Have a nice day, Governor Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger's breakfast, via Twitter. His previous twitter from last night: "Water is biggest crisis facing CA. 40% unemplymt in Cent Val. Delta close to collapse. Leg must deliver water Friday or see lots of vetoes." Click on the smiley face if you can stomach more.
ONE month ago, the Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Contra Costa Times, Capitol Weekly, Aquafornia, this website and others followed the California legislature down to the last weary minutes of regular session (intro here, news roll here, conclusion here). For the first time in a quarter of a century, there was a slim chance that a package of water bills aimed at securing the future of safe water supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta might pass.
They didn’t. Arnold Schwarzenegger threatened legislature that unless Delta …
“The governor should back off”
WHILE the post-Zell Los Angeles Times news side has had only spotty coverage of the most important water legislation in a quarter of a century moving through the state legislature this year, the paper’s editorial pages have followed it diligently. (For an account of rolling news coverage across the press, click here).
The subject at the heart of the legislation is the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, source of water for two out of three Californians and the largest estuary on the Pacific coast of North America.
Today’s editorial in the Times gives credit to the much maligned legislature and looks at arguments over how to pay for an estimated $12bn worth of water infrastructure upgrades.
Their bottom line: “The governor should back off and allow lawmakers the additional week or two to craft a package that will work.” To read …
Debris warning for burn areas
THE US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY today issued winter rain debris-flow warnings for communities at the feet of the San Gabriel Mountains, as well as areas in Big Tujunga Canyon, Pacoima Canyon, Arroyo Seco, West Fork of the San Gabriel River, and Devils Canyon.
For the USGS press release along with further links for landslide preparedness and weather warning systems, click here; for text of the USGS hazard assessment, click here; for the Los Angeles Times report, click here. To enlarge the map, click on the image.
Over at LA Observed, Kevin Roderick harks back to John McPhee’s account of “rock porridge” via a Bernadette Murphy op-ed piece in the LA Times.
If it’s any comfort to those downhill from potential torrents of debris, predictions of an El Nino for Southern California look about as promising for rainfall as another supposed El Nino year, 2006-2007, a record low …
She says Mulroy, Reisner said Mulwray
Patricia Mulroy. Photo: Sam Morris / Las Vegas Sun. Click on the image to be taken to Morris's portrait.
WHEN Marc Reisner updated his landmark book Cadillac Desert in 1992, he mistakenly referred to the “forceful woman” who heads the Las Vegas-based Southern Nevada Water Authority as Patricia Mulwray. Her name is actually Patricia Mulroy.
Reisner’s mistake might have been a Freudian slip: Hollis Mulwray is a character in the movie Chinatown who is based on William Mulholland, the powerful founder of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
To keep reading Matt Jenkins’ update in the High Country News on Patricia Mulroy’s plan to siphon the water from the foot of the Great Basin National Park to Las Vegas, click here.…
The Dry Garden: Carol’s list
AT A packed hall of the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden last week, horticulturist Carol Bornstein was asked by assembled Southern Californian park keepers how native plants would do in landscapes irrigated by reclaimed water.
To read what the author of “California Native Plants for the Garden” advised in this week’s Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times, click here.
For information on how to attend Bornstein’s presentation on the sensory impact of native plants this Thursday night (October 8th) at the Southern California Horticultural Society meeting, click here and here for her October 15th talk on the same subject at the Solvang public library.…
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