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With standards relaxed, water use on the rise throughout California

Californians continued to backslide on water conservation during the hottest summer on record, worrying regulators and frustrating environmentalists critical of a new policy enacted this spring that allows most urban water districts to avoid mandatory cuts in water use.

On Wednesday, the State Water Resources Control Board announced that conservation in urban California in August was still below the baseline year of 2013 – but by a far smaller percentage than in August 2015. In August 2015, Californians saved 27 percent compared with 2013. This year, that savings rate fell to less than 18 percent.

OPINION: Flora Not Blinded By Tunnel Vision, Would Protect Our Water

Why does Jerry Brown desire to send Northern California water south? The governor has a seriously poor sense of direction. Sacramento bureaucrats have no right to assume the power to re-direct river water from Northern California farmland, demanding to send the water to the Delta strictly for the survival of fish and, ultimately, out to sea. After all, the fish didn’t elect Brown. Heath Flora, seeking Assembly seat 12, places people, food, jobs and the economy first.

Project Underway To Prevent Straying Of Adult Sacramento River Salmon

Yet another hazard to migratory salmon will disappear soon, when local, state, and federal officials finish building a permanent, fish-friendly weir in the Yolo Bypass.The Wallace Weir Fish Rescue project, located four miles northwest of Woodland and near Knights Landing, will help prevent adult Sacramento River salmon from swimming into a drainage ditch that leads deep into farm fields where spawning is hopeless. By building a permanent barrier across the Knights Landing Ridge Cut, the agencies will be able to better control farm drainage releases to avoid attracting salmon.

Scientists Take To The Air To Look For Water Under The Ground

A low-flying helicopter is circling above the community of Lost Hills, checking for water below the ground. The flights are being done by U.S. Geological Survey researchers on behalf of state water officials, and the work will continue next near Buttonwillow. Officials say they’re developing 3D maps of where there’s fresh and salty groundwater in certain oil field areas in the state. The first phase of that big project is the work underway in Kern County. “We will be trying to find places where it’s likely that fresh water exists,” USGS research geophysicist Lyndsay Ball told Eyewitness News on Thursday.

OPINION: Time to Stop the Backsliding on California’s Water Conservation

The drought persists. This summer was the hottest on record. Last month, a National Weather Service meteorologist called the chance of adequate winter rainfall this year “a crapshoot.” Farmers in the Central Valley are pumping groundwater like there’s no tomorrow. And they may not be wrong; it’s not for nothing that the rest of the world ratified the Paris climate accord on Wednesday. Thank heaven Californians finally have gotten serious about water conservation – oh, wait

Water Contractors Sue Federal Government For $350 Million

Seventeen California water districts have filed a lawsuit for $350 million against the federal government for not delivering water to contractors in the drought year of 2014. The Fresno Bee reports that the districts in the San Joaquin Valley and the city of Fresno filed the suit Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C. Attorney Craig Parton, who is representing the contractors, says the claim seeks to recover the fair market value of Friant Division water not delivered to the contractors even though there were sufficient supplies in Millerton Lake that year.

Nottoli remains critical of Delta tunnels proposal

Sacramento County Supervisor Don Nottoli last week expressed his ongoing opposition to the controversial California WaterFix – aka “Delta tunnels” or “twin tunnels.”

The Gov. Jerry Brown-supported project calls for the construction of a pair of 35-mile-long, 40-foot-wide tunnels 150 feet beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta for the purpose of rerouting Sacramento River water to parts of Central and Southern California.

 

Do environmentalists really want to destroy Valley farms? No

I was surprised to read in the op-ed by Lance Johnson (“Learn from history; fight to hold onto your water,” Oct. 2, Page 1D) that he learned from me and other conservationists that our secret agenda was to bring an end to Central Valley agriculture.

That’s simply untrue.

I’ve never heard anyone in the environmental or fishing communities express that desire. Like everyone, I enjoy the products of Central Valley agriculture – the tomatoes, pistachios, lettuce and many other crops, increasingly grown with highly efficient drip irrigation. California’s Central Valley will continue to thrive and be our nation’s breadbasket, as it should.

The Southwest Will Probably Suffer a Crippling Megadrought This Century

People living in the American Southwest have seen their share of drought. But the West’s recent water woes may pale in comparison to what’s coming later in the century, researchers say. The Southwest may very well face a decades-long megadrought before the 21st century is out.

A team climate scientists led by Toby Ault, an atmospheric researcher at Cornell University, has just calculated the risk of a Southwestern megadrought occurring by 2100. By “megadrought” they mean an extreme, bone-dry period that can last for more than 35 years.

BLOG: Legislative Update: Six New California Laws Impacting Water

The end of September meant both the end of the 2016 water year and a deadline for signing new legislation. In the past few weeks California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bevy of new bills into law, many of them addressing drought or water issues in the state. Some affect water indirectly. Senate Bill (SB) 859, which establishes a Healthy Soils Program, is written to help build quality agricultural soil to increase carbon sequestration, but healthy soils also help retain more water. SB 1414 aims to help increase energy efficiency, which can also help save water.