Water quality, image by Pixel-ShotOPINION – Through creative thinking and partnerships between state leaders and local dairy farmers, LandFlex is helping us improve water quality and increase supplies to meet our region’s needs while sustaining our local agricultural economic engines at the same time.
Photo by The Image Party via ShutterstockOPINION – In many historically redlined and low-income communities, full-service grocery stores are rare. In these neighborhoods, farmers’ markets supported by the California Nutrition Incentive Program (CNIP) can serve as a vital source of affordable fruits and vegetables for community members.
However, CNIP and its largest program — Market Match — face a
Young rainbow trout at the Warm Springs Fish Hatchery near Big Pine, Calif., on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. (Photo: Sean Lema, via Shutterstock)The impacts of California’s interminable drought are well-known. But one aspect has drawn little relatively attention — its relationship with environmental laws. Last year was the second-driest water year on record, with all 58 California counties placed under a drought emergency proclamation, according to California’s official drought website.
Workers at an agricultural plant in Newell sort through material on a picking line. (Photo: My Photo Buddy, via Shutterstock)Tired of losing billions to worker lawsuits, California business leaders are betting millions that voters will eliminate the lightning rod Private Attorney General Act and give enforcement authority to a historically underfunded state agency.
A landfill gas collection site in Sunnyvale. (Photo: Michael Vi, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Reducing the amount of organic waste that is buried in California landfills is an environmental imperative. As state policy mandates, something has to be done to choke back the production of methane, the gas that is generated when table scraps, yard clippings and other organic materials decompose underground.
A California Department of Water Resources geologist measures and records a pumping water level in a production well. (Photo: John Chacon,/DWR, 2013, via California Water Blog)Analysis: California’s single most urgent water policy priority is preserving our groundwater supply. In normal years, groundwater provides one-third of our state’s urban and agricultural water. In dry years, it provides up to nearly two-thirds.
An aerial view of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.State water officials today ordered cuts in water to dozens of growers and ranchers, limiting supplies to farmers who have had rights to the water for more than a century. The cutbacks mark the first time since 1977 — also a severe drought year — that such reductions have been ordered.
The California coast along Redwood National Park, north Humboldt County, (Photo: Don Forthuber, redwoods.info)OPINION: It’s been a year since I resigned from the California Coastal Commission, and it’s time to tell a few stories of what I learned as a Coastal Commissioner. Each and every month I learned that not everything was how it seemed. My first lesson was learning that developers love farmers.