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House and Senate leaders reached agreement Monday on a bipartisan bill to authorize $170 million for Flint, Michigan, and other cities beleaguered by lead in drinking water, and to provide relief to drought-stricken California.

A vote on the water-projects bill could be held this week as Congress wraps up its legislative work for the year. But the measure was jeopardized by sharp opposition from California Sen. Barbara Boxer and other Democrats who said it would harm drinking water quality and severely weaken the Endangered Species Act, threatening salmon and other endangered species.

 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, teamed up Monday to slip a legislative rider into a giant end-of-year water infrastructure bill that would override endangered species protections for native California fish for the purpose of sending water to San Joaquin Valley farmers.

Retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., angrily denounced the rider as a “poison pill,” calling a late-afternoon news conference, during which she lashed out against McCarthy, saying he lied by calling the more than 80-page provision a “little, small agreement.”

Based on data from the NWS Climate Prediction Center, temperatures across much of the northwest US, from Alaska all the way down to northern California and the Four Corner states will be below the normal mean values (reference period 1981-2010) during the first half of the month. The highest probability of below normal temperatures occurring extends along the northern Rockies and is mainly related to the invasion of very cold Arctic air across northwest Canada into the northwest US.

California is finally embracing its rivers. It may be a choking embrace. We Californians have long celebrated our coastal splendor and beautiful mountains. But our rivers were seen as mere plumbing for our hydration convenience. Now California’s communities, seeking space for environmental restoration and recreation (and some desperately needed housing), are treating rivers and riverfronts as new frontiers and busily reconsidering how these bodies of water might better connect people and places.