by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Western newspapers, blogs, and podcasts are humming this month with stories that the seven states on the Colorado River are close to an agreement on managing the river in future years. The existing agreements, designed to “supplement” the ancient and sacred Interstate Compact during [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Gertrude Stein wrote her oft-repeated line “A rose is a rose is a rose…” in a 1913 poem. She explained it as meaning “things are what they are.” But what if it’s called something else? That was Juliet’s question to Romeo: “What’s in a [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Here is a late-breaking flash from a new study released last week at the University of Arizona: Westerners use too much water. Pete Seeger’s 1960s folk standard, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” is in the Grammy Hall of Fame, made a genuine classic [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel Every year for the past 25, at least, negotiating teams for the seven states on the Colorado River have worked to overcome a new crisis, invariably driven by two entities: the state of California and the federal Bureau of Reclamation (BOR). For a quarter-century, [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow The Daily Sentinel An early lesson I learned as a young staffer for the late Sen. Bill Armstrong was the importance of careful consideration. He disliked being rushed into hasty decisions and developed a standard response to any demand for immediate action. “If you need an answer [...]
by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor As Appearing in the California Globe ‘Conservation as a way of life:’ Demanding additional conservation from urban water users is a non-starter California’s drought conditions are actually historically normal. So are our occasional heavy wet winters – Despite Gavin Newsom’s moldy talking point [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow As appearing in the Daily Sentinel Most people are happier on weekends. We know that because a government study proved it. Without such studies, you may not know that people drive poorly when talking on a cellphone, or that the elderly cherish happy memories more than sad [...]
by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor As Appearing in the California Globe ‘Judges don’t weigh the correctness of an environmental report’s conclusions, only its sufficiency’ Judge Samuel T. McAdam of the Yolo County Superior Court denied an environmental lawsuit to halt the Sites Reservoir project, addressing the streamlined legal [...]
by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor As Appearing in the California Globe Reader asks ‘Whatever happened to the reservoirs that the residents of California approved to be built in 2014?’ Gov. Gavin Newsom is bragging about more than $140 million coming from the Biden-Harris Administration to support “critical water [...]
by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow As appearing in the Daily Sentinel In the 1980s Gunnison philanthropist Butch Clark offered a novel way to end the age-old West Slope-East Slope water battles. He suggested that Denver could use the Colorado River’s remaining unallocated water by building a pipeline from the Utah line to [...]
