Among many other things you will find in the fifth staff draft of the Delta Plan, issued last week, is the subsidence/earthquake/sea level rise mantra repeated over and over and over and OVER. Roger Patterson of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), among others, is going around chanting the same mantra. Facts hardly...Read More
The ability of wealthy interests to get what they want with respect to water extends all the way to using bonds to get California taxpayers to cover their projects, according to a two-part article by Lloyd Carter and Patrick Porgans. In Part 1, Carter and Porgans show how A few of California’s land rich billionaires...Read More
To see this “you pay, we benefit” strategy up close, we only need to look at the July 29 meeting of the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC), as reported by Restore the Delta’s Brett Baker. One action the DSC took was to unanimously adopt an amended Delta Science Program contract, allowing the program to net an...Read More
Perhaps the most substantive undertaking of the Council thus far in its existence was agenda item 7: the East Bay Municipal Utilities District Aqueduct Protection Projects, which would entail levee improvement projects on Lower Roberts Island, Upper and Lower Jones Tract, as well as Palm and Orwood Tracts. In a decision that will have...Read More
A graduate student named Aracely Campa at Sac State has done a thesis in Public Policy and Administration called “The Bay Delta Conservation Plan: a mid-course evaluation measuring best practices in collaboration.” According to the abstract, The main findings of the study demonstrated that key stakeholders are missing in the decision-making process. The data also...Read More
In his August 9 blog post, water economist David Zetland fielded a question about investing in “productive agricultural land with water on site”-apparently almond farms. Zetland calls this a high risk strategy, for a variety of reasons. But we don’t want to forget that for all the talk about feeding the world, some agricultural landowners...Read More
Here are the interests represented on the BDCP Management Committee: Natural Resources Agency: Jerry Meral and Karla Nemeth Department of Fish and Game: Scott Cantrell Department of Water Resources: Mark Cowin, Dale Hoffman-Florke, and Cathy Crothers Bureau of Reclamation: Ron Milligan, Sue Fry, and Federico Barajas Westlands Water District: Jason Peltier Hallmark Group (a capital...Read More
As Delta Protection Commission chair Don Nottoli pointed out in a letter to Resources Secretary John Laird, The current BDCP process, although heralded as a “fresh look”, seems to be a continuation of the past process that will harm the lives and livelihood of the people who live in the Delta and shut out those...Read More
On July 24, Alex Breitler of the Stockton Record spoke with Jim Beck, head of the Kern County Water Agency about the south San Joaquin Valley’s perspective on Delta conveyance. The complete interview is available at this link. Beck said that a canal might have lower construction costs but greater mitigation costs. He said, “I...Read More
A year ago this past April, Kern County (where Mr. Beck hails from), came up with a PowerPoint presentation on conveyance. Through a Public Records Act request, a preliminary draft of that presentation has become available to us. Click here to view the draft. Following a detailed analysis of 15,000 cfs size conveyance the Water...Read More
