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MOUNTAIN HOUSE (CBS13) — The community of Mountain House is days away from having no water at all after the state cut off its only water source. Anthony Gordon saves drinking water just in case, even though he never thought it would come to this. “My wife thinks I’m nuts. I have like 500 gallons of drinking water stored in my home,” he said. The upscale community of Mountain House, west of Tracy, is days away from having no water. It’s not just about lawns—there may not be a drop for the 15,000 residents to drink. “We’re out there looking...

In the summer of 2002, shortly before I was elected to Congress, I sat through an eye-opening meeting with representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council and several local environmental activist groups. Hoping to convince me to support various water restrictions, they argued that San Joaquin Valley farmers should stop growing alfalfa and cotton in order to save water — though they allowed that the planting of high-value crops such as almonds could continue. Then, as our discussion turned to the groups' overall vision for the San Joaquin Valley, they told me something astonishing:

"... Clues to Causes It's clear that the pups' main problem is a lack of food, rather than disease, but it's less certain what's wiping out food supplies from year to year, and whether the problem will persist. This year, the most likely culprit is that warm water blob, which has disrupted food webs and might also be killing masses of seabirds. But that blob wasn’t there during the earlier strandings, when oceanographic conditions looked much more normal..."

California Gov. Jerry Brown said he is doing his part by cutting back on showering and drinking water as the state continues to battle extreme drought. “I didn’t take a shower this morning,” the 77-year-old Democrat told reporters Friday after a meeting with Silicon Valley mayors in San Jose, Bloomberg reported. “We’ve installed a low-flow system and we’re using it quite carefully and quite sparingly.” Mr. Brown said he continues drinking coffee and wine but has reduced his water consumption.

California Gov. Jerry Brown is attempting to implement the state’s first-ever mandatory water cutbacks, among voluntary measures, and he is leading by example: “I didn’t take a shower this morning,” he told reporters in San Jose last week. Brown also said that he has cut back on drinking water, though he continues to enjoy coffee.

WASHINGTON -- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said Sunday that he supports a constitutional amendment that would bar the Supreme Court from granting marriage equality rights nationwide. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision this month that could grant, for once and for all, same-sex couples the right to wed across the country. But Walker said on ABC's "This Week" that he would support amending the constitution to protect states that still want to ban same-sex marriage. "I personally believe that marriage is between one man and one woman," Walker, a prospective GOP presidential candidate, said. "If the...

After years of unfounded hysteria from so-called environmentalists, the media and Hollywood that fracking causes drinking water contamination, the Environmental Protection Agency just issued a major blow to anti-fracking activists. A new report from the EPA, based on a study sanctioned by Congress, shows drinking water contamination only results if fracking wells aren't built or maintained properly, which is a rarity. "We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. Of the potential mechanisms identified in this report, we found specific instances where one or more of these mechanisms...

An unusual schism has opened up on California’s politically dominant left flank, where Gov. Jerry Brown, a longtime favorite of the state’s environmentalists, has refused to give in to the climate change movement’s demand for a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing. His stance comes despite the growing clamor in the aftermath of fellow Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision in December to allow a similar statewide ban of the revolutionary oil and gas drilling technique in New York. Hollywood stars and environmental activists badly want California to be next. The irony, of course, is that there may be no greener governor...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Chinese state firms are poised to be strong contenders in the race to make high-speed trains that will sprint between Los Angeles and San Francisco, part of a $68 billion project to bring the service to the United States for the first time. While "bullet train" manufacturers from Germany, Japan, South Korea, and France are expected to be among those jockeying for the estimated $1 billion train contract, China’s ability to offer low prices and hefty financing appear to make it the one to beat, say lobbyists and industry insiders. Lacking experience in the technology, California...

California Gov. Jerry Brown had some sharp words for environmentalist critics of his proposed Sacramento River water tunnels. On Wednesday, Brown told critics of his $15 billion plan to “shut up, because you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” according to the AP. Brown’s office told Sacramento Bee blog Capitol Alert that the governor’s remarks were made in “jest.” But the sharp rebuke highlights the tension surrounding the pricey project, which would send water from the northern part of the state south by using a pair of underground water tunnels to divert water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River...

“You know, I believe people knew this was likely in the 1970s, but enviros stopped the necessary water projects,” Glenn Reynolds wrote as an aside in September while linking to an article titled “American Southwest has 80% chance of decade-long drought this century.” Today at City Journal, Victor Davis Hanson flashes back to when California enviro-leftists began the countdown on the state’s existence: Brown and other Democratic leaders will never concede that their own opposition in the 1970s (when California had about half its present population) to the completion of state and federal water projects, along with their more recent...

Joel Kotkin, the noted liberal critic of California’s far-left government, says that Gov. Jerry Brown is leading California to ruin–and that the state’s business leaders share the blame by failing to speak out. In a new essay at the Daily Beast that summarizes much of his recent criticism, Kotkin says that while Brown’s father Pat brought the state progress and prosperity as governor (1959-1967), Jerry Brown “has waged a kind of Oedipal struggle against his father’s legacy.”

California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work. As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises. As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes. The water situation reflects this breakdown in the starkest way. Everyone who follows California knew it was inevitable we would suffer a long-term drought. Most of the...

People will gather in San Francisco this weekend to mark the 109th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake. SNIP The only survivors are believed to be 113-year-old Ruth Newman and 109-year-old William Del Monte. It was not known Friday if they would attend the early-morning ceremony Saturday. Mayor Ed Lee, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr and Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White will attend.

One water district manager says the plan fails to account for water-saving measures already in effect in some California communitiesCalifornia cities are pushing back against Gov. Jerry Brown's order for mandatory water use reductions, but it's not likely that regulators will retreat with the state in its fourth year of drought. The State Water Resources Control Board's proposal to meet Brown's order has some cities slashing water use by more than a third, and it will be updated in the coming days. Dozens of affected agencies say the expected reduction targets are overreaching, unrealistic and unfair. Calif. Sets Water Use...

Gov. Jerry Brown has billed his $25 billion plan to build two massive tunnels under the Delta as a way to not just make it easier to move water from north to south, but also increase the reliability of water supplies and bring back salmon and other endangered species. But now the Brown administration is proposing a major and politically risky change: dropping a 50-year guarantee to restore the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta's environment. A centerpiece of the project, the environmental plan included $8 billion to preserve 100,000 acres of wetlands and dozens of other restoration efforts. The dramatic course...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Even in 2015, the New York Times is still pretending that desalination does not exist The New York Times just published this article on California’s water shortage:California Drought Tests History of Endless GrowthA punishing drought is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been the state’s engine has run against the limits of nature.April 4, 2015LOS ANGELES — For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and...

A punishing drought is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been the state’s engine has run against the limits of nature. ... a punishing drought — and the unprecedented measures the state announced last week to compel people to reduce water consumption — is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature. Can Los Angeles continue to dominate as the country’s capital of entertainment and glamour, and Silicon Valley as the center...

Victor Davis Hanson, noting the draconian water restrictions that Gov. Jerry Brown has imposed on California, suggested that Brown and his cohorts have only themselves to blame for the effects of the drought in a piece in City Journal on Thursday. When Brown was first governor, in the 1970s, he opposed a number of projects that might have brought more water to parched Californians. Brown also diverted water to fish and river enhancement that might instead have lessened the effects of the drought.As a result of Brown’s folly, California’s agricultural sector is in great peril. This peril will impact...

The liberals who run California have long purported that their green policies are a free (organic) lunch, but the bills are coming due. Lo, Governor Jerry Brown has mandated a 25% statewide reduction in water use. Consider this rationing a surcharge for decades of environmental excess.