Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta – California Globe

Ringside: Will the Delta Pumps Operate at Capacity this Winter?

December 18, 2025 2:55 amDecember 18, 2025 2:56 am

With another series of drenching storms about to hit California, now is a good time to ask what has become a perennial question: why can’t we harvest more of this massive runoff and reserve it for our farms and cities?...

Ringside: Will Advocates for More Water Supply Projects Find Unity?

December 11, 2025 9:00 amDecember 11, 2025 9:01 am

There’s only one way to restore reliable water allocations to farmers, avoid turning our cities into rationed “xeriscaped” heat islands, and cope with whatever the climate ultimately delivers. That’s to build more infrastructure to safely and sustainably produce millions of...

Ringside: Politically Viable Water Supply Projects

November 27, 2025 6:30 amNovember 27, 2025 6:31 am

A few years ago I was involved in an effort to qualify a ballot initiative, the “Water Infrastructure Funding Act.” While we failed to gather sufficient signatures to get it onto the November 2022 state ballot, if it had been...

Ringside: Large Scale Desalination Could Transform California

October 30, 2025 2:45 amOctober 30, 2025 2:46 am

Why is it axiomatic among California’s water agencies and policymakers that large scale desalination is inconceivable in California? That certainly isn’t the case in other arid locales. In 2024, an estimated 30 million acre feet of fresh water was produced by desalination...

Ringside: The Cost and the Upside of the ‘Big Gulp’

September 25, 2025 2:45 amSeptember 25, 2025 6:38 am

Of all the possible ways to increase California’s water supply, nothing compares to the potential of the so-called “big gulp,” that is, the ability of new and improved water infrastructure to safely divert millions of acre feet from the Sacramento-San...

Ringside: How Dredging the Delta Enables Groundwater Recharge

August 28, 2025 3:45 amAugust 28, 2025 3:46 am

ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization and winner of multiple Pulitzer prizes, recently published a report “The Drying Planet.” They report that “Moisture lost to evaporation and drought, plus runoff from pumped groundwater, now outpaces the melting of glaciers and the...

Ringside: Is California’s Water Infrastructure Ready for Climate Whiplash?

July 10, 2025 2:55 amJuly 10, 2025 2:56 am

If there is anything that might constitute an overwhelming institutional consensus in California, it’s that we are experiencing climate change, and that one of the consequences will be more rain, less snow, and more so-called whiplash between very wet years...