Whose water is it, anyway? Water rights 101
Posted on | April 7, 2015 | No Comments
Who has the rights to the state’s water, in what order, for what, in what quantity, and under what terms, is an evolving construct. The above photo captures South Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta farmer Rudy Mussi in front of his Roberts Island alfalfa field, where he posed to demonstrate why California’s oldest water rights holders should not have to meter traditional flood irrigation. He and fellow Delta farmers with long-held claims on the state’s water say their rights preempt those of 19 million Southern Californians also dependent on the Delta. To learn more about the California’s rapidly changing water law system, click on the image to be taken to KCET’s Bay Delta Project. Photo: Emily Green/KCET
Tags: Bay-Delta > Emily Green > KCET > water rights
The Assignment? “Explain the Delta”
Posted on | March 17, 2015 | No Comments
When KCET came to me with a project funded by the Rose Foundation to “explain the Delta” to Southern Californians, the easiest response was, “You’re drinking it.” The first in a multi-part new series for KCET shows how the Delta became ground zero for a plan by California and the federal Bureau of Reclamation to spread water from places that had it to places that didn’t. Click on this 1930 map from the California State Water Plan to be taken to Part One of the KCET Bay Delta Project.
Bob, Ted, Leavenworth and Bavaria
Posted on | February 25, 2015 | 2 Comments
In 1960 Bob Rodgers and Ted Price opened a Bavarian-themed cafe in the depressed logging town of Leavenworth in central Washington. A decade later, residents were dancing around maypoles. Prompted by Rodgers and Price, Leavenworth became an Alpine-style resort so popular that it received an “All America City” award and was featured in Look magazine. Yesterday Rodgers’ niece, Arlene Collins, phoned to say that Price died on February 19th in Vancouver, Washington. Her uncle had died “just about exactly a year earlier.” So, if heaven exists, it’s a safe guess that it’s about to be redecorated. Here’s to the men who once wrote me a tongue-in-cheek note that began, “Thank you for outing us on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.” And here is the 2003 LAT piece that prompted the note from the World War II veterans who braved American lumberjack country and decided that a good new look would be lederhosen. Photo: Rodgers and Price/Leavenworthhistory.com
Proposition 1 analyzed for voters
Posted on | October 23, 2014 | No Comments
Californians, whether you love, hate, or have heretofore been unaware of Proposition 1, a measure on the pending November 4 ballot that would raise $7.12 billion in public money for water projects, here is the best-considered and most impartial breakdown that you are likely to find. Everyone who reads the Pacific Institute’s Prop 1 summary or report itself is likely to have at least one takeaway line.
Mine is: “water conservation and efficiency efforts would be allocated a mere 1%.”
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Pacific Institute > Proposition 1
Fourth year in the garden
Posted on | October 17, 2014 | No Comments
Helianthus annuus flowers. Bees, finches and squirrels will keep visiting even cut flowers — if you leave them outside — for nectar and seed heads.
When I remarked to a neighbor that a group from the Los Angeles County Arboretum was coming this week to tour my garden the response was: “Why?”
Bragging never ends well.
That said, it’s as good a time as any to link to this photo essay of the fourth year in the garden.
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North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
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