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Bird’s Eye Look Of Work Underway At Oroville Dam Spillways

/in , /by /Chico Enterprise-Record

The second and final phase of reconstruction continues at the Oroville Dam spillways. This year, contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. is rebuilding the top 730-foot portion of the main spillway and using structural concrete to rebuild the walls and resurface the chute in the middle. A flight over the location last week during a break in Butte County Sheriff’s Office helicopter training exercise, showed that much original concrete at the top of the chute has been removed, along with the walls.

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Are Avocados Toast?

/in , /by /Grist (Seattle, Wash.)by Nathanael Johnson

Chris Sayer pushed his way through avocado branches and grasped a denuded limb. It was stained black, as if someone had ladled tar over its bark. In February, the temperature had dropped below freezing for three hours, killing the limb. The thick leaves had shriveled and fallen away, exposing the green avocados, which then burned in the sun. Sayer estimated he’d lost one out of every 20 avocados on his farm in Ventura, just 50 miles north of Los Angeles, but he counts himself lucky.

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Congress Learning To Padlock Courthouse Door

/in , /by /E&E News (Washington, DC)by Michael Doyle and Amanda Reilly

The high-ranking lawmaker who wants to block judicial review of a massive California water tunnels project calls his maneuver something close to standard operating procedure. And, like it or not, he’s right. In the latest example of a controversial tactic, the chairman of a key House panel included language blocking judicial review of California’s WaterFix project in a fiscal 2019 Interior Department funding package. The bill would also block court scrutiny of several gray wolf decisions.

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OPINION: Valley Farms, Cities Need Temperance Flat Dam To Assure Secure Water Future

/in , /by /The Fresno Beeby Buddy Mendes and Justin Mendes

“Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” is a quote made famous by Mark Twain upon hearing rumors that he had died in 1897. This is the same thought that we had in reaction to news that the most important project for securing a long-term water supply for the Central Valley, the construction of Temperance Flat Dam, was not fully funded by the California Water Commission.

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Proposition 68: Will Voters Approve $4.1 Billion For Parks And Water Projects?

/in , /by /East Bay Timesby Paul Rogers

The last time California voters passed a statewide ballot measure to provide funding for parks, beaches, wildlife and forests, it was 2006.  Arnold Schwarzenegger was in his first term as governor, Twitter was a fledgling app, and the iPhone hadn’t been invented yet. Since then, California’s population has grown from 36 million to 39.5 million — the equivalent of adding a new San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego.

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State Water Project Allocation Rises To 35 Percent

/in , /by /The Bakersfield Californianby John Cox

Farmers receiving allocations from the State Water Project can expect a bigger allotment this year than they anticipated as recently as last month, thanks to late-season precipitation. The California Department of Water Resources announced Monday this year’s allocation has been raised to 35 percent of full distribution, or 1.48 million acre-feet of water statewide. (One acre foot is enough to cover one acre of land with a foot of water.)

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OPINION: Republicans Seek To Ban Lawsuits On Delta Tunnels

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby John Garamendi

A new threat to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the San Francisco Bay is coming not from the governor’s mansion but from the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona (Riverside County), inserted language into the Interior and Environment Appropriations bill that would prohibit legal challenges to anything related to California WaterFix — the governor’s name for the twin tunnels project to move water from the delta to Southern California — not just retroactively but in perpetuity.

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A Washington Bomb Set To Go Off In California’s Delta Tunnels Water War

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Jacques Leslie

A congressman set off a legislative bomb in California’s water wars last week. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) inserted a rider into an Interior Department appropriations bill that would exempt from all judicial review the intensely contested Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta twin tunnels project. Passage of the rider — it’s scheduled for a House committee vote Tuesday — would mean that the water diversion scheme wouldn’t have to follow federal or state law. The project, known formally as California WaterFix, would bury two 35-mile-long, 40-foot-diameter tunnels beneath the delta.

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Five Things To Know About Water Bonds On Upcoming California Ballots

/in , /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Matt Weiser

California this year will vote on not one but two water bond measures totaling $13 billion. Given that the state still hasn’t spent all of the $7.5billion from the Proposition 1 water bond passed in 2014, it raises a crucial question: Does California really need another $13 billion in water bonds? As of December 2017, the state had allocated only about $1 billion from Proposition 1. About half of the total money available from the bond is dedicated to new water storage under a complicated new process that funds only the “public benefits” of such projects.

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OPINION: Keep State’s Struggling Water Systems Afloat

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Danielle Blacet and David Guy

We all can agree every Californian should have access to safe drinking water. But too many – nearly 800,000 people – do not. The unfortunate reality is their local drinking water system serves contaminated water or can’t provide reliable service, and also can’t afford to invest in improvements to make the system safe. There are about 300 of these chronically noncompliant systems, most small and in rural, isolated communities. We can take an important step toward fixing this important health and safety problem by empowering newly created local agencies to supply clean and safe drinking water.

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