Tuesday, August 27, 2013

News articles and links from August 27, 2013


Bay Delta Conservation Plan 

From: Efrain Rojas, Merced Sun-Star 

The San Luis Reservoir is drying up. Assuming the worst about global warming, we should prepare for greater shortcomings by encouraging desalination for coast communities. Desalination is a solution to our water needs and global warming.

Coalition response...San Luis Reservoir lost the potential of storing 800,000 acre-feet of water earlier this year because of federal regulations. These regulations kept the water in the Delta for fish species instead of allowing it to be rightfully diverted to nearly 4,000 farms and 25 million Californians. Instead, this water flowed to the ocean with no demonstrable benefit for the fish.

Looking for new water supplies is always a good idea. Studies are underway on several projects---Upper Temperance Flat on the San Joaquin River, Sites Reservoir in western Colusa County and raising Shasta Dam---that would increase the water supply for California. It is estimated that 120 desalination plants the size of the recently approved Poseidon facility in San Diego would be required to meet the 6 MAF requirements of the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project. With 840 miles of California coastline, a desal plant would have to be placed every seven miles and would still not connect to our current water distribution system. Plans already underway, such as the above and the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, would be much cheaper and more environmentally-friendly than lining our coastline with desal plants.

Bay Delta Conservation Plan

From: Press Release, State Water Contractors

The State Water Contractors released a fact sheet today comparing two of the studies being referenced to assess the costs and benefits of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP). UC Berkeley's David Sunding and University of the Pacific's Jeffrey Michael, have both testified before the legislature and are regularly utilized as sources on this issue, but their findings are drastically different.

From: Ryan Lillis, Sacramento Bee

Sacramento city officials are paying a high-powered political affairs firm $10,000 a month to communicate the city's opposition to a plan to build two massive water diversion tunnels in the Delta.

From: Zane Vorhes, Sacramento Bee  

Re "Capital steps up Delta battle" (The Public Eye, Aug. 25): Thank god I live in the county. A city that can't afford swimming pools, police officers and firefighters is spending money on public relations, under no-bid contracts to oppose the Delta pipeline project, although it does not affect its interests.

From: C.J. Jawahar, Sacramento Bee

Re "Capital steps up Delta battle" (The Public Eye, Aug. 25): I applaud Sacramento city officials for spending $10,000 per month to communicate their opposition to the Delta tunnel water sale plan

Water Bond

From: Seth Nidever, Hanford Sentinel  

As the state Legislature debates spending billions on a water infrastructure bond, Kings County supervisors are expected to weigh in Tuesday with demands that it include new dams.

Kings County's ag-based economy is near crisis mode after two consecutive dry Sierra snowpacks. Calls for more water storage have been amplified by environmental restrictions that prevent more Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta water from being pumped south.

Supervisors will consider passing a resolution outlining the need for additional storage and calling for action.

Groundwater

From: David Sneed, SLO Tribune  

The State Water Resources Control Board has sent a letter to San Luis Obispo County supervisors urging them to adopt an emergency ordinance to protect the Paso Robles groundwater basin.

From: David Sneed, SLO Tribune

An estimated 375 wells have been drilled in the North County during the past five years - with the deepest of them in a swath east of Paso Robles where the aquifer levels have dropped the most since 1997, according to a Tribune review of county well permit data.

Delta 

From: Alex Breitler, Hispanic Business

(This article was previously printed in the Stockton Record.)
In the age of Google Earth and GPS, century-old hand-drawn maps of the Delta would seem irrelevant.

Not so.

Meetings 

From: Press Release, USBR

The Bureau of Reclamation in partnership with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Water Resources, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California Water Board, and the University of California, will be hosting a landowner and stakeholder workshop focused on initial planning tasks to evaluate the feasibility of reintroducing Chinook salmon into tributaries above Shasta Lake.

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