LeakBird

(May 1, 2009, ClimateWatch, NPR)
NPR’s Morning Edition launched an “occasional series” on California’s water woes this morning. Veteran correspondent John McChesney begins with the impact on agriculture in the Central Valley’s Westlands Water District, the nation’s “biggest irrigated region.”
KQED’s Central Valley Bureau Chief and Climate Watch contributor Sasha Khokha will have three stories in the [...]

(May 11, 2009, The California Progress Report)
The San Joaquin Valley has been ground zero in the current economic recession. News outlets have run a number of stories about food banks running out of supplies and residents leaving their hometowns in search of work on the East Coast.
Water contractors have claimed that recent environmental regulations [...]

(April 17, 2009, The Christian Science Monitor)
California’s third year of drought is stirring up long-standing – and usually low-simmering – tensions between farmers in northern and central California and urban consumers in the state’s dry Southland.
(Original Article Here)

(April 15, 2009, The New York Times)
As part of the federal stimulus plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar offered California $260 million on Wednesday to patch the Central Valley’s decrepit water-delivery system and protect its threatened fish.
(Original Article Here)

David Curran wrote a stimulating op-ed on the California drought in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle.  Mr. Curran expressed his perplexity at the incongruity of intermittent first quarter flooding in the Bay Area and the Governor’s dire “worst drought ever” declaration.
California has gone from being the bread basket of the US to a water crisis basket [...]

(March 7, 2009, The Merced Sun Star)

Kenneth Shackel is feeling more like an emergency-room doctor than an agricultural researcher these days as he helps west Valley farmers cope with little to no irrigation water this season.
“It’s like triage,” said Shackel, a University of California at Davis pomologist and plant science professor. “For some, this isn’t [...]

(March 3, 2009, Dan Bacher, IndyBay)
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Department of Water Resources and corporate agribusiness have continually tried to frame the battle over restoring the California Delta and Central Valley rivers as one of “fish versus people.”
This false dichotomy was exemplified by an article published in the Sacramento Bee, “Delta cutbacks put Valley [...]

(Feb. 27, 2009, Reuters)
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday declared a state emergency due to drought and said he would consider mandatory water rationing in the face of nearly $3 billion in economic losses from below-normal rainfall this year.
As many as 95,000 agricultural jobs will be lost, communities will be devastated and some growers in [...]

(Feb. 21, 2009, Jesse McKinley, The New York Times)
The country’s biggest agricultural engine, California’s sprawling Central Valley, is being battered by the recession like farmland most everywhere. But in an unlucky strike of nature, the downturn is being deepened by a severe drought that threatens to drive up joblessness, increase food prices and cripple farms [...]

(Feb. 11, 2009, Gim Gogek)
When people talk about conserving water in California, it’s always about turning off your yard sprinklers, taking shorter showers or shaving without the water running. We fret about watering golf courses and lawns in the suburbs. In presentations at schools, at Rotary clubs and on public service announcements, we’re continually told [...]

(Feb. 11, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
California’s unfolding drought – now three years running – may prove to be the worst in recorded history. Farms have begun to fail, communities to crumble, food prices to rise and more people are going hungry. How we respond to the drought will offer us a template of how [...]

(Feb. 10, 2009, The Wall Street Journal)
MENDOTA, Calif. — Dwindling water supplies are compounding economic woes in California’s Central Valley, causing farmers to leave fields fallow and confront the prospect of going under.
The state’s water supply has dropped precipitously of late. California is locked in the third year of one of its worst droughts on [...]

(Feb. 6, 2009, Aguanomics)
This 26 minute PBS video is excellent for its overview of California water issues. They interview farmers in the Central Valley (”protect our way of life”), enviros (”we can’t keep taking water from nature”) and have a good overview of the technology (water recycling, reverse osmosis, etc.) What do they forget to [...]

(Feb. 2, 2009, The Merced Sun Star)
An unprecedented shift of San Joaquin River water from farmers in the east Valley to those in the west could further complicate the scramble to save crops from drought this year.
At stake is precious San Joaquin River water, which has helped east-side farmers cultivate a multibillion-dollar economy on 1 [...]

(Photo Courtesy of Old-Photos.Blogspot.com)
Drought and water shortages may drive up the cost of food in America this year, before the Fed’s printing press can even produce symptoms of inflation. Though Peter Gleick may focus on “water footprinting”, David Zetland says it’s not the core issue.
The core issue is price. And price needs to reflect water’s [...]

(Jan. 22, 2009, Associated Press)
Some of the nation’s largest farms plan to cut back on planting this spring over concerns that federal water supplies will dry up as officials deal with the drought plaguing California.
Farmers in the Central Valley said Thursday they would forego planting thousands of acres of water-thirsty canning tomatoes and already have [...]

(Jan. 22, 2009, Visalia Times-Delta)
Don’t be fooled: The latest rain offers no real relief from dry conditions that could cost Central Valley agriculture more than 40,000 jobs.
That was the message delivered Wednesday to the State Board of Food and Agriculture in a session on water conditions that increasingly are putting a squeeze on agricultural operations.
“The [...]

(Nov. 30, 2008, The San Francisco Chronicle)
At a time when people are deeply concerned about our dependence on imported oil, we should also be concerned about increasing our state’s dependence on imported food. In fact, our ability to feed our state could be seriously threatened by problems such as a long-term drought, the state’s aging [...]