While Gavin Newsom has tried to shoehorn in the Delta tunnel, state lawmakers have been adamant about not including the project in the state budget. With the July 27 deadline looming to agree to a finalized budget for California, state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom appear to still be split on the controversial Delta tunnel.
The largest Native American reservation in the United States has lost a key legal battle to protect access to a waterway that is critical to its citizens’ spiritual practices — and their survival.
All but one member of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled Thursday against the Navajo Nation in its fight to ensure that the federal government is legally obligated to address the tribe’s need for water from the dwindling flows of the Colorado River.
There will be no state lawmakers on the Colorado River Drought Task Force, though Capitol leadership has a lot of influence over who is on the panel. The 17-member task force charged with spending the rest of the year studying the Colorado River water crisis to help state lawmakers respond is starting to take shape, with most of the panel now appointed.
The Marin Municipal Water District has approved a $305.9 million, two-year budget that will begin to make significant investments in new water supplies not seen by the agency in decades. “We have a very big job ahead of us with this budget,” Monty Schmitt, the president of the district’s elected board, said before it voted unanimously to adopt the budget on Tuesday.
“The story of Los Angeles is the story of water,” remarks Peter Massey, TreePeople’s project manager of Water Equity Programs, noting how California’s modern history is so deeply intertwined with water issues.
El Niño has arrived, bringing potentially major effects on weather around the world, such as drought and flooding, and possibly setting a new record for the hottest year. Seven years ago an exceptionally strong El Niño took hold in the Pacific Ocean, triggering a cascade of damaging changes to the world’s weather.
California’s two biggest reservoirs are all but full after reaching perilously low levels late last year. Lake Shasta, at 96% full, and Lake Oroville, at 100%, had fallen to around 25% to 30% of their capacity before the state’s historically wet winter rejuvenated them.
Amping up their concerns as a deadline looms, key California legislators today escalated their pushback on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to streamline the Delta water tunnel and other infrastructure projects. The stalemate could become a critical lever while lawmakers haggle with Newsom over the 2023-2024 budget leading up to his June 27 deadline for approving the spending plan.
The price of water is rising across the Southwest as utilities look to cover the cost of the increasingly scarce resource, the infrastructure to treat and distribute it and the search for new supplies.
National forecasters made it official this month: El Niño is here. But we might not feel the effects of it just yet. “Historically El Niño events during the summer tend to have very weak impacts over the United States,” explained National Weather Service meteorologist Michelle L’Heureux.
