Bay Delta
Conservation Plan
From: Cathy Lazarus, San Jose
Mercury News
California is a thirsty state.
The 20th-century water delivery infrastructure is inadequate, deteriorating and
unreliable.
We now recognize that historical
water delivery and management strategies have caused serious harm to the
fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta ecosystem, the source of much of
California's water supply, including Santa Clara County's.
Sacramento River
From: Matt Weiser, Sacramento
Bee
A Bay Area water agency may use
its water contracts on the Sacramento River for the first time to help its
customers survive the ongoing drought.
The East Bay Municipal Utility
District anticipates it will need to divert water this year from the Freeport
Regional Water Project on the Sacramento River, which it helped build in
partnership with Sacramento County at a cost of nearly $1 billion. The district
has not used the diversion since it was completed in 2010, but its board will
vote in April whether to activate it.
Drought
From: Staff, Western Farm
Press
Parts of California could receive
significant amounts of rainfall late this week. Most observers do not see the
moisture ending the state's worst drought in decades, instead teasing them with
what might have been if rainfall had been near normal for the winter.
Participants in the World Ag Expo
2014 Water Forum in Tulare, Calif., heard members of two panels discuss the
current situation with the drought and the outlook for legislation and
regulatory changes to the water delivery system to the nation's leading
agricultural production area.
From: Staff, Sacramento Bee
Blog
Saying Gov. Jerry Brown's budget
proposal "includes little to address the effects of the current
drought," a new report by the Legislature's nonpartisan fiscal analyst
suggests anti-drought and conservation steps that lawmakers could take.
Friday's review of the resources
portion of Brown's January spending plan came two days after Brown and
legislative unveiled a $687.4 million package of drought relief measures, some
of which seem to mirror parts of what the LAO suggests.
From: Lon Allan, San Luis
Obispo Tribune
I've always known that the
availability of water was not absolute. My dad perpetually had a small
"farm" while he worked other jobs, and I recall his admonition to me
to make sure we didn't waste water when we irrigated our grapes.
In those days (1950s) we plowed
three furrows between the vines and simply flooded them with water. You had to
be vigilant to make sure the water didn't break out of the furrow and run -
wasted - onto the nearby roads and elsewhere. At his direction you simply
continued to walk the vineyard on the day you were running water.
From: Kim Stemler, Salinas
Californian
Local hills are greener, thanks
to the recent rains, and we are still in a drought that has exceeded historic
dry records. Monterey County vineyards are "dusty in the middle of
January," said Andy Mitchell, director of vineyard operations at
400,000-case Hahn Family Wines. "Last year was bad, but this year is much
worse."
This at the same time we are
celebrating last year's record wine grape harvest in California - up 7 percent
from the previous record high of 2012's crush, as reported by the California
Department of Food and Agriculture in the Preliminary Grape Crush Report
published earlier this month.
Food News
From: Jeanne Fratello, Jolly
Tomato
Where do the country's families,
grocery stores, restaurants, and food services get their leafy greens in the
dead of winter? And where do those warm and dry regions get their water to be
able to grow those crops? We got the answers to those questions and more last
week while on a farm tour last week to California's "Low Desert"
region (Imperial and Coachella Valleys) with the California Farm Water
Coalition - along with blogger friends Priscilla from She's Cookin, Kim from
Liv Life, and Barbara from Barbara Cooks.
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