CP&DR

MWD's Search for Water Leads to an Unlikely Source

Jul 1, 2001

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 16 No. 07 Jul 2001

The Cadiz Valley is an unlikely spot for an agricultural empire. A windswept Mojave Desert outpost best known for its spectacular sand dunes and dry lake beds, the valley receives only about 4 inches of rain a year and is seared by 120-degree temperatures during the summer. The nearby hamlet of Bagdad qualifies as one of the continent's driest spots, having once gone without recorded rainfall for 767 days. Left to its own devices, the landscape around Cadiz would support only such hardy veg

Clean Water Act: Who Really Won at the Supreme Court?

May 1, 2001

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 16 No. 05 May 2001

Regulators with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) traditionally have explained their agency's role in protecting the nation's waterways by saying it had authority over "anything bigger than a duck's butt."

Delta Water Storage Project Advances, But Questions Remain

Apr 1, 2001

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 16 No. 04 Apr 2001

In most parts of the world, islands are bits of dry land that stick out of the water. The term has quite a different meaning in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a place where human ingenuity has managed to stand geography on its head.

Modest Federal Review Unleashes Revolution In Sierra Forest Practices

Mar 1, 2001

California, Environment Watch, John Krist, Sierra Nevada Mountains, Vol. 16 No. 03 Mar 2001

A few lines tucked into the 1993 federal budget bill funding the Department of Interior granted the agency $150,000 to launch a "scientific review of the remaining old-growth in the national forests of the Sierra Nevada in California, and for a study of the entire Sierra Nevada ecosystem by an independent panel of scientists." That deceptively modest directive gave birth to a mammoth undertaking.

SF Bay's Health Could Depend on More development

Feb 1, 2001

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 16 No. 02 Feb 2001

For more than a century, commercial and residential development has been consuming the wetlands, tidal flats and beaches surrounding San Francisco Bay, the largest and most biologically rich estuary on the West Coast. Now, those same development forces may help reverse the trend, making possible the restoration of thousands of acres of critical wildlife habitat. Although one would assume that environmentalists welcome the change, the prospect has not been embraced wholeheartedly by the...

Coastal Commission's HCP Request Sparks Turf War

Jan 1, 2001

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 16 No. 01 Jan 2001

Politically popular but ecologically suspect, habitat conservation plans (HCPs) have become a powerful tool for resolving conflict between human economic activities and the survival of imperiled plants and animals. Before 1994, only 20 such plans had been adopted. But since the Clinton administration figured out the potential for such agreements to avoid divisive clashes over the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the federal government has embraced them in a big way. There are now more th...

Critical-Habitat Designations Sweep Across California

Dec 1, 2000

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 15 No. 12 Dec 2000

When the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service proposed in September that 5.4 million acres in 31 California counties be designated critical habitat for the threatened red-legged frog, howls of outrage came from nearly every corner of the state. Builders, water agencies, local government officials and farmers decried the designation as an impending disaster with dire implications for everything from construction of affordable housing to the integrity of Southern California's precarious water supply. The...

Conservation Gains Federal Funding, But Larger Package Fails

Nov 1, 2000

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 15 No. 11 Nov 2000

After years of meager funding at the hands of a congressional majority with little affection for environmental issues, land-conservation and habitat-protection programs nationwide are about to receive a huge financial boost from the federal government. California, in particular, stands to gain a great deal from what some observers characterize as a "landmark" conservation-funding measure in the $18.8 billion Interior Department appropriations bill sent to President Clinton in Octobe...

Electricity Deregulation Could Have Surprising Impact

Oct 1, 2000

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 15 No. 10 Oct 2000

In retrospect, no one should have been surprised by the chaos this summer in California's electricity industry. The stage was set six years ago for a painful collision between consumer expectations and marketplace realities when the Public Utilities Commission began dismantling the tightly integrated power industry. In 1996, the Legislature expanded the PUC's efforts and practically guaranteed this summer's debacle when it hurriedly approved a complicated deregulation plan intended t...

The Long saga of Owens Valley Gets Another Chapter

Sep 1, 2000

Environment Watch, John Krist, Vol. 15 No. 09 Sep 2000

If you had traveled north through the Owens Valley before 1924, just past the hamlet of Olancha, you would have come upon an amazing site: a large blue lake in the middle of a high desert landscape. Wedged between the snowcapped escarpment of the Sierra Nevada on the west and the equally imposing mass of the Inyo Mountains to the east, Owens Lake was 15 miles long, 10 miles wide and 30 feet deep. Its saline waters contrasted strikingly with the rugged peaks and arid hills, and supp...

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