Drought
From: Alison Vekshin,
BusinessWeek
Farmers in California's Central
Valley, the world's most productive agricultural region, are paying as much as
10 times more for water than they did before the state's record drought cut
supply.
Costs have soared to $1,100 per
acre-foot from about $140 a year ago in the Fresno-based Westlands Water
District, which represents 700 farms, said Gayle Holman, a spokeswoman. North
of Sacramento, the Western Canal Water District is selling it for double the
usual price: $500 per acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons (1.2 million liters).
From: Katharine Mieszkowski,
Center for Investigative Reporting
California Gov. Jerry Brown has
asked restaurants not to serve water unless diners ask for it. He's letting
lawns at the state Capitol turn brown. Farmers in the Central Valley are
getting just a trickle of the water they usually do. Conspicuous water wasters
- commercial and residential - face fines of $500 a day.
Bay Delta
Conservation Plan
From: Paul Rockwell, Contra
Costa Times
Like the Florida Everglades, the
Bay Delta watershed is a national treasure. Every Californian has a stake in
the outcome of the fierce controversy over the re-engineering of our unique and
precious estuary.
The Bay Delta Conservation Plan
is 40,000 pages long. To keep it simple, the $25 billion water-transfer project
is based on a single assumption: that California's water-ecosystem crisis is
caused by a lack -- a lack -- of engineering projects in the Delta watershed.
As if the Delta needs more steel, more pumps, more cement (and more farmers
dispossessed through eminent domain). The peripheral tunnels, the industrial
heart of the project, do not replace, they actually augment hundreds of dams,
aqueducts and pumps that already send water to corporate farms and cities south
of the Delta.
Colorado River
From: Antoine Abou-Diwan,
Imperial Valley Press
A deceptively simple question was
raised at the Imperial Irrigation District's Board of Directors meeting on
Tuesday.
If the IID has consumed slightly
less than 50 percent of its annual Colorado River water entitlement so far this
year, how is the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projecting an annual
over-consumption of nearly 38,000 acre-feet? That projection is especially
troubling for IID officials and farmers because any amount of water that the
district uses in excess of its entitlement needs to be repaid.
Water Bond
From: Craig Miller, KQED Blog
Drought has moved to the top of
the list in the latest survey of Californians' environmental worries. In a
statewide poll conducted during the second week of July, more than a third of
respondents (35 percent) cited water supply and drought as "the most important
environmental issue facing California today." That more than doubled the
second most popular response, which was air pollution.
It's the first time since the
annual survey was launched in 2000 that Californians have cited water supply as
their top concern, according to Mark Baldassare at the Public Policy Institute
of California, which conducts the annual "Californians and Their
Environment" poll. Even when asked the question in the drought year of
2009, only 18 percent pinpointed water supply as their biggest concern.
From: Staff, Associated Press
A slim majority of likely
California voters support an $11.1 billion water bond slated for the November
ballot, but public support would grow if the bond comes with a smaller
price-tag, according to survey results released late Wednesday.
The Public Policy Institute of
California poll comes as lawmakers are negotiating changes to a funding package
for water projects that legislative leaders see as too large and full of
pork-barrel spending to win voter approval.
From: Mark Walker, San Diego
Union-Tribune
Drought-conscious Californians
say they support mandatory restrictions on water use and back a massive state
bond to increase water supplies.http://www.utsandiego.com/news/most-recent/
Those are among the key findings
in a Public Policy Institute of California poll that comes as the San Diego
County Water Authority is expected to recommend limiting outdoor watering
throughout the county to reach an overall cutback in the region's usage of up to
20 percent.
Water Supply
From: Dennis Wyatt, Manteca
Bulletin
A streak of sub-90 degree days
has Public Works Director Mike Houghton concerned. He's the man responsible for
overseeing Manteca's municipal water system. "My worry is the cooler
weather will get people to thinking they don't have to conserve as much,"
Houghton said. "We are still in the middle of a severe drought."
Groundwater
From: Corey Pride, Merced
Sun-Star
As California copes with one of
the worst drought years in the state's history, Madera County officials are
preparing to take steps to maintain local control of its water issues.
Government officials are in the process of forming a Joint Powers Authority and
reviewing whether there will be a moratorium on agricultural wells.
Johannes Hoevertsz, Madera County
public works director, said varying county interests are being asked to form a
JPA. "It's an effort to have local enforcement," Hoevertsz said.
Fisheries
From: Staff, U.C. Davis Center
for Watershed Sciences
A growing number of ecologists
say we need to rethink how we go about "saving nature." We should not
attempt to restore a wounded meadow, estuary or wetland to some legendary
pristine state, they say. Instead, resource managers should accept that human
footprints are everywhere and manage ecosystems for the species and functions
we desire.
From: Jonathan Wood, Pacific
Legal Foundation Blog
This morning, the Ninth Circuit
denied a rehearing before the entire court, leaving March's panel decision in
place. The denial sets the case up for a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Longtime Liberty Blog readers will recall that PLF previously sought Supreme
Court review of the case on our Commerce Clause challenge. Although that issue
is no longer live, there should be plenty of issues remaining to interest the
judges.
From: Staff, KION
State and federal wildlife
officials have unveiled ambitious plans aimed at helping endangered salmon and
steelhead thrive again in Central California rivers.
The fish were abundant, migrating
from the Pacific through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and up rivers, but
dams were built, blocking 90 percent of passageways to their historical
spawning areas at the heart of California. By the 1990s, the fish were nearly
extinct and given protections under the federal Endangered Species Act.
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