Free Republic

The sprawling estuary about 70 miles inland from San Francisco feels distinctly out of place — more like the swampy Florida Everglades than arid California. But from that confluence of two great rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, 1,100 miles of webbed waterways and levees send upward of six million acre-feet of freshwater a year to thirstier parts of the state, from farms in the San Joaquin Valley to the Southern California megalopolis. Known as the California Delta, the estuary is among the state’s most important sources of water — and most consistent flash points over environmental protection. Donald...

...Following President Trump’s recent criticism of the delta smelt — a fish he has tied to the lack of water for fighting the Los Angeles fires — his administration is planning to cut funding for a captive breeding program intended to ensure the survival of the endangered fish...A memorandum signed Jan. 20 by the president, titled “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California,” calls for undoing fish protections and increasing delta pumping, in part to help Los Angeles area fire crews... .

SACRAMENTO, CA — With Governor Gavin Newsom facing withering criticism over his preparations for wildfires, the Delta Smelt Fish Association hosted a press conference to reiterate their support for the Governor. The fish expressed total support for the Governor's decision to allow millions of gallons of rainwater to give them more room to swim, as opposed to collecting it to put out fires. "We fully support Governor Newsom's water management," said the Delta Smelt spokes-fish. "Things really looked dire for us delta smelt fish, but thanks to Governor Newsom, all the water that could have been put into fire...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted President-elect Donald Trump’s response to the California wildfires in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” recorded Saturday, saying, “Mis- and disinformation I don’t think advantages or aids any of us.” Newsom appeared to be referring to Trump’s posts on Truth Social blasting Newsom, President Joe Biden and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass since the fires broke out Tuesday. In one post, the president-elect baselessly claimed Newsom had blocked a measure that would have allowed water to flow from Northern California to Southern California. “Responding to Donald Trump’s insults, we would spend another month,”...

Los Angeles' water boss who makes $750,000 a year couldn't quite explain why fire hydrants have run dry during the disastrous wildfires in a bumbling video. During a press conference Wednesday, Janisse Quiñones, the newly appointed chief executive officer and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said all water storage tanks in the Pacific Palisades area 'went dry' as flames continue to rage on. At least seven people have been killed and almost 180,000 forced to leave their homes amid the most destructive blaze in the county's history. Quiñones, who previously worked for PG&E prior...

In a bizarre monologue on Fox News on Thursday, President Donald Trump said California was redirecting "millions of gallons" of water to the Pacific Ocean to help "certain little tiny fish." "California is going to have to ration water. You know why? Because they send millions of gallons of water out to sea, out to the Pacific, because they want to take care of certain little tiny fish that aren't doing very well without water," the US president told Fox News' Sean Hannity. Trump has ridiculed Democrats in California for conservation policies that redirect water to the San Francisco Bay...

California is free of drought for the first time in more than seven years and only a small amount of its territory remains abnormally dry as a very wet winter winds down, experts said Thursday. More than 93 percent of the state is free of drought or dryness, and areas of abnormal dryness along the Oregon border and in parts of four southern counties amount to less than 7 percent of the state, the U.S. Drought Monitor said in its weekly update. The conditions in the far south are because of very dry prior years, the monitor said, noting reservoirs...

The Bay Area should embrace the state’s call Tuesday to make permanent water-wasting rules that were in effect during the last drought. It’s the responsible thing for urban water users to do when the Sierra Nevada snowpack stands at only 20 percent of normal. But farmers should be required to do their part, too.

In December 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a “biological opinion” imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento was channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told California voters Friday that he can solve their water crisis, declaring, "There is no drought." Speaking at a rally in Fresno, Calif., Trump accused state officials of denying water to Central Valley farmers so they can send it out to sea "to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish

Californians are taking to drought shaming sites to tattle on each other for wasting water. Residents are using the sites to out each other for reasons including neighbors with leaky sprinklers to waiters who serve water without asking as the state's historic drought continues. The tattling has also reached social media where residents are using the hashtags 'droughtshaming' and 'watershaming' to reveal any water-wasting activities. An app called DroughtShame was even developed to 'capture geotagged photo proof of disregard for California's water restrictions'.

