Fisheries
From: Peter Fimrite, San
Francisco Chronicle
The celebrated king salmon of the
West Coast won't be as abundant as last year, but ocean fishermen can still
expect to reel them in by the score despite a third year of drought and
potentially dire conditions in California rivers, fisheries biologists said
Wednesday.
The National Marine Fisheries
Service predicted Wednesday that 634,650 fall-run chinook salmon from the
Sacramento river system would be out in the ocean this year, a good sign for
local commercial and recreational fishermen and women whose livelihoods aren't
likely to be threatened by major restrictions.
Water Supply
From: Matt Weiser, Sacramento
Bee
The strain on water supplies in
this serious drought year was evident this week, as major landowners in the
Sacramento Valley protested the federal government's forecast that it will
deliver only 40 percent of usual water supplies.
That 40 percent allotment for the
so-called Sacramento River settlement contractors is only a forecast by the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, based on drought conditions that are expected to
deplete snowmelt. Such a low allocation has never been made before, and it is
well below the 75 percent that the settlement contractors say is the minimum
they should receive under any conditions.
From: Ramona Giwargis, Merced
Sun-Star
The California State Board of
Food and Agriculture will come to Merced next week to meet with the governor's
Drought Task Force and local leaders to discuss the drought's impact on
agriculture, the agency announced Wednesday.
Members of the task force are
traveling around the state to meet with local officials to learn how
communities are coping with drought effects.
From: Daniel Wood, Christian
Science Monitor
Conventional water wisdom in
California boils down to this: Eighty percent of the water is allocated to
farmers, 20 percent to cities. But 36 months into the state's worst-ever drought
- 12 months of the driest on record, following 24 below normal - cattle are
going without food on mud-cracked rangelands yet fountains flow freely in Los
Angeles water parks.
Groundwater
From: Staff, Modesto Bee
There were several positives in
the first meeting of the Stanislaus County Water Advisory Committee, which is
tasked with developing recommendations on the equitable management and
regulation of groundwater in Stanislaus County.
First, the county gave the
19-member committee a June 11 deadline to report back to the Board of
Supervisors. That creates a sense of urgency, which is desperately needed
during a drought that has reached crisis dimension. Some farmers have drilled
huge wells, which threaten to lower water tables in several parts of the
county.
From: B.K. Brooks, Chico
Enterprise-Record
Droughts come and go. It's
history folks, whether you call it normal weather cycles that do include
dramatic extremes, or global warming, err, cooling, err, change or whatever.
But what really gets me is when the greens claim that even more reservoirs are
not the answer.
Put simply most statistics
suggest we are nearing twice the population that our reservoirs were meant to
handle. Smug greenies say even if you build you would still have only 38
percent of normal reservoirs. Personally I would rather have 10 more reservoirs
at 38 percent full than just a few we have due to the moratorium we have had
inflicted on us for almost 50 years now.
Water Bond
From: Staff, Modesto Bee
Drought worries are prompting
state lawmakers from this area to pitch bills competing with the California
water bond up for a statewide vote in November.
Sen. Cathleen Galgiani on Tuesday
joined a parade of legislators, including Sen. Anthony Cannella and Assemblyman
Adam Gray, who are advocating differing responses to a third dry winter and
dwindling water sources.
Food News
From: Jeanne Fratello, Jolly
Tomato
If your city is covered in snow
and ice, where are you going to get your fresh fruits and vegetables? In many
cases, they'll be grown in the low desert of California's Imperial and
Coachella Valleys. On the first leg of our farm tour with the California Farm
Water Coalition we learned about growing spinach and lettuce in Imperial
Valley; today's portion included a lesson on citrus, date, and pepper farming
in Coachella Valley.
From: Christine Souza, AgAlert
Faced with severe water
shortages, growers of nut crops such as almonds, walnuts and pistachios are
making tough decisions that include removing orchards, using just enough
irrigation to keep their trees alive, or taking their chances with growing a
crop.
An almond farmer in the Westlands
Water District who expects no surface water, Barry Baker, said he is destroying
1,000 acres of almond trees and has earmarked another 1,000 acres for removal.
No comments:
Post a Comment