The Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) has produced a June 2010 Status Update with several interesting maps. They’re looking at management strategies and “opportunity areas,” and considering “site selection criteria” for 5 in-river intakes at 3,000 CFS capacity each (“to avoid high population density areas”). If you aren’t looking carefully, you could miss this subtle...Read More
Richard Roos-Collins, one of Governor Schwarzenegger’s appointees to the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC), has resigned. Roos-Collins, an attorney for the Natural Heritage Institute, had previously served on the BDCP steering committee. Restore the Delta and other groups thought that this constituted a conflict of interest, since one function of the DSC is to evaluate the...Read More
The Delta Stewardship Council couldn’t wait to get started on the part of the Interim Plan that involves “review and approval of Proposition 1E expenditures for selected projects.” When voters approved 1E in 2006, that approval included $35 million “to reinforce those sections of the levees that have the highest potential to suffer breaches or...Read More
As Delta farmers struggle to file water use reports by July 2 to comply with last year’s legislation changing reporting requirements, the Senate will be voting this week on SB 565 (Pavley). This bill would establish several new penalty and investigative powers at the State Water Resources Control Board dealing with water rights, while reducing...Read More
Writing in the California Progress Report, Alegria De La Cruz, Legal Director of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, talks about those farmworker demonstrations on the Westside last summer: “What about the ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations by farmworkers marching under the ‘Fish vs. Jobs’ banner? Go talk to the laborers in the small destitute towns...Read More
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s S. 1759, “Water Transfer Facilitation Act of 2009,” is on the U.S. Senate Legislative Calendar, and opponents fear that it could be included in omnibus legislation. This is the legislation that would relax the law in order to benefit the Kern Water Bank and other private entities profiting from taxpayer subsidized water...Read More
In their enthusiasm to pass the “historic water package” last November and create a Delta Stewardship Council to put things right in the Delta, lawmakers neglected to address the matter of paying for the Council. To correct this oversight, Assemblymember Huffman presented AB 2092, a long-term financing plan for the DSC, to the Senate Natural...Read More
That was Senator Lois Wolk’s description of AB 2775, a bill that would amend the water bond to remove language that would allow nongovernmental partners to be part of joint powers authorities formed to own and manage dams. Assemblymember Jared Huffman and Senator Dave Cogdill, who never agree about anything with respect to water, coauthored...Read More
