OPINION
August 8, 2012
The Bay Delta Conservation Plan has the potential to untangle some of the expensive and inefficient knots in California's water supply system while repairing some of the damage done over the decades to the landscape and wildlife of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Gov. Jerry Brown's "preferred alternative" of tunnels around the delta may work - or it may not, and Californians still need to know more before committing the state to a new water diversion project. Analysis and environmental review are ongoing.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
March 30, 2012 | By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
Federal biologists have concluded that another native fish of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is headed toward extinction, underscoring the region's severe environmental problems. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday that it has determined that longfin smelt in the delta deserve Endangered Species Act protections. But the finding won't expand restrictions on the delta's water operations because the agency is simply designating the fish a candidate for listing.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 7, 2011 | By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
For more than a decade, the state's de facto water baron has been a man most Californians never heard of. Oliver W. Wanger is not the archetypal power broker embodied by William Mulholland but a workaholic U.S. District Court judge whose Fresno courtroom was the forum for many of the state's fiercest water conflicts. Last week was his last on the bench. At the age of 70, Wanger returned to private practice, leaving a record of long, complex rulings and a parting diatribe at federal scientists that has echoed across the country.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 21, 2011 | By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
A judge ordered a federal agency Tuesday to rewrite protections for migrating salmon that have reduced water shipments from Northern California, concluding that some of the pumping curbs were based on "equivocal or bad science. " But in a mixed ruling, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger also said that the National Marine Fisheries Service was justified in finding that government water operations that export supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta jeopardize dwindling populations of chinook salmon and several other fish on the endangered species list.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 6, 2011 | By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
A proposal to build a large water tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is incomplete, confused and plagued by a number of scientific gaps despite years of study, according to a National Research Council report. The document bolsters criticisms that the agencies overseeing the project are not seriously evaluating alternatives and are instead pursuing a preordained outcome without examining the effects. "The lack of an appropriate structure creates the impression that the entire effort is little more than a post-hoc rationalization of a previously selected group of facilities," write the authors, an independent panel of scientists and other experts.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 24, 2010 | By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
A drilling rig bit into the bed of California's biggest river, hauling up sage-green tubes of clay and sand the consistency of uncooked fudge. The rig workers rolled the muck into strips, dried it in sugar-sized cubes and crushed them under their palms. They packed slices into carefully labeled canning jars for testing at an engineering lab. They were taking the river bottom samples for a $13-billion project that would shunt water around ? or under ? the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the big aqueducts that ferry supplies south.