Sacramento River
From: Matt Weiser, Sacramento
Bee
As California's drought stretches
toward the hot summer months, state and federal officials are planning
extraordinary measures to protect drinking water supplies and endangered
Sacramento River salmon, according to a plan unveiled Wednesday.
The "Drought Operations
Plan" was released by the state Department of Water Resources and U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation, which operate the primary systems of water reservoirs
and canals in California.
Coalition response... All water users must share in the challenges of this drought, including
commercial fisheries. For decades in-delta water quality has benefited from
flows provided by the State and federal water projects regardless of water
shortages elsewhere within the projects' service area. This is especially true
in the late summer and fall.
During the third dry year in a
row and long after human users are no longer able to rely on deliveries from
our state's infrastructure, the projects might also fail to satisfy the wish
list of a few outspoken environmentalists who want more water released for
fisheries. On one hand they criticize the projects and the almost 4,000 farmers
south of the Delta who grow hundreds of different crops with water that flows
through the Delta. At the same time they want water quality and supply benefits
from the projects with little regard for the people who are actually paying for
them.
Drought
From: Staff, San Francisco
Chronicle
Sen. Dianne Feinstein is
fast-tracking a bipartisan bill through the Senate that seeks to unravel
decades of carefully crafted protections for the San Francisco Bay estuary in
an effort to divert more water to Southern California farms and cities.
Feinstein's call for more
"flexibility" in when and where more water is captured benefits
Central Valley interests but undermines two decades of hard-won decisions to
protect sufficient flows for salmon.
Coalition response... Odd that the SF Chronicle is criticizing water diversions meant to
supply one of California's most important food-producing regions while at the
same time is benefitting from its own Delta water diversion far upstream at
Hetch Hetchy.
Water Supply
From: Carolyn Lochhead, San
Francisco Chronicle
First came the urgent e-mail to
two cabinet secretaries from San Joaquin Valley farm interests, demanding that
officials allow "maximum pumping" of water from recent storms for
agriculture and cities and minimize flows for endangered fish making their river
migrations amid the worst drought in years.
Two days later, on March 25,
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein allied herself with the same Central Valley
House Republicans she had criticized just weeks earlier for trying to override
endangered species laws. In an urgent letter to the cabinet secretaries,
Feinstein and the Republicans echoed the farming groups, calling for capturing
"the maximum amount of water from this week's storm."
From: K. Fielde & V.
Novack, KPCC Radio
Last year, as California endured
one of its driest years on record, the Westlands Water District made it rain
3,000 miles away, on Capitol Hill. The nation's largest agricultural water district,
located in the Central Valley, spent $600,000 on lobbying efforts, according to
an analysis by KPCC in partnership with the nonpartisan Center for Responsive
Politics. That's by far Westlands' biggest annual expenditure for lobbying -
about six times what it spent in 2010.
The lobbying comes as Congress
and federal agencies consider how to respond to three years of drought
conditions that have cut water supplies across the state and ratcheted up
political pressure from the hard-hit agricultural sector, including many of
Westlands' customers.
From: Staff, CBS-LA
Water managers are determining if
recent storms helped California's dwindling water supplies enough to warrant
increases in water deliveries to farms and thirsty cities. Meantime, the
California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on
Wednesday announced that water deliveries will remain at zero until the
analysis is complete.
State Water Project allocations
have been cut to zero for the first time in the system's 54-year history, and
the federally run Central Valley Project has also cancelled deliveries to most
recipients.
From: Staff, AP
Water managers are determining if
recent storms helped California's dwindling water supplies enough to warrant
increases in water deliveries to farms and thirsty cities.
Meantime, the California
Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Wednesday
announced that water deliveries will remain at zero until the analysis is
complete.
From: Jeff Barnard, Modesto
Bee
Farmers on the Klamath
Reclamation Project straddling the Oregon-California border are facing
irrigation cutbacks caused by drought for the third year in a row. The U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation operations plan released Wednesday shows only 61 percent
of the water needed for full irrigation is available to the 1,200 farms on the
project.
Greg Addington of the Klamath
Water Users Association said that even with contracts paying farmers to leave
their land idle, and groundwater pumping, the agency will have a tough time
meeting all the demand for water this year.
Delta
From: Alex Breitler, Stockton
Record
State officials unveiled a
longer-term plan to deal with the drought Wednesday, one which relaxes some
water-quality standards and endangered species protections in the Delta to
allow for more water to be sent south to parched cities and farms.
Officials described the plan as a
"balance" that attempts to bolster supplies to the extent possible
while minimizing harm to fish.
Still, "We know many water
users, as well as fish and wildlife, will suffer hardship this year," said
Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources.
Groundwater
From: Staff, San Jose Mercury
News
In a remarkable turn of events,
California's devastating drought could produce one of the state's biggest
environmental breakthroughs in decades.
Lawmakers need to seize the
moment and enact groundwater management legislation to halt the draining of the
aquifer under the state's most fertile farmland, a deepening crisis that the
Mercury News' Lisa Krieger vividly described in a Page One story in March.
Sacramento
River
From: Bryce Lundberg, NCWA
Blog
Despite recent rainfall in March,
there will be significant surface water cutbacks in the Sacramento Valley
during the third consecutive year of drought. Reduced water use by farms and
wildlife refuges will directly impact wildlife habitat, rural communities and
our economy.
For areas where surface water is
available for use this year, the water resources will be managed so that every
drop will serve multiple uses. For example, water released from the
various reservoirs will serve triple duty - as cold water for salmon rearing in
the upper reaches, to grow crops in the valley and to provide significant
wildlife habitat for millions of birds along the Pacific Flyway.
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