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You Could Vote on Controversial Delta Water Tunnels Plan in 2018

/in /by /Los Angeles Times by By John Myers

An Assembly committee gave its approval Tuesday to legislation that would require California voters approve of Gov. Jerry Brown’s $15-billion water plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

“In times of crisis, we shouldn’t reach for the easiest thing,” Assemblywoman Susan Eggman (D-Stockton), the bill’s author, said during the hearing. Eggman’s AB 1713 would set new criteria for the long-debated water plan when it comes to the impact on the delta community. Most notably, though, it would also subject the project to an up-or-down vote at the next statewide election.

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BLOG: El Capitan’s operating schedule will change on May 1st

/in /by /SDFish

(Media Coverage editor’s note: This blog post previously contained erroneous information about San Diego County Water Authority operational activity at El Capitan Reservoir. The error has since been corrected by the post author.)

The city of San Diego had been drafting water from El Capitan at a rate of a little more than 1 foot per week since March 5th, leaving the lake lower than it had been in over a decade. However, the drafting stopped on April 7th, and the water level has leveled off about 5 vertical feet higher than the minimum operating level for the launch ramp to be usable.

 

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Delta Tunnels Bill Mandating Voter Approval Advances

/in /by /The Sacramento Bee by By Jeremy B. White

A California Assembly committee on Tuesday moved to force a public vote on a controversial water conveyance project. The $15.5 billion plan to construct two massive water conveyance tunnels in the heart of California’s water circulatory system has driven the latest round of a decades-long battle over exporting water from wetter Northern California to more populous Southern California.

Lawmakers representing the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area, where signs opposing the project are ubiquitous features of the landscape, have clashed with a potent pro-tunnels coalition of business groups, organized labor and major urban and agricultural water importers.
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Slow Progress on Salton Sea Projects as Time Runs Low

/in /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs) by By Sammy Roth

Efforts to limit air pollution and create wildlife habitat at the Salton Sea are inching forward, but critics say the progress isn’t nearly fast enough.

Earlier this month, Bruce Wilcox — Gov. Jerry Brown’s Salton Sea czar — submitted a report to the state Legislature outlining progress on restoration projects. While a few small-scale projects to reduce hazardous dust emissions and create habitat for fish and birds might be finished before the lake’s decline accelerates in 2018, several larger projects probably won’t start construction until 2018 or 2019, according to the report.

 

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OPINION: Too Much Water to Waste?

/in /by /Voice of Orange County by By Debbie Cook Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Does California have too much water? Seriously. Because our actions are sending peculiar messages. Even the State Water Board has backed off on conservation targets for some water agencies.

It’s true, rains have replenished much of Northern California’s reservoirs and Governor Brown’s mandated 25% water restrictions made a serious dent in our water binge. A whopping 1.1 million acre-feet of water was saved, or rather, not wasted, thanks to these restrictions.

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Corporate Water Users Who Saved the Most — Or Least

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune by By Morgan Cook

The City of San Diego supplied its top 10 corporate water customers with 1.6 billion gallons in the budget year that ended on June 30, 2015.

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Counties Fight SoCal Water Giant’s Delta Grab

/in /by /Courthouse News Service (Pasadena) by By Julie Baker-Dennis

Political agencies and nonprofits in the Central Valley say the Metropolitan District of Southern California’s $175 million purchase of four islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta may cause significant environmental changes and sued to block the sale.

San Joaquin and Contra Costa counties, Central Delta Water Agency, Contra Costa County Water Agency and Food & Water Watch and the Planning and Conservation League sued the district on April 15 in San Joaquin County Superior Court, seeking a court order blocking Metropolitan District of Southern California’s purchase of 20,369 acres of property — including five delta islands and tracts — until an environmental review is satisfied.

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Synthetic Grass Distributor Says L.A. Demand Doubled in Past Year

/in /by /Total Landscape Care (Tuscaloosa, Ala.)by By David Rountree

Southern California didn’t enjoy the El Nino bump in rain and snow that fell in the northern part of the state. The nearly 5-year-old drought isn’t likely to end in 2016, and it has already doubled the demand for artificial turf in greater Los Angeles, according to Anaheim-based Synthetic Grass Warehouse, the nation’s largest distributor of the product.

In citing its annual growth in the L.A. market, privately held Synthetic Grass Warehouse, or SGW, points to continuing water restrictions as a key driver of demand.

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OPINION: Actually, Fellow Headline Writers, Storms Did Dent the Drought

/in /by /Los Angeles Daily News by By Larry Wilson

“Storms won’t make a dent in the drought.” I hate that headline. It is so untrue — not that we haven’t used it ourselves a few times over the five years of California drought.

But the fact is that the Friday and Saturday rains made a big dent in the drought, and not just for those of us who like our little yards. The drought is not a monolith; we all have our own locavore version of it to grapple with.

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OPINION: We Can Better Deal With Drought With More Data

/in /by /The Sacramento Bee

 

When Californians want to buy a car, data on fuel efficiency, safety, performance and virtually every factoid imaginable are just a quick online search away. However, California’s water managers have to do extensive research just to piece together the basic facts.

By making California’s existing water data open, transparent and publicly accessible, we could significantly improve our drought resilience. The problem isn’t a lack of information so much as a lack of accessible, user-friendly data.

 

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