Governor calls for action to prevent water crisis (click here)
Issue Date: July 25, 2007
By Ching LeeAssistant Editor
The California Aquaduct is the principal water-conveyance structure of the State Water Project, carrying water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Southern California.
While California farmers and ranchers continue to struggle through one of the driest years on record, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week renewed his call for the state to invest in new water storage and outlined his long-term plan to improve the state's water system.
The governor visited the San Luis Reservoir in Merced County and toured the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during a two-day stump to address the state's worsening water crisis and urge lawmakers to approve his $5.9 billion water bond package, which he unveiled in January.
That plan would provide $4.5 billion to build two reservoirs and boost surface and groundwater storage; $1 billion to restore the delta; and $450 million for restoration and conservation efforts....


Inspector General Investigating Allegations of Politics Over Delta Species (click here)
by Dan Bacher Tuesday Jul 10th, 2007 3:45 PM
During a Congressional field hearing in Vallejo on July 2, Steve Thompson, Manager of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's California and Nevada Operations Office in Sacramento, could not tell Representative Mike Thompson whether scientists at the Department of Interior were pressured by the Bush administration to manipulate science because the matter was currently under investigation. Just as Dick Cheney engineered the Klamath Fish Kill of 2002 by disregarding science for political purposes, the Bush administration has orchestrated the collapse of Delta smelt, winter run chinook salmon, spring run chinook salmon and other fish species by increasing Delta water exports since 2002. The horribly destructive political legacy of Bush and Cheney will be felt on the Bay-Delta Estuary, the largest and most important estuary on the West Coast, and the Klamath River for decades to come....


Banks at breaking point (click here)
5:00AM Saturday July 28, 2007
By Peter Huck
A storm in the Napa River valley breaks through the levee. Photo / Reuters
If politicians are correct a perfect storm is bearing down on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a labyrinth of wetlands, channels and islands that is a vital hub in California's vast water management system that supplies fresh water to a US$32 billion ($40 billion) agribusiness and 25 million people.
Earlier this month, state lawmakers said that the delta levee system - 1770km of earth embankments, some a century old - that helps channel fresh water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers into two huge aqueducts that flow through the San Joaquin Valley into Southern California, was on the verge of collapse.
"There is substantial evidence that the delta is completely broken," Department of Water Resources director Lester Snow said. "We need to invest significantly."…


New thinking needed on floods (click here)
By Patrick McCully
July 17, 2007
Floods are the most destructive, most frequent and most costly natural disasters on earth. And they're getting worse.
Floods have caused hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars of damage around the world this summer. The worst floods in 50 years killed at least a dozen people in Texas and destroyed 1,000 homes, and other states have also been hit hard.
England has suffered unprecedented rainstorms and serious floods; cleanup is expected to cost insurance companies $3 billion. Several hundred have been killed and hundreds of thousands evacuated in Bangladesh, China, India and Pakistan. Australia, Japan and Switzerland have been hammered.
Flood damage is soaring partly because global warming is leading to more intense storms, and partly because more people are living and working on flood plains. Flood-control measures, which are supposed to protect us, are in fact a key part of the problem - and the limitations of conventional flood control will become ever more evident as global warming-induced super-storms test dams and levees beyond their intended limits.
The time has come to recognize that all anti-flood infrastructure can fail. This must be accounted for in flood planning....