Big water
A report released Wednesday by the Pacific Institute shows how in a relatively modest pass at obvious waste, California could conserve more than one and a half times the amount of water used every year in Los Angeles through improvements in farm irrigation, city landscaping, more efficient appliances and plumbing upgrades. Thirty per cent of the opportunities were found in cities and the remaining seventy per cent in agriculture. The most intriguing part? The cost is a fraction of the allowance for new dams called for in the bills behind the now postponed state water bond. Click here to read the synopsis, and here for the report. Or to read why conservation is the first most universally logical step for Californians to take to insure their water supply in the future, click 
Prop 18 analyzed by The Pacific Institute
Click on the cover for a PDF file the Pacific Institute's analysis of Proposition 18, California's $11.1bn water bond
At the end of 2009, the California Legislature passed a series of water-related bills and at the same time approved a massive $11.14 billion bond [the "Safe, Clean, and Reliable Drinking Water Supply Act of 2010"] to fund a wide range of water projects and efforts. This is the largest water bond in 50 years, yet the costs and benefits of the bond have not been fully assessed by an independent organization. Until now, writes Pacific Institute president Peter Gleick in the San Francisco Chronicle.
This bond is to be voted on by California voters in November, as Proposition 18. The Governor recently proposed postponing the bond, but the Legislature has not yet taken the action required to have it pulled off of the November…
When life gives you salt water, make subsidies
THIS week, the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California voted a hefty public subsidy for the Poseidon Group, a private company proposing a desalination plant in Carlsbad, CA, near San Diego. To this, Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, CA, has a two-part response in the San Francisco Chronicle. For part one, click here, for yesterday’s part two here.
Cadiz environmental review back online
WITH THE revival of the Cadiz groundwater project in the San Bernardino desert, the Pacific Institute has put back online an exhaustive environmental impact report finished in 2001. To access it, click on the cover, or here. For the Pacific Institute overview page of its work on the Cadiz project, click here. The institute’s president, Peter Gleick, who offered to host the material, says the “serious thanks” are due to Courtney Smith for uploading it. Courtney, thank you! Seriously.
Saved by drip?
A REPORT this week from the Pacific Institute argues that using pricing to encourage California farmers to switch from flood irrigation to sprinklers or drip could conserve 5.6 million acre-feet of water a year. According to the report’s co-author Peter Gleick, this is the equivalent to:
