I have three topics today: 1. Discounted prices may be mythical. 2. Banks are changeable. 3. In California, “Whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting,” as the old adage goes. First, the mythical discounts: Last week, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office sued four major department stores for allegedly issuing misleading advertising. They are JCPenney, Sears, Kohl’s, and Macy’s.
Science tells us the world is experiencing a sixth extinction. For California, one of the most environmentally aware places on the planet, to give up on protecting our salmon runs, upon which tens of thousands of jobs depend, rather than conserve and recycle water, would not just be a disaster for salmon communities, it would be a disaster for the state and the world. Last week, Congress passed disastrous legislation weakening protections for San Francisco Bay-Delta salmon under the Endangered Species Act.
Groundwater resources could be depleted in the next few decades in dry areas of the world where people use lots of water for drinking and irrigating crops, researchers said Thursday. The research was presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. “While many aquifers remain productive, economically exploitable groundwater is already unattainable or will become so in the near future, especially in intensively irrigated areas in the drier regions of the world,” said researcher Inge de Graaf, a hydrologist at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado.
Kale or quinoa? Free range chicken or seasonal veggie medley? Pellegrino or … recycled water? Californians could soon start drinking purified wastewater. In response to a five-year drought, the state Water Resources Control Board recently informed legislators that regulating recycled, drinkable water is perfectly feasible. California would be the first state in the nation to implement such regulations.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., stayed off the Senate floor on Friday evening while her California Democratic colleague, Sen. Barbara Boxer, opposed a water resources bill. Boxer and senators from Washington and Oregon said the bill contains provisions to deal with the California drought that could damage the salmon industry and reduce the power of the Endangered Species Act. Boxer, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, also said that the drought provision was the work of a single House member, which was a veiled reference to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
Observers of California’s longtime water wars expect language inserted into a major water bill last week to exacerbate the ongoing competition between fish and farms for scarce supplies.
Are we going to decide to kill fish tonight? It was a question Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell brought to the Senate floor last Friday as she implored colleagues to vote no on a controversial water bill that would increase water flow to San Joaquin farmers and away from fish habitat in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. And if they start messing with water flows in northern California, what’s to stop them from doing it in Washington?
Another rainstorm pounded much of the state Thursday, causing minor havoc in some areas but putting another dent in California’s five-year drought.The storm was expected to continue into Friday, bringing rain in low-lying areas and snow to the Sierra Nevada. Rain gauges and reservoirs were filling up as California continued to experience one of the strongest starts to the rain season in years. Fresh data showed California is making progress against the drought.
The drying out starts … now. The storm that swamped the Bay Area and prompted flash flood warnings, inundated roads and triggered rock and mud slides from Sonoma County into Monterey County has moved south. After a few showers late Thursday and early Friday, the region is in for what appears to be at least a week of non-rain.
Droughts sparked deadly wildfires, killed tens of millions of trees and damaged crops and livestock in large regions of the U.S. in 2016. Major regional droughts hit the U.S. this year in the Southeast, California and New England—and all developed differently.
