California wineries, farms to get access to last-resort fire insurance as Gov. Newsom signs SB 11 [North Bay Business Journal]
With wildfire losses in the state soaring, and insurance company rates following suit, a governor’s signature on a bill is leaving some winery owners eyeing a bit of relief. The Napa County Farm Bureau, one of the supporters of the legislation, reports that Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed Senate Bill 11, giving owners of wine and other agricultural properties a way to gain coverage through the state’s high risk insurance plan called the California FAIR plan, the state’s insurer of last resort. As the plan is set up now in law, it does not cover agricultural property. SB 11 throws out the exemptions, at least on buildings and inventory or stock. The bill is authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, D-Baldwin Park. “This legislative victory is the culmination of months of hard work led by the Farm Bureau,” said Ryan Klobas, CEO of the Napa County Farm Bureau. “This is a first step that will now allow agricultural properties in Napa Valley and throughout California to access basic property insurance for wildfire coverage. ”
Valley farmers might face harshest ever water restrictions due to drought [ABC 30, Fresno]
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, farmers in the Central Valley are now facing more uncertainty. “Not only is this year already bad, it’s about to get worse,” said Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO Ryan Jacobsen. Most of California is under a drought state of emergency. On Friday, the State Water Board released a draft ’emergency curtailment’ order for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed where there’s an extreme water shortage. “We’re looking at one of the tightest years on record,” said Jacobsen. The order would cut thousands of Central Valley farmers from using river and stream water to irrigate their crops.
Valley farmers might face harshest ever water restrictions due to drought – ABC30 Fresno
Editorial: The California salmon wipeout is even worse than you think [Los Angeles Times]
The news reports about the California salmon wipeout got a good chunk of the story right: Record-breaking heat waves made Northern California rivers too warm to sustain migrating chinook salmon, and virtually all of the salmon in the Sacramento River this summer have died, or will die, before reproducing. Any eggs that were successfully laid, or the fry hatched from those eggs, are also probably doomed. So a generation of the rare and endangered winter-run Chinook is virtually gone, and the spring-run as well. Some of the details were a bit off, though. It’s important to know that the salmon are facing extinction not just because of warm weather or climate change, but because of Trump-era policies that continue to be carried out by President Biden’s and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administrations, despite those Democrats’ professed rejection of Donald Trump’s destructive approach to California’s water….One of the bureau’s duties is to keep enough water in the reservoir’s lower depths, where it is shielded from the summer heat, so that it can be released into the river as needed to keep it cold enough to prevent extinction of the winter run. Government biologists issue guidelines prescribing the amount of water needed. As president, Trump scoffed at those practices, saying all the stored water should go to orchards and farm fields. To use water to prevent extinction, he said, was just “shoving it out to sea.” His Interior Department pushed aside its biologists and got new ones, who issued new guidelines calling for much less cold-water storage.
Editorial: California salmon wipeout is worse than you think – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
The western drought is a crisis for migrating birds, too [San Francisco CityLab]
…“Flooded rice fields are critical for these species, and this year is looking grim,” said John Eadie, a waterfowl biology professor at the University of California, Davis. “Even if the water were there, there just aren’t enough acres for them on the ground.” Ducks and geese traveling through California’s agricultural heartland get about 50% of their food supplies from those flooded fields, said Eadie. A lack of resources could weaken current populations and hurt their chances for survival and reproduction….For birds that do manage to find water, crowded habitats can also be more prone to disease, like the botulism outbreak that killed 40,000 birds at a wildlife refuge in the Lower Klamath last year….Natural resource conflicts often find farmers and environmentalists at loggerheads, and the long-term decline of California’s wetlands is an example of why. But the story of the rice industry and wetland birds has been a recent case study in unlikely coalitions. Many rice growers flood their fields in the winter as a way to decompose crop residue so that the land can be dried up and ready to plant by spring. To accommodate bird species that arrive in late summer and early fall, a program called BirdReturns pays California farmers to flood during those shoulder seasons.
California’s Water Crisis Comes for the Birds – Bloomberg
First steps taken to make pumped hydro energy storage project at San Vicente Reservoir a reality [San Diego Union-Tribune]
With an $18 million boost from the state, a major energy storage project using hydroelectric power is taking shape at the San Vicente Reservoir, nestled in the Cuyamaca Mountains near Lakeside. The long talked about San Vicente Energy Storage Facility — proposed by the city of San Diego and the San Diego County Water Authority — received the funding earlier this month when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the state budget. The $18 million will be spent to tackle some of the preliminary work needed to make the “pumped hydro” project a reality, such as initial design, environmental reviews and federal licensing. “We believe the project is a critical component to meeting the state’s needs for integrating renewables” into the power grid, said Gary Bousquet, deputy director of engineering at the County Water Authority….Using pumped hydro projects as a means of storing energy has taken on a greater focus as California moves forward on its goal to derive 100 percent of its electricity by 2045 — if not sooner — from sources of power that do not release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2021-07-26/pumped-hydro
Drone views of EBMUD reservoirs as California faces extreme drought [Bay Area News Group]
After a very dry winter and spring, all of California is now in some level of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. One year ago, just 58 percent of California was in drought. In the East Bay, the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s reservoirs total system capacity is currently at 61% full, which is 73% of average. The district is in decent shape for now, but is encouraging its customers to conserve water as much as possible. The Upper San Leandro Reservoir (63% full) and the Briones (93% full) and San Pablo Reservoirs (55% full) are fed from the Pardee Reservoir (87% full) in Calaveras County, which provides 90% of EBMUD water. From Pardee, the water travels 95 miles through the Mokelumne Aqueduct to the East Bay, where it’s treated and stored until needed, serving 35 municipalities and 1.4 million customers. “We keep it as full as possible to maintain our water supply,” said EBMUD spokeswoman Andrea Pook about Pardee….EBMUD has worked for decades to diversify its water sources, and if the drought gets worse next year, the district will look at purchasing water from other entities. The water district serves an urban area, and does not provide water for agriculture. It relies heavily on conservation and recycled water for irrigation and industrial processes.
Photos: Drone views of EBMUD reservoirs as California faces extreme drought (mercurynews.com)
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