Immigration and housing dominated the headlines from Sacramento this year. But with little fanfare, state lawmakers working with Gov. Jerry Brown also approved a sweeping measure to provide $4.1 billion in new funding for parks and water projects — everything from building Bay Area hiking trails to expanding Lake Tahoe beaches to constructing new inner city parks in Los Angeles.
California is increasing the pressure on millions of Californians to help pay for two giant water tunnels that Gov. Jerry Brown wants built. The Associated Press obtained documents Friday and confirmed the expanded funding proposal in interviews with state and local water officials. Brown wants to re-engineer California’s north-south water system in the $16 billion project. Amid doubts about whether the mega-project is worth the cost, no big water district has yet to sign on to help pay.
Repairs to the Oroville Dam spillway are on track for the Nov. 1 deadline, state Department of Water Resources representatives say, but work will be far from over then. The November deadline was set in the hopes of beating the start of the area’s typical rainy season. The spillway will be functional by then, able to pass flows of 100,000 cubic-feet per second, or cfs, according to DWR’s plans, but the structure will have a higher capacity when the redesign is complete.
In the wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, large sections of southeast Texas and southern Florida were underwater. The massive flooding has claimed the lives of more than 100 people, and AccuWeather predicts that the economic cost of the two storms will be almost $300 billion. Right now, California may be dealing with more fire than flood, but there are still important lessons that the state can learn from Harvey and Irma, says Nicholas Pinter, the associate director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis.
Bringing more certainty to an unruly and unpredictable Colorado River system was a common theme among water managers speaking at the Colorado River District’s annual seminar on Friday, Sept. 15. Although the drought that has gripped much of the Colorado River basin for the past 16 years has eased up a bit, population growth and the long dry spell have pushed the river’s supplies to the limit, with every drop of water in the system now accounted for.
Opponents of the Delta tunnels proposal, facing a long-shot bid to kill the controversial project on environmental grounds, are now trying to undermine the plan’s financial structure. Six environmental groups filed court papers late Thursday attempting to derail the state Department of Water Resources’ plans to bankroll the tunnels with billions of dollars in bond financing. The groups said bonds can’t be issued because the tunnels violate California environmental laws and because the project has received illegal subsidies from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
It takes Humberto Lugo several minutes to explain how the home he is standing in front of actually gets its water. It’s a small, stucco house dwarfed by an expanse of dusty farm fields that sit mostly fallow in September, awaiting the next planting of winter vegetables. An irrigation canal runs by the front of the property, and brings water not just to the surrounding farms but also to homes.
In the final hours of this year’s legislative session, which ended after 2 a.m. Saturday, key immigration and affordable-housing bills passed out of the Legislature, as did a $4 billion parks and water bond, which the governor has said he will sign. It will appear on a June 2018 ballot. A clean energy bill did not get a vote in the Assembly, however, and an Internet privacy bill also remained stuck in committee.
This week the California Legislature is considering two critical water bills that will reduce water waste and improve drought planning. Senate Bill 606 (Hertzberg/Skinner) and Assembly Bill 1668 (Friedman) deserve the legislature’s full support.
