Senator Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) secured Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature on legislation that will speed the permit process for low-income Central Valley communities to deliver clean drinking wate for residents. The bill, Senate Bill 974, exempts new water projects that serve small, rural communities from some provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act.
Tom Steyer, a one-time Democratic presidential candidate who has spent a portion of his multi-billion dollar fortune supporting environmental causes, thinks the path to California’s economic recovery during the coronavirus pandemic will begin with clean energy jobs. Steyer in April was named co-chair for the state’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery, along with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff Ann O’Leary.
During the coronavirus crisis, water utilities around the world have undergone a deep transformation to continue guaranteeing water service to the population. For this to be possible, remote control of processes and infrastructures, teleworking or social distancing measures have made digitalization an essential tool to maintain the quality of service. These are the four lessons learned in the water sector after its response to the crisis.
The Trump administration is urging a federal court to reject a multimillion-dollar claim over water rights from California farmers, in the latest round of a politically sensitive and long-running lawsuit.
At issue is a decades-long case from major farmers claiming that the Bureau of Reclamation has failed to build a drainage system in the San Joaquin Valley’s Westlands Water District.
Buying water from Colorado farmers and ranchers and other water users, to provide it to California and Arizona farmers and ranchers, and to casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada, is not a simple matter. But a fair number of Colorado water experts, and financial experts, and agricultural experts, have been working with the Colorado Water Conservation Board to design a workable process.
Among the people forced to flee the Creek Fire were workers who keep the vast network of hydroelectric dams running. Eric Quinley is general manager of the Delano-Earlimart Irrigation District. He said reservoir releases were reduced to minimum levels. Friant Dam, located at the end of the water delivery network, was at just 30% capacity right now.
In the annals of California’s wildfire history, so much is happening now that seems unfathomable: The number and size of this year’s fires — and their maddingly erratic behaviors — have created the worst season in the state’s modern history. Nearly 4 million acres have already burned, killing 26 people.
Homes on the eastern edge of Santa Rosa were under assault early Monday morning and residents had been ordered to flee from the flames of a fast-burning fire that broke out Sunday — the largest in the Bay Area and one of the 27 fires currently burning around California. The Glass Fire swelled to 11,000 acres with zero containment by Monday morning, according to CalFire — more than 8,000 new acres burned overnight.
Utah’s proposed Lake Powell pipeline had been on a fast track for approval, but on Thursday state water officials asked the Interior Department to slow down the controversial billion-dollar project’s review.
The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to overhaul the way communities test their water for lead, a policy change that will be pitched ahead of Election Day as a major environmental achievement for a president not noted for his conservation record.
