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California water-bill fight is percolating again on Capitol Hill

/in /by /McClatchy DCby Michael Doyle

California water will retake the Capitol Hill stage in coming days, with compromise nowhere in sight.

Deep into a largely arid legislative season, lawmakers will again reflect on the state’s drought as early as Monday and wrangle over efforts to address it. A hearing and one or two votes in the House of Representatives whose outcomes are effectively preordained will expose the divisions that endure.

“Things are on hold for the moment,” Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, said Friday, adding that “I don’t think we’re going to see a compromise” for at least several months.

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DROUGHT: Experts: Why California should be stingy with water

/in /by /The Press-Enterpriseby SUZANNE HURT

Water suppliers are loosening water-use restrictions and reporting they’ll have enough water to meet demand for the next three years.

But is that a good idea in the midst of ongoing drought?

While the end of the state’s mandated water conservation targets is intended to give agencies more flexibility, some experts worry customers are being sent the message it’s no longer vital to conserve.

Water officials expect people to keep conserving after suppliers were allowed to set their own water conservation goals for the rest of 2016.

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DROUGHT: Experts: Why California should be stingy with water

/in /by /The Riverside - Press Enterpriseby SUZANNE HURT

Water suppliers are loosening water-use restrictions and reporting they’ll have enough water to meet demand for the next three years.

But is that a good idea in the midst of ongoing drought?

While the end of the state’s mandated water conservation targets is intended to give agencies more flexibility, some experts worry customers are being sent the message it’s no longer vital to conserve.

Water officials expect people to keep conserving after suppliers were allowed to set their own water conservation goals for the rest of 2016.

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Property owners already paying for Governor’s tunnels, group says

/in /by /Central Valley Business Times (Stockton)

The “Zone 7 Water Agency” of Alameda County has been using property taxes to pay for planning costs for the governor’s massive Delta water tunnels without a vote by the public, the anti-tunnel advocacy group Restore the Delta says Thursday.

It says it’s claims are based on documents released under the California Public Records Act.

Fees for the tunnels were to come from water ratepayers not property taxes..

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BLOG: California’s Agriculture Chief: Why Can’t We All Get Along?

/in /by /The Huffington Postby Seth M. Siegel

Among Nebraska’s best farm exports may be one of the country’s most important agriculture officials, California’s Secretary of Food and Agriculture Karen Ross. Raised on a Nebraska farm, Ross knows her way around fields and barns, but has spent much of her adult life focused on farm policy, including stints working for a US Senator and the current US Secretary of Agriculture before accepting her current post.

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House approves Denham bill to protect salmon, eliminate wasteful water usage

/in /by /The Ripon Advance (Washington, D.C.)

The House of Representatives approved legislation on Tuesday that U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) introduced to address conflicting statutes that endanger salmon in California.

The Save Our Salmon (SOS) Act, H.R. 4582, would strike a doubling provision for striped bass — a non-native predator of salmon — outlined in the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA). In the process, the bill would help curb non-essential water usage because millions of acre-feet of water have been flushed into local waterways to help salmon and other native species reach the ocean while striped bass simultaneously feed on them.

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Super-warm seas wiped out an entire underwater forest, scientists report

/in /by /The Washington Postby Chris Mooney

This year, the tragic die-off of large volumes of coral at the treasured Great Barrier Reef has provided a climate change shock like few others. The cause was too much warm water — which seems to have pushed the corals past a thermal survival threshold. And that warm water, in turn, is tied to climate change.

Now, however, a team of researchers has revealed that another Australian coastal ecosystem that gets less attention — Australia’s kelp-dominated Great Southern Reef, which covers a huge expanse along its more temperate southern and southwestern coasts — saw an equally dramatic ecosystem upheaval five years ago.

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BLOG: Leave California’s ‘New’ Water in the Ground

/in /by /The Union of Concerned Scientistsby Juliet Christian-Smith

In the last couple of weeks, the California media have been heralding the discovery of “new water” in deep aquifers as a possible solution to the state’s ongoing drought and water shortages. Unfortunately, the updated estimate of available groundwater reported by Stanford University researchers isn’t that new—scientists have long known that there are many deep aquifers throughout the state—and more significantly, accessing these waters would be extremely expensive due to their great depth and poor quality.

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Progress report on Sustainable Groundwater Management Act

/in /by /Kern Golden Empireby JIM SCOTT

California is being pulled, kicking and screaming to the point of becoming the last state in the western U.S. to regulate its groundwater resources.

Legislation passed in 2014 sets the stage for an unprecedented effort to balance our groundwater supplies with demand. Thursday in Bakersfield, growers and water managers received a progress report on the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which promises to be a game-changer down on the farm. At Hodel’s Restaurant Thursday morning, stakeholders were digesting what they learned about the landmark water legislation passed in 2014.

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Arctic ice is getting hammered this year and that could affect weather patterns here in the future

/in /by /ABC10by Rob Carlmark

It’s always difficult to imagine how something thousands of miles away will have anything to do with you directly, but we need to do just that with the Arctic because big changes are happening now and big changes are coming.

Let’s get caught up with Arctic Sea Ice, if you’re not familiar. At the top of the planet, we have a big chunk of the ocean that is frozen and we call it an ice cap.

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