These contrasting results were underlined Friday by officials with the federal Central Valley Project — the U.S. government’s elaborate system of moving water around Northern California and in the Central Valley using dams, pumps and canals. Normally, farms get at least three-quarters of this federal water, though not in times of drought, when cities are favored. As the San Jose Mercury-News reports, the feds’ interpretation of its own rules leads it to widely different conclusions about how much water goes where:

South [Bay Area] cities will receive 55 percent of their contracted water amounts this summer — up from 25 percent last year — from the Central Valley Project, California’s largest water delivery system.

 

Heavy rains in March boosted the amount of water in Northern California’s large reservoirs such as Shasta and Folsom, allowing farmers in the Sacramento Valley and wildlife refuges to receive 100 percent of their contracted amounts, while the Contra Costa Water District also will receive 100 percent, up from 25 percent a year ago.

Water allocations: Some farmers more equal than others

But the news was brutal elsewhere. In the San Joaquin Valley, federal regulators announced that only 5 percent of normally supplied water would be available. In interviews with the Sacramento Bee, farmers and their allies said the drought essentially had never left:

While a 5 percent supply is better than the zero allocation they received in each of the past two years, those farmers will again have to scramble to buy water from growers with stronger water rights – assuming the officials who monitor endangered fish in the Delta even allow for the extra water to be pumped south. The limited water shipments will put continued pressure on the valley’s groundwater basins, which in many areas have been pumped to record low levels in the drought.

 

The huge disparities in water allocations reflect California’s hodgepodge water rights system, which generally favors farmers north of the Delta. … On top of that, concerns over critically endangered fish have prompted federal and state officials to limit pumping to the south state even though Delta flows surged dramatically after March storms. The pumping restrictions drew complaints from south-of-Delta advocates who argue that stormwater flowing out to sea is being “wasted.”

 

[Federal reports] said that, in total, the federally operated reservoirs hold 86 percent of their average water for this time of year, but the south-of-Delta facilities are comparatively empty. New Melones Reservoir, which dams the Stanislaus River and is the state’s fourth-largest reservoir, is just 26 percent full – a figure so low that the Central San Joaquin Water Conservation District and Stockton East Water District will receive no water from the CVP this year.

Most, but not all, of SoCal struggling with supplies

In Southern California, meanwhile, the raw numbers illustrate the drought’s continued hold on the region:

The water level of Lake Mead, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam that stores Southern California’s Colorado River supply, stood last week at 1,081.32 feet above sea level — a recovery of about 6 feet since it reached a recent low point in June. But that’s still the lake’s lowest level in any March since 1937, when it was still filling for the first time. Mead is currently at about 39 percent of capacity. …

 

Reservoirs in Central and Southern California remain well below their averages, with Don Pedro Reservoir in the Sierra foothills at 82 percent of its average and 60 percent of capacity, and Perris Lake in Riverside County at 43 percent of its average and 36 percent of capacity. While the snowpack is calculated at 87 percent of normal overall, its depth varies widely across the state — rising over recent months to roughly 100 percent of the average in the far north of the state, but reaching only about 75 percent of the average toward the south. The U.S. Drought Monitor still shows much of Southern and Central California to be facing long-term “exceptional drought.”

That’s from an L.A. Times’ analysis calling for a “statewide approach” to address California’s continuing water crisis.

Only San Diego County is doing well in the state’s southern realms. The county water authority’s 25-year-old emphasis on seeking new sources of water independent of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has paid off so well that two months ago, its reservoirs brimming, it had to dump some 500 million gallons of treated drinking water.

By Katy Grimes

California could become the next oil boom state. Will Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and a Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature seize the day — and the tax revenue that would come with drilling and fracking? Or will excessive environmental concerns block the development, the jobs and the revenues?

I’ve been saying for months now, if Gov. Brown doesn’t want to go down as the leader responsible for driving the silver stake into the heart of the state of California, he has one option: he can always turn to oil fracking and save the state. Just the mere mention of this dramatic policy change would impact financial markets.

California oil = jobs + tax revenues

California sits on two-thirds of America’s shale oil reserves.  The Monterey Shale Formation is four times the size of the Bakken Shale Reserve in North Dakota, which is now the largest oil producer in the country behind Texas.

Along the Western side of the San Joaquin Valley in the middle of the state, the Monterey Shale Formation encompasses several hundred miles, where water has dried up and unemployment is the highest in the state.

North Dakota has a monthly oil output of nearly 20 million barrels, and accounts for 11 percent of U.S. oil production. But California quickly could produce 15 million barrels a month more using today’s technology. Many experts estimate as much as 400 billion barrels of oil are in the Monterey Shale Formation.

The oil boom in North Dakota spurred the state’s $3.8 billion surplus and is responsible for the declining unemployment rate, currently at 3.2 percent, the lowest in the nation.

California’s unemployment still hovers at 9.8 percent, and is tied for the worst rate in the nation with Nevada. “Over the last 20 years, 3.6 million more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in, and 130,000 more Americans have moved from Hawaii than to it,” reported “Rich States, Poor States,” authored by Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore and Jonathan Williams.

This is what’s known as a teaching moment.

California has implemented no real reform policies in recent years to promote jobs. Currently, Brown has not seemed to be interested in making any of these pro-growth economic moves as he pushes high-speed rail and the implementation of AB 32’s radical climate change policies.

“However, if Brown merely adopted the tax reform policies of Kansas, California would see immediate improvement in the business sector, job growth and unemployment rate,” I wrote recently.

“Kansas flattened the income tax, dropped three tax brackets to two, lowered the income tax rate from 6.45 percent to 4.9 percent, and eliminated personal income tax for small business owners,” explains “Rich States, Poor States.”

In lieu of the pro-growth policies in Kansas, oil revenues would be fruitful.

Oil jobs

California’s financial house is a mess. But the Golden State is sitting on a lot more oil and jobs than the state has seen in decades.

“Gov. Jerry Brown yields to no one in his enthusiasm for green energy, but he knows black gold when he sees it,” Investors Business Daily recently wrote. “Witness his remarks last Wednesday at an event announcing three new renewable energy projects: ‘We want to get the greenhouse gas emissions down, but we also want to keep the economy going. That’s the balance that’s required.’”

A recent study found that exploiting Monterey shale could generate up to 2.8 million new jobs and add 14 percent to the state’s GDP by 2020, near the peak of production.

The University of Southern California researchers and the Communications Institute, a Los Angeles-based think tank, found those new jobs would include many outside the actual shale formation. But most of the new employment would be near the drilling — in the counties that have some of the highest unemployment in the state.

High-speed rail false jobs

Brown knows where jobs are needed the most, and high-speed rail won’t provide these. Oil can and will do far more for the Central Valley and state than Brown’s train, where the only jobs are going to well-connected union contractors and public relations firms.

If the California Environmental Quality Act can be exempted to build sports stadiums, California’s politicians should use their power for good, and tell the environmentalists to sit back and enjoy the economic oil boom.