The 20th century dams and canals that gave birth to modern California — to San Francisco, to Los Angeles, to the San Joaquin Valley farms that feed the nation — are near the end of their engineered lives. The rivers and aquifers they tap are, simply, tapped out.
Bernie Sanders mocked the presumptive Republican nominee for his recent comments on the drought in California, calling out Donald Trump over his dismissal of climate change.
“You see, we don’t fully appreciate the genius of Donald Trump, who knows more than all the people of California, knows more than all the scientists,” Sanders told the crowd of more than 5,000 people who braved 92 degree heat to hear the senator speak.
One San Diego couple’s yard is certainly worth admiring: their drought-friendly landscape has just won a big contest. Bonita homeowners Barbara and Nick Amalfitano are the new winners of the Otay Water District’s 2016 landscape contest.
The changes they’ve made to their front and back yards over the years have reduced their water usage by 78 percent, and reduced their maintenance significantly. The couple’s property is three-quarters of an acre and looks more like a park than a model for water efficiency.
They told Vince Calcagno to cut his water use by more than a third last year as the desert summer loomed with its 112-degree highs. He stood near the swimming pool in his pretty back yard off a Palm Springs golf course and wondered, “How am I going to make this work?”
It worked as badly as he envisioned. After months of almost no watering, “the back yard looks pretty awful now,” Calcagno, a retired restaurant owner, said recently. “It’s brown and full of crab grass.”
Congressional battles over California water have intensified, unleashing a surge of mostly divisive and ill-advised federal legislation. On Friday, presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump even dived into the fray at his Fresno rally when he declared, “There is no drought,” accusing state water officials of denying water to farmers to save a 3-inch fish. None of this will help California’s ongoing water concerns.
A closely watched effort to force a statewide vote on Gov. Jerry Brown’s water tunnels project was blocked Friday in the Assembly — a big victory for Brown in a year where the plan faces some key hurdles.
AB 1713 by Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) would have required voters to approve the construction of twin underground water tunnels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta . The bill’s language would have meant a statewide vote as soon as 2018.
As regional leaders fine-tune a half-cent sales tax proposal for the November ballot that would fund public transit and road construction, a coalition to support the divisive measure has started to take shape.
While deep green environmental groups and anti-tax conservatives have opposed the initiative on divergent grounds, land conservationists, the local general contractors association and the San Diego Padres have signaled potential backing if the final ballot wording meets their expectations.
San Diego County Water Authority officials are in the midst of mapping out a long-term water supply plan that’s expected to look quite different from the document they drew up just five years ago. Some environmentalists worry those plans rely too much on energy-intensive sources like desalination.
Water officials say the region’s forecast for the year 2040 relies less on imported water from Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and more on local supplies that tap into recycling and possibly desalination.
In a case that highlights how difficult it is to enforce agricultural water reductions in California, a state panel has moved to dismiss a $1.55 million fine it levied last year against a Delta-area agency accused of ignoring an order to stop diverting water in the drought.
State water regulators alleged last June that Byron-Bethany Irrigation District in the southern Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta defied a state order issued to dozens of senior water rights holders. The order told them to stop pulling water from streams and rivers due to extremely dry conditions.
House Republicans are trying a new approach to divert more water from Northern California.
Check that. They’re dusting off a stale and disreputable tactic: attaching a proposal that can’t pass on its own to unrelated legislation that has bipartisan support. In this instance, they’re hitching a ride on Senate-approved energy measures that reached the House floor this week. One is a must-pass bill that contains $37.4 billion in funding for the upcoming fiscal year. The other is a broader energy policy bill.
