
Alexander Valley has a rich history of water. Namely, the Russian River runs through our long valley of twenty-two miles from the north in Cloverdale to the southern end until the river takes a hard right at the top of Chalk Hill Valley into Healdsburg and out to the Pacific Ocean.
Alexander Valley Groundwater Basin, Alexander Subbasin
Groundwater Basin Number: 1-54.01
County: Sonoma
Surface Area: 24,500 acres (37 square miles)
The Alexander area is a subbasin of the Alexander Valley Groundwater Basin. The Alexander Valley Groundwater Basin also includes the Cloverdale area subbasin to the north, and occupies a structural depression in the Coast Ranges north of the San Francisco Bay. The Alexander valley floor is locally bounded by low hills consisting of unconsolidated water-yielding sediments. The basin boundary extends from about 2 miles south of Asti in the north (the southern boundary of the Cloverdale area subbasin) to about 5 miles southeast of Jimtown. The northern boundary is noted by a reduced section of water-bearing materials between Alexander and Cloverdale valleys.
The Russian River flows south along the entire length of the basin. Precipitation in the Alexander Valley area ranges from approximately 36 to 44 inches. *
View Overview of Proposed Alexander Valley Water District (PDF)
Alexander Valley Watershed
The Alexander Valley watershed drains approximately 122 square miles of land. It includes the mainstem of the Russian River from its confluence with Cummiskey Creek (approximately 1 mile north of the Sonoma/Mendocino county line) at the northern end of the Valley to its confluence with Maacama Creek (due east of the City of Healdsburg) at the Valley’s southern end. A number of tributaries drain the hills and empty into the Russian River, the largest of which include Crocker, Gill, Gird, Miller and Sausal on the east side of the Valley, and Oat Valley, Cloverdale, Icaria, and Lytton creeks on the West side.
View Watershed Overview from the Sonoma Resource Conservation District website
Land Use
Alexander Valley includes the City of Cloverdale and the unincorporated areas of Jimtown, Geyserville and Asti. The watershed is almost 100% privately owned, with major land uses including vineyard, rural residential, urban, recreation, and gravel mining. Historic land uses include farming of hops and prunes, which dominated the Valley’s agriculture in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Vegetation
Vegetation, outside of agriculture, consists mainly of hardwood and herbaceous cover, with small amounts of shrub land and coniferous forest mainly in the northwest portion of the watershed. Riparian areas along the mainstem of the Russian River as it runs through Alexander Valley tend to be sparsely vegetated and dominated by willows, due to the dynamic and gravelly nature of the riparian corridor.
Fish and Wildlife
The mainstem of the Russian River provides migration habitat for endangered coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) and threatened steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), as well as spawning and rearing habitat for threatened Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). Some Alexander Valley tributaries provide spawning and rearing habitat for steelhead trout.
