You are now in California and the U.S. category.

Gridley – “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the impact on your lives,” Bill Croyle told a crowd of more than 250 people at the Butte County Fairgrounds. Croyle, the acting director of the Department of Water Resources, answered questions and listened Thursday evening as people stepped up to a microphone and were heard during the first of the water agency’s community meetings about the Oroville Dam spillway disaster and evacuations. Six more meetings are planned through mid-May. The next one is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Oroville Municipal Auditorium on Myers Street in Oroville.

California water officials on Thursday approved funding for Paso Robles’ proposed $18 million tertiary sewage treatment plant, the final in a series of major infrastructure projects that will bring about 3,300 acre-feet of water to the city each year. Dick McKinley, Paso Robles’ director of public works, said Thursday that the city plans to award a contract bid next month and break ground on the plant in June or July.

A controversial California irrigation drainage deal designed to resolve one of the West’s trickiest, most expensive and longest-running water problems won approval from a key House of Representatives panel Thursday. But the debate – and uproar over the proposal – is only beginning, and its long-term fate is uncertain. On a mostly party-line 23-16 vote, the House Natural Resources Committee approved the bill to settle the irrigation dispute between the mammoth Westlands Water District and the federal government.

Foam floated downstream and made circles on the water last week in the pool below Oroville Dam. Water quality experts are trying to determine why. Foam can happen naturally, or it can be a result of something else in the water. At this point the cause of the foam is unknown. Water tests were planned Wednesday, with lab results available in about two weeks, said Bryan Smith, supervising engineer with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Nothing quite like calling a group of committed activists “stupid” to light an even bigger fire under their already aggrieved asses. In publishing a factually challenged editorial that uses the S-word five times, “dumbest” once, “narcissistic” once (rubber/glue, anyone?), calls their mission a “little takeover hobby” and compares them to stoners who celebrate 4/20 every day of the year, Carmel Pine Cone Publisher Paul Miller gave Public Water Now what I think of as a new sense of resiliency in its mission to bring public ownership of the Monterey Peninsula’s water utility to reality.