Michael Doyle reports in the Sacramento Bee on the apparent death of California drought legislation: A California water bill that skeptics say has been cloaked in excessive secrecy will probably miss its Capitol Hill train this year. Facing criticism from fellow Democrats, and with key details still unresolved, Sen. Dianne Feinstein conceded Friday that the …

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Nicholas Pinter at UC Davis points to one of the benefits of drought as we head into an El Niño winter: With California reservoirs at record lows, most regulated rivers in the state are unlikely to see major flooding downstream of their dams.

Daniel Polk, an anthropologist now based at Stanford’s Lane Center has an interesting post looking at the question of our perceptions of the Salton Sea – natural or not? The lake demonstrates that the “natural” is a fluid and not fixed term. Proponents of the Salton Sea often emphasize the natural qualities of the lake. …

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From a new Public Policy Institute of California white paper on water allocation reforms: Regions with drought-prone climates need reliable accounting of water availability and use. Authoritative water accounting is a foundation for the transparent, reliable, timely administration (and, if necessary, curtailment) of water rights, management of groundwater, and water trading. This drought spotlighted serious …

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Jay Lund, Dr. Water at UC Davis, asks a provocative question that gets to this gnarly question of the status of water saved by conservation measures – what if municipal water users could direct how the savings from their conservation efforts are used? Albuquerque has done extraordinarily well in the last two decades. Per capita …

Continue reading ‘What if I wanted the savings from my water conservation to go to the Rio Grande itself?’ »

Brandon Loomis, in an excellent recent piece on the problems of the Salton Sea, quoted a resident along the troubled inland California lake who thinks the answer to its decline is straightforward: Rod Jeffries, a 64-year-old urban refugee from San Francisco, is confident the state will act…. His favored solution is to pipe seawater from …

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