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California Drought: Six Years In, How Will the State Keep Saving Water?

California is working to put into place a framework that will help the state deal with its current water shortage, as well as future droughts that are likely to be more severe with a changing climate. “Making Water Conservation a Way of Life,” a draft report released last week, is the collective effort of five state agencies to fulfill Gov. Jerry Brown’s Executive Order B-37-16, signed in May 2016. Following the 1976-77 drought in California, the state has taken a series of progressive steps to increase drought resilience, as well as conservation and efficiency measures.

Toast the Water Bill with Whiskey

Fights over water are the norm but the successful water bill that passed Congress last week with a rider provision for California may upset the old standard that water is for fighting and whiskey is for drinking. The bill will divert runoff water to parched farms and set up storage, desalination and recycling programs in California. The overall measure sailed through the House and Senate despite opposition from California’s junior senator, Barbara Boxer, and now awaits the president’s signature.

OPINION: How California’s water conservation strategy is falling short

Just six months ago, Gov. Jerry Brown declared that he wanted to make water conservation a “way of life” in California. His executive order laid out a framework for water suppliers to make conservation permanent and ensure that Californians continue to use this precious resource efficiently.

Today, the likelihood of that vision becoming a reality is uncertain.

Long-sought flood control projects eased passage of California water bill

Flood control concerns in the Sacramento area and Merced County helped drive a big water bill that won overwhelming congressional approval despite heated conflict over other California provisions.

The flood control authorizations, including some $780 million for West Sacramento work, $880 million for work along the American and Sacramento rivers and a go-ahead for continued study of Merced County streams, made it into the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act.

BLOG: Donald Trump forces a California water deal without lifting a finger

California’s politicians and pundits – including this one – have been busily speculating on what effect a Donald Trump presidency could have on a state that rejected him overwhelmingly.

Well, we saw the first major impact last week, without Trump even lifting a finger. A compromise bill that, in effect, reallocates federally controlled water in California – much to the delight of farmers and the dismay of environmentalists – won final congressional approval Friday.

What does the new federal water bill mean for California? For one, a big win for farmers

California farmers and Southern California cities were aghast last winter when much of the heavy rainfall that fell in Northern California washed through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and out to sea. In their view, it represented a lost opportunity to capture high river flows and pump water to arid regions south of the Delta.

 

A Problem ‘Too Big To Ignore’ — How Years Of Congressional Wrangling Led To A Water Compromise

Few people expected a California water fight in the final days of a lame-duck Congress, and fewer still expected landmark water legislation to pit the state’s U.S. senators against each other in the last moments of their 24-year partnership. It took years of negotiations, and the right political timing, to bring the first major water policy affecting California in decades through the House and Senate. Over frayed feelings and filibuster threats, both chambers overwhelmingly passed the bill, which changes how much water is pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California.