Nancy Vogel, a Department of Water Resources employee blogging for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), has thrown the agency’s support behind a study that minimizes the effect of reduced water quality on agriculture in the Delta. She cites a study by the U. C. Davis Center for Watershed Sciences that found the cost of...Read More

Among the stories that appeared in the LA Times during Thanksgiving week, Diana Marcum reported on a family in East Orosi, Tulare County, who couldn’t use their tap water to wash their Thanksgiving turkey because they live in “one of the many Central Valley farm communities where the supply is tainted – by nitrates, arsenic...Read More

Travelers on Interstate 5 or Highway 99 through the San Joaquin Valley pass mile after mile of almond trees, California’s biggest permanent crop.  Almonds are harvested by mechanical shakers, sweepers, and pickup machines.  These generate a lot of particulate matter that contributes to air quality problems in the San Joaquin Valley, helping to account for...Read More

California has never suffered from a lack of people willing to dream big, even in defiance of common sense. For example, there was Ray Karlovich, who founded Pacific States Land Company in the 1950s.  The company, now run by his son Brett, is a leader in the development of subdivision properties throughout the Antelope Valley,...Read More

Twenty years ago last month, President George H. W. Bush signed the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA). The Act included reforms intended to encourage efficient water use, including authorizing transfers of agricultural water and creating a land retirement program to reduce water use on tainted land. It shortened the term of Central Valley Project...Read More

On November 6, the Board of Supervisors of Trinity County adopted a position of opposition to the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to construct an isolated conveyance to move additional Northern California water south of the Delta. The Board resolved as follows: “that until such time as adequate assurance and protections for the public trust,...Read More

Your tax dollars are now helping to support the BDCP propaganda machine. In an opinion  editorial in the San Jose Mercury News earlier this month, Department of Water Resources (DWR) director Mark Cowin insisted that “Levees alone won’t secure California’s water” (but the BDCP will). Of course, we never said levee improvements would fix everything....Read More

The Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Delta Plan is scheduled for release November 30, after which there will be a 45-day comment period (for your holiday reading pleasure). Word is, though, that release of the state and federal environmental documents for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan is being pushed back yet again, to early...Read More

In his new Salmon Water Now video, “Twisted Water Games,” Bruce Tokars gives Westlands family farmers (and there are a few of those) some reasons to oppose the Peripheral Tunnel plan. View that video here.Read More

Last week, two scientists writing for the U.S. Geological Survey published a paper that adds to the growing body of scientific concern about the effects of exports on the Bay-Delta Estuary. The paper, by James E. Cloern and Alan D. Jassby, is Drivers of Change in Estuarine-Coastal Ecosystems: Discoveries from Four Decades of Study in...Read More