This summer marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy and Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown (father of the present Governor) going to Los Banos to break ground for the San Luis Dam.  Congressman Jim Costa compares the Bay Delta Conservation Plan and Governor Jerry Brown’s twin-peripheral tunnel vision to the San Luis project....Read More

Research by Deirdre Des Jardins of California Water Research Associates reveals that B. F. Sisk Dam has clay soils underneath it.   They were bone dry when Bureau of Reclamation engineers tested the soils, and the dam was engineered based on the properties of the dry clay soils. But clay expands and gets slippery when it...Read More

Most recent discussion of earthquake risk in the Delta have been based on the Delta Risk Management Strategy (DRMS).  DRMS was prepared by consultants (URS Corporation) for the Department of Water Resources. Experts disagree about many of the findings in DRMS, which assumes five Delta fault systems. For example, new modeling of the “Montezuma Hills...Read More

Food and Water Watch has released a study on the cost of the peripheral tunnels to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) ratepayers. The study finds that homes and businesses in LAWPD will pay between $4 a month and $19 a month for the tunnels, averaged out over 40 years.   That is in...Read More

In a recent blog post, NRDC’s Tina Swanson reports that the San Francisco Bay is in a “persistent, manmade drought” characterized by inadequate flows of fresh water.  She notes that estuaries need fresh water, just as people do.  And the Bay-Delta Estuary hasn’t been getting enough fresh water for decades. Says Swanson, “For the first...Read More

To the Winnemem Wintu, water is life and water is sacred.  The Winnemem Wintu people are among the leaders advocating for California to pass a human right to water bill.?? Says Chief Caleen Sisk, “Please support AB 685 ‘Human Right to Water.’  Let’s have California lead the nation in ‘water is life!’ Call your representative...Read More

Last week (August 6) DWR began overwater drilling in the Delta “to collect data for proposed water conveyance alternatives associated with BDCP.” Work continues through October. DWR needs these geotechnical investigations to support the environmental documents for the BDCP. Does this mean we shouldn’t expect to see the BDCP EIR before October? Click here for...Read More

Now here’s a silly bit of reasoning from the south-of-Delta water users who never tire of looking for scapegoats to blame when they don’t get all the water they want: Southern resident Peuget Sound orcas – also known as killer whales – eat Chinook salmon. Chinook salmon runs in the Delta have severely declined. It...Read More

Phil Isenberg, Chair of the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC), reacted to last week’s announcement by Governor Brown and Secretary Salazar with more support than we’d like to see from the chair of a body that will have authority to incorporate the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) into the Delta Plan for the California Delta. (Read...Read More

During the past five years, while Californians have been subjected to increasingly panicked predictions about an earthquake causing levee failures in the California Delta, the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) has been doing a Corrective Action Study to figure out how to prevent an earthquake-caused dam failure that “could inundate hundreds of square miles...Read More