Tuesday, May 7, 2013

News articles and links from May 7, 2013


 WATER SUPPLY

Column
By Willy Blackmore
From Take Part - Monday, May 6, 2013
When the 1 percent wields such incredible influence across the country and around the globe, it understandably becomes fodder for criticism.

Coalition response...This article provides a glimpse into the world of farming in California's Central Valley. The land and water, combined with the management practices of farmers, have produced a food supply that is feeding people around the world with healthy and affordable food. Some critics, as noted by the author, simply do not agree with the valley's farming practices. Yet, these same farming practices---water management, crop selection, laser-guided tractors, global positioning satellites and more---are copied by others around the world.

The water used by farmers throughout California account for 41% of the available supply in an average year, not the 80% as reported in the article. The remaining water is divided between the environment, 48%, and urban, 11%, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

BAY DELTA CONSERVATION PLAN

Video
From BDCP - Monday, May 6, 2013
Learn more about  the risk of an earthquake disrupting the flow of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to 25 million Californians  in this video featuring Raymond Seed, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Opinion
By LANG staff
From San Gabriel Valley Tribune - Monday, May 6, 2013
The Los Angeles News Group (this paper and eight others in the greater Los Angeles area) may have the same owners as the Bay Area News Group (San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, et al), but we clearly have different editorial positions. Such as the two news groups' positions on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, a $24 billion project to restore some important wetlands, protect the delicate delta environment and build infrastructure (huge tunnels) to make water deliveries to the Central Valley and Southern California more reliable in the face of global warming. 

WATER SUPPLY

Story
From Christian Science Monitor - Saturday, May 4, 2013
Scientists are testing a new approach for gauging the amount of water stored in mountain snows - reservoirs that supply more than 75 percent of the fresh water in the western US and that slake the thirst of some 1.5 billion people around the globe.

RIVERS

Story
From LA Times - Tuesday, May 7, 2013
For decades this rural basin has battled over the Klamath River's most precious resource: water that sustains fish, irrigates farms and powers the hydroelectric dams that block one of the largest salmon runs on the West Coast.

Story
From UC Davis - Monday, May 6, 2013
A team of University of California, Davis, scientists is developing a groundwater management tool that could lead to better streamflow conditions for salmon and steelhead in northern California's Scott River Valley, which provides critical fish habitat within the Klamath Basin.

LEVEES

Story
From Sacramento Bee - Monday, May 6, 2013
It seemed like it could be a slam-dunk in a Congress that can't agree on much of anything. But California Sen. Barbara Boxer's bipartisan effort to pass legislation to fund flood control, navigation and storm recovery projects hit a snag Monday when the White House issued a statement highly critical of the bill, which Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee approved unanimously in March.

SALTON SEA

Opinion
By Bill Borden
From Desert Sun - Monday, May 6, 2013
Out here where we live, anything created before the old Chart House on Highway 111 is considered sacred and worth saving. Buildings, animals, trees, piers, even artificial bodies of water -you name it - we gotta save it.

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