Clarity Blog

What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

Shanghaiing the Yangtze

Harken with us back to the days of yesteryear, before “unsustainability” became an unpardonable sin, back when “exploitation” defined our approach to natural resources. Sigh. Sort of. There’s a lot to be said for keeping species alive, even if it can be a costly pain in the … water bill.  But in China, they’re still into subjugating nature, as described in this fascinating article about plans to divert six trillion gallons of water a year from the Yangtze River. We balk at $11 billion for the SacDelta fix, but this project’s price tag is $62 billion!

Check out the New York Times article here

And here’s a map showing the different diversion routes

Speaking of moving water long distances, how about from the moon?

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What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

Brown Out

During the campaign, Jerry Brown shed about as much light on his water policy as a … moonbeam.  We thought he’d be OK, but would he be great OK or so-so OK? It’s the latter. Resources Secretary Jerry Meral said yesterday MWD’s hoped-for big tunnel will no longer be the primary focus of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. EPA praised the move. MWD’s been quiet. Enviros have dug in with, “Tunnels, chunnels or any movement of water from or around the Delta are [sic] wrong! They will destroy the Delta …” Where’s the wiggle room in that?

Here’s the SacBee on Meral’s comments.

And from the far left, a response (more…)

What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

Border Wars

After fighting proposed ocean desalination in Carlsbad and Huntington Beach for a couple centuries (well, it feels like that even if it’s only been a decade or so), environmentalists were shocked that the San Diego County Water Authority might buy water from a desal plant proposed at a Rosarito Beach power plant just across the border from thirsty San Diego. Calling the proposed plant a “trans-boundary scam,” one opponent whined, “It’s absolutely unethical!”   And abusing the courts with one losing claim after another to stop Poseidon’s plants is ethical?

Read the environmentalists’ lament here

Here’s a longer, more objective piece from Voice of San Diego

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What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

Sucker Punch

Smoky rooms still rule – except now it’s probably medical marijuana smoke filling rooms like the one the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Center for Biological Diversity met in to hammer out a Santa Ana sucker deal. The Center, an enviro litigation mill, had sued to expand the sucker’s critical habitat within the Santa Ana River, and the closed-door settlement added over 10 percent more land, which will gravely impact 12 water agencies’ beneficial use river flows. The agencies have implemented a successful sucker protection plan, so this is case of no good deed going unpunished.

Read about the 12 agencies’ plan to sue the Service here

Read how the settlement “would literally shut down” the local economy

Here’s a great piece on the topic from DC’s The Hill blog

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What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

Not Going with the Flow

All across the state sweet, tasty water is surging out of dams as massive releases are being made to drop reservoir water levels out of fear of flooding that would come if capacity isn’t available to receive yet more snowmelt from the mountains.  As zillions of gallons flowed to the Pacific only to quickly become undrinkable, a chorus of voices asked, “Why doesn’t California have more reservoirs?” Farmers and city-dwellers argued for ‘em, environmentalists argued against ‘em – just another week in California water, eh?

For example, here’s the story from Oakland, Sacramento and Modesto

Here’s the perspective from Western Growers, George Skelton and Dan Walters

The Environmental Defense Fund questions the feasibility of more storage here

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What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

The Long Goodbye to the Drought

News that Gov. Brown was going to declare the drought over leaked like December’s deluges. We started hearing about it days before the formal announcement, and we figured he was waiting for the Wednesday Sierra snowpack reading.  We were right – the announcement came Wednesday night, shortly after DWR reported snow levels in the Sierras were to die for.  The Guv did the right thing by reminding us all to conserve, but disappointingly (not surprisingly!) said nothing about the need to fix the ongoing regulatory drought.

Read Brown’s drought-ending proclamation here

Read DWR’s report on Sierra snowpack here

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What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

Japan’s Crumbled Water Infrastructure

Lost in the deluge of bad news following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor problems in Japan is any news on the state of water infrastructure in the country’s devastated Northeast.  Finally, we’re getting some indication of the extent of damage, and as expected, it’s not good:  Up to 2.5 million homes are without water, there are miles of destroyed water lines, lots of damaged facilities and no power for pumps and treatment plants.  Please add all that to your prayers for Japan.

Read Circle of Blue’s report here

Read Bloomberg’s report here

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What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

Big News

Yeah, we’re excited the cops are finally closing in on Bat Boy, but the really big news this week is just how much good water news there’s been.  Where do we start?  How about the settlement agreement that will allow more water to be pumped from the Delta?  Or the fact that there’s lots and lots of snow in the Sierras and it’s very, very wet?  Or that the fisheries folks are predicting a banner year for California salmon, an indicator fish for Delta ecology? There’s just so much to choose from!

Read all about it!  The Delta Settlement!

Extra! Extra! Snow Packs Mountains!

This just in! Salmon Spawn Like Rabbits! (more…)

What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

Duh, Duh, Duh, Yikes

The Delta Stewardship Council released the first of four drafts of the Draft Delta Plan that, when all are published, will lay out the entire concept for environmental review.  The first draft’s four points were three duhs and a yikes: California’s water is oversubscribed (duh), it’s an increasingly volatile issue (duh), there’s no emergency response plan for the Delta (duh) and even with our best efforts, some Delta species will go extinct (yikes, because that’s an opening for endless litigation to postpone solutions).   Subsequent elements will be published March 17, April 21 and May 19.

Read the explanatory cover letter

Download the first study

Read the Sacramento Bee coverage

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What were the three biggest California water stories of the past seven days?  Well, the news-heads and policy wonks here at Laer Pearce & Associates have compiled them for you here.  You’ll find the Big Three here every Thursday, or you can follow LPAWater on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news and analysis. You can also sign up to receive the Weekly 3 via email here.  This week:

Wet and Dry

Al Gore can smile and explain how the fierce winter storms in the Midwest and East can be blamed on global warming – but only if you call it climate change – and we really don’t care because it’s sunny and mild here.  Such are the vagaries of weather. We’re also seeing that here in the West, as California enjoys a respite from drought … while the Colorado River basin struggles with too many sunny days.

Read DWR’s most recent report on the Sierra snowpack

Read The Economist: Las Vegas is the canary in the mineshaft

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