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California’s goal of ensuring universal access to safe drinking water, as mandated in the 2012 Human Right to Water Bill, will come a step closer to being met if Gov. Jerry Brown signs a new measure into law that halts the creation of new small, unsustainable ­– and in many cases dangerous – water districts in the state.

The bill, SB1263, passed through the state assembly and senate in August. It aims to guarantee the safety and reliability of drinking water statewide by encouraging new developments to tie into existing water districts rather than create their own.

Each spring, a group of UC Davis student scientists and their professors take a whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon to study a river that sustains 40 million people. Capital Public Radio’s Amy Quinton traveled with them. I’m in a raft on the Colorado River, about to hit the fastest, steepest and most treacherous rapid in the Grand Canyon — Lava Falls. Here, the river drops 27 feet in a span of several hundred feet. The raft’s direction or momentum is not up to me. My fate is in someone else’s hands, someone far more experienced than me. Ann Willis, a researcher at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, guides the boat with precision. “You hanging on?” Ann asks as we approach the monster and hear the screams from rafters in front of us.

Governor Jerry Brown says he will continue to push California’s climate change policies, no matter the results of November’s presidential election.

“I would do what I’m doing now,” he said, speaking in Sacramento at the Doubletree Hotel on the opening night of the Society of Environmental Journalists conference, an annual meeting attended by more than 300 journalists from around the country this year. Brown, who has made climate change a centerpiece of his final term as governor, touted the group of climate change bills signed over the last month, including SB32, which set a new climate change agenda for California.

Some comments carry more weight than others – such as comments from Gov. Jerry Brown.

The State Water Resources Control Board unveiled its plan to take 30 to 50 percent of the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers late last week. After taking four years to compile the 2,000-page report, the water board gave the people of the Northern San Joaquin Valley 60 days to digest it and make objections.