MICHAEL GEORGE HAS called the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta “highly important, highly complex, highly compromised.” George serves as Delta watermaster, a position created as part of the Delta Reform Act of 2009 to administer water rights in the Delta, where there are some 2,800 separate water diversions.
A state board’s proposal to help fish populations by increasing water flows down the Merced River would hurt the local ag industry, according to a new report done for the Merced Irrigation District. If the State Water Resource Control Board’s proposed Bay-Delta Plan is approved, the report predicts Merced County’s economy would shrink by up to $231 million. “This magnitude of change in long-term surface water supply reliability could lead to a structural change in the agriculture section,” the report said. “Such a drastic reduction could likely result in a countywide contraction in the agricultural sector.”
Downtown San Jose sank 13 feet between 1910 and 1970 from excessive groundwater pumping. Repairs to sewers, roads, and bridges, plus the construction of levees to protect land below high tide from flooding, cost the area at least $750 million in 2013 dollars. The Santa Clara Valley region would still be sinking at a rapid rate if it weren’t for the foresight of the Santa Clara Valley Water District and supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. In the 1960s, the State Water project started delivering Delta water to the Bay Area, Central Valley and Southern California.
The Board of Water and Power Commissioners today tightened up the criteria for granting turf removal rebates, under which synthetic turf and mulch will no longer be allowed and more rainfall capture features and plant coverage will be required.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power gives out $1.75 for each square foot of grass lawn that is removed.
A resolute effort in Arizona, California, and Nevada to reduce Colorado River water use is slowing the decline of Lake Mead and delaying mandatory restrictions on water withdrawals from the drying basin.
The Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that oversees lake levels, forecasts that Arizona, California, and Nevada will draw less than 7 million acre-feet from the river this year, some 500,000 acre-feet less than they are permitted to consume and the lowest since 1992. (An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons, enough water to flood an acre of land with one foot of water.)
Our wet winter increased the state’s water supply and filled many of our reservoirs. But in many ways, the much-needed relief exposed the failure of the current water system and the lack of a cohesive federal and state plan to secure water for California residents and businesses. Unlike the commonly used phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” our state’s water system is widely recognized as broken, in dire need of a fix.
Western communities are facing effects of a warming climate with slower and earlier snowmelt reducing streamflows and possibly the amount of water reaching reservoirs used for drinking water and agriculture, according to a study published in July.
Last week, Northern and Southern California state legislators had a rare breakthrough over one of the state’s most divisive issues — water. The Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted to instruct the State Auditor to launch an audit of Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed Delta Tunnels. Recent revelations show the project has murky funding and even supporters know the tunnels cannot be built on a financial house of cards. The Delta Tunnels would be 40-foot tall, 35-mile long tunnels dug beneath the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary.
Shortly before state water officials announced today that most urban water providers will no longer be subject to mandatory conservation targets, three environmental groups pleaded with the same panel for emergency flows through the Delta to prevent extinction of the smelt. It’s normal for some smelt to die off this time of year as juveniles mature into adults, Jon Rosenfield, a conservation biologist with The Bay Institute, told the State Water Resources Control Board. But something must be done to help a larger share of those babies make it to adulthood this year, he said.
The San Joaquin Valley Weather Infrastructure Authority (SJVWIA), a Joint Power of Authority composed of many San Joaquin Valley cities, counties and water agencies, is charged with the goals of ensuring completion of the Temperance Flat Dam feasibility studies and preparing the necessary bond funding application to get the structure built. Stephen Worthley, president of the SJVWIA and member of the Tulare County Board of Supervisors said, “The big step for us is going to be the preparation of the application, which has to go to the Water Commission in a little less than one year’s time.
