By Aubrey Bettencourt | The Modesto Bee If you go to your doctor and ask for prescription pain relievers even after you’re no longer in pain, that probably makes you an addict. Instead of killing pain, you need those pills to feed an addiction. And you will say anything to get those pain pills! To an uninvolved…
By Aubrey Bettencourt | Fox & Hounds The number of homeless people dying on the streets, along the riverbank and under bridges is going up in Sacramento, writes Bill Lindelof of the Sacramento Bee. As the total climbed to 705 homeless men, women and children dying between 2002–2015 tin California’s capitol, state government bureaucrats at the…
California finds itself in simultaneous — conflicting and confusing — statewide emergencies. Depending on Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr.’s whim, we are either enduring a drought emergency or a flood emergency. On the one hand, there is the State of Emergency Declaration of a Statewide Drought, issued January 17, 2014 by Governor Edmund G. Brown,…
By Aubrey Bettencourt | Fox & Hounds A new environmental study, published in in the prestigious North American Journal of Fisheries Management, reveals that Governor Jerry Brown’s State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) imposed so-called pulse-flow release requirements on water rights holders affecting several California rivers, operating from unproven beliefs the study now shows were without sufficient…
By Dave Kranz Lessons learned during the multi-year California drought will help farmers and ranchers cope with the next one—and those lessons extended beyond the farm to the realms of policy and public perception, according to farmers who spoke at a water conference in Monterey. Four farmers from different parts of the Central Valley talked…
By Aubrey Bettencourt Executive Director, California Water Alliance | Tuesday, May 23rd, 2017 California’s epic drought is officially over. As drought-related mandatory water conservation orders end, ordinary citizens’ water, sewer, utility rates and other water-related costs continue to rise. East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD) recently announced two water rate hikes, one of 9.5 percent in…
By Aubrey Bettencourt Executive Director, California Water Alliance | Thursday, May 25th, 2017 On May 13, 2017, Governor Brown outlined his revised budget proposal focusing the state’s financial resources on his High Speed Rail legacy project and renewing its efforts to fight the Trump Administration on multiple fronts. While he may have dropped the mic with…
By Christine Souza An employee of Bettencourt Farms uses a backhoe to help drain water from a flooded alfalfa field at the farm near Lemoore. Rapid snowmelt during high temperatures swelled the level of the Kings River, which breached its banks in Kings County and near Kingsburg, due to increased outflow from Pine Flat Lake.…
By Aubrey Bettencourt Executive Director, California Water Alliance | Thursday, July 6th, 2017 Read Original Article Here A few weeks ago, the governor and other state politicians ran victory laps proclaiming their passage of California’s new record budget. The behemoth budget — the largest spending plan in our state’s history — provides $183 billion to fund many…
By Aubrey Bettencourt, California Water Alliance Posted in The Fresno Bee Flint, Michigan, and its 100,000 citizens exist in one universe; California’s Central Valley and its population of nearly a million cling to survival in another. Both have economic woes. Both suffer a deadly water supply made toxic with lead. Beyond that, all comparison…