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Last-minute push for California drought legislation creates friction between Feinstein and Boxer

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Sarah D. Wire and Bettina Boxall

House Republican leaders and California’s senior senator announced Monday a new attempt to pass legislation that would increase water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley agribusiness and Southern California.

The 90-page proposal was added to a water infrastructure bill that Congress is expected to vote on this week before adjourning for the rest of the year. The deal sets Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on a collision course with her colleague, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who blasted the proposal as a poison pill and vowed to do everything she could to stop it, including halting all action in the Senate unless it is removed.

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December: Wetter Overall With Colder Temperatures For West

/in /by /The Weather Networkby Mario Picazo

Based on data from the NWS Climate Prediction Center, temperatures across much of the northwest US, from Alaska all the way down to northern California and the Four Corner states will be below the normal mean values (reference period 1981-2010) during the first half of the month. The highest probability of below normal temperatures occurring extends along the northern Rockies and is mainly related to the invasion of very cold Arctic air across northwest Canada into the northwest US.

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To Save SF Bay and Its Dying Delta, State Aims To Re-Plumb California

/in /by /CALmatters (Sacramento)by Julie Cart

The report’s findings were unequivocal: Given the current pace of water diversions, the San Francisco Bay and the Delta network of rivers and marshes are ecological goners, with many of its native fish species now experiencing a “sixth extinction,” environmental science’s most-dire definition of ecosystem collapse. Once a vast, soaked marsh and channel fed by the gushing Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the Delta has diminished dramatically over the previous century as those rivers and their mountain tributaries have been diverted to irrigate Central Valley farms and Bay Area urbanity.

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