Article of Interest for December 26, 2013 San Jose Mercury News Delta tunnels plan’s true price tag: As much as $67 billion By Paul Rodgers For more than a year, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration has been describing his plan to build two massive water tunnels through the Delta as a $25 billion project. That would rank it as one of the largest public works plans in California history. But when factoring in long-term financing costs, the price tag actually ranges from $51 billion to $67 billion, according to new figures that emerged last month. While there’s nothing unusual about long-term debt to finance big projects, the new numbers suggest for the first time that the interest payments for the controversial [...]
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Delta Flows: December 19, 2013
December 19, 2013
“In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.” – Czeslaw Milosz Articles [—ATOC—] [—TAG:h2—]Water pokerWithout at all minimizing the hardships that many Californians may experience if drought projections for 2014 are borne out, we want to note that as of December 18, 2013, Southern California’s Castaic Lake reservoir is at 88% of capacity, and Southern California’s Pyramid Lake reservoir is at 97% of capacity.Central Valley reservoirs, by contrast – those serving California’s agricultural heartland – are alarmingly low. Most of these reservoirs lie behind dams built on rivers that used to sustain a complex natural environment, rivers on which fish have relied from time immemorial. And aquifers, the [...]
