Legislation

In a first-ever, nine Bay Area county vote, Measure AA earned 69.3 percent in favor of funding wetlands restoration and flood control projects around the San Francisco Bay shoreline. The measure needed a two thirds majority of votes to pass. David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, Oakland, referred …

Bill includes $100 for Bureau of Reclamation’s Western Drought Response program The U.S. Senate passed the fiscal year 2017 Energy and Water Development appropriations bill late last week with funds specifically earmarked for drought plagued California. Senators from both sides of the aisle cited it as a model of the …

Assembly Bill 1713, asking voters to decide the fate of the construction of the state’s controversial twin tunnels, advanced in the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife on Tuesday by an 8 to 4 vote with bipartisan support. The current plan calls for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to …

Both the state’s Senate Finance and Governance Committee and the Assembly Local Government Committee voted last week to approve different versions of bills to reform the Central Basin Municipal Water District (CBMWD) headquartered in Commerce.  Both bills seek to increase accountability within the agency following a history of poor leadership …

California’s Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23) have both individually written letters late last week urging President Obama to direct federal officials to increase pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta immediately. Both legislators are seeking Obama’s direction to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife …

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) recently issued a statement asking federal agencies to increase pumping and store more water during the March storms, as much as possible, within the bounds of the biological opinions. A statement from Sen. Feinstein said, “Between Jan. 1 and March 6 last year, 1.3 million acre …