On Wednesday morning, October 19, the Assembly Water, Parks & Wildlife Committee held a joint oversight hearing on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. This was one of the periodic hearings in which legislators are reminded of how little influence they have over the Delta planning processes going forward. A Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signed recently...Read More

The legislators heard from a panel including both Roger Patterson of the Metropolitan Water Agency (MWD) and Dennis Cushman of the San Diego Water Authority, which is MWD’s largest member agency, buying about a quarter of everything MWD sells. Cushman raised an issue that we haven’t heard much about yet: What is the real demand...Read More

Staff from the Department of Water Resources conduct regular research assignments and write reports to assist officials with making water management decisions. At other times, these assignments are given to contractors to create the information that the Department of Water Resources needs to facilitate the planning of projects. Restore the Delta finds two such reports...Read More

Does the State Water Project’s largest contractor have enough customers actually willing to pay for the conveyance being contemplated? With that question in mind, let us turn to our report on the California Water Commission meeting on Wednesday afternoon. At the Water Commission, DWR is urging Commissioners to act under the assumption that new conveyance...Read More

An alcoholic has to admit to having a drinking problem before that problem can be solved. And California has to admit to having a water problem – and understand the real nature of that problem – before it goes spending a lot of money on “solutions”. That was one important take-away message from the October...Read More