Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta – California Globe

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...

Ringside: Politics and the Cost for Water Infrastructure

July 3, 2025 2:55 amJuly 3, 2025 2:56 am

When it comes to building water supply infrastructure, even if regulations are streamlined and litigation is contained, there are massive costs. Quantifying these variables is something we have focused on a great deal, most recently “The Economics of the Delta...

Ringside: How to Add 10 Million Acre Feet Per Year to California’s Water Supply

April 30, 2025 3:52 pmApril 30, 2025 3:52 pm

There is a good chance that a Californian is going to be nominated to become the new Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. One source of opposition to his confirmation could be senators representing states that share with California the...