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

Last week, Mike Taugher reported in the Contra Costa Times that key people – including some of those institutional enviros – have been meeting behind closed doors to work out a deal for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP).  The Governor really wants that canal, and he prefers to do water policy closeted with a...Read More

The Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, a group of Kern County growers and irrigators whose idea of a sustainable Delta is one from which they can get a large and uninterrupted supply of water, is suing the Department of Fish and Game for having game fish protection on striped bass, a non-native predator.  There’s plenty...Read More

Last week the Delta Stewardship Council (DSC) adopted an interim plan for the Delta as required by last year’s Comprehensive Water Package. This is the plan that the DSC will use to guide its actions until the Delta Plan is adopted and implemented, by January 1, 2012. There were problems with the legislation that created...Read More

Remember that joint powers authority (JPA) that made its way into the water bond section on operational improvement (mainly dams and reservoirs)?   Remember how the Legislature decided, on second thought, that this JPA was a really bad idea? It was such a bad idea that they introduced a bill – AB 2775 – to...Read More

Back in April, Restore the Delta reported that Delta Stewardship Council Staff recommended that CH2MHill provide the primary support for developing the Delta Plan, as mandated by the legislature. CH2MHill was already heavily involved in the historic Cal-Fed process and developing the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, which the Delta Stewardship Council is set to either...Read More