Sure enough, Clinton sprinkled a number of mentions of water into her standard stump speech, promising the crowd that if she’s elected president, “we’re going to get to work on water.”

Her proposals were vague. She noted the “water systems here [were] built before our time,” before pledging to invest anew in infrastructure. New water projects have been a top priority for Fresno’s agriculture industry, which has struggled to adapt to the state’s lingering drought. In another nod to the local industry, Clinton changed her standard riff promising to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws.

No surprise here, but an annual spring survey that is an important indicator of the Delta smelt’s ability to spawn shows the species has hit another record low.

“I am not optimistic that the smelt can make it through the next year or two. Love to be proved wrong,” California native fish expert Peter Moyle said in an email today after reviewing the survey results from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

 

Sites Reservoir could be built sooner than anticipated — if it ever receives public funding,

Accelerating the construction timeline for the long-proposed reservoir project, as well as other proposed dams in the state, is the focus of a bill co-authored by Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Plumas Lake. Assembly Bill 2551 recently passed the Assembly and will head to the Senate. It would allow water storage projects to use so-called alternative delivery methods, allowing several steps in construction, such as designing and building, to happen at the same time.

More rain arrived in Northern California this year, which is good news overall. Yet, more bad news is lurking in the forest: Bark beetles.

In fact, those bark beetles are lurking in backyards throughout Butte County. Trees were under stress the past few years due to lack of water. Bark beetles have an easier time attacking trees when the forest is in poor health. The adult insects work their way under the outer protective bark, feed on the soft inner bark, and lay eggs for the next generation.

Overhead irrigation systems have revolutionized agriculture across the United States and in other parts of the world, using less water than furrow irrigation and requiring significantly less labor and maintenance than drip systems. But in California, the No. 1 agriculture state in the nation, it hasn’t gotten off the ground.

That is beginning to change.