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Opinion: County Farm Bureaus Innovate During Pandemic

/in , , /by /AgAlert (Sacramento)by Lindsey Liebig, Colleen Taber and Hannah Gbeh

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shelter-in-place protocols and safety concerns disrupted rural communities and markets for agricultural products. Around California, county Farm Bureaus responded with innovative solutions intended to help their members ensure safety of themselves, their families and their employees, and to promote and sell crops and commodities in new and rapidly changing conditions.

Here are three examples among many, showing how county Farm Bureaus in California have supported their members and their communities.

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While Some Farmers Face New Challenges Amid COVID-19, Others Have Found Success

/in , , /by /KALW San Franciscoby Adreanna Rodriguez

In California, farms have not been immune to COVID-19. A Farm Bureau Federation survey recently found that more than half of farms across the state have lost customers or sales due to pandemic. Small family farms are especially vulnerable.

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Building Effective Water Data Platforms

/in , , /by /Stanford Water in the Westby Megan Glatzel

Much like solving a mystery, making informed water management decisions in California involves finding and investigating all necessary information. With data scattered across multiple locations, the process of accessing and analyzing the information can be an arduous task.

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Central Valley Water Districts Take Aim at Each Other’s Groundwater Plans

/in , , /by /SJV Waterby Lois Henry

There is no tougher playground than California’s water world.

Just take a look at the zingers flying back and forth between water districts on one another’s groundwater sustainability plans posted on the Department of Water Resources’ website.

“It’s like a giant game of dodgeball,” said Dana Munn, General Manager of Shafter-Wasco Irrigation District.

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Trial Underway in SF Could Remove Fluoride from Drinking Water

/in , /by

About 200 million Americans, nearly two-thirds of the population, drink water containing fluoride to fight tooth decay. That could be changed by a case now on trial in a San Francisco federal court.

The Next Generation of Pumped Storage

/in , , /by /Water Power & Dam Construction by Jim Day

The first slide of Daybreak Power’s first-ever presentation to potential investors quotes Paul Allen, the legendary co-founder of Microsoft, asking what he calls the most exciting question imaginable: “What should exist? … What do we need that we don’t have?”.

The answer I reached in the years leading up to co-founding Daybreak in 2018 is this: A bunch of big-honkin’ pumped storage hydropower projects, for the simple reason that we’re going to need a ton of cost-effective, proven, long-duration energy storage if we, as a society, are to have any hope of integrating high levels of intermittent wind and solar power, and thereby slash greenhouse gas emissions to put the brakes on catastrophic climate change.

Plus, we can create a lot of jobs and maybe make some money on it!

Joyce Patry, a former MBA classmate, and I founded Daybreak in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, as an early-stage developer of these massive infrastructure projects.

Despite extremely limited resources, we pulled together some engineering and cost-configuration studies that had previously been conducted on potential pumped storage sites at US Bureau of Reclamation dams around the West. In late 2018 we filed a FERC preliminary permit application for the 1540MW Next Generation Pumped Storage project near Hoover Dam/Lake Mead, and followed that up with a July 2019 application for the 2210MW Navajo Energy Storage Station near Glen Canyon Dam/Lake Powell on the border of Utah and Arizona.

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PFAS Forecasted to Drive US $12.1 Billion In Water Utilities’ Spend Over Next Decade

/in , , /by /Smart Water Magazineby Bluefield Research

Mounting public concerns and new state regulations in the U.S. are compelling water & wastewater utilities to address health risks associated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – a class of pervasive chemicals found in drinking water and wastewater biproducts.

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Lake Powell Pipeline Will ‘Make the River Angry,’ Southern Paiutes Warn as Feds Release Analysis

/in , , /by /The Salt Lake Tribuneby Brian Maffly

Any potential alignment of the Lake Powell pipeline would pass through lands that hold spiritual and cultural significance to Southern Paiutes, who fear the project would jeopardize their culture and upset the balance of nature.

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The Western View: Cease-Fire Ahead in the Water Wars?

/in , /by /AgNet Westby Len Wilcox

It’s been a year of surprises, one thing after another – a pandemic that shut down the world, a murder hornet that suddenly appeared in the north woods, rioting in the streets, and even a giant meteor just missed the earth. But there is one more startling event that not many people know about. That is: The State and the feds are actually talking to each other about our water. They’ve been figuring out how to balance the needs of fish versus farmers and settle how they will handle water deliveries to the Central Valley and Southern California.

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More Than $16 Million Provided to Nine Water Reclamation and Reuse Projects Around the US

/in , , /by /Environment and Energy Leaderby Emily Holbrook

The Bureau of Reclamation is providing more than $16 million to nine congressionally authorized Title XVI Water Reclamation and Reuse projects. This funding, part of the WaterSMART Program, is for the planning, design, and construction of water recycling and reuse projects in partnership with local government entities.

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