Thinking like a watershed*
When I left Pasadena nearly 25 years ago, my water mentor Tim Brick was hard at work on the problem of restoring a semblance of riverness to the Arroyo Seco, the channel that defines that Southern California city’s western edge. Via a visit by our old mutual friend Larry Wilson to the confluence of the [...]
Water’s for not fighting over?
If men will fight over water, they will also cooperate to conserve it and the history of water controversies is that, in the long run, the rule of cooperation prevails. Yet another nugget from my current favorite book, Carey McWilliams’ California: The Great Exception. Do you think he’s right? (The quote’s the opening of a 1949 [...]
California groundwater regulation: a historical perspective
The absence of a state policy governing the use of underground waters is, in fact, the outstanding weakness in California’s water conservation program. Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception, 1949 To what extent does this still hold today?
Fixing Northern California’s Delta: some process issues
Matt Weiser at the Sacramento Bee offered up a fascinating framework in a piece last Sunday for thinking about California’s $23 billion (and counting) proposal to reshape the way water moves in and through the largest estuary on the western coast of North America: [A]s the process now stands California voters will have no formal [...]
water conservation diaries: it’s about making more food
Visiting a farm recently, I was reminded that business people for whom water is an input think about water conservation differently than city folk like me. For a given amount of water available, the farmer wants to grow and sell as much food as possible. So it should not be surprising to see water conservation [...]
BDCP rollout: did anyone say anything that surprised you?
Busy with New Mexico’s drought, I’ve been paying scant attention to the rollout of California’s Bay Delta Conservation Plan, AKA the Peripheral Thingie. This is the scheme to build tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to move water south to California farms and cities. It’s the biggest and most interesting US water policy gambit out [...]
California’s resilience to drought
Given my profession, I’m incentivized to freak out about drought. If I thought it wasn’t a big deal, I’d have to find something else to write about. But in darker moments, I wonder if I’m overdoing the freakout. Chris Austin’s writeup of Ellen Hanak’s comments at this week’s California water bond hearing raise the question [...]
A new framing of the Sacramento Delta problem
From the California state water contractors, a new framing. It’s not that stupid little fish, or those pesky environmentalists: Limits on pumping operations are an ongoing issue due to the Delta’s outdated water delivery system. “Earlier this year, storms came through that could have provided a substantial boost to our water reservoirs, but we simply [...]
farming and mining in California
Apart from the specific contributions which mining made to agriculture in California, farming has always resembled mining in this state. The soil is really mined, not farmed. Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception
“The environment has always gotten the short end of the stick.”
The interplay between human water use and natural systems has always been a ratchet, and when the environmental conversation began in earnest in this country, the ratchet was already cranked down tight. By the time, for example, that we began having a conversation about preservation of environmental values on the Lower Colorado River, Hoover Dam [...]
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