San Francisco Chronicle Archives

Feinstein Pushes To Extend Controversial Water Law Despite Environmental Concern

December 11, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is joining forces with House Republicans to try to extend a controversial law that provides more water for Central Valley farms, but with a sweetener for the environment: help with protecting California’s rivers and fish. The proposed extension of the WIIN Act, or Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, would keep millions of federal dollars flowing for new dams and reservoirs across the West. It would also continue to allow more water to be moved from wet Northern California to the drier south.

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Big Setback for Gov. Brown’s Twin Tunnels Delta Water Project

A crucial certification needed to build two tunnels that officials believe would help solve California’s water delivery problems was withdrawn Friday, ensuring that Gov. Jerry Brown’s pet water project won’t be approved before he leaves office in January. The California Department of Water Resources withdrew its petition seeking approval of Brown’s $17 billion twin tunnels plan, known as California WaterFix, which would take water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and deliver it to users in the south.

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Jerry Brown’s New Water Deal Is Not Certain

December 5, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Dan Walters

Water supply is clearly the most important long-term issue affecting California’s future. It’s also the most politically complicated. Incremental changes in California water policy typically take years, if not decades, to work their way through seemingly infinite legal, regulatory and political processes at federal, state and local levels — and the conflicts often are over the processes themselves.

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Prop. 3: California Water Projects Bond Measure Goes Down To Defeat

November 7, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Nanette Asimov

Backers mourned the loss of Proposition 3 on Wednesday, the nearly $9 billion bond measure that would have modernized old dams, restored tainted watersheds and created desalination plants, among dozens of other water projects throughout the state. Prop. 3 — backed by state water agencies, farming organizations, social justice advocates and environmentalists, but not the Sierra Club — lost by 52 to 48 percent, a difference of 320,000 votes out of nearly 7 million ballots cast.

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Brown, Newsom Wade In To Delay Plan To Withhold Water From Cities, Farms

November 7, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

A river restoration plan that would restrict the water supplies of California cities and farms, including San Francisco, was put on hold Wednesday after Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom joined Gov. Jerry Brown in requesting more time for negotiations over the controversial initiative. The State Water Resources Control Board was scheduled to vote Wednesday on a years-long proposal to boost flows in the San Joaquin River and its tributaries, part of an effort to restore California’s declining salmon population and revive the languishing Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

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OPINION: Buying A Myth On California Water Impedes Real-World Solutions

November 5, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Brent Hastey and Steve LaMar

The same black-and-white perspective that overshadows nearly all discussion on the water of the San Francisco Bay-Delta unfortunately briefly became San Francisco policy last week when the Board of Supervisors reflexively labeled the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission as being against restoring the health of the bay-delta’s ecosystem. In this narrative, one party incorrectly identifies restoring unimpaired flows as the only answer to declining fisheries. The other party disagrees, which instantly labels them as anti environmental. This in turn creates a false reality that stalls progress, widens divisions and reinforces a good guy/bad guy myth.

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SF Mayor Breed Vetoes Supervisors’ Resolution that Supported State River Plan

November 2, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

San Francisco Mayor London Breed broke her silence on California’s latest water war Friday, saying she wouldn’t support a state river restoration plan that would mean giving up some of the city’s pristine Hetch Hetchy water. In addition to her unexpected announcement, Breed vetoed a resolution passed unanimously by the Board of Supervisors earlier this week that offered the city’s blessing for the little-known, but far-reaching state initiative.

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State High Court Rejects Berkeley Group’s Suit to Drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir

October 17, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /San Francisco Chronicleby Bob Egelko

The California Supreme Court rejected a conservation group’s lawsuit Wednesday seeking to drain Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a source of water for San Francisco and surrounding Bay Area communities. Restore Hetch Hetchy, a Berkeley group, argued in its suit that the location of the dam and reservoir, which flooded a valley in the park after construction in 1923, violates a provision of the California Constitution requiring reasonable water use. But a state appeals court in Fresno ruled in July that Congress had overridden state laws when it authorized construction of the dam and reservoir.

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OPINION: State Water Board’s Proposed Cutbacks Will Affect All Californians

October 15, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Mike Wade

Our state is in a fight over water policy that could hit all Californians squarely in their grocery carts. If the State Water Board’s unimpaired flow policy is adopted, significant additional amounts of water will be diverted away from farms and others and left in our rivers under the assumption that it will help native fish. Not only does science show this approach doesn’t work, we also know it will cause a variety of new problems. California families should reject this approach.

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Plan to Revive Rivers Pits SF Against California

October 14, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

The rivers that once poured from the Sierra Nevada, thick with snowmelt and salmon, now languish amid relentless pumping, sometimes shriveling to a trickle and sparking a crisis for fish, wildlife and the people who rely on a healthy California delta. A state plan to improve these flows and avert disaster, however, has been mired in conflict and delays. And critical opposition is coming from an unexpected place: progressive San Francisco. City water officials worry that the far-reaching effort to revive hundreds of miles of waterways will mean giving up too much of their precious mountain supplies.

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