Best of the Notebook

WATER QUALITY: A basic primer on water quality regulation

September 9, 2020

496

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 t... Read More...

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

Maven

August 26, 2020

234

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

435

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 plans has revealed some important lessons to be l... Read More...

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

Maven

August 12, 2020

1080

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 ... Read More...

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

Maven

July 22, 2020

440

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

731

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 Southern California. Over the course of that career, he... Read More...

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

Maven

July 8, 2020

484

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, f... Read More...

FEATURE: The state of California’s environment

Maven

July 1, 2020

301

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

997

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 important part of California's - and the nation's water su... Read More...

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

Maven

June 17, 2020

297

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 add... Read More...

FEATURE: Water rights 101

Maven

June 3, 2020

1479

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

661

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 changes in water storage in a specific area; however,... Read More...

FEATURE: The state of the salmonids in California

Maven

May 6, 2020

589

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 remedia... Read More...

TED GRANTHAM: The evolution of environmental flows in California

Maven

April 15, 2020

605

Ted Grantham is a Cooperative Extension Specialist at UC Berkeley and the CalTrout Ecosystem Fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California. He studies water, climate, and water management with a focus ... Read More...

WATER LAW SYMPOSIUM: The battle over the raising of Shasta Dam

Maven

April 8, 2020

940

One of the long-running controversies in California water is the effort to raise Shasta Dam, a dam on the Sacramento River in Northern California which creates a 4.5 MAF reservoir, the largest in California. The dam provides long-term water storage, flood con... Read More...