Central to the ongoing tug of war about how best to balance California water uses is a plan by the State Water Resources Control Board to leave more water in the main tributaries of the San Joaquin River during periods it considers key for at-risk native species.
A California water bill set for House approval on Thursday that’s split the state’s two Democratic senators will make it easier for the incoming Trump administration to build new Western dams.
Non-native predatory fish in the Stanislaus River will be test-targeted for elimination. New Melones reservoir storage could expand. Money would flow to water recycling projects in cities such as Sacramento and San Luis Obispo, and to desalination projects like ones proposed for Southern California.
A protracted conflict over whether and how to protect fish from dying at desalination plants is clouding prospects for what would be California’s second large plant of this type – and for the future of desalination along the entire California coastline. For years, a proposed Poseidon Resources desalination plant in Huntington Beach in Orange County has been kept in limbo.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein calls her rider to a bipartisan water appropriations bill a way to improve efficiencies and capture more supply from “wasted” river flows for California cities, agriculture and the environment. Sen. Barbara Boxer, the author of the bill the rider amends, calls it a “poison pill” and vows to filibuster it to death.
Barbara Boxer has torpedoed more legislation than she’s helped pass during her four terms in the Senate. Before retiring for good (literally), the Bay Area Democrat is trying to sink a water bill that could provide modest relief to farmers in California’s parched Central Valley. Congress plans to vote this week on bipartisan legislation that would authorize a variety of water projects including port dredging, reservoirs, fish hatcheries, lake recreation and wetlands restoration. The package also includes $120 million to fix Flint, Michigan’s corroded pipes and other aging municipal water systems.
“Boxer slams water bill rider backed by Feinstein” (Dec. 6) is an unfortunate attack on a bill that California desperately needs to ensure its water operations are based on good science and which help construct a new and different water infrastructure. We’re a state of 40 million people relying on a water system built when only 16 million people lived here — that’s not sustainable. The water bill that Congress is now considering puts us on the right path.
Local water folks are hopeful, but not holding their breath, that the latest congressional effort to move a little more water down the pike from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta will actually succeed. Even if it does, I’m sure environmental activists already have their lawyers prepped and ready for launch. But it’s the holidays, so who knows? This legislation may be the Christmas miracle that everyone had hoped El Niño would be last year. (Rotten little boy.) It’s expected to be taken up by the House and Senate over the next week. Anyhow, here’s what all the hubbub is about, at least in water circles.
The White House on Tuesday voiced doubts about controversial California water legislation that has already caused an unusually public split between the state’s two Democratic senators. Meeting with reporters, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the California provisions that span some 91 pages of often-technical text seemed problematic, though he cautioned that analysis continues. “Based on what we know so far, we don’t support the kinds of proposals that have been put forward to address some of the water resources issues in California right now,” Earnest said.
Urban Californians used about 1.8 percent more water in October compared with a year earlier, state officials said Tuesday. It marked the fourth straight month in which conservation has slipped following the state’s decision to relax drought mandates.The State Water Resources Control Board said, however, that conservation was better in October than in September, and that it was largely pleased with the efforts Californians were making. “Californians’ continued commitment to conservation shows they don’t take water for granted anymore,” said board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus in a prepared statement.
In his global evangelism about the threat of climate change, Gov. Jerry Brown has dismissed skeptics as “troglodytes” and “deniers of the obvious science.” But Brown, who in recent years has emerged as a premier climate warrior, has refused to ascribe those characteristics to Donald Trump since his election as president, despite the Republican businessman’s support for fossil fuels and repeated dismissals of climate change as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. In brief remarks about the subject, Brown said Monday that it would be difficult for the U.S. to “go rogue” on climate change.
