CDFW Awards $1.3 Million for Restoration in Watersheds Impacted by Cannabis Cultivation

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) today announced the selection of four projects to receive funding for habitat restoration projects within California’s Northern Coastal watersheds most impacted by unregulated cannabis cultivation.

The awards, totaling $1.3 million, were made under CDFW’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program, and will support cleanup and habitat restoration at inactive cannabis cultivation sites.

“These grants mark an important step forward in our efforts to address the extensive damage to habitat and toxic chemicals threatening a host of wild species,” CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham said. “Providing a resource to address the impacts of reckless cannabis cultivation adds an important piece to the complex puzzle of our existing watershed restoration work.”

Huntington Beach desalination plant challenged in court

A coalition of non-profits is asking a superior court to reverse a state agency’s decision to greenlight a long-proposed, controversial desalination plant in Huntington Beach.

In a lawsuit filed in Sacramento Friday, Nov. 17, the three coastal advocacy groups allege an inadequate environmental review was conducted on the impacts of building a desalination plant and that the State Lands Commission failed to examine the plant’s impacts on the ocean in its entirety.

The Poseidon desalination plant has been proposed for the site of the AES power plant on Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach for nearly 20 years, and has been continually challenged and fought by environmental groups. Its opponents contend that the intake and outfall pipes could suck in tiny marine life and have advocated for subsurface wells that the builder deemed infeasible.

One of the first projects in LA County to capture storm water is being built in Long Beach

The thousands of miles of concrete channels diverting street water from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles rivers represent the last major water project in Los Angeles County, built almost 100 years ago.

On Thursday, Dave Sorem, owner and vice president of Mike Bubalo Construction Co., showed off the first of a second wave of street-water projects that elevate what is essentially water pollution into a drinkable water source.

One of the first in Los Angeles County, the Los Cerritos Channel Storm Water Capture Facility in Long Beach will take the “first flush” of rain water from the streets of Signal Hill and Long Beach and the runways and taxiways of Long Beach Airport and re-purpose it. The $9 million project located on the southern end of the airport will do exactly what many Southern Californians say when it rains: “Why don’t they capture that water instead of wasting it to the ocean?”

STATE TAKING STEPS TO MANAGE SUBSIDENCE-RELATED IMPACTS TO CALIFORNIA AQUEDUCT

For as long as agriculture has existed in the Central Valley, farmers have pumped water from the ground to sustain their livelihood and grow food consumed by much of the nation. This has caused the ground in certain places to sink, sometimes dramatically, eliminating valuable aquifer storage space that can never be restored.

$4 Billion California Bond Will Help With Droughts and Floods

DROUGHTS AND FLOODS are both a part of life in California as 2017 has so clearly demonstrated: It took one of the wettest winters on record to pull the state from the depths of a five-year drought.

The state has invested funds in bulking up drought and flood protection in the past, but recent events highlighted the necessity of rejuvenating those efforts. As a result, Gov. Jerry Brown recently approved a new general obligation bond measure that would fund projects focused on those problems. The bond measure will go before California voters during the 2018 primary on June 5, and it must receive a 66.6 percent “yes” vote to pass.

A massive storm flooded Houston. Experts say California’s state capital could be next.

Even living here on the West Coast, Marion Townsend decided to act as floods ravaged Texas and hurricanes pounded the Caribbean in recent weeks.

Her Sacramento neighborhood slopes downward from a levee that separates it from the American River, in an area that officials concede never should have been settled but is home to 100,000 residents.

Flood experts say California levees need much more money

Sacramento – California needs to spend another $100 million a year to keep the state’s levee system sound, according to state flood control experts.

At a press conference marking flood preparedness week Monday at a levee repair site near Sacramento, Bill Edgar, president of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board said the levees will need a $17 billion to $21 billion investment over the next 30 years to protect the seven million Californians at flood risk.