Clearing forests: No simple solution to California wildfires [Chico Enterprise-Record]
With nearly 40 million people living in California and development spreading into once-wild regions, some of the state’s best tools toward preventing wildfires can’t be widely used. Still, there is growing agreement that the state must step up its use of forest management through prescribed burns and vegetation removal in an attempt to lessen the impact of wildfires….Among the biggest complications in forest management are California’s strict environmental regulations….The state has been working since 2010 on an EIR that would cover all vegetation treatments in California under one overarching environmental document.
https://apnews.com/3dc9f998caba48bfa5e1d3d15ff73049
The Central Valley is sinking as farmers drill for water. But it can be saved, study says [Sacramento Bee]
A team of Stanford University researchers believe they have identified the best way to replenish the shrinking aquifers beneath California’s Central Valley….In order to “recharge” aquifers, farmers have taken to strategic flooding of their fields and orchards. “The key question is where does the water go?” Knight said. “If you’re going to flood a farmer’s field, you should be sure it’s going to work.” The approach recommended by the study relies on “a marriage of two types of remote sensing data” that analyzes sand and clay layers in the ground.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/big-valley/article229148999.html
California wineries shut out from China amid trade war [San Francisco Chronicle]
When China imposed retaliatory tariffs on American goods last April, vintners at Wente Vineyards in Livermore feared the move would push them out of China, the world’s fastest-growing wine market, for months or years….Wente Vineyards Wines hasn’t shipped wine to China since the tariffs took effect, after 24 years of doing business there….California wines make up 90% of U.S. wine exports by volume. And they’re hurting well beyond China….But the trade war with China has nonetheless dampened spirits throughout the industry.
Opinion: Will the U.S. crash out of NAFTA? [Los Angeles Times]
…With fingers crossed in hopes that Trump’s anti-Mexico rants will diminish, Republicans are pushing for a summer vote on the USMCA. But the trade agreement’s risk of stalling or rejection in Congress is high — and if that happens, it’s the American people who stand to lose most….Congress should treat the USMCA as a necessary stopgap to preserve free trade on the continent from a White House that is unusually hostile to cooperation with our most important economic partners. It’s up to Congress to ratify the trade agreement and prevent a no-deal crash out of NAFTA.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-schechter-usmca-nafta-trade-deal-20190415-story.html
H-2A housing ordinance: Santa Maria City Council to consider 2 options Tuesday [Santa Maria Times]
Two options for a permanent ordinance that would govern how H-2A farmworkers are housed in Santa Maria’s residential zones will be considered Tuesday by the City Council. The meeting comes a little more than a year after the Santa Maria City Council passed an urgency ordinance temporarily banning the housing of more than six H-2A workers in low- and medium-density dwellings during its March 20, 2018, meeting….While some community members have expressed concern that H-2A housing will change the character of their neighborhoods and displace Santa Maria families, many large farming operations in the region say they rely on H-2A workers to fill a labor need that otherwise wouldn’t be met.
US agency reconsidering status of bistate sage grouse [Associated Press]
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is revising its plans to protect a type of imperiled game bird found only along the California-Nevada line after a federal judge struck down its earlier decision to rescind a proposal to list it as threatened. The agency announced late Thursday it will reopen the public comment period and reconsider whether to protect the bistate sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act through June 11. A judge ruled last May that the agency acted illegally in 2015 when it withdrew an earlier proposal to list the bistate grouse as a distinct, threatened segment of the larger population of the greater sage grouse.
