Editorial: Water details become vital as drought worsens [Sacramento Bee]
In
time of drought, when leaders tell us every drop of water counts, Californians
ought to be able to count every drop. The concept seems so simple, but because
the issue is water, it’s not. For the third year running, Sen. Fran Pavley,
D-Agoura Hills, is pushing legislation to provide public access to otherwise
confidential reports about groundwater wells….But opponents of public access to
the information include many heavyweights of California agriculture: the
Western Growers Association, the California Farm Bureau Federation, the
California League of Food Processors, the California Chamber of Commerce, and
the Valley Ag Water Coalition, which represents many San Joaquin water delivery
agencies. Reflexive opposition by farm groups is unfortunate. As urban water
users face restrictions, if not rationing, they could turn on farmers whose
crops use 80 percent of the water consumed by humans in California.
Monterey
County groundwater plan draws criticism [Monterey Herald]
Expressing
concern about the approach to complying with the state’s new groundwater
sustainability mandate, Monterey County officials and agricultural industry
representatives called for speeding up the process and including more public
input. According to a report presented during Tuesday’s joint meeting of the
Board of Supervisors and county water resources agency board of directors, the
county is in the early stages of trying to create a groundwater sustainability
agency for the Salinas Valley groundwater basin….The groundwater agency will
have broad regulatory and enforcement powers over groundwater extraction and
use in the basin….Monterey County Farm Bureau executive director Norm Groot
cautioned the boards that the county’s draft sustainability “approach” document
was just a list of projects without enough supporting information.
Deal
on Stanislaus River fish could aid Lake Tulloch [Modesto Bee]
A
tentative agreement on Stanislaus River flows could shore up irrigation
supplies and keep Lake Tulloch from emptying this summer. The deal calls for
regulators to relax the springtime flow requirements aimed at getting young
salmon to the Pacific Ocean. The saved water could allow the Oakdale and South
San Joaquin irrigation districts to get through summer without draining
Tulloch, an idea that had stirred protest from lakefront homeowners. Each
district would get up to 225,000 acre-feet of water this year under the
agreement. That’s well short of the 300,000 available in better times, but more
than what many districts elsewhere will deliver in this fourth year of
drought….The agreement projects that New Melones will hold just 115,000
acre-feet at the Sept. 30 end of the current irrigation season – just 5 percent
of its capacity.
Opinion: Conserve water, but
don't panic yet [Ventura County Star]
Californians
are starting to freak out about the drought….However, if Californians are
indeed beginning to freak out about the drought, that is not a bad thing. It
could inspire the most important short-term response to the drought, one that
is largely beyond the power of state and local governments — a widespread ethic
of water conservation….The challenge for governments and water managers is to
come up with long-term solutions that allow water policy to adapt to the
effects of climate change. If, as the modeling suggests, the snowpack is going
to be reduced by 50 percent or more, management of existing storage systems
must adapt and new storage must be designed to capture winter rainfall rather
than spring runoff. The modeling also predicts the rainy season will become
more condensed and storm events will become more intense. If that’s the case,
it will become imperative that systems be designed to capture water that now
runs off in floods and to allow exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
to be maximized during brief periods of true surplus.
Questions
raised over pesticide use near high school [KNBC TV, Los Angeles]
Questions
are being raised about the safety of an Oxnard high school after a new report
shows the surrounding agricultural land may be saturated with a potentially
toxic pesticide. Rio Mesa High School’s campus is literally bordered by
agriculture fields, with strawberries as far as the eye can see - part of
Ventura County’s $3 billion farming industry….The county’s agriculture
commissioner presented a report to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday about
pesticides on the campus. He also faced some tough questions about one chemical
in particular, called 1,3-Dichloropropene - also called 1-3-D. "Everybody
jumps to the conclusion that, because it's so much, it's got to be 'bad.' And
that is not accurate," Henry Gonzalez told the board.
Environmental
groups urge feds to consider beef’s cost in U.S. diet [San Francisco Chronicle]
Full
page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post on Tuesday called on the
federal government to advise Americans to cut some meat from their diets. The
ads, sponsored by more than 100 health and environmental groups, come as U.S.
policymakers evaluate evidence that meat, particularly beef, takes a toll on
the environment, and as they consider adjusting the nation’s dietary guidelines
accordingly. On Tuesday, policymakers held a public hearing in Bethesda, Md.,
to take input on how a revision of the federal food guidelines should read. The
guidelines help shape school and military meals as well as the more
consumer-oriented food pyramid, which was recently recast as a plate. At the
heart of the dietary debate is an opinion by an advisory panel that people
should eat less meat because of its destructive impact on the planet, a
suggestion that the meat industry and its allies in Congress have taken to
task.
Ag
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