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Some of the bigger promises made by president-elect Trump will require the cooperation of the Republican-controlled Congress. Promises like a border wall, mass deportations, and repealing Obamacare will take some time. But with a stroke of his presidential pen, Mr. Trump can bring sudden and consequential changes that could reverberate throughout the Central California. One of the biggest changes could be to the distribution of water to farmers in the Valley.

 

 

Today, House committee legislators will be voting to approve or deny a California irrigation bill that would forgive $375 million worth of debt owed by one of the nation’s largest farm-focused irrigation districts, Westlands Water District.

Approving the plan would, essentially, relieve the federal government of its obligation to provide drainage for each farm in the 600,000-acre Westlands district. According to The Sacramento Bee, the estimated overall costs to the federal government of providing these drainage services is $3.5 billion and counting.

Next year, A new California law will revolutionize how the state manages its groundwater. By June 30, 2017, according to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), many groundwater users must form new agencies and begin drafting plans to “sustainably manage” their aquifers. Three years later, they must begin operating aquifers according to those new plans, which will dramatically change how groundwater is used.

Business as usual on the Colorado River may be about to come to a screeching halt. One of the worst recorded droughts in human history has stretched water supplies thin across the far-reaching river basin, which serves 40 million people. Nowhere is this more obvious than Lake Mead, which straddles the border of Arizona and Nevada. The water level in the country’s largest manmade reservoir has been plummeting; it’s now only 38 percent full. With an official water shortage imminent, Arizona, Nevada and California are taking matters into their own hands.

 

Yesterday, San Diego County Water Authority’s General Manager, Maureen Stapleton, sent a letter to CA Natural Resources Secretary John Laird asserting that Dr. David Sunding’s economic analysis for the Delta Tunnels project “may significantly overstate Southern California’s future demand for water from the Bay-Delta.” Ms. Stapleton’s letter explains that Dr. Sunding’s economic analysis used water planning assumptions from Metropolitan Water District’s 2015 Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) regarding the need for San Francisco Bay-Delta water. However, as Ms. Stapleton points out, MWD’s 2015 IRP only included local projects that were recently completed or under construction.