The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, offered The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board his view of California’s plumbing system last week.
If Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers want voters to weigh in this year on a multibillion-dollar water bond – a big if – they will need to compromise on what may seem like an arcane point: Who controls the money earmarked for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta?
The federal District Court in Fresno denied a legal effort by Chico’s AquAlliance and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance to stop water transfers this year.
San Joaquin County supervisors agreed Tuesday to oppose Gov. Jerry Brown’s twin tunnels project – for the second time – and to send nearly 100 pages of highly critical comments to state and federal officials.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed twin tunnels “will effectively destroy the Delta as it exists today,” and will forever alter San Joaquin County’s economy, county officials warn in a new report.
Agencies from San Joaquin and Contra Costa counties to NASA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture formed an invasive-weed task force seeking holistic, more comprehensive solutions to free the Delta from its oppressors.
Seventy-plus years later, [Whitey] Rasmussen is still tying his own feathered flies and crafting his own lures, still using them to catch his own trophy fish, and still telling some great stories in a way that only an ex-Navy man can. But Rasmussen is more than a storyteller.
Stockton can continue to pump water from the Delta this summer, ensuring that its new $220-million drinking-water plant — funded by ratepayers —won’t be standing idle.
The California Supreme Court has agreed to decide an epic battle over whether the state must condemn and acquire parcels on tens of thousands of acres of private property to conduct preliminary testing for Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to construct two large water-conveyance tunnels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The lone state agency to oppose Gov. Jerry Brown’s twin tunnels plan warns that the project could force marinas out of business and take a big bite out of Delta agriculture.
With the governor’s controversial Delta tunnel project a key part of the debate, lawmakers on Monday failed to advance a leading Senate proposal to put a revised water bond on the November ballot.
As part of a “branding” effort to increase public awareness about the estuary, the Delta Protection Commission is asking residents to help decide whether the Delta should be referred to as “The California Delta” or “The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.”
From the Los Angeles Times, in a commentary by George Skelton:
As lawmakers struggle to craft a water bond proposal for voters, there’s a huge reservoir of wonderful, non-controversial project ideas. But practically everyone is suffering from tunnel vision. Literally.
Water flows into the American River were increased Tuesday, despite the ongoing drought, because state and federal officials are fighting to keep salinity from San Francisco Bay from intruding into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
From The Sacramento Bee, in a commentary by Javier Padilla Reyes:
The reckless indifference of Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration in failing to provide adequate access and participation for non-English speaking Californians shows that the state’s rush to build the twin Delta tunnels at all costs effectively disregards nearly 600,000 Delta residents and 20 percent of California’s population.
