The always-alert Aquafornia blog posted an excellent summary of California’s snowpack woes.
The Reader’s Digest version? While Winter storms promised much, a dry spring means the Sierra snowpack has fallen far short of early expectations.
Faster than you can say "rationing," every major paper in the state jumped on the story.
From the Contra Costa Times:
California’s snowpack is [...]

As we’ve pointed out in the past, Nestle Waters of North America uses it inexhaustible supply of lawyers to bully, intimidate, and just plain wear out their opponents (usually small towns). If one lawyer gets beat, they shove another $2000 suit into the breach.
That’s why it’s heartening to hear the Protect Our Waters Coalition (CalTrout, [...]

OK gang, The Underground’s Sizable Corporate Staff made it past the always-hectic Monday, but that’s small comfort given that it was 31 degrees this morning and yes — it was snowing.
Frankly, here at the Underground we’re pretty damned tired of the damned cold and the damned snow and the damned clouds and the damned [...]

PacifiCorp — the Underground’s least-favorite utility because of its bid to hold onto the Klamath’s Salmon-destroying damns — agreed to refrain from running their Link River Dam hydroelectric project during the months when the project kills endangered fish species (this project is located in Klamath Falls).
Fans of corporate spin will no doubt find the following [...]

Dan Bacher does a beautiful job of summarizing a recent (and complex) legal ruling by Federal Judge Wagner denying a plan to export more water from the California Delta — even as salmon, steelhead, and other fish populations are in a state of collapse:
Federal judge Oliver Wanger today tossed out a controversial water plan that [...]

The West Coast’s ongoing salmon crisis isn’t exactly a secret to regular Underground readers, and it’s safe to say we’ve seen more salmon-related stories in major media channels in the last three years than in the prior 30.
This time, the New York Times Op-Ed lays it out: the next president will have to focus on [...]

As expected, the collapse of salmon stocks in the Sacramento River has resulted in the cancellation of the salmon season off the California and Oregon coasts (only limited recreational Coho salmon fishing will be allowed off central Oregon).
The news wires are crawling with stories, suppositions, animosity and outright rage, though the collapse of the final [...]

The Aguanomics blog is a water-issues blog written by an honest-to-goodness economist, and frankly, the Underground’s sizable Nestle-research staff had a good laugh at his comments regarding the folks in McCloud who originally signed this absolute hummer of a contract:
Bottom Line: They should fire/tar and feather the fools who signed the original contract and start [...]

What do you do when you implement special “artificials-only, one-fish limit” regulations and they produce a 135% increase in trout populations?
If you’re the moronic easily influenced folks in charge of fisheries at the Prarie River in Wisconsin, your course is clear; you lift the regulations on a critical five-mile section of river (more than 30 [...]

Via the Aquafornia blog:
To help prevent the spread of invasive mussels that can impact the fishery and damage water conveyance systems, all boats entering Crowley Lake this year will be thoroughly inspected, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) recently announced. Boats showing signs of contamination with invasive mussels, or found to contain [...]

The McCloud Watershed Council held a community meeting over the proposed Nestle plant, and while the town’s still clearly divided over the project, even the proponents have got to be kicking themselves over the lopsided contract.
After all, Nestle’s getting the water for about 1/4000 the cost paid by a similar plant in Ohio, and you [...]

It’s been too long since we visited with our good, good friends at multinational predator Nestle Corporation.

Then again, I doubt they’ve missed us much, being as they’ve been busy making all the "World’s Worst Corporation" lists (’#10 with a bullet), suing small towns in Maine into oblivion, trying to illegally obtain new water [...]