Trinity River
From: Devan Schwartz, Klamath
Falls Herald & News
The Bureau of Reclamation will
announce next week whether it plans to release additional water to help prevent
a Klamath River fish kill, prompting threats of legal challenges to the
proposed action.
From: Editorial, Redding
Record Searchlight
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is
doing the right thing by the environment in planning to release a late-summer
slug of water down the Trinity River to help ensure a healthy run of salmon.
But in the process, it's flushing
millions of dollars downstream. It's drawing what will surely be a hard-fought
lawsuit from increasingly thirsty irrigators. And it will further increase
north state utility ratepayers' already rising electric bills. Is it worth the
cost?
(The following comment is posted
to the above articles.)
Coalition response...The proposed release of water down the Trinity River is above and beyond
the Record Of Decision for the Trinity River that specifies and limits the
quantity of water dedicated annually to the fishery. That decision has
significantly reduced the amount of water that was historically delivered to
the Central Valley Project and farmers in the Central Valley who grow the food
we depend upon. Action taken last year by Reclamation to send the additional
water down the Trinity was also controversial and provided unclear benefits to
the Klamath river salmon. A repeat of that action this year will reduce the
water supply to farmers who have had their supplies cut by 80 percent. It is no
surprise that water agencies are fighting on behalf of their customers to keep
water flowing to their farms rather than losing more water for Klamath River
salmon, a fish that is not listed as endangered.
Groundwater
From: David Sneed, SLO Tribune
County planners have outlined a
series of emergency steps county supervisors could take to minimize depletion
of the Paso Robles groundwater basin.
Included are prohibitions of any
new plantings of irrigated crops, bans on conversion of dry land farming or
grazing land to irrigated crops and limitations on building new development if
it is dependent upon the groundwater basin.
From: Julie Lynem, SLO Tribune
The way to replenish the Paso
Robles groundwater basin is not to impose restrictions on the agricultural
community, but to push for a California Water District that would have the
power to establish short-term and long-term solutions to stabilize the aquifer.
That's the message from the Paso
Robles Agricultural Alliance for Groundwater Solutions, a group of vineyard owners
and other agriculturalists who want to establish a special district that could
obtain loans to help people dig deeper wells, as well as fund projects to get
supplemental water.
Colorado
River
From: William deBuys, LA Times
John Wesley Powell, whose
legendary descent of the Colorado River in 1869 brought the one-armed explorer
fame and celebrity, worried about America's westward migration. The defining
characteristic of Western lands was their aridity, he wrote, and settlement of
the West would have to respect the limits aridity imposed.
He was half right.
The subsequent story of the West
can indeed be read as an unending duel between society's thirst and the dryness
of the land, but in downtown Phoenix, Las Vegas or Los Angeles, you'd hardly
know it.
Technology
From: Joe Scott, Western Farm
Press
Farming in California's Central
Valley has many advantages. Controlling the timing of applied water to thirsty
crops is one benefit which growers in other areas of the world would like to
have, versus relying on unreliable rainfall.
There are disadvantages too.
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