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OPINION: Why Gov. Newsom Should Save The Delta Ecosystem

/in , /by /The Mercury News (San Jose)by Barbara Barrigan-Parilla

The confluence of California’s two great rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, create the largest estuary on the West Coast. Those of who live here call it, simply, the Delta. It is essential to California’s future. That’s why we must save it. In the early 1800s, this estuary teemed with salmon migrating to and from the rivers of the Sierra Nevada. Salmon were, as documented in photographs, so plentiful that you could harvest them from the river with a pitchfork.

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OPINION: State Should Use Science To Determine Delta Water Flows

/in , /by /The Mercury News (San Jose)by Jon Rosenfield

How low our expectations of government have sunk. Federal agencies now regularly deny science that explains the warming of our planet and rising seas. Back-room deals and obstruction of the public’s will have become so commonplace that we notice when one of our state government’s agencies takes action to protect the environment, even if it falls well short of the mark.

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California Cedes Water To Feds In Delta Deal With Trump

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler and Ryan Sabalow

Southern Californians could lose billions of gallons of water a year to Central Valley farmers under a deal Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration has struck with water officials working for President Donald Trump. There’s no guarantee the agreement with Trump will accomplish what Brown’s team is seeking: a lasting compromise on environmental regulations that could stave off significant water shortfalls for farms and cities across California. A powerful state agency, the State Water Resources Control Board, hasn’t yet signed off on Brown’s compromise environmental proposal. Environmental groups have called the governor’s idea woefully insufficient to save ailing fish populations.

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OPINION: A Fight Over A Unique Delta Island

/in , /by /The Record (Stockton, Calif.)by Michael Fitzgerald

A Delta farming island crucial to sandhill cranes is so mismanaged that the levees may break, a lawsuit alleges. Ironically, the allegedly bad manager is The Nature Conservancy. A suit by the Wetlands Preservation Foundation seeks to stop TNC’s allegedly bad, even dangerous, farming practices to avert a potential catastrophe on Staten Island in San Joaquin County. “TNC has failed to live up to its proud environmental tradition,” says the suit, filed in San Joaquin County Superior Court. The Nature Conservancy counters that the suit is baseless. The nonprofit is proud of its work on Staten, which is helping cranes rebound, a spokesman said.

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Brown Tries To Jam Delta Water Hearing Through Legislature

/in , /by /Tracy Pressby Michael Ellis Langley

An innocuous sounding hearing tomorrow morning for lawmakers on the Joint Legislative Budget Committee at the State Capitol may lock taxpayers into paying for the California WaterFix for the next half century. The informational hearing, called “Department of Water Resources: Proposed Water Supply Contract Extension & Amendments,” will commit 50 years of funding to the WaterFix, the state’s plan to build two tunnels to siphon water from the Delta and send it south.

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OPINION: The Twin Tunnels Are Best Water Fix For California

/in , /by /Pasadena Star-Newsby Charles Wilson, Tracy Hernandez, and John Hakel

Let’s start with this: California WaterFix, Gov. Brown’s $17 billion twin-tunnels project, is the best and most affordable long-term solution to our great state’s water woes. If we’re going to call it a time machine, we should acknowledge it will transport us to a brighter future, where there’s clean, reliable water for generations to come. The boondoggle rhetoric that has recently appeared in these pages is classic political redirection. Opponents have been serving up nonsense for more than a decade in hopes of derailing California WaterFix.

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OPINION: Recommendation Will Help Preserve Delta’s Health

/in , /by /The Mercury News (San Jose)

The State Water Resources Control Board provided a voice of sanity to California’s water wars Friday. The board, which oversees California’s water rights issues, recommended significant increases in the water flowing through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in order to preserve its long-term health. Whew. What a relief. It’s a welcome departure from Southern California and the Trump administration’s non-stop efforts to send more water south at the expense of the Delta’s water quality and eco-system.

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Suit Says State Council Favored Twin Tunnels Over Restoring Delta

/in , /by /The Independant (Livermore)by Ron McNicoll

A coalition of environmental groups has sued the California Delta Stewardship Council (CDSC) over what they say are violations of law affecting Delta environment restoration. The suit was filed May 25 in Sacramento Superior Court, where headquarters for the council are located. The plaintiffs include the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the River, Center for Food Safety, Sierra Club California, Planning and Conservation League and Restore the Delta.

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California WaterFix Developments Continue

/in , /by /The Press (Brentwood)by Tony Kukulich

Over the last few weeks, several significant developments related to the California WaterFix project have occurred, not the least of which was the formal creation of the Delta Conveyance and Design Construction Authority (DCA). A joint exercise of powers agreement between the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the DCA gives the the DCA responsibility to staff, design, contract, construct and finance the California WaterFix project.

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Deeply Talks: Protecting Native Fish In The Delta

/in , /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Ian Evans

In this episode of Deeply Talks, Tara Lohan, Water Deeply’s managing editor, speaks with University of California, Davis fisheries experts Peter Moyle and John Durand about the challenges and opportunities for fish restoration in the California Delta. The Delta is a critical artery for California’s water. The estuary is the outlet for two of the state’s most important rivers – the Sacramento and San Joaquin – and it is a main source of the water transported south through the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.

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