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In the latest skirmish over transparency at the troubled Oroville Dam, a Northern California activist group has sued state officials alleging they’re illegally withholding information about potentially toxic asbestos. AquAlliance, a Chico-based advocacy group focused on Sacramento Valley water issues, filed a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court on Tuesday alleging the Department of Water Resources broke state records laws when it denied the group’s request for emails containing information about the asbestos at the dam. The state did release nine documents, the group said, but not the relevant emails.

While I was California Environmental Protection Agency secretary, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and I often worked collaboratively on important statewide water issues. That is why I found her op-ed regarding the Cadiz water project so troubling (Water extraction project would be destructive to California’s Mojave Desert, May 24). The project has followed the law and offers immense benefits for her constituents. Yet the senator’s opinions are disconnected from facts in this case.

After coming out of a major drought via a remarkably wet winter, California water management is top of mind for the fresh produce industry. Looking to address the issue, major water agencies are working with California Governor Jerry Brown to take additional responsibility in order to close a $15.7 billion delta tunnel deal, named WaterFix, according to the Associated Press. Initially proposed in 1982, and revisited numerous times in the decades since, the WaterFix plan seeks to modernize the 50-year-old water conveyance system throughout the state, but has moved slowly due to environmental concerns.

Salmon are at the heart of tribal cultures up and down the West Coast—their diet, commerce, ceremonies, and spirituality. They appear in cave art of 10,000 or more years ago. Salmon are not just a way of life. They are life.
And in California, they may soon be extinct. Three quarters of the state’s salmonids, as salmon and trout are called, could be gone in a century if conditions don’t change. That’s according to a new scientific assessment released on May 16. Nearly half of all salmon species face extinction in 50 years if trends in the state stay the same.

The first step toward sustaining one of San Joaquin County’s most precious resources took nearly two years. And it may have been the easiest part of the journey. Still, local officials sound optimistic about their efforts to comply with the state’s new groundwater mandate,largely because the county’s diverse, sometimes feuding water agencies have agreed to at least sit down at the table and talk about it. “We’ve gotten this far,” San Joaquin County Supervisor Chuck Winn said last week, ahead of a major deadline at the end of this month.