With a global pandemic, a catastrophic economic recession, and record-high unemployment numbers, one would think the state has enough issues to tackle. But proponents of a state water grab that I have been fighting since the day I was sworn into office in 2012 disagree. Where others see turmoil and anguish, they see opportunity. Apparently, they believe in the adage, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
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The State of California revealed the latest trick up their sleeve in regards to slowing or stopping water delivery to millions of Californians through the Central Valley Project earlier this month. The State Water Resources Control Board has rejected the Sacramento River Temperature Plan by the United States Bureau of Reclamation. The Temperature Plan has been months in the making in order to coincide with this year’s hydrology.
The State Water Resources Control Board has recently released the proposed NPDES Suction Dredge Mining General Permit for public comments. A virtual public workshop was held on May 28, 2020 with a virtual Public Hearing originally scheduled for June 17th. The public hearing has now been rescheduled to August 5th with comments due by August 24th. No action will be taken at this public hearing. The State Water Board will schedule a meeting subsequent to the public hearing to consider adoption of the General Permit.
As California confronts increasing water challenges, the most equitable statewide solution from a social justice perspective is the single-tunnel project proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, known as the Delta Conveyance Project.
More than 27 million Californians rely on imported drinking water conveyed through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. This imported water also serves millions of acres of local agricultural lands and vital wildlife refuges.
For the second time, the state’s top water cop has directed the Western Slope’s oldest and most valuable water rights to be left off the once-a-decade abandonment list. That means hundreds of these mostly irrigation water rights have been granted immunity — even though they are no longer being used — from the threat of “use it or lose it,” further enshrining them in the state’s system of water administration and dealing a blow to the validity of the well-known adage.
Every 10 years, engineers and water commissioners from the Colorado Division of Water Resources review every water right — through diversion records and site visits — to see whether it has been used at some point in the previous decade. If it hasn’t, it could end up on the decennial abandonment list, which is scheduled to come out in July.
After 67 years of living and breathing dairy farming in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Scott Magneson cannot, will not, stop.
Every morning before dawn, when the valley fog is still resting on his fields in thick clouds, he checks the barns. Then he starts on the to-do list, which outlasts the day. In another farm tradition, Magneson rarely leaves his land. He can’t remember the last time he and his wife Pat (who does the bookkeeping) took a vacation.
The Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies and National Association of Clean Water Agencies, two organizations representing municipally-owned utilities, recently asked Senate leaders to include public sector aid in the next round of COVID-19 relief legislation.
A California federal judge is weighing whether to block the Trump administration’s controversial water rule, as requested by more than a dozen states suing over the regulation.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California spent three hours Thursday hearing arguments on whether to halt the Navigable Waters Protection Rule from taking effect on June 22, as planned.
A preliminary injunction will “prevent widespread harm to national water quality, and disruption” to water pollution control in cities and states while the claim is litigated, the 17-state coalition led by California and New York argued in a motion filed last month.
The rule “seriously undermines water quality and seriously is contrary” to the Clean Water Act, New York attorney Timothy L. Hoffman, representing the coalition, told Judge Richard Seeborg.
US environmental regulators have decided they will not put restrictions on perchlorate – a rocket fuel ingredient known to harm fetal brain development – in drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency argued that the federal government, states and public water systems have already taken proactive steps to reduce perchlorate levels.
