Divide Water Fairly. Use It Efficiently.

By: William Bourdeau   For forty years, not a single new state-funded dam or reservoir was built in the state, even as California’spopulation doubled. Rather than build critical water infrastructure, California turned instead to its legislature and administrative bureaucrats to ration the state’s water resources to Californians. Now they regularly impose mandates restricting how we…

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Showing California’s Water Managers’ Incompetence

This week, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) set an initial water allocation for our State Water Project at 15 percent for cities and farms. During the 2016-2017 water year the state allowed nearly 50 million acre-feet (16 trillion gallons) of water to run unimpeded into the Pacific Ocean. The inability of California’s water…

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When is it a wetland? When a state board says so

Originally Published in the Sacramento Bee A single word, in the right context, has power. The State Water Resources Control Board is engaged in a wholesale reclassification of millions of acres of public and private lands by choosing a new definition for the word “wetland.” Whether out of fear of their admitted failure to preserve…

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Back to the Drawing Board on Wetlands for Water Board

By Jim Patterson Originally Published in Fox & Hounds Daily In California, nothing succeeds like success except — perhaps — failure. Take as one case in point California’s State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) in the matter of wetlands management. According to the SWRCB — California’s governor-appointed czars endowed by our legislature with broad authority…

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The State Water Resources Control Board’s Back-Door Land Grab

The California Water Alliance, a statewide, non-profit, water-policy organization, submitted public comments in response to the State Water Resources Control Board’s rule making process for Clean Water Act Section 401 – Certification and Wetlands Program, “STATE WETLAND DEFINITION AND PROCEDURES FOR DISCHARGES OF DREDGED OR FILL MATERIAL TO WATERS OF THE STATE” redefining “wetlands” under…

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Flint and California, a painfully parallel water-quality universe

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…

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Like Drought Never Happened: Budget Omits Funds for Water

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…

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‘Worst is over’ for snowmelt, officials say

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.…

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Trump Provides California Water Solutions as Gov. Brown Focuses on his Legacy

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…

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