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This past winter’s weather should serve as both a reminder and a warning. It’s a reminder that the California climate cycles between long periods of extreme drought and short bursts of extreme rainfall, and it’s a warning that climate change is making this cycle more extreme.  The Golden State must adapt to this “new normal” now – and that requires funding. It’s long past time that our state had a serious discussion about how to fund the kind of water infrastructure we need now and in the future.  Here is an idea: a public goods charge for water.

Jason Tucker’s job title is facility manager at the Glen Canyon Dam. But you could also say he’s also a kind of banker. Colorado River water flows into his bank – the reservoir behind the dam. He can then loan it out to create electricity. Some even call the dam here a kind of “savings account,” tapped as needed to replenish Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, which lie past the Grand Canyon to the west.

California’s top water manager said Monday that the problem-plagued Oroville Reservoir will have a new spillway in place to prevent potentially dangerous outflows of water in time for the next rainy season. The pledge follows concern that the reservoir’s concrete main spillway, which fractured in February, would require more than the dry summer and fall months to fix because of the extent of damage.

Re “State’s plan for river flows spells disaster” (Page 7A, March 20): Restore the Delta agrees that Gov. Jerry Brown’s Delta tunnels proposal and the San Joaquin water plan by the State Water Resources Control Board will be a disaster economically and ecologically for the Delta, and that the State Water Board ignores the Delta’s area of origin rights (Water Code Sections 12200-12205). But we disagree with San Joaquin County Supervisors Chuck Winn and Katherine Miller’s treatment of fish issues.

This is northern California’s wettest year of record, so far.  The Yolo Bypass has been flooded for most of this wet season, and is still flowing.  Are Delta water exports going to exceed the previous record exports from 2011 (6.5 maf)?  The figure above compares this year’s Delta water exports compare with other years before and after the 2007 Wanger Decision, and the drought years (2012-2016). So far, the State Water Project and Central Valley Project together have pumped a little less than in 2011, 2006 (another wet year), or 2007. They are all pretty close (with most of these highest-export water years falling after CVPIA and Endangered species restrictions on Delta pumping).