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders will propose more than $1 billion in drought-relief spending for California as it heads into a fourth dry year, according to a legislative staffer who has been briefed on the package. The staffer tells The Associated Press that the vast majority of the package to be announced Thursday accelerates spending that voters have already approved for water and flood projects, including last year’s $7.5 billion bond measure. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the staffer is not authorized to speak to the media. The package would provide immediate aid to communities...

California farmers struggling with drought say a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued Monday that keeps strict water restrictions in place to protect a tiny, threatened fish has forced them to leave thousands of acres unplanted in the nation’s most fertile agricultural region.The justices rejected appeals from farmers in California's Central Valley and urban water districts who had challenged a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to safeguard the 3-inch-long Delta smelt, a species listed as threatened in 1993 under the federal Endangered Species Act. The smelt only lives in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast...

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a 2009 federal decision that called for reducing the amount of water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in order to protect salmon and other species. The 2009 environmental review by the National Marine Fisheries Service found that continuing to pump water from the delta at such a high rate would threaten several endangered salmon species and killer whales. Some of the state’s biggest water agencies, including Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District, had challenged the 2009 federal decision. …

San Joaquin Valley growers Wednesday filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping to reverse an appellate court’s rejection of their claim that flawed science was used to cut back water pumping in Northern California. The case already has been through U.S. District Court in Fresno, which sided with growers in a decision that would have forced federal leaders to rewrite 2008 protections for the threatened delta smelt. The dwindling fish population lives in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta where pumps divert water for Valley farms and Southern California cities. Federal wildlife agencies say water pumping is harming the...

California is run from a sort of Pacific Versailles, an isolated coastal compound of elite rulers physically cut off from its interior peasantry. To understand how California works — or rather does not work — drive over the I-5 Grapevine and gaze down at the brilliantly engineered artificial Pyramid Lake. Thanks to California water project deliveries, even in a third year of drought its level still fluctuates between 90 to 100% full — ensuring, along with its companion reservoirs, plentiful water for the Los Angeles-area municipalities for the next two years. The far distant watersheds and reservoirs that feed Pyramid...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - As California faces a historic drought, a U.S. appeals court on Thursday sided with federal wildlife regulators who had recommended that the state reduce exports of water from north to south California in order to protect a finger-sized fish, the threatened Delta smelt. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against growers and California water districts in the case and said a lower court had erred in describing the regulators' determination as arbitrary and capricious. Reaction from growers was swift. In a blog post, Damien Schiff, an attorney for growers, said the ruling "is terribly...

WASHINGTON — Federal protections for California's delta smelt will remain intact, but Western water controversies will keep on boiling, with a Supreme Court decision Monday not to hear farmers' ambitious challenge to a key environmental law. The court's decision, issued without comment, effectively upholds the conclusion by a Fresno, Calif.-based trial judge and a lower appellate court that the Endangered Species Act can protect even those plants and animals that don't cross state borders.

An Interior Department official said Thursday the agency will ask independent experts to review allegations by a federal judge that the testimony of two department scientists was so inconsistent and contradictory it amounted to deliberate deception. U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger attacked the credibility of the biologists last month shortly before retiring from the bench. At a hearing on a motion in a court case involving delta smelt protections, Wanger called one of the scientists a "zealot" and accused the agency of engaging in "bad faith."

With a House Republican loading political ammunition in a national fight over government science, Interior Department officials said Friday they would stand by the work of two scientists whose integrity was attacked recently by a federal judge overseeing the Delta water wars. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, in a lengthy and strongly worded assault Sept. 16, said the two scientists deliberately misled him when they urged him not to weaken new rules meant to help imperiled Delta smelt in wet years like this one. He called one scientist, Jennifer Norris of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a "zealot" who...