In an interview earlier this week with the Central Valley Business Times, Jonas Minton of the Planning and Conservation League provided some background on this meeting of “principals.” Click here to read. Exporters undertook the BDCP process to secure water supplies.  Minton notes that we now have overwhelming scientific evidence that if the Bay-Delta Estuary...Read More

So what is in this 70-page document? For one thing, it includes material that never had a public hearing. “Although many of the concepts and descriptions within this context document have been discussed in the BDCP Steering Committee, others have not.  Therefore, information within this Document should not be attributed to the Steering Committee.”   The...Read More

By the way, the tunnel being proposed is 45 miles long and so wide in diameter (29 feet) that small planes could fly through it.  Maybe the state could sponsor flight competitions to help pay the cost of building the thing.  They certainly won’t be able to use it full-time for conveying water.  Even Northern...Read More

In her latest blog post on The California Spigot,  Patricia McBroom reports on new USGS findings that the threat of Delta levee breaches in an earthquake is greater than anyone thought. The report is based on the response of Delta soils to ten small earthquakes (up to 4.2 magnitude) that have occurred in the East...Read More

In McBroom’s blog, Greg Gartrell of the Contra Costa Water District suggests that in the event of seismically-induced levee breaches, water supplies might be compromised for three to four months by salt water intrusion before fresh water has a chance to flush the system. In the meantime, some Californians could be using water stored in...Read More

Last week the Hanford Sentinel reported that the Kings County grand jury has criticized the board of supervisors and the Kings County Water Commission for not doing more to stop the sale of water out of the county. Click here for article Last year, Sandridge Partners, a Bay Area firm with substantial farm holdings in...Read More

Members of Congress and the California legislature have sent a letter urging Lester Snow and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to open up the closed door talks now underway among “Delta Principals.” As we reported in our last newsletter, a small group of unidentified people has been meeting to work out a deal for the Bay...Read More

Every bit of progress made in the past year to curtail pumping and give habitat a chance to recover is threatened by the close-door meetings now taking place among top water agency officials, regulatory agencies, and three environmental groups. State Resources Secretary Lester Snow is coleading closed-door sessions to negotiate an agreement about the Bay...Read More

We congratulate Mike Machado on his appointment as director of the Delta Protection Commission.  He will take over September 20, replacing Linda Fiack, who is retiring. Restore the Delta will be sorry to lose Machado’s expertise on its board of directors, but we are happy to have such an experienced and knowledgeable person directing the...Read More

Governor Schwarzenegger addressed the Bohemian Grove oligarchs at the end of July in a keynote speech on an “undisclosed” topic.  If you’ve never heard about this shadowy institution of America’s elite movers and shakers, click here read Dan Bacher’s recent editorial on the subject. As Bacher points out, this is the kind of secrecy we’ve...Read More