San Francisco Chronicle Archives

California Water Woes: Ballot Measure Aims at Solutions, but at a Steep Cost

The biggest ticket item on California’s November ballot, tucked between the governor’s race and local elections, is $8.9 billion in bonds to help modernize California’s sprawling waterworks. The measure, which was authored by a former state water director, would fund scores of projects, from shiny new desalination plants to upgrades of old dams and aqueducts to restoration of tainted watersheds, including San Francisco Bay. The initiative, Proposition 3, comes as a historic drought has exposed the vulnerabilities of California’s water infrastructure, and it has become apparent that hotter, drier times ahead will test the adequacy of state supplies.

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OPINION: California Prop. 3 — Vote Yes To Pay For Watershed, Water Supply And Water Projects

Flint, Mich., isn’t the only place where tap water is poisonous. Shockingly, more than 1 million California residents are exposed to unsafe tap water each year in our homes, schools and public buildings. Latino and low-income communities are suffering the most. At the same time, longer droughts and shrinking Sierra snowpack endanger the water supplies of millions more Californians, and threaten extinction for salmon and other wildlife. More extreme storms have exposed vulnerable old dams and canals that need maintenance to protect us from floods and deliver water to homes and farms.

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OPINION: California Prop. 3 Shifts Water Project Costs But Not Benefits To All Taxpayers

October 1, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Jim Blickenstaff

What’s being sold as commonality between Republicans and Democrats on environmental concerns based on support for Proposition 3 is a false premise. Prop. 3 is not what it appears to be. There are several bad ideas incorporated in this $8.9 billion bond statewide bond measure. A shift of the fiscal burden for water delivery systems from corporate agriculture and water agencies to the general public. How? The bonds would be repaid out of the state’s general fund, thus all taxpayers, not just the project beneficiaries, would foot the bills. Another good deal for large, well-connected water interests, and one more bad deal for the average taxpayer.

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$823 Million, 31 Billion-Gallon Calaveras Reservoir Dam Ready For Debut

September 21, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /San Francisco Chronicleby Dominic Fracassa

After nearly two decades of planning and construction in the rolling, sun-baked hills of the Sunol Valley, crews are finishing a new, $823 million dam that will be the showpiece of a major overhaul to the Bay Area’s water delivery system. At the northernmost tip of the Calaveras Reservoir, the clatter and roar of heavy machinery fills the air as earthmovers and bulldozers, cutting deep treads in soft soil, line the dam’s sloping walls with riprap — big chunks of blueschist rock blasted off a nearby hillside that will defend the earthen structure against erosion.

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OPINION: A Permanent Solution To California’s Water Woes — Seawater

September 12, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Michael L. Waxer

Environmental calamities recently have battered California with alarming frequency. Over the past year, we have suffered the most damaging wildfires in our history. But, as in Steinbeck’s era, chronic water scarcity remains our most serious environmental problem. In some corners of the state, extreme water conservation has become a year-round way of life. This is certainly the case on the Monterey Peninsula.

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El Niño Fears Grow As Starving Baby Birds Wash Up On California Beaches

September 4, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Peter Fimrite

Scores of starving baby seabirds have been washing up on Northern California beaches this summer, raising fears among scientists that a climatic cycle like the one that wreaked havoc on sea creatures a few years ago may be moving in. More than 100 undernourished common murre babies have been plucked from beaches from Monterey to Marin County by biologists and volunteers with International Bird Rescue and are being rehabilitated at the organization’s Fairfield center.

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Climate Change Report: California To See 77 Percent More Land Burned

August 27, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

This year’s wildfire season is not the worst that California will see. The number of large fires across the state will likely increase by 50 percent by the end of the century while the amount of land that burns annually will rise 77 percent, according to a new, far-reaching state report that seeks to document the impacts of climate change.

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OPINION: State Water Board Plan Would Require Water Rationing In The Bay Area

August 25, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /San Francisco Chronicleby Jim Wunderman

Apart from a famous Mark Twain quote involving whiskey and fighting, no cliché about California water is more abused than the phrase “water wars.” However, in the instance of the State Water Resources Control Board’s plan to restore the San Joaquin River, the label fits. War has been declared on the Bay Area’s largest source of freshwater, with grave implications for residents and businesses that go way beyond letting your lawn go brown. At issue is a proposal to increase freshwater flows on the San Joaquin River.

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California’s Water Wars Heat Up At Sacramento Hearing Over River Flows

August 21, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Andrea Mora /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

Central Valley farmers and their elected leaders converged on Sacramento on Tuesday to accuse the state of engineering a water grab that puts the fate of fish above their fields and jeopardizes a thriving agricultural economy. The allegations came at a meeting of the powerful State Water Resources Control Board, which recently unveiled a far-reaching plan to shore up the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the West Coast’s largest estuary and a source of water for much of California.

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Farmers Protest California Water Plan Aimed To Save Salmon

August 20, 2018/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /Associated Press (As published by the San Francisco Chronicle)by Kathleen Ronayne

Hundreds of California farmers rallied at the Capitol on Monday to protest state water officials’ proposal to increase water flows in a major California river, a move state and federal politicians called an overreach of power that would mean less water for farms in the Central Valley. “If they vote to take our water, this does not end there,” said Republican state Sen. Anthony Cannella. “We will be in court for 100 years.”

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