Water
The Future of the Colorado
The Bureau of Reclamation has issued an important new report on the future of the Colorado River. The Colorado supplies drinking water to 40 million people and irrigation water to nearly 5.5 million acres of land. The report projects decreases in supply over the next fifty years, including a 9% decrease in average flow and a …
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CONTINUE READINGToday’s Supreme Court Arguments in Los Angeles County Flood Control District
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals got no love from either the U.S. Supreme Court or the advocates appearing before it today in Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Counsel. Nor did a previously-unheard-from government actor similarly absent from the Supreme Court chambers today. Yesterday Sean Hecht posted on the …
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CONTINUE READINGThe strange saga of how Los Angeles County’s stormwater pollution ended up in the Supreme Court
Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council. This case involves a lawsuit by clean-water advocates to require our County Flood Control District to take responsibility for ensuring that polluted stormwater doesn’t impair our local water quality in two local rivers. The Ninth …
CONTINUE READINGBP Agrees to Plead Guilty to Felony Charges Arising Out of Deepwater Horizon Disaster
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that British Petroleum has agreed to plead guilty to felony charges stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers and precipitated the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. As part of the plea bargain, BP has agreed to pay the federal government $4.5 billion in penalties, including …
CONTINUE READINGDraining Hetch Hetchy — Some History for San Francisco’s “Measure F”
San Franciscans will be voting next week on Measure F to study the draining of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park. Hetch Hetchy, for those who don’t know, is a spectacular, glacier-formed valley of equal proportion to its neighbor Yosemite Valley. Congress authorized a dam in 1913 to provide public hydroelectric power and a …
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CONTINUE READINGThe significance of SB 1201 for the Los Angeles River
In late August, Governor Brown signed SB 1201 (de León), which promotes public access to the Los Angeles River. Los Angeles County Flood Control District is now required to provide for public use of the River for recreational and educational purposes, when such uses are not inconsistent with flood control and water conservation. As Sean Hecht …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change Politics: Calling Junior Appropriators!
“Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.” At least that’s the old saying (incorrectly attributed to Twain), and it is true. You can’t study water law for more than a moment without seeing conflict. In the west, water law is particularly conflictual due to the system of prior appropriation: rivers are divided into …
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CONTINUE READINGIs Rain a Miracle?
Starting this Sunday evening, with the festival of Shemini Atzeret, observant Jews add a brief passage in the middle of the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy. Addressing God, the line reads: You cause the winds to blow and the rain to fall. It’s hardly surprising in one sense: with the beginning of …
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CONTINUE READINGAdapting to Drought Through International Free Trade
In a world where people and nations do not trade, you can only consume what you produce. If you want a cup of coffee and can’t trade with anyone then you better know how to make one. International trade breaks the link between consumption and production. When nasty drought occurs in one nations, but …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change and National Security
The two parties disagree sharply about whether climate change can be considered a threat to our national security. A recent paper by Andrew Guzman (Berkeley) and Jody Freeman (Harvard) summarizes the support for this idea among serious students of national security: In 2008, the National Intelligence Council produced the most comprehensive analysis to date of …
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