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

With the rainy season off to a strong start, California officials on Wednesday more than doubled the amount of water they expect to provide next year from the State Water Project. Officials had been proceeding with caution after five years of drought, projecting last month that the state’s massive network of reservoirs, pumps and pipelines would distribute only 20 percent of the requested water. That estimate was adjusted to 45 percent.

A long-awaited draft environmental review document for California American Water’s Monterey Peninsula desalination project will not be released Wednesday as originally scheduled, and the release of the critical report will be delayed until next month. According to a California Public Utilities Commission statement sent to The Herald on Tuesday, the draft desal project environmental impact report, as well as an environmental impact statement, is still in the works and is now expected to be published in January.

President Barack Obama on Friday signed a massive infrastructure bill designed to control floods, fund dams and deliver more water to farmers in California’s drought-ravaged Central Valley.Obama signed the $12-billion bill in a distinctly low-key act. Controversial provisions that critics fear could harm fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta were wrapped inside a package stuffed with politically popular projects, ranging from Sacramento-area levees to clean-water aid for beleaguered Flint, Mich.

Parts of the Bay Area are still drying out from last week’s big soaker. The numbers are in and it turns out area reservoirs got a nice boost from all that rain. One of the larger reservoirs in the Santa Clara valley, Lexington, in the mountains above Los Gatos is now at just over 40 percent of capacity. That’s a roughly 5 percent increase over a week ago. It represents a good start for the year.

 

Saving the Delta requires sacrifice by all, not just residents of this region. I hope someone drilled that idea into the State Water Resources Control Board. The board, whose Sisyphean job is to ensure California’s water is used fairly, brought its road show to Stockton last Friday for a public hearing on its dubious Water Quality Control Plan.To save dying fisheries, and to make the Delta healthier, the board proposes to bump up flows on three rivers that feed the San Joaquin River: the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced.