Water Bond
From: Jeremy White, Fresno Bee
The drought-driven quest to put a
new water bond before California voters has fluctuated over the last few weeks,
marked by new measures appearing, old ones evaporating and legislators shifting
allegiances.
Lawmakers have introduced no
fewer than nine water bond proposals, all vying to replace the $11.1 billion
measure that is scheduled for the November ballot but widely believed to have
little chance of passage.
From: Staff, Chico Enterprise
Record
North state Assemblyman Dan
Logue, R-Loma Rica, Tuesday pulled his own water bond proposal to sign on to a
Democrat's version, which later cleared a committee.
Logue became a co-author of AB2686
by Assemblyman Henry Perea, D-Fresno, which Tuesday afternoon passed out of the
Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee on an 11-1 vote.
Drought
From: Lois Henry, Bakersfield
Californian
Water does funny things in
California. When there's a drought as bad as the one we're in now, it does
things you wouldn't think were possible. Like flow backwards. As in south to
north. I'm talking about water in the California Aqueduct, which was
specifically built to bring water from the north to the south.
But if flows out of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are reduced to a trickle, local agricultural water
districts are preparing to move banked groundwater from Kern County back up the
system to reach growers in the Lost Hills, Berrenda Mesa, Belridge and Dudley
Ridge districts.
From: Amy Quinton, Capital
Public Radio
California supplies virtually all
of the nation's sushi rice and half of it is exported. But of all the food
crops in the state, rice is likely to be affected by the drought the most. The
mere speculation of losses is already driving up prices.
At Montna Farms near Yuba City,
huge drag scrapers level a rice field in preparation for planting. The rice
grown in the Sacramento Valley is primarily medium grain rice. Nicole Van Vleck
with Montna Farms says the high gluten sticky rice is perfect for sushi.
From: David Castellon, Visalia
Times-Delta
When Phil Deffenbaugh thinks
about the nearly 20 years he has worked at Lake Kaweah, he said it's hard to
remember a time when the water has been as low as it has been in recent days.
As of last week, Lake Kaweah was at about 25 percent of its capacity, thanks in
large part to the statewide drought.
"We are low; today we have
46,000 acre feet," Deffenbaugh, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer's manager
for the lake, said Friday.
Regulation
From: Antoine Abou-Diwan,
Imperial Valley Press
Farmers are crying foul over a
proposed revision of the federal Clean Water Act, saying it would burden them
with onerous new regulations and could limit ordinary farming practices. The
American Farm Bureau Federation issued a statement this week urging its members
to fight the proposal.
"It would expand the EPA
(Environmental Protection Agency) and Army Corps of Engineers regulatory
authority over new lands," said Kari Fisher, associate counsel for the
California Farm Bureau Federation.
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