Groundwater
From: Staff, Chico
Enterprise-Record
When it comes to the water that
sits in north state aquifers, we trust our local counties to safeguard it and
determine how to use it much more than we trust the state to manage it. Even
though water is abundant in the north state, we generally know how valuable the
resource is. We manage it wisely for the most part.
Especially in a drought, other
areas covet our water. Despite vague remarks of indifference by water managers
south of the delta, the underground reservoir here is coveted as much as the
water in the above-ground reservoirs. And just like the building of Shasta,
Trinity and Oroville dams was done solely to capture that blue resource, we
know in this state that no expense is too great and no justification too
exaggerated for getting their hands on any water source. Ask the folks in the
Owens Valley or Trinity County.
Coalition response... Locally-controlled groundwater management is a reasonable plan for
every part of the state. Many of the orchards that are in peril today were
planted prior to changes in federal fishery regulations that have drastically
reduced water deliveries in the last five years. Simply put, farmers made
decisions based on what they knew at the time, and then the rules changed.
Blaming them now is unfair. California's water supply didn't get where it is
because of a few dry years. Two decades of environmental-based water supply
cuts that have decimated San Joaquin Valley farmers have done little to improve
conditions for wildlife. It's time to try something different that protects
water users in northern, central, and southern California and produces real
improvements for threatened and endangered species. We hope elected and
appointed officials don't base sweeping changes on a few dry years, and instead
return some sensibility to water supply and ecosystem management.
San Joaquin River
From: Mark Grossi, Fresno Bee
The San Joaquin River is
America's most endangered waterway this year, says the national advocacy group
American Rivers, known for annually picking the country's 10 most troubled
rivers.
The San Joaquin's water is spread
too thin among farmers, hydroelectric projects and other uses on the mainstem
and three tributaries, the Merced, Stanislaus and Tuolumne rivers, the group
announced Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
Water Storage
From: Matt Weiser, Sacramento
Bee
The federal government's
operation of Folsom and Nimbus dams is harming fall-run Chinook salmon and
steelhead in the American River, several environmental and fishing groups
allege in a complaint filed this week with the state.
The groups are urging the State
Water Resources Control Board to amend the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's permits
to require colder and faster river flows from the two dams. The board has
authority over water rights issued to the Bureau of Reclamation, as well as
responsibility for protecting public trust resources, including fisheries and
water quality. The board first issued operating permits for the dams in 1958.
From: John Holland, Modesto
Bee
The Modesto and Turlock
irrigation districts took a key step Tuesday morning toward using Don Pedro
Reservoir for perhaps another half-century.
Their boards voted 5-0 at
separate meetings to file a final license application with the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission, a huge set of documents with many details on how they
would manage the reservoir. A crucial issue - how much water to release for
fish in the lower Tuolumne River - remains unsettled because studies are
ongoing.
Transfers
From: Garth Stapley, Modesto
Bee
There's no longer a dispute over
whether the Modesto Irrigation District should help drought-stricken farms get
more water this year by paying some growers a fixed price to forgo their water
shares or by allowing open-market sales among farmers.
The MID board on Tuesday quit
arguing which approach - both approved in February - best fits the district's
mission and agreed that both will proceed.
Groundwater
From: Thomas Elias, Hanford
Sentinel
The next front in California's
long-running water wars has already opened, and the reasons for it will
sometimes be hard to see - but not always.
That next fight is over ground
water, source of about 35 percent of the state's fresh water in normal years
and a much higher percentage in dry ones like 2014. This battle has the
potential to become far more bitter than even the quarrels over how to distribute
water from the Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems.
Federal
Regulations
From: Staff, Merced
Sun-Star
The interconnection of the
natural world has long been part of human wisdom. "All the rivers run into
the sea," notes Ecclesiastes, and they do this even if they are streams
that do not flow all year. As long as water flows downhill, pollution in one
place can be carried to another.
So it makes sense that the
Environmental Protection Agency has long sought to recognize this reality. But
Supreme Court rulings in 2001 and 2006 have confused the understanding of which
waterways can be subject to EPA rules. On March 25 it issued a proposal to
clarify that intermittent streams near bigger ones will be covered.
Farming News
From: Greg Northcutt, Western
Farm Press
On April 1, Mendocino County wine
grape grower Zac Robinson was feeling more upbeat about the prospects for his
2014 crop than he was two months earlier. Since then, the rain has returned to
his Anderson Valley vineyards. That includes a total of about 3 inches that
fell just in the last six days of March.
"In terms of water supply,
we started the year in a dire place and things have gotten better," he
says. "We're probably out of the range of unprecedented drought and into a
severe drought."
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