California Gov. Brown orders more emergency drought measures [Sacramento Bee]
Gov.
Jerry Brown on Friday signed a sweeping new emergency drought proclamation,
cutting red tape for a variety of government functions to help water agencies
find new supplies, and to press the public to use water carefully….The governor
first proclaimed a drought emergency Jan. 17. This second proclamation goes
further by waiving compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act and
the state water code for a number of actions, including water transfers,
wastewater treatment projects, habitat improvements for winter-run Chinook
salmon imperiled by the drought and curtailment of water rights. The order also
suspends competitive bidding requirements for drought-related projects
undertaken by a number of state agencies, including the departments of Water
Resources, Fish and Wildlife, and Public Health.
'Nobody's
going to get the amount of water they are hoping for,' says secretary of the
interior as she tours south Delta export pumps in S.J. [Stockton Record]
President
Barack Obama's lead adviser on water and wildlife toured the enormous south
Delta export pumps Tuesday, examining the roaring, 22,500-horsepower pumps
before cautioning that no one would receive all the water they need this year.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell told reporters that state and
federal governments will have to be flexible to make the best use of a limited
amount of water….Recent storms temporarily boosted the amount of water flowing
through the Delta, west of Stockton. But by the middle of last week, San
Joaquin Valley farmers had grown frustrated because most of that water was not
being pumped their way. Instead, it was left in rivers flowing toward the
ocean.
Farmers
scramble to bolster water supplies [Marysville Appeal-Democrat]
Thousands
upon thousands of acres of crops in Yuba-Sutter will receive no surface water
this summer. The chances of that changing have dwindled to almost nothing.
After months of uncertainty, the water delivery picture in California has
finally crystallized, and the end result has varied depending on water rights
seniority. Settlement contractors on the Sacramento River, the most senior
water rights holders, saw their water delivery increase from a 40 percent
allocation to 75 percent.
The
Public Eye: UCD, growers in dispute over strawberry research [Sacramento Bee]
Just
a few months ago, California Strawberry Commission President Rick Tomlinson was
looking at the possibility of losing a valuable asset for strawberry farmers up
and down the state – the public breeding program at UC Davis. For more than
half a century, the university’s strawberry breeding program has played a
pivotal role in the strawberry industry, providing research and developing new
varieties for farmers to grow. Instead of licensing plants from private
companies, farmers are able to buy them from UC Davis, which has some of the
lowest royalty rates around. So when school officials raised the specter of
shuttering or selling the program, Tomlinson said, the strawberry commission
responded in October with a lawsuit, arguing that the college couldn’t in good
conscience turn its back on growers who had bankrolled the research program for
several decades.
Opinion: Lyons, Bradford:
Labeling law would hurt California farmers [Merced Sun-Star]
Farmers,
scientists, businesses and others have joined to strongly oppose Senate Bill
1381, a costly, anti-science food labeling bill moving its way through the
state Legislature. This legislation would add massive new bureaucracy and red
tape for California family farmers and food producers; it will increase grocery
costs for consumers, and could stifle new scientific advances in agriculture
that help local farmers grow environmentally beneficial and abundant healthy
crops – all while promoting misleading and unnecessary information to
consumers. SB 1381 would effectively ban the sale of tens of thousands of
perfectly safe, common grocery products in California that contain genetically
engineered (GE) ingredients unless they are specially repackaged, relabeled or
remade with higher-cost ingredients. It would mandate complex new food-labeling
regulations in California that don’t exist in any other state or federally.
Opinion: Disbelief in water
allocations and lessons the state should learn [Sacramento Bee]
I
sat silently for many minutes with the phone still in my hand, trying to absorb
what I had just heard from two trusted sources. It’s not often that your day
includes a moment when the world shifts. Seven weeks ago, that moment was
learning that agriculture in the state might die. How can it be, I asked
myself, that the drought is so bad and planning so nonexistent that there are
serious thoughts of eliminating all surface water for agriculture in the state?
I was numb.
Ag
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