The week (and a day) that was 6/28-7/5/2009
- “…people are looking for responsible luxury.” From a July 4 Los Angeles Times roundup of fashionable private swimming pools
- “Many of us think the situation is even more dire.” Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist William Patzert on the White House Climate Change report
Calls to California Legislature to save Delta salmon
Delta salmon. Photo: California Department of Water Resources
FOLLOWING Saturday’s editorial pointing to a tide of water bills about to surface in Sacramento, today the San Francisco Chronicle carries a guide to those bills along with calls to protect the Bay-Delta’s historic salmon fisheries.
Samples, links below along with a guide to the bills.
From “As the Delta goes, so go our salmon:”
“The estuary is dying. California has long viewed the delta as a massive reservoir it could endlessly plumb for agriculture and development. Water “wasting” to the sea is seen as a massive leak. In reality, the delta is an ecosystem – it is our Everglades, our Chesapeake Bay. An estuary’s lifeblood is its freshwater inflow mixing with saline tidal flows to create a rich, brackish water that nourishes salmon, crabs, sole, oysters and shrimp. As the estuary dies, so do California salmon.”
From “Limit …
Secret water bills to emerge in Sacramento, claims op-ed
JULY 4, 2009: “Several secret bills are set to emerge this week to cover some contentious water issues, including governance of the Bay-Delta region, water conservation, new dams and an updated proposal for a peripheral canal, which was overwhelmingly rejected by California voters in 1982,” claims an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Click here for text.…
The Dry Garden: armed for conservation
If there’s one thing harder to get than a good garden hose, it’s a good nozzle to fit on it. Now that we’re in a drought, good nozzles we need. After testing 10, two leaked from the start and one exploded. The Dramm Revolver (above, in purple) performed best. Shopping for them offered an experience that felt more like going to a gun show than a garden center. For the full LA Times story, click on the image, which is by LA Times photographer Kirk McKoy.
Drought to persist or intensify
California is red on the most recent edition of the US Seasonal Drought Outlook, along with western Nevada, south Texas, Louisiana, central Oklahoma, central Washington, pockets of northern Montana and western faces of the Hawaiian islands.
Source: National Weather Service. To link to the US Seasonal Drought Outlook webpage, click on the map image.
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