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 ballot.
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August fully loaded
Wet gardens need grooming once a week. Dry ones demand attention once a quarter. To learn what to cut and when, do take the native plant maintenance courses offered this month at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley or Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont. Then, with all the time you’ve saved, join the wonderful Leigh Adams at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden to learn how to make mosaics. The class stipulates that you make a birdbath. An oppressive stroke. Tile the town! There is no cheaper, prettier or more fun way to add color to a dormant garden. If none of that appeals, there are bird walks and bike rides in the newly compiled dry garden events calender for August.…
High good, low bad: Mead in July 2010
Photograph: Pete McBride on the parched Colorado River delta, by Jonathan Waterman. Click on the image to be taken to Waterman's Colorado River Project.
During a recent discussion of water at the Aspen Institute’s Environment Forum in Colorado, former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt told a packed house: “The American Southwest is not one of those regions where there is water scarcity. It’s hard to believe, given all the hyping in the national and local and regional press.”
The audience and his copanelists–Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project and freshwater fellow for the National Geographic Society, and Pat Mulroy, general manager of Southern Nevada Water Authority (overseeing Las Vegas water)–were taken aback by these statements, writes Jonathan Waterman in the first of a series of Colorado River notes in National Geographic.
Throughout the Southwest, and particularly in a region that I know, the Colorado River …
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