COMMENT: Remember when you read these media scare tactics we MUST support the farmers and ranchers by distributing the REAL water facts, to them. PRIMARY WATER is why we DO NOT have a water shortage. . . Go to www.PrimaryWater.org and distribute the 1/2 page double sided flyers to everyone you know and consider joining the call to action by ordering car magnets to let others know this goods news – call (707) 586-9558 . . . Spread the GOOD NEWS! Primary Water – Water is Renewal. . . The media is now saying we have fossil water and peak water when the Earth is the water planet and continuously creates pure, clean water . . Watch the YouTube “Primary Water Explained” . . . Help be part of the solution this is not ONLY a California water and land grab this is global and headed to your town. Start educating NOW – well informed people will not consent to this falsified water science when they are armed with the TRUTH . . .
Obama administration announced $110 million in additional funding to provide temporary jobs for dislocated Californians, to support farmers and to improve water efficiency.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-drought-water-rights-20150612-story.html
For the first time in nearly 40 years, state regulators are telling more than 100 growers and irrigation districts with some of the oldest water rights in California that they have to stop drawing supplies from drought-starved rivers and streams in the Central Valley.
The curtailment order, issued Friday by the State Water Resources Control Board, has been expected for weeks. Earlier this spring, the board halted diversions under some 8,700 junior rights. With snowmelt reduced to a trickle this year, there simply isn’t enough water flowing in rivers to meet the demand of all those with even older rights predating 1914.
And as flows continue to decline this summer, board officials said, they expect to issue more curtailments, stopping river pumping by more senior diverters.
Assembly Republican Leader Kristin Olsen of Modesto condemned the board action. “Today’s water grab by the state board is disappointing, but not surprising,” she said in a statement. “It is one they have been eager to do for a long time and our current drought crisis gives them the cover they’ve been looking for to follow through.”
In California and the West, most rights to surface water are based on when the water was first diverted and used, a system known as “first in time, first in right.” The oldest claims date to the Gold Rush era, when miners sucked water from streams and used it to blast gold out of the Sierra Nevada foothills.
In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, growers with riparian rights volunteered last month to reduce their use by 25% this summer — a deal that headed off possibly more severe cuts by the state board.
Friday’s curtailments apply to 86 senior rights holders in the Sacramento River watershed, 14 holders in the San Joaquin River watershed and 14 in the delta. Because some holders have multiple rights, the total number curtailed Friday was 276. Those with riparian rights were not affected.
In other drought action Friday, the Obama administration announced $110 million in additional funding to provide temporary jobs for dislocated Californians, to support farmers and to improve water efficiency.
The money comes on top of more than $190 million that federal agencies have already committed to aid drought-stricken communities this year, officials said.