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.
