Please Note: The headlines below are the original headlines used in the publication cited at the time they are posted here, and do not reflect the stance of the Water Education Foundation, an impartial nonprofit that remains neutral.
A crucial certification needed to build two tunnels that officials believe would help solve California’s water delivery problems was withdrawn Friday, ensuring that Gov. Jerry Brown’s pet water project won’t be approved before he leaves office in January.
With drought entering a second decade and reservoirs continuing to shrink, seven Southwestern U.S. states that depend on the overtaxed Colorado River for crop irrigation and drinking water had been expected to ink a crucial share-the-pain contingency plan by the end of 2018. They’re not going to make it — at least not in time for upcoming meetings in Las Vegas involving representatives from Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and the U.S. government, officials say.
Federal health officials say that it is too soon to know how many Medicare providers are complying with a government agency’s order to reduce the risk of Legionnaires’ disease, the deadliest waterborne illness in the United States. A division of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reimburses hospitals and nursing homes for providing healthcare to recipients of those two government programs.
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Here’s a sweet deal for the holidays: Get 50 percent off the paperback Water & the Shaping of California, a treasure trove of gorgeous color photos, water literature and famous sayings about water. This beautifully designed oversize book discusses the engineering feats, political decisions and popular opinion that reshaped the nature – flood and drought – and society – gold, grain and growth – that led to the water projects that created the California we know today. The book Includes a foreword by the late Kevin Starr, the Golden State’s premier historian.
To fend off lawsuits over its plans to build a new city in the rugged countryside northwest of Los Angeles, Tejon Ranch Co. made a landmark concession to environmentalists. It promised a decade ago to preserve 90% of its land — 240,000 acres — as an untouched ecological conservancy for public enjoyment through educational and research programs.
A property tax hike could be coming to Washington County, with water managers saying they need to increase revenues to cover the costs of developing new water resources for the St. George area, including the proposed Lake Powell Pipeline. … A public hearing on the plan is slated for 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Washington County Water Conservancy District office.
The Oakdale Irrigation District skirted state law by not predicting the environmental results of fallowing land and selling freed-up water to outside buyers in a 2016 proposal, appellate justices in Fresno ruled. The Nov. 27 decision affirms one handed down last year by a Stanislaus County judge, who said OID should have conducted an environmental impact report before launching the project.
[Gov.-elect Gavin] Newsom reminded the crowd that he promised to return to Fresno during his last stop while on campaign, and the state’s new top man spent hours being inundated with testimony. His afternoon began with a series of closed-door meetings with local leaders and ended in a more public town hall – both of which discussed the Valley’s key issues: poverty, air quality, water, education, pre-term birth and a prevailing feeling of under-representation at the state level.
Paradise Irrigation District President Dan Wentland announced at the end of Wednesday’s special meeting that he is resigning from his position and moving to Crossville,Tenn. Wentland’s house was destroyed in the Camp Fire early last month.
After months of hauling water from Corning, recent rains have eased Paskenta’s water crisis. “We have water in the creek,” said Paskenta Community Services District Secretary Janet Zornig. “It’s starting to get a little low but we’ve been running the plant.”
Over the next week and a half, the federal government will make its quarterly offering of public lands for sale to oil and gas developers. Absent from the auction block: more than 1 million acres that the Bureau of Land Management pulled from its December sales after a federal judge temporarily blocked the agency from streamlining the leasing process in sage grouse areas (Greenwire, Oct. 24).
As early as March, visitors will be invited to explore Sonoma County’s newest regional park: a wooded 1,192-acre oasis north of Santa Rosa along more than 2.5 miles of upper Mark West Creek.
After nearly a year of public input on the issue, the Marin Municipal Water District is considering revising its electronic bike restrictions in the Mount Tamalpais watershed. … “We’re doing our due diligence to explore all the pros and cons of allowing e-bikes on fire roads,” said Crystal Yezman, the district’s facilities and watershed division manager.
After more than a three-week delay, commercial crab fishermen will begin dropping their nets this Saturday in coastal waters from Bodega Head north to the Sonoma-Mendocino county line. The region was slated to open Nov. 15 but was postponed due to unsafe levels of toxic domoic acid found in crabs. Points south of the Sonoma County coastline opened on schedule last month.
In a magic moment Friday, Thea Cowsky poured a 5-gallon bucket filled with water and four big rainbow trout into a submerged pen. “My high school kids are going to be thrilled about this,” she said. Cowsky is the manager of a Mount Shasta-area high school Interact Club, a Rotary-sponsored youth group.
Interested in birdwatching, but not sure where to start? The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has you covered with naturalist-led free tours that travel around the Marysville area to the best spots for seeing several bird species.
Called the Good Samaritan Remediation of Orphaned Hardrock Mines Act of 2018, the bill would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to set up a program that allows certain environmental and local watershed groups the ability to clean up Colorado’s 23,000 abandoned mines without bearing the legal risk that work entails.
Fourteen years after Congress authorized New Mexico to trade 14,000 acre feet of water with a downstream user in Arizona—and four years after a state commission voted to build a diversion on the Gila River—there’s little to show for the project, other than continued confusion and about $17 million in spent money. “The process is going to end at some point,” said Norman Gaume, an opponent of the project and a former director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (ISC). “It’s a question of how much more money will they waste?”
Five appointed state regulators can do an enormous amount to help salmon and the state’s most-altered water system on Dec. 12. Or they can guarantee that water lawyers will stay busy for decades to come. The State Water Resources Control Board’s five members – including one added Thursday – are scheduled to vote on implementing the Bay-Delta Plan’s Substitute Environmental Document.
Coloradoans know well the impact of abandoned mines and the risk they can pose to rivers and streams. Colorado has 13,000 miles of these streams, some of which are impaired from mining activities and miners long gone. As CEO of Coeur Mining and as CEO of Trout Unlimited, we don’t necessarily agree on everything.
