Thursday, July 10, 2014

News articles and links from July 10, 2014


Water Supply

From: Steve Knell, Modesto Bee

The story "OID's fees for services adjusted" (Page B1, July 3) contained a number of inflammatory statements that need to be addressed, lest The Bee create more ill-informed readers.

It may come as a surprise, but all water in California is "free." You just need to pay for the infrastructure, and the operations and maintenance of the hardware used to get water to the farm gate. That cost is not cheap. In the Oakdale Irrigation District, it is $60 per acre-foot of delivered water.

Drought

From: Theopolis Waters, Reuters

The cost to produce a BLT, America's favorite summer sandwich, hit a record high of $1.65 in May and will continue to take a bigger bite out of wallets in the coming months, given a pig virus that has ramped up bacon prices and drought-stricken salad crops in California.

From: Staff, New York Times

California is in the third year of its worst drought in decades. But you wouldn't know it by looking at how much water the state's residents and businesses are using. According to a recent state survey, Californians cut the amount of water they used in the first five months of the year by just 5 percent, far short of the 20 percent reduction Gov. Jerry Brown called for in January. In some parts of the state, like the San Diego area, water use has actually increased from 2013.

From: J. Lund, J. Mount, E. Hanak, U.C. Davis Center for Watershed Sciences' California WaterBlog

As the effects of the drought worsen, two persistent water myths are complicating the search for solutions. One is that environmental regulation is causing California's water scarcity. The other is that conservation alone can bring us into balance. Each myth has different advocates. But both hinder the development of effective policies to manage one of the state's most important natural resources.

From: Jessica Calefati, San Jose Mercury News

Few Californians listened earlier this year when Gov. Jerry Brown begged them to conserve water. So now, with no end to the extreme dry weather in sight, state officials are poised to slap water wasters with unprecedented fines of up to $500 a day.

Regulations

From: Chris Adams, McClatchy DC

A proposal that federal officials said was intended to simplify federal water laws has instead been interpreted to do the opposite - and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is scrambling to defend itself to agriculture and other industries.

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