A chat with Jennifer Pierre of the State Water Contractors

CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: We won’t use that old Mark Twain quote (that he probably never wrote anyway) but fighting over water has been California’s favorite pastime for at least 175 years. If you think norcal/socal baseball rivalries are bitter – try the socal vs. Delta water wars. One of the people tasked with managing that aqua drama is Jennifer Pierre, General Manager for the State Water Contractors – a statewide, non-profit association of the public water agencies that contract with the Department of Water Resources to receive water from the State Water Project. The SWP provides water for 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland. A UC Davis alumna with a bachelor’s in environmental biology and conservation, Pierre has 20 years of experience in Delta management and uses that experience to help improve water supply and operations for the SWC. She joined us to talk about challenges of climate change, issues from overpumping groundwater, and if DC and and California can make nice on Water Policy.

1:01 Capitol Weekly Insiders Survey

1:58 Dominique Donette

2:58 AI podcasts

3:33 Top 100 Party

6:04 Jennifer Pierre

7:30 Water in the California Budget

8:53 “Housing doesn’t happen without water”

9:41 Background

12:53 Managing Climate Change: Hydrology

13:41 Subsidence: “We’ve got a major problem on our hands”

16:59 Status of DC vs. California water fights

20:04 Playing peacemaker among different stakeholders

22:43 Prop. 4 implementation

26:30 #WWCA