Author Archives: WayneLusvardi

Water Exporter Riverside Sues State over 28% Cutback

In California, drought has been redefined as when your city has surplus water it already sells to alleviate shortages of other water suppliers that doesn’t count towards its state-mandated water cutback.  Even water suppliers that are water independent and export water to other water districts to alleviate drought are being tagged with as much as 28 percent mandated water cutbacks.

One such city is Riverside, which has sued the California Water Resources Control Board over its 28 percent reduction mandate on the basis that it is “water independent” and its groundwater should be counted toward meeting the requirements for only a 4 percent water curtailment.  Statewide the Water Board’s goal is to cut back urban water usage by an average of 25 percent.  But the Water Board has mandated a certain percentage of water reduction, from 4 to 36 percent, for each city based on gallons of water used per person per day.

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Big Coastal Cities, Not Wealthy Cities and Farms, Have Drained Northern California Reservoirs

“Laws are like spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught” — French novelist Hornore de Balzac, author of “Bureaucracy”.

Small, wealthy cities and large corporate agriculture have been blamed as the main culprits of California’s four-year long drought.  But focusing on the size of cities, not gallons of water used per person per day, tells a different story. Continue reading

Rebutting the NRDC on Ways to Deal with California Drought

“Climate change is likely to increase the frequency of warmer winters and low snowpack”.  – Ben Chou, Natural Resources Defense Council, “California Needs Proactive Ways to Deal with Drought”, EnergyNewsData.com, April 3, 2015.

But such a climate change prognostication is a classic case of a self-fulfilling prophecy because California already has warmer winters and lower snowpack during normal dry years!  You can’t predict the present. 

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U.C. Davis Experts Call For Drought Environmental Water Market

By Wayne Lusvardi, Guest Blogger

On Feb. 11, 2014, a team of water experts[1] associated with U.C. Davis called for the creation of a “special water market” to generate “revenues that would help support fish and wildlife recovery” to alleviate the California drought. Continue reading