How vulnerable is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to earthquakes? Apparently the answer to that sciency-sounding question depends on your interests in various Delta solution paths. The Delta is a giant, richly entangled example of what Dan Sarewitz talks about: The necessity of looking at nature through a variety of disciplinary lenses brings with it a …
Water’s never really wasted. It always goes somewhere and does something. See, for example, the lining of the Coachella Canal, on the northeast side of the Salton Sea: [L]eakage from the unlined Coachella Canal recharged local aquifers. Wetlands have expanded due to spring discharge below the canal. Wetlands were natural features prior to canal construction, …
In a comically disingenuous TV diatribe earlier this month, Congressman Devin Nunes, defender of San Joaquin Valley farmers’ federal water, suggested that perhaps if the effete liberals in San Francisco care so much about the Delta smelt, they should reduce their own consumption of Sierra Nevada water: If the Delta ecosystem is collapsing, I would …
One of the most interesting analyses of California’s water problems I read before last week’s trip was “California’s Sacramento San Joaquin Delta Conflict: from Cooperation to Chicken“, by Kaveh Madani and Jay Lund at UC Davis. It looks at the struggle over the Delta’s future as a game theory problem, one in which an optimal …
Twenty-one years ago, I did a very bad thing. This is my confession. On the Public Record lists the 1979 California Water Atlas as one of the essential texts, describing it thus: Try to get your hands on one of the old California Water Atlas, put out in the 1970?s. They’re real big, bound in …
SACRAMENTO – One of the things I’ve been struck by in my week talking to water people in Sacramento is a sense of urgency around the problems of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta – a feeling that now is the time to do something. I’m also struck by the lack of consistent clarity of what that …
In answer to my question over the weekend about whether the big California snowpack might have “bought Californians nothing other than a new set of facts on the ground to fight over”, there is this possible answer from Mike Taugher: Delta water users have sued to block a temporary decrease in pumping meant to save …
SACRAMENTO – Marc Reisner famously called the Colorado River “the most legislated, most debated and most litigated river in the entire world.” As for the “most litigated,” U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Michael Connor last week said wants to hand the plaque over to California. “I’m going to shift the title to the Bay-Delta region,” …
SACRAMENTO – My friend Judy Liddell*, wise in the ways of bird travel, tipped me to be on the lookout for the yellow-billed magpie while I’m in northern California. She knows whereof she speaks. I saw my first one on the roof of my motel this morning as I ventured out for breakfast. They’re everywhere. …
I’m headed up to Boulder this week for the University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center’s “Navigating the Future of the Colorado River” conference (more from John McChesney here), then off from there to Sacramento and the Bay Area (with the kind support and assistance of Stanford’s Lane Center) to learn more about California’s water …