Perhaps you were musing to yourself, “What could coax OtPR out of retirement?” What could it be? A pressing new dilemma? An insightful new book to discuss? A cogent new analysis? No, my friends. I have not returned for any of those. I am only here for a minute, and only here to point out that I was so fucking right. The almond bust is upon us and will cause the ag counties all of the difficulties I described. One of CA’s ‘Largest #AlmondGrowers’ Goes #Bankrupt. It Owes Millions to Local #Companies.#GVWire #News #Agriculture #Economy #Business #California #CA #CentralValley #FresnoCounty #Tu ..read more

I am sincerely enjoying the work coming from women academics younger than me, demonstrating that mainstays of California water management are pretty well bullshit. Here is Dr. Ulibarri pointing out that water districts spend substantial time and money on management plans that they do not use to manage their water and that we don’t use to hold them accountable. Also, the plans only really address water supply. Here is Dr. Dobbin saying that SGMA agencies do not concern themselves with drinking water for small and vulnerable communities, and if we want them to, we will have to go beyond “outrea ..read more

There’s a new scholarship in her name: The Marjorie Caisley Conservation Engineering Scholarship for Women Let’s support more fish passage and fish restoration engineers ..read more

My friend Margie died of cancer this summer. She was glorious: insightful, funny as hell, kind. She was the DFW Fish Passage engineer for the north state, including the Scott and Shasta Rivers. She designed and reviewed restoration and fish passage projects, adamantly requiring that they be sound and effective. She did fieldwork up on the Scott and Shasta rivers most of the summer. She thought she had the perfect job. She also thought that fish management up on the Scott and Shasta Rivers was a clusterfuck. She would tell me stories about the situation up there; basically the agriculture is ca ..read more

I saw this description of Abundance Progressivism with great relief. I was delighted for a name for my position. It also explained to me why I’ve been irritated with the “tear out your lawn” school of water conservation in this drought. A broad movement is needed to countervail special interests and get our institutions working again. Movement Progressivism (e.g. Green New Deal, @AOC) has energy but lacks outcomes. Abundance Progressivism has similar goals but a different approach. https://t.co/eUXRMZq4Ae — Misha Chellam (@mishachellam) July 14, 2022 Over the past few years, I have increa ..read more

Yesterday Max Gomberg had his last day at the State Water Resources Control Board. He sent this on his last day, and cc’ed me. With his permission: Hello everyone:  I am sharing my parting thoughts because I believe in facing hard truths and difficult decisions. These are dark and uncertain times, both because fascists are regaining power and because climate change is rapidly decreasing the habitability of many places. Sadly, this state is not on a path towards steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions reductions, massive construction to alleviate the housing crisis, quickly and permanently ..read more

I spent much of 2015 urging the State Board to issue a moratorium on planting new almonds (although I myself was too timid. I said to only restrict them in gw basins with declining water levels, although that is all of them so maybe that argues against my timidity). Yesterday I wrote that had they done that, they’d look prescient now. But in that counterfactual, I do not think we could have estimated the policy success. In 2015, CA almond acreage was 1,110,000 acres. (3.3MAF/year) In 2021, CA almond acreage was 1,640,000 acres. (4.9MAF/year. This is a low estimate, btw. I’ve seen ETAW up near ..read more

When I observe that we are holding 2MAF of 2021 and 2022 water in stored almonds, I have some thoughts. You know, I don’t fault growers for mis-reading the first year. The shipping situation was extreme and odd and we now know that depending on returning empties is a brittle technique, but we didn’t then. What I do see is that the people who said that we shouldn’t be converting to permanent crops in our variable climate were absolutely right. Even knowing they’re on track to grow 30% too many almonds (buying expensive inputs, compounding an expensive storage problem) almond growers must do it ..read more

You may not know that the California almond industry has been unable to ship its almonds for two years (almonds used to be shipped to China in returning empties; the past two years ships aren’t willing to wait at port long enough to fill up with almonds). Last year, 20% of CA almonds were held in storage for lack of shipping. This year, the prediction is that 30% of CA almonds will be held over. Let’s do some fun math and then do some fun context. For this exercise, we will be b.o.t.e. people, content with a first approximation. It will not be so inaccurate as to change the conclusion, which i ..read more

It is actually a problem that the Newsom water administration are a bunch of goal-less fuckscannot articulate a clear vision for what California water should do. If we do not develop a clear new vision, we will keep operating from the old vision. That vision was clear as day. It was to eliminate the original peoples of the state, to destroy everything wild, to mine any valuable stock and to “feed the world”. They knew what they wanted and they put our water system in place to achieve it. This is the water system we are currently operating and it is currently achieving the same goals. We cannot ..read more