Re “Here is the first step to a sustainable water policy”;
Good commentary and on the mark. But it’s discouraging to say that documenting the actual amount of water available is the first step to a sustainable water policy. This is the same step people have been saying for the 10 or more years that I’ve been tracking these issues.
Based on our legal counsel’s briefs, we blogged on our Save the California Delta Alliance website about “Paper Water” in 2013, reporting that the state had oversold water by five times the amount it actually had. The UC Davis study the writer refers to was in 2014.
Yes. The answers are appropriate water rights, addressing groundwater overdrafting, addressing Delta environmental issues via Delta flows, conservation, wastewater recycling and the retirement of impaired agricultural lands.
It includes doing what the Legislature dictated in the 2009 Delta Reform Act, namely moving toward regional self-reliance more than 10 years ago. Yet nothing changes.
