In an effort to protect more than 5 million Californians from a cancer-causing contaminant, state regulators today set a new standard that is expected to increase the cost of water for many people throughout the state.
For the first time in California history, state officials are poised to crack down on overpumping of groundwater in the agricultural heartland.
The State Water Resources Control Board on Tuesday will weigh whether to put Kings County groundwater agencies on probation for failing to rein in growers’ overdrafting of the underground water supply.
In the Records Room of the CalEPA building in Sacramento are some of the most important documents in the entire state of California. Some date back to 1914. “Our files are organized in ascending order,” explained Matthew Jay, an analyst with the State Water Resources Control Board. “The oldest documents are at the bottom and so you can see that some of the stuff is all typewritten and in a lot of cases, handwritten.”
Sacramento and cities across California caught a break from the state’s water regulator this week after the agency faced criticism that its water conservation rules were too complicated and costly to meet.
A Sacramento judge upheld a decision by California’s water regulator to cut back agricultural and municipal water use from the San Joaquin River. The decision could lend support for future regulations in the rest of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta system.
Even in wet years — like the last two, which saw disastrous flooding in many parts of the state — Californians need to use less water. That’s the message the State Water Resources Control Board conveyed to the public during a workshop as the agency considers new rules for water conservation in urban areas.
Two independent and respected monitors of California government are warning the state’s top water regulator that it is dangerously off course by proposing massive cuts in water use for residents throughout the state, particularly in the Central Valley, in the name of better day-by-day conservation
For decades, water has been siphoned from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains and piped downhill to be bottled and sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water. After a years-long fight over the bottled water operation in the San Bernardino National Forest, California water regulators ruled Tuesday that the company must stop taking millions of gallons through its pipelines.
A centerpiece of California’s perpetual political and legal wrangling over allocation of water is the complex array of rights that stretch back to the earliest years of statehood in the 19th century.
Simply put, those who claimed water before 1914, when the state assumed legal control, have “senior rights” that traditionally have entitled them to virtually unlimited supplies even when other users face cutbacks during drought.
California’s complex system of water rights took shape starting in the mid-1800s, when settlers saw the state’s water as abundant and free for the taking — a time when a Gold Rush prospector could stake claim to river flows simply by nailing a notice to a tree.
Today, California’s oldest and most senior water rights — called riparian and pre-1914 rights — have been passed along to thousands of agricultural landowners, irrigation districts and urban water suppliers that claim control of roughly one-third of the water that is diverted from the state’s rivers and streams.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
