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Republican-backed federal legislation with strong support from agricultural communities in California aims to eradicate salmon from much of the San Joaquin River. It will nullify numerous laws protecting wetlands and waterways in order to provide farmers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta with more northern California water. Environmentalists and fishery advocates are characterizing the bill, H.R. 23, or the Gaining Responsibility on Water Act of 2017, as one of the most aggressive attempts ever taken by the political allies of farming interests to divert maximum flows of water south from the Delta.

On the assumption that one year of heavy rainfall hasn’t erased Californians’ memories of the severe drought that preceded it, state lawmakers and other proponents have drafted measures that could go before California voters in 2018, seeking investments in various projects dealing with water and the environment. Four new bond proposals pertaining to water and the environment have been filed with the state or are currently pending in the state Legislature. California Farm Bureau Federation Director of Water Resources Danny Merkley, who is analyzing the proposals, said they contain resources intended to address a variety of California water challenges.

One of the most monumental and potentially devastating decisions in California’s water history is currently being considered and the health and sustainability of the backbone of California’s water system and affordability of your water rates are at stake. Over the next month or two, a number of public water agencies will decide on whether to fund construction of two massive, 35-mile long tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to ultimately deliver water to Southern California. The state will be asking your water agency to make a financial commitment to invest in this project.

Statewide water savings slipped in June to 17.4 percent of that in the same month in 2013, the state Water Resources Control Board announced Tuesday. That’s the lowest monthly conservation rate since February 2016, which saw savings of 11.9 percent compared to the benchmark pre-drought year. Local districts did much better than the state average, ranging from 25-40 percent water use reductions compared to June 2013. The Del Oro Water Co. saw the biggest savings at 40.2 percent. That was the fourth best conservation rate in the state. Daily per capita water use was 84 gallons.

 

After undergoing five years of drought, many Californians may fear a future with less rainfall thanks to climate change. However, research carried out at the University of California, Riverside, suggests precipitation across the state may actually increase over the next hundred years. The paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, looked at several different California climate models and aggregated the results. However, not every model is good at predicting factors like precipitation. So, rather than simply aggregating the findings, Robert Allen, a climatologist at the University of California, Riverside, and the lead author on the paper, was picky.