California water regulators will re-examine the way they determine water rights violations in the wake of the State Water Resources Control Board’s dismissal of a proposed $1.5 million fine to a water district east of the San Francisco Bay area.

Officials issued the fine to the Byron Bethany Irritation District at the height of the drought last summer, but the water board on June 7ww affirmed two hearing officers’ earlier ruling that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove the district took water it wasn’t entitled to under its century-old water right.

 

El Niño has passed on its merry way after 17 months of unusual warmth, wet weather, and unusual storms from the Pacific Ocean around the world. The big story for this El Niño has been whether it would aid dry California’s comeback from a drought.

The answer is mixed. “In California, it’s all about location, location, location,” Jan Null, San Francisco meteorologist said, according to USA Today.

 

A popular Delta sportfish may be on the hook yet again after water users mostly south of the estuary asked state officials this week to allow more of the fish to be caught, in order to reduce their numbers.A nearly identical proposal, ardently opposed by Delta fishermen, was rejected in early 2012 by the state Fish and Game Commission.But the water users didn’t stop fighting. Their concern is that stripers, which are technically not native to the Delta, gobble up threatened and endangered fish. And the decline of those species has reduced the amount of water that can be pumped to southland cities and farms.

(TNS) — Measure AA, a landmark $12 annual parcel tax in all nine Bay Area counties to fund wetlands restoration and flood control projects around San Francisco Bay’s shoreline, appears to have won approval from voters.

The measure, which would raise $25 million a year for 20 years, and needed two-thirds to pass, and had 69.3 percent in favor Wednesday morning with all 4,643 precincts counted. Although there are still some provisional and mail-in ballots that were postmarked on Election Day left to be counted, Measure AA had 837,162 yes votes by 6 a.m. Wednesday — more than 31,000 above the two-thirds threshold from a total of 1,208,704 cast.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s drought legislation, Senate Bill 2533, has been the focus of much attention in recent months as it is viewed as a potential solution to California’s water woes.

Short-term solutions in the bill include changes in federal law that would direct water and wildlife agencies to operate differently in order to make more water available from Shasta Reservoir and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Some of these changes involve adjusting how agencies manage biological opinions, a set of rules imposed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).