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OPINION: California’s Can’t-Miss Chance To Provide Safe Drinking Water For All

/in , /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Kirsten James

The clock is ticking to ensure clean drinking water is available to all in California. Legislators have just five days to help an estimated 1 million Californians access safe and affordable drinking water from their faucets. In the world’s fifth-largest economy, there should be no question about voting “yes” for the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund (SB 844 and SB 845). Stories we’ve heard from around the state make the need all the more compelling.

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OPINION: If Trump Wants Coal, He Can Have It. But California Must Commit To 100 Percent Clean Energy

/in , /by /The Sacramento Bee

By most measures, California is way ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to fighting climate change. We have some of the strictest environmental regulations, more zero-emission cars on the road than any other state and, as of July, are four years ahead of our self-imposed goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels not seen since the 1990s. But if this week has proven anything, it’s that now is not the time to rest on our laurels.

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OPINION: State Water Board Plan Would Require Water Rationing In The Bay Area

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Jim Wunderman

Apart from a famous Mark Twain quote involving whiskey and fighting, no cliché about California water is more abused than the phrase “water wars.” However, in the instance of the State Water Resources Control Board’s plan to restore the San Joaquin River, the label fits. War has been declared on the Bay Area’s largest source of freshwater, with grave implications for residents and businesses that go way beyond letting your lawn go brown. At issue is a proposal to increase freshwater flows on the San Joaquin River.

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OPINION: Sacramento’s New Way To Tax The Water You Drink

/in , /by /The Californianby Susan Shelly

Another new tax is headed for your water bill as if it wasn’t high enough already. Gov. Jerry Brown has been trying to push through a statewide tax on drinking water, the first ever in California history, and as you might imagine, it has been a challenge for him. People are fed up with new taxes. That was demonstrated very convincingly in the June recall of state Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton.

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Is There Water Left To Be Developed In The Colorado River Basin?

/in , /by /KUNC (Greeley, Colo.)by Luke Runyon

The Colorado River is running low on water. The lifeline that slakes the thirst of 40 million southwestern residents is projected to hit a historic low mark within two years, forcing mandatory cuts to water deliveries in Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. Facing exceptional drought conditions, cities throughout the watershed this summer have imposed mandatory water restrictions, ranchers have begun selling off cows they’re unable to feed, and the river’s reservoirs are headed toward levels not seen since they filled decades ago.

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Lake Mead Water Shortage Could Spell Trouble For Colorado

/in , /by /The Durango Heraldby Marianne Goodland

A new forecast from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shows signs that water levels at Lake Mead, which supplies water to three southwestern states and northern Mexico, could drop so low by next year that it could eventually result in a demand for more water from the Colorado River and from the upper basin states, including Colorado, that rely on the big river. The ever-increasing shortages in those three southwestern states could eventually mean water shortages in Colorado, too.

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OPINION: Safe Drinking Water For All

/in , /by /The New York Timesby Laurel Firestone and Susana De Anda

In 2007, the small town of Lanare in California’s Central Valley finally got what it had desperately needed for years — a treatment plant to remove high levels of arsenic in the drinking water. But the victory was short-lived. Just months after the $1.3 million federally funded plant began running, the town was forced to shut it down because it ran out of money to operate and maintain it. More than a decade later, the plant remains closed and Lanare’s tap water is still contaminated — as is the drinking water piped to about a million other Californians around the state.

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Tree Rings Tell CSUF Students About Droughts And Fires In The Sierra

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Wendy Fawthorp

Some students plant trees. Some hug them. This summer, eight Cal State Fullerton students sampled trees. Really, the students were listening to what trees had to say about the droughts and fires they had lived through. Specifically, the students extracted cores from trees in the Sierra Nevada – including some in Yosemite that had burned a few years ago – and are now examining the cores back on campus. A new laboratory, the Cal-Dendro Tree Ring Laboratory, has been set up to conduct research on the cores, which are expected to reveal valuable data going back 500 to 1,000 years.

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California’s Water Wars Heat Up At Sacramento Hearing Over River Flows

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

Central Valley farmers and their elected leaders converged on Sacramento on Tuesday to accuse the state of engineering a water grab that puts the fate of fish above their fields and jeopardizes a thriving agricultural economy. The allegations came at a meeting of the powerful State Water Resources Control Board, which recently unveiled a far-reaching plan to shore up the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the West Coast’s largest estuary and a source of water for much of California.

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Behind Most Wildfires, A Person And A Spark: ‘We Bring Fire With Us’

/in , /by /The New York Timesby Tim Arango

In the summer of 1965, Johnny Cash was living in the wilderness of Southern California when — possibly high on drugs — he sparked a wildfire with his overheated truck that blazed through more than 500 acres and threatened the lives of endangered condors. When asked by a judge if he started the fire, he said, “my truck did, and it’s dead, so you can’t question it.” (Mr. Cash ended up settling the case for $82,000, or about a half a million in today’s dollars.)

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