A federal judge is reviewing a proposed order requesting approval of an interim operations plan for 2022 that would affect Central Valley Project and State Water Project agricultural water users.
U.S. District Court Judge Dale Drozd in Fresno is reviewing legal filings submitted last month by the Biden administration in consultation with the Newsom administration.
Federal authorities have moved to reverse a Trump administration decision that cleared the way for Cadiz Inc. to pipe water across public land in the California desert.
The request filed in federal court Friday, which must still be granted, could deal a blow to the company’s decades-long effort to pump groundwater from beneath its desert property 200 miles east of Los Angeles and sell it to urban Southern California. The project is fiercely opposed by conservationists, who say it will dry up desert springs and seeps relied upon by Indigenous tribes and rare wildlife. Cadiz insists its plans won’t harm springs in the area.
The new infrastructure law signed by President Biden includes almost $50 billion to protect communities against climate change, the largest such investment in United States history and a recognition that the effects of warming are outpacing America’s ability to cope.
Mr. Biden has insisted that at least 40 percent of the benefits of federal climate spending will reach underserved places, which tend to be low-income, rural, communities of color, or some combination of the three.
In actions that carry out President Biden’s economic agenda, the U.S. House of Representatives last week passed two pieces of significant legislation, including a $1.2 trillion bipartisan package that includes $8.3 billion for critical water projects in drought-parched California and the West.
On Friday, the House also passed the president’s social safety-net bill, the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, on a party-line vote. That bill, which funds universal pre-K, expansion of Medicare, renewable energy credits and affordable housing, now moves to the Senate.
The Biden administration’s proposal to bolster environmental permitting review is a good first step but doesn’t go far enough towards scrapping Trump-era rules, according to a coalition of Democratic attorneys general.
The changes included in President Joe Biden’s National Environmental Policy Act proposed rule fall short of undoing Trump-era regulations that undermined the environmental review process, the attorneys general said in their comment letter submitted Tuesday.
The Biden administration took action Thursday to restore federal protections for hundreds of thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways, undoing a Trump-era rule that was considered one of that administration’s hallmark environmental rollbacks.
Thousands of jobs in infrastructure — like clean energy and roads — could come to California and San Diego thanks to a $1 trillion package signed Monday by President Joe Biden.
The hard-fought, bipartisan package, inked into law by Biden on the White House lawn, makes major financial commitments into broadband internet, the power grid, airports and environmental cleanup efforts, among others areas. Its largest area of spending is in road and bridges where new spending over the next five years is expected to be $110 billion.
President Biden on Monday signed a historic $1-trillion bipartisan bill that he said will overhaul the nation’s infrastructure and boost the nation’s economy, which has been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Touting the legislation as a job creator, the president said it was also an example of him fulfilling a campaign promise to reach across the aisle to get things done.
Amid worsening drought in the West that threatens the region’s water and food supplies, Vice President Kamala Harris went to Lake Mead on Monday to pitch the Biden administration’s infrastructure and climate change plans, saying they would create jobs and respond to climate change.
“It is critical that we as a nation understand that we have within our hands, within our possession, the ability to actually change the course of where we’re headed,” Harris said, standing in front of a lectern with Lake Mead — and its precipitously low water levels — as a backdrop. “Let’s get these bills passed.”
President Joe Biden’s pledge to boost America’s clean-energy economy is great news for the planet and aligns well with California’s goal to lead the way to a 100 percent clean energy future. The Biden administration is working to position the United States to lead the world in manufacturing electric vehicles while securing a domestic supply chain of the materials these vehicles require.
Last year, electric vehicles became California’s No. 1 export and our state is proud to be home to 34 zero-emission vehicle related manufacturers.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
