One by one, big trees are disappearing, the sound of songbirds replaced by the buzz of chain saws and crews cleaning up dead branches. According to the U.S. Forest Service, 102 million trees have died in forests across California since 2010 due to heat, drought and infestation from beetles and other bugs. Many heritage oak trees in the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding open spaces are turning brown and falling over.
It takes a while to get to the point, but an 80,000-page environmental opus released Thursday makes the case that Gov. Jerry Brown’s $15.7 billion twin tunnels project is the best way to fix California’s water woes. The final environmental impact report on the controversial plan known as WaterFix does not contain a cliffhanger ending, but the governor characterized it as a crucial bookshelf filler for water wonks.
Northern California and Oregon irrigation districts have won a key round in a long-running legal battle as they seek compensation for their loss of water in the Klamath River Basin. In a 53-page opinion, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Marilyn Blank Horn concluded the federal government’s 2001 diversion of Klamath River Basin water amounted to a “physical taking” of the irrigation districts’ property. Horn’s ruling Wednesday rejected the government’s argument that the diversion instead amounted to a “regulatory taking.”
Where will the water come from? We’re entering the wet time of year, but the drought continues to transform communities around the state. And now, Santa Barbara is almost out. Lake Cachuma, the county’s primary source of water for years, is at 7 percent of its capacity and is expected to go totally dry by the end of the year. So while state regulators have lifted the statewide mandatory 25 percent cut in water usage, Santa Barbara officials are cracking down. Beginning Jan. 1, the city will ban all residential lawn watering.
After years of planning, officials have finalized all 97,000 pages of environmental documents to support Gov. Jerry Brown’s controversial plan to build two massive tunnels through the heart of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. In spite of a recent call for a scaled-down version of the project from a prominent nonpartisan California water think-tank, state officials are moving forward with the original plan for what they call California WaterFix. The $15.5 billion project would tunnel two pipes 40 feet in diameter for 35 miles under the fragile ecosystem that serves as the hub of the state’s water-delivery network.
For the second consecutive year, the City Council approved its appointments to various boards and committees with little fanfare. Mayor Catherine Blakespear will represent Encinitas on the board of directors for the powerful San Diego Association of Governments. Better known as SANDAG, the county’s transportation and metropolitan planning agency oversees regional pedestrian, motor vehicle and transportation projects and has the authority to propose tax increases to support those efforts.
A water and power district east of San Diego is suing the University of California over records related to a legal opinion that supports Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to expand the state power grid across the western United States. The lawsuit, filed last week in Alameda County, said university officials refused to turn over documents that three law professors relied on to produce the study. The opinion was commissioned in March by the California Independent System Operator, or CAISO, the government nonprofit that manages most of the the grid.
After many alternatives, iterations and tweaks, final environmental documents are to be made public Wednesday for a water re-routing project that has come to be known as the California WaterFix. Don’t expect the documents to mollify critics or to answer every question about environmental and financial costs, however — or to lessen the tension among the many interests that have a stake in the West’s shrinking supply of water.
Folsom Lake is filling up, which means the floodgates must open. On Thursday, Dec. 16, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released 35,000 acre-feet of water between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. According to Louis Moore, deputy public affair officer, starting at 9 a.m. they released 15,000 acre feet and every hour after released an additional 5,000 Acre feet until 1 p.m. Throughout the rainy season, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will be lifting the floodgates periodically to keep up with capacity, what will be coming into the lake and how much will need to be release to flow down the river to the delta.
Watching the live, online feed of the public hearing related to California’s proposal to take two major rivers by forcing water from them to flow unimpeded to the ocean says one thing to me: this is going to be a different fight for government officials who enjoy the view from their thrones.
