State water regulator flexes new muscle in response to drought [Los Angeles Times]
…Long
considered timid and politically weak, the board is flexing new muscle in
response to a dry spell that threatens to be the worst in modern California
history. It is delivering emergency water to parched communities, reviewing
never-before-collected data on irrigation around the state and considering
limits on farmers who are accustomed to taking their fill from the state's
rivers and streams. On Friday, the board is scheduled to issue unprecedented
new regulations to require urban Californians to use 25% less water. Experts
said the challenge of the drought appears to be a turning point for the board
and for the way officials manage California's water. "They are exercising
authority that the state board has never exercised before," said Lester
Snow, executive director of the nonprofit California Water Foundation, which
supports research and other projects.
Redistribute
California's water? Not without a fight [National Public Radio]
The
state of California is asking a basic question right now that people often
fight over: What's a fair way to divide up something that's scarce and valuable?
That "something," in this case, is water….Consider, for instance, the
case of Cannon Michael. He grows tomatoes and melons in California's Central
Valley. And despite the drought, he'll still grow them this year….These fields
will receive water, and others in California will not, because of history….Leon
Szeptycki, who is executive director of a program called Water in the West at
the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, says that this first-come,
first-served system made sense in the 19th century….But Szeptycki says this
system it is not so great when it comes to responding to drought….Despite those
problems, though, Szeptycki says that government officials are not seriously
proposing any fundamental change to the water rules, because for farmers, it
would be as shocking and disruptive as reshuffling land, or bank accounts.
Drought
unlikely to cause major damage to California economy, analysts say [Los Angeles
Times]
California's
drought has threatened farmers, ski resorts and golf courses, but it's unlikely
to do much damage to the state's overall economy or budget, according to a new
report. “We currently do not expect the drought to have a significant effect,”
said the report, released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s
Office, which provides budget advice to state lawmakers. The minor impact is
explained by the lopsided relationship between water use for farming and
agriculture's overall contribution to the state economy….None of that means the
drought isn’t having a big effect on the state. Farmers have taken a
$1.5-billion hit, fallowing 400,000 acres and laying off 17,000 people,
according to state officials.
Paul
Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau, has warned about national and
international economic effects if agriculture continues to suffer.
Ordinance
to regulate groundwater exports is approved by supervisors [San Luis Obispo
Tribune]
Anyone
wanting to export groundwater out of a basin or across San Luis Obispo County
lines will now have to obtain a permit, which would only be issued if moving
the water would not harm local supplies. The San Luis Obispo County Board of
Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to approve an ordinance regulating
groundwater exports, joining at least 20 other counties across California to do
so….An export permit would only be approved if the public works director finds
that moving the water would not have any adverse impacts to groundwater
resources, such as causing aquifer levels to drop, disrupting the flow of
neighboring wells or resulting in seawater intrusion.
Editorial: Gray’s water bill
passes first crucial test [Modesto Bee]
Forgive
the fractured cliché, but the state of California has put the people of Merced,
Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties in between a rock and the river.
Assemblyman Adam Gray is trying to give us a tiny bit of wiggle room. His
Assembly Bill 1242 passed its first committee vote Tuesday, 8-4 – the barest of
margins. Next, it goes to the Natural Resources Committee, where it faces
another tough battle….What the state has failed to recognize is that for
groundwater to be sustainable, it must be recharged. In this region, one of the
most significant means of recharge is flood irrigation….Because the state’s
original environmental documents have failed to take any of the irrigation
benefits into consideration, Gray was compelled to act. He authored AB 1242 to
force the state to consider the benefits of irrigation on recharge when
considering how much water to require from the rivers.
Gerawan
workers protest outside Court of Appeal in Fresno [Fresno Bee]
Several
hundred Gerawan Farming workers protested outside the 5th District Court of
Appeal in downtown Fresno on Tuesday, angry over nearly a two-year delay in
resolving an election that could remove the United Farm Workers as their
union….The protesters rallied outside the courthouse on Ventura Avenue where
Gerawan’s attorneys were trying to convince three appellate judges that the
process for settling disputed employee contracts is unconstitutional. If they
succeed, they will effectively rid the union from the company, one of the San
Joaquin Valley’s largest fruit growers. At issue is an attempt by the union to
represent about 3,000 Gerawan workers nearly 20 years after winning the right
to do so. Although both sides began negotiating a new contract in late 2012,
the union called for mandatory mediation and conciliation, a state process
where a third-party arbitrator decides the terms of the contract.
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