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OPINION: President Obama Should Veto This Harmful Water Bill

/in /by /The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa)

As feared, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has cut a deal with Congressional Republicans on legislation that will take much-needed water from Northern California’s fragile waterways — and its vulnerable fish — and hand it over to farmers and businesses in the Central Valley. To make matters worse, the deal was attached to a politically popular bill that sailed through the U.S. Senate early Saturday. The comprehensive measure, which gives the go-ahead to some 30 new infrastructure projects around the country, now heads for the Oval Office. But if President Barack Obama is willing to stand by his strong environmental convictions, he will veto it.

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Big Storm Hits California, Chopper Saves Homeless and Dogs

/in /by /The Associated Press as published by ABC Newsby John Antczak and Kristin J. Bender

A pre-winter storm drenched California with rain and dumped nearly three feet of snow to help bolster the vital Sierra Nevada snowpack but also triggered mud flows, street flooding and the dramatic rescue Friday of two homeless women and 10 dogs from a river island near Los Angeles. With thousands of acres of wildfire burn scars all over the state, authorities were warily monitoring barren slopes where parched earth soaked with rain can cause life-threatening mudslides.

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A $1-Billion Desalination Plant Might Be Coming To Huntington Beach, But It Will Test California’s Environmental Rules

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Bettina Boxall Mentioned: Carlsbad Desalination Plant

Poseidon Water hopes to help quench Orange County’s thirst, but first the company’s proposed desalination project must slake a thirst of its own. That’s why Poseidon has long eyed a coastal power plant that has, for more than a half-century, sucked up seawater to cool its massive generators. The AES Huntington Beach Generating Station’s giant smokestacks and steam boilers will be gone in a few years, replaced under state orders by a smaller plant that uses air, rather than the ocean, to keep from overheating.

 

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Heavy rain is on its way, and that could mean dangerous mud flows in the Southern California foothills

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Joseph Serna

Powerful winds and rain will sweep across Southern California on Thursday, bringing the potential for dangerous mud flows in the foothills of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, the National Weather Service said.

Starting early Thursday in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, the storm will spread southeast across Los Angeles County and the San Gabriel Mountains, where it’s expected to drop 1 to 3 inches of rain by Friday morning, meteorologist Joe Sirard said.

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A tale of two droughts in California: Wetter in the north, still bone dry in the south

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Matt Stevens

When California water officials assess the drought, the first place they look is the northern Sierra Nevada mountains.

Rain and snowmelt from the area feed into a complex system of rivers, canals and reservoirs that send water across the state. And by almost all measures, the drought picture in Northern California has dramatically improved over the last two months, as a series of storms have helped replenish the state’s two major water projects. So far this season, rain levels in the northern Sierra are 180% of average, with 23.5 inches of rain falling — and more on the way this week.

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Problems in California Complicate Negotiations To Boost Sinking Lake Mead

/in /by /Las Vegas Review-Journalby Henry Brean

A multistate agreement aimed at shoring up Lake Mead can’t be finished until California finds a way to solve two major, long-simmering environmental fights. That was the message from top water managers Thursday gathered in Las Vegas for the annual conference of the Colorado River Water Users Association. For the past 18 months, Nevada, California and Arizona have been negotiating a drought contingency plan to keep Lake Mead from shrinking enough to trigger a first-ever federal shortage declaration and force Nevada, which receives most of its water from the Colorado, and especially Arizona to slash their use of river water.

 

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OPINION: Congress Drops Ball On Basin Water Plan

/in /by /Yakima Herald (Wash.)

Hope blossomed last spring in Washington, D.C., when federal money appeared headed to the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan. Sadly, with the approach of winter, those hopes have been put on ice, at least for this year. Back in April, largely through the bipartisan efforts of Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the Senate overwhelmingly approved $92 million for the integrated plan, a compromise that aims to combine conservation and new storage to ensure a more-reliable water supply for Central Washington.

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Fake Sales, Changing Banks And California’s Latest Water Fight

/in /by /The Tribune (San Luis Obispo)by Phil Dirkx

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.

 

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OPINION: Protect Salmon, Drinking Water, And The San Francisco Bay-Delta

/in /by /San Francisco Chronicleby John McManus

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.

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Study Warns Of World’s Groundwater Depletion By 2050

/in /by /Yahoo

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.

 

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