Calls to California Legislature to save Delta salmon
Posted on | July 5, 2009 | 1 Comment
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 agribusiness for salmon’s sake:”
In coming weeks, the California Legislature will address legislation on one of the state’s most important issues, the management of our water. We need to ask our legislators some questions before they make the difficult decisions that will determine the future of the delta ecosystem, our water and our fisheries:
Do we really believe that more dams, reservoirs and a $25 billion peripheral canal (a pipe three football fields wide), to pump water around the delta, will save the delta?
Why do we as taxpayers subsidize water for agribusiness to grow water-intensive cotton and alfalfa in the desert?
How did it come to be that 10 percent of California’s farmers use 70 percent of California’s water?
Maybe we need to consider conservation incentives rather than water subsidies. Instead of more reservoirs, we should talk about recharging the ground water aquifers that already exist, recycling, desalination and retiring drainage-impaired agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley.
At 9 a.m. Tuesday, the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee will hold a hearing on proposed delta solutions legislation in Room 4202 of the state Capitol in Sacramento. Possibly this will be the one and only hearing for the public to comment on policies that could permanently shape the delta’s future and water use in California.
From “Water use must change whether fish live or die:”
“…the health and viability of local salmon has everything to do with the health and viability of the aquatic ecosystem that surrounds us. As biologists will attest, if you want to measure the health of aquatic ecosystems, you need to measure fish.
As salmon begin to go extinct, it sets off a chain reaction in the natural community and a chain reaction for people impacted by loss of revenue from salmon and sport fishing, farming and tourism in the bay delta. It also has major implications for the costs and quality of California’s water supply.
A run-down of water bills now in the works in the California legislature:
SB12
Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto: The bill establishes the Delta Ecosystem and Water Council to advance two equal goals: restoring the delta ecosystem and creating a more reliable water supply in California. The bill is scheduled for a hearing by a joint session of the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife and Senate Natural Resources and Water committees on Tuesday.
AB39
Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael: This bill requires development of a new plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that implements the Delta Vision Strategic Plan issued by the Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force. The plan calls for improving the existing water channel through the delta to move the water south and creating a second channel to carry the water around the delta to the pumps that export the water south. The document refers to the channel as a conveyance facility. In years past, this idea was referred to as the peripheral canal.
AB49
Assemblymen Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael: Requires a 20 percent reduction per capita in urban water use by 2020. This bill is scheduled to be heard Monday in the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee.
SB457 and SB 458
Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis: This bill requires the Delta Protection Commission to review all general plans of cities and counties within the delta protection area. This bill authorizes the commission to cover the cost of the review by imposing a per acre-foot fee on any water diversion within the delta watershed, and a fee on any water conveyed through or around the delta.
Tags: Bay-Delta > chance of rain > Emily Green > salmon > San Francisco Chronicle
Secret water bills to emerge in Sacramento, claims op-ed
Posted on | July 4, 2009 | No Comments
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.
Tags: Bay-Delta > chance of rain > Emily Green > San Francisco Chronicle
The Dry Garden: armed for conservation
Posted on | July 3, 2009 | 1 Comment
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.
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Los Angeles Times > nozzles > The Dry Garden
Drought to persist or intensify
Posted on | July 2, 2009 | No Comments
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.
To be taken to the Weekly Drought Monitor website, click on image.
July dry gardening events
Posted on | July 2, 2009 | No Comments
WE CAN change the world … by treating it sensibly and artfully. What’s more, for Western gardeners, it’s fun. Click here for a full calendar of dry gardening events around Southern California. If you like the look of the Epilobium californica pictured below and blooming now in native gardens across the region with scarcely a drop of water, don’t miss Lili Singer’s “Look Ma, no lawn!” courses for the Theodore Payne Foundation.
Epilobium californica. Photo: Native Sons. Click on photo for link to Native Sons nursery
Lili Singer of the Theodore Payne Foundation
Tags: chance of rain > dry gardening > Emily Green > Native Gardening
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