Best of the Notebook

MEETING: Delta Watermaster breaks down water use in the Delta, addresses implementation of reduced reliance on the Delta

October 28, 2020

390

At the October 22nd meeting of the Delta Stewardship Council, Delta Watermaster Michael George gave a detailed presentation on estimating water use in the Delta, something he acknowledged doesn't matter much ... Read More...

FEATURE: How dynamic are property rights in water?

Maven

October 21, 2020

516

Professor Holly Doremus is a leading scholar and teacher in the areas of environmental law, natural resources law, and law and science, bringing a strong background in life sciences and a commitment to interdis... Read More...

WATER QUALITY: A basic primer on water quality regulation

Maven

September 9, 2020

596

In 2014, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (or SGMA), requiring local agencies to be formed and groundwater sustainability plans to be written for all groundwater basins subject to SGMA. Those plans must avoid six undesirable re... Read More...

ACWA CONFERENCE: Adapting to Flood, Fire, and Drought: A Case Study of the American River

Maven

August 26, 2020

270

The Governor's Water Resilience Portfolio Initiative underscores the need for communities to maintain and diversify water supplies and to protect and enhance natural environments to prepare for the impacts of... Read More...

GSA SUMMIT: Addressing environment, disadvantaged communities, and domestic wells in the 2022 Groundwater Sustainability Plans

Maven

August 19, 2020

471

The groundwater sustainability plans that were submitted to the Department of Water Resources in January of 2020 were the first of the groundwater sustainability plans to be completed. Public review of these... Read More...

DAM REMOVAL UPDATE: Klamath Dams, Matilija Dam, and the Potter Valley Project

Maven

August 12, 2020

1761

The California Advisory Committee on Salmon and Steelhead Trout (CAC) was re-established by the Legislature in 1983 in response to public concern about declining populations of salmon and steelhead. The role of the public committee is to advise the Director ... Read More...

GSA SUMMIT: Setting Sustainable Management Criteria: It’s easy, isn’t it?

Maven

July 22, 2020

495

The details of how a groundwater sustainability plan will be implemented are defined by the setting of sustainable management criteria (or SMC). With several undesirable results to consider, a range of tech... Read More...

TIM QUINN: Forty Years of California Water Policy: What Worked, What Didn’t, and Lessons for the Future

Maven

July 16, 2020

847

Tim Quinn spent more than ten years as the executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies and more than twenty years as the Deputy General Manager of the Metropolitan Water District of South... Read More...

GSA SUMMIT: Lessons learned from the 2020 GSPs: Perspectives from the critically overdrafted basins

Maven

July 8, 2020

514

The implementation phase of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act has now begun for the basins designated as critically-overdrafted. Getting to this point has been an unparalleled journey as communities, farmers, water suppliers, and others navigated thro... Read More...

FEATURE: The state of California’s environment

Maven

July 1, 2020

321

Friends of the River co-founder Mark Dubois and current Executive Director Eric Wesselman discuss the protections for California rivers and why they are optimistic for the future April 22 is Earth Day, which m... Read More...

GROUNDWATER 101: The basics

Maven

June 24, 2020

1485

Dr. Thomas Harter provides a basic understanding of groundwater – what it is, how much groundwater is out there, how fast groundwater moves, and where it comes from and where it goes Groundwater is an importan... Read More...

CA WATER COMMISSION: Preparing California’s Water System for Climate Extremes

Maven

June 17, 2020

324

In October 2019, the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released the report, Priorities for California’s Water, which outlined California’s water management challenges and their top priorities for addressing those challenges. Other reports from the ... Read More...

FEATURE: Water rights 101

Maven

June 3, 2020

1815

California water law is complex, governed by both state and federal law, part property law and part environmental law. The system incorporates a traditional water rights riparian system with the appropriative ... Read More...

WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT: Developing a water budget

Maven

May 13, 2020

893

With water availability being an important concern, water managers often use water budgets to quantify and manage water resources. A water budget is an accounting of the rates of the inflows, outflows, and cha... Read More...

FEATURE: The state of the salmonids in California

Maven

May 6, 2020

648

Webinar takes a deep dive into the state of salmon and steelhead, and provides recommendations for resiliency In 2005, the California Legislature passed SB 857 requiring CalTrans to locate, assess, and remediate fish passage barriers on the State Highway Syst... Read More...