Fasten your seat belt, California
The reported voiding of the Quantification Settlement Agreement today by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Roland Candee has put a concentrated bounce into what Southern Californian water managers have long fashioned as their “hard landing” after they were forced in 2003 by six less well-off states sharing the Colorado River to stop hogging as much as 962,000 acre feet of water above their legal allotment of 4.4 million.
In spite of unfettered urban development across the Colorado River service area in the lead-up to the 2003 cap, Southern California cities managed to reduce their reliance on the river in part by legalizing trades of water from the wildly well endowed agricultural rights holders of the Imperial Irrigation District and neighbors, who had between them 3.850 million acre feet of water. However, evidently not everyone in the Mojave farming community approved of the QSA. Imperial, in a bid to reaffirm its …
Identifying the whatchamacallits
Ah, nature. It’s so full of whatchamacallits.
For many, no labels are necessary when a flower catches the eye or a bird flits overhead. It could be cuckoo or it could be a sparrow. It’s background.
For others, the problem isn’t lack of interest, but memory. By the time most of us are back home flipping through a bird book, our minds will have played tricks with the plumage. He is sure it was an oriole; she is just as sure it was a woodpecker.
Click here to keep reading the LA Times article on new iPhone apps for bird and wildflower lovers.…
Rain likely
The National Weather Service’s prediction for a chance of rain over the weekend in Los Angeles County elevates to “rain likely” for Martin Luther King Day and into the following week. If you haven’t got your wildflower seeds in the ground, the next few days are your window. Over at AccuWeather.com, Ken Clark’s blog sees enough rain coming that he warns people living near recent burn areas to “be ready to evacuate.”
Meanwhile, as the struggle between town planners and developers continues over implementing a Low Impact Development ordinance that would decrease storm water run-off, a community meeting is scheduled for tomorrow at City Hall. Click here for details.…
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