California’s state government began drawing up plans for Sites Reservoir in the Sacramento Valley 70 years ago. And it still only exists on paper.
So, kudos to Gov. Gavin Newsom for deciding that it’s finally time to put this tardy project on the fast track.
Fast track means there’ll be limited time for any opponent to contest the project in court on environmental grounds.
In what seems to be perennially Michael Abatti v. IID season in the courtroom, Judge Michael Anello of the Federal Southern District Court heard oral arguments from each side’s attorneys on Wednesday, June 6, in San Diego.
Mr. Abatti and 23 of his relatives and friends filed a lawsuit last June alleging that the IID’s new Equitable Distribution Plan violated their rights to water, deprived them of due process, and caused them economic harm.
Water is a precious resource, essential to life and requires our utmost care. As drought, climate change, wildfires and other natural disasters become more impactful, it is more important than ever that we are meeting our everyday and emergency water needs.
If we hope to solve our country’s most pressing natural resource challenges, we must go straight to the source: Americans on the ground who know firsthand what is needed to solve them.
The historic Colorado River agreement reached last month temporarily secures access to clean water in the West. All Americans deserve clean air and clean water, but unfortunately, the challenges confronting the Colorado River puts access to this vital resource in jeopardy.
Because of the decrease in fossil fuel plants, an old idea suddenly looks new again in the consideration of power generation for TVA.
The utility has begun to study whether a pumped storage power plant similar to the Raccoon Mountain facility just west of Chattanooga might be feasible for either of two mountain ridges along the Tennessee River in Northeast Alabama.
When California imposed its first-ever regulation on the extraction of water from underground aquifers in 2014, it gave environmental groups a landmark victory in their decades-long effort to overhaul water use laws.
It was also a political setback for farmers, who are California’s major water users and have depended on wells to irrigate their crops as increasingly frequent droughts reduce surface water in rivers and reservoirs.
In the long sweep of human history, water has always played a central role in determining the geography of civilizations, and eons ago it influenced the migration of our early ancestors out of Africa and across the world. The ability to manage water contributed to the success or failure of empires along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers of the Middle East, the Indus in southern Asia, and the Yangtze in China. This First Age of water saw the earliest efforts to manipulate water with dams, aqueducts and intentional irrigation, and also the first water laws, institutions and water conflicts.
Amid a tidal wave of bad news – from inflation and the war in Ukraine to climate change and divisive politics – there is one story that might trump all others in importance, and yet it receives the least sustained global attention: water.
California’s water laws are stuck in the past. The Legislature can—indeed, it must—make the changes to state law necessary to address the 21st century’s complex water challenges.
A recent decision by California’s Sixth District Court of Appeal highlights everything that’s wrong with California water law. The ruling blocks the State Water Resources Control Board’s authority to reduce water deliveries to a group of water districts amid California’s ongoing drought.
“The shadows sway and seem to say/ ‘Tonight we pray for water, cool water’/ And way up there He’ll hear our prayer/ And show us where there’s water, cool, clear, water.” Sons of the Pioneers, singing Bob Nolan’s “Cool Water” in 1941.
Eighty-one years later, the “show us where there’s water” prayer remains.
