Gov. Jerry Brown may have declared the drought emergency over in April, but don’t tell that to California’s plants and trees. According to a new study, not only do the effects of drought on the environment linger after it starts raining, but this “drought recovery” period is lasting longer than ever before, likely because of climate change.
Delta tunnels proponents really want you to read the latest blog post by fish experts Peter Moyle and James Hobbs. The project’s official Twitter account, @CAWaterFix, has tweeted links to the post six times over the past day. “Dr. Moyle & Dr. Hobbs explain why they are optimistic about #CAWaterFix from a fish perspective,” one tweet reads. The scientists do share some reasons for optimism, explaining their “qualified support” for the project.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority plans to spend up to $7.5 million in Mexico over the next 10 years in exchange for more Colorado River water. Authority board members unanimously approved the payments Thursday as they gave their blessing to a sweeping water-sharing agreement the U.S. and Mexico are expected to sign next month. The new pact, known as Minute 323 to the Mexican Water Treaty of 1944, spells out how much Mexico would have to reduce its river use during a shortage on the Colorado and how much extra water the nation would get in a surplus.
Now that there’s a list of projects vying for the $2.7 billion in Proposition 1 dedicated to water storage, you’d think the chances of the proposed Sites Reservoir in Colusa County getting some of that cash would be clearer. Not so. There are few surprises in the list of projects seeking the money. Most are proposals that have been around for years, have been studied endlessly, and haven’t gotten built due to a lack of funding.
Seeking to freeze a contentious $16 billion waterworks plan supported by Gov. Jerry Brown, Sacramento County sued the California Department of Water Resources on Thursday over its certification of the project’s “dizzying” and “shifting” environmental review. In a 69-page lawsuit filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, the county says the plan known as the “California WaterFix” will harm residents and the environment in myriad ways. According to the petition, a judge should throw out the environmental certification and halt one of the largest public works projects in state history.
Dumping billions of gallons on California every year, rain is the state’s way out of drought — if only all that water could be captured instead of washing into drains and out to sea. An ambitious new collaboration spanning five University of California campuses, including UC Santa Barbara, hopes to do exactly that. The research partnership of UCSB, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside and UC San Diego aims to revolutionize the collection and management of stormwater — and demonstrate its potential for addressing drought and flood risk. A $1.9 million UC Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) grant will help get it done.
If you live in Los Angeles, the cost of building the Delta tunnels might raise your water bill by as little as $2 a month or less – no more than a latte, to quote one of the project’s main cheerleaders in Southern California. But if you’re a farmer on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the increase could be hundreds of dollars per acre-foot of water. And you could be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional expenses every year, for decades, for a resource that’s as indispensable to farming as soil itself.
Throughout the history of the West, the old adage remains true: “water is worth fighting for.” I believe our national parks are also worth fighting for. They are cherished places collectively known as “America’s best idea.” To protect both water and National Parks and in response to increasing threats to the California desert’s national parks, national monuments and groundwater supplies, I recently introduced Assembly Bill 1000 — the California Desert Protection Act.
Like many before him, California Governor Jerry Brown has vowed to “fix” the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, that vast and beleaguered wetland east of San Francisco Bay that is a source for much of Southern California’s water, an agricultural powerhouse, and a nursery for valuable fisheries. The root of the problem, of course, is the number and degree of demands on the Delta. There are too many stakeholders and too little water, so nobody ever gets what they want, and often they don’t get what they need.
Two proposed reservoirs for the Central Valley are among the largest projects seeking money from a bond issue approved by California voters in 2014. But there are ten other projects also trying to get money from the bond issue. In all, the dozen projects seek $5.8 billion. The bond issue totaled $2.7 billion. The 12 applications for funding under the Water Storage Investment Program include several new or expanded reservoirs:
