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OPINION: Recharging Groundwater Reserves, Not Building New Reservoirs, Is Key To California’s Water Future

/in , /by /Los Angeles Times

To the editor: Your editorial, “California is dammed enough already,” raises some important points about improving our water future. The state faces a chronic problem that will only get worse with climate change: depleted groundwater supplies. Groundwater is the lifeline communities and farmers turn to in drought. The good news is there’s an untapped solution under our feet called groundwater recharge, which is much cheaper than building new surface reservoirs, has few environmental hurdles and can be implemented relatively quickly. There’s also three times more water storage capacity underground than in all of California’s surface reservoirs combined.

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OPINION: Invest In Watershed Improvements, Not Taller Dams

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Laurie Wayburn

There is broad consensus that California’s water challenges are only going to get worse as climate change continues. We will have more drought, more major rain events with consequent flooding and more uncertainty. In this era of global warming, we need new approaches to help solve our water problems. The Trump administration proposal to raise the Shasta Dam by 18½ feet, along with the recent vote by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to support the delta tunnels, illustrate our complete and outmoded dependence on built infrastructure to provide water.

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These Sacramento Area Water Storage Projects Just Got A Boost In State Bond Money

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Ryan Sabalow

Two water-storage projects in the Sacramento region are closer to becoming a reality after getting another bump in state bond funding. The California Water Commission announced Friday that the Sites Reservoir project was eligible for $1 billion in Proposition 1 funds, up from $933 million the commission had said it might receive last month. It’s the most money tentatively awarded to any of the 11 projects that have applied for Prop. 1 funds. If completed, the project near Williams along the Glenn-Colusa county line would store water piped in from the Sacramento River.

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Santa Clara Valley Water District Delays $650 Million Vote On Brown’s Delta Tunnels Project

/in , /by /The Reporter News (Vacaville)by Paul Rogers and Jason Green

After a five-hour packed public hearing, the board of Silicon Valley’s largest water provider postponed a decision on whether to provide up to $650 million toward a $17 billion plan to build two giant tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to move water south. Although it appeared there might be four votes on the seven-member Santa Clara Valley Water District board in favor of Gov. Jerry Brown’s so-called WaterFix project, board members late Wednesday night were divided and continued the issue until 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.

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Congressman: State Put Delta Tunnels Ahead Of Oroville Dam Spillway

/in , /by /CBS Sacramentoby Kelly Ryan

Just days before the last repair work begins on the Oroville Dam spillway, the federal government is balking at whether or not it will pay for the repairs. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Davis) and Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Oroville) have been speaking with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for months to cover up to 75 percent of the repair costs, but have little to show for it. The agency is conducting a forensics study of the spillway but says it doesn’t have the legal precedent to reimburse repair costs from damage caused by deferred maintenance and design deficiencies.

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Temperance Flat Reservoir Project Far From Key State Funding Despite Valley Backing

/in , /by /The Fresno Beeby Robert Rodriguez

The California Water Commission on Thursday put in serious doubt the future of building a reservoir at Temperance Flat in east Fresno County. Meeting in Sacramento, the commission appeared to be headed toward preventing the massive water storage project to move forward. Commission members spent three days reviewing the public benefit portion of all 11 water projects seeking funding. Consideration of Temperance Flat began Wednesday and continued into Thursday evening. Commissioner Armando Quintero sympathized with the project organizers, but he said the project did not meet the technical requirements necessary.

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OPINION: Address State’s Drinking Water Crisis While Protecting Farming

/in , /by /Bakersfield.comby Nicholas Ortiz and Beatris Sanders

Several years ago, California farmers, including many in the Valley, began receiving threatening letters from the State Water Resources Control Board. The demand? Provide clean drinking water to local residents with nitrate contaminated private wells or face punitive legal action. The logic? Years of fertilizer application by farmers led to excess nitrates in the drinking water supply for some residents in California’s agricultural regions, including our Tulare Lake Basin.

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OPINION: More Water Storage Doesn’t Mean Build More Dams

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicle

The California Water Commission has been meeting this week to discuss how to invest $2.7 billion in water storage funds approved by voters under Proposition 1. The commission — and all Californians — should bear in mind that water storage doesn’t necessarily mean a dam with water behind it. The commission’s charge is not to fund the biggest new dam but to fund projects with the greatest net benefits to California cities, farms and wildlife.

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Rain Light But It Was Most In San Diego In 6 Weeks

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Robert Krier

The scattered showers that slickened roads across San Diego County Wednesday morning, though light as expected, brought the most rain the region has seen since mid March. Next up is a drying and warming trend. Temperatures, well below normal Tuesday and Wednesday, on Thursday should be near normal for early May. By Saturday, building high pressure should raise the highs to around 90 degrees in the inland valleys, the mid 70s at the coast and over 100 in the desert.

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To Manage California’s Groundwater, Think More About Surface Water

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

California’s 2014 legislation, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was significant in that it was the state’s first major groundwater regulation. But Michael Kiparsky the founding director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, says that it was also significant in another way. “It breaks with what had been decades of a legal fiction that groundwater and surface water were not part of a single hydrologic system,” he says. While rivers, lakes and other surface waters are often thought of – and regulated – separately from the groundwater below, the two are connected.

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