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IN THIS ISSUE – “The Sum Adds Up To Something Much Worse Than The Parts”
NEWSOM IN CRISES
- Multiple Crises Make Newsom “Look Vulnerable” in 2022
- Governor’s Pandemic Emergency Health Corps Failed to Muster
- Governor Dissolves Economic Recovery Task Force
- New Corner Office Legislative Secretary
CA ELECTION FINAL WORD
- Overwhelming Voter Opposition to Tax Increases, Poll Finds
- CA Election Post Mortem: Vintage Biden, With Republican Undertones
DROUGHT ON OUR HORIZON?
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week, tailored to your business and advocacy interests. Please feel free to forward.
READ ALL ABOUT IT!!
FOR THE WEEK ENDING DEC. 4, 2020
Multiple Crises Make Newsom “Look Vulnerable” in 2022
Commentary from George Skelton @ LA Times, California’s senior political writer
Mix a governor’s hypocrisy with a touch of elitism and perceived incompetence and you can create a killer negative campaign ad.
On the positive side for Gov. Gavin Newsom, he carries California’s vastly preferred political brand — Democrat — has a clean image, is gifted with telegenic looks and seems to always be trying.
Newsom’s positives should be enough to win him reelection in 2022, especially since his ability to raise campaign money is practically unlimited.
But he’s starting to look vulnerable after the French Laundry and unemployment scam embarrassments.
It was damaging enough that Newsom was hypocritical in attending a lobbyist friend’s birthday dinner with people from several households. It was the type of mixing he had urged other Californians to avoid in order to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Newsom initially told reporters the party was outside where the coronavirus is less likely to spread. But clandestine photos showed a private dining room that looked mostly inside. The elitist touch was added by the French Laundry being an opulent, super expensive restaurant in the Napa Valley wine country.
“I made a bad mistake,” the governor later acknowledged. “I need to preach and practice, not just preach and not practice.”
Then things got worse for Newsom.
Just before Thanksgiving, nine district attorneys and a federal prosecutor reported that the state Employment Development Department had been mistakenly paying out unemployment benefits to convicted murderers, and other state prisoners and local jail inmates.
By Monday, state investigators had identified $400 million paid on roughly 21,000 unemployment benefit claims improperly filed in the names of California prisoners.
“As we unravel this onion, it’s likely to be the biggest fraud in California history,” says Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert, who led the task force that investigated and reported the scam.
Some D.A.s speculate the misspent amount could hit $1 billion. The investigation is still underway.
“I have no doubt that hardcore gang members inside prisons and jails have money flowing outside to guns and drugs, financing potentially violent behavior,” Schubert says.
A 2022 challenge of the governor is beginning to look like more than a hopeless exercise.
“I’m very seriously thinking about running because California needs new leadership and one-party rule has not served the state well in the last few years,” Republican San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer told me.
Faulconer’s mayoral term ends Dec. 10.
“More to come shortly,” he says.
Translation: The soon-to-be ex-mayor is unquestionably running. The only unknown is, how far does he get? A topic for another day.
“The scope of this fraud is breathtaking,” Faulconer says. “It’s another gut punch to Californians who have been waiting months to get unemployment benefits and yet they see it going to death row inmates.
“It’s incredible mismanagement. All the more glaring for Californians because we are the state of innovation, of technology. Yet we can’t get this system to work.”
Newsom and his advisers are trying to explain the unexplainable — something that never could be sold in a 30-second TV ad. If you feel compelled to use up a TV spot for that quagmire of weeds, you’ve already lost.
Dozens of other states have cross-checking systems that allow their unemployment agencies to compare the Social Security numbers of benefit claimants with the inmate population. But California law forbids sharing of Social Security numbers with non-law enforcement agencies. So, no cross-checking for the EDD.
Yes, that state law should be changed. The administration says it’s working on it.
The vast majority of fraudulent claims involved a new federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, Newsom told the D.A.s in a letter Tuesday. That program was designed for independent contractors — Lyft drivers, for example — who aren’t eligible for regular unemployment insurance because they’re not employees.
With the PUA program, there’s no company to check with to verify that the claimant is legit. It’s “a self-certification process,” Newsom wrote, and “bad actors took advantage of the crisis to abuse the system.”
Since then, EDD has installed a more secure identification system, it says.
OK, but the only real explanation is: We screwed up.
“The sum” of the French Laundry incident and prisoners’ scam “add up to something much worse than the individual parts,” says Dan Schnur, a former political strategist who now teaches politics at USC and UC Berkeley.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars going to convicted felons is an easy campaign commercial. But when that ad can show a split screen with the governor having dinner at an expensive restaurant with well-connected lobbyists during the pandemic, it becomes a much more damaging hit.”
Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant and top advisor in gubernatorial campaigns for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman, says: “It plays on all the things people imagine are the worst things about politics — and it turns out to be true.”
Democratic Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris of Laguna Beach heads an Assembly committee that has tried to hold EDD’s “feet to the fire,” she says.
The lawmaker is critical of her fellow Democrat Newsom, noting his first reaction to the fraud was to create a task force.
“We do not need a task force to implement simple and obvious steps that are implemented across the country,” she says. “It’s absurd. This is outrageous.
“EDD is an example of where California government needs to do a much better job in expending tax dollars.”
Petrie-Norris’ tough rhetoric results partially from her representing a very competitive district. She just barely won reelection over a GOP opponent.
If Newsom doesn’t tighten up his administration and partying, he could also face a competitive race.
Governor’s Pandemic Emergency Health Corps Failed to Muster
Sacramento Bee
In late March, as the state scrambled to prepare for the emerging pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the creation of the California Health Corps to recruit and deploy thousands of retired doctors, newly graduated nurses and other medical professionals into COVID-19 hotspots.
Roughly 93,000 people signed up in the days after Newsom unveiled the program, signaling that a groundswell of workers was ready to meet the moment for hospitals and nursing homes. “If you have a background in health care, we need your help,” he declared.
But now, as the state faces another surge in COVID-19 and some hospitals are sounding the alarm about a dangerous lack of medical staffing, less than 1% of the people who originally signed up for the Health Corps are available to help.
It turns out, the vast majority of the tens of thousands of people who signed up were ineligible to work. Those who were qualified were at the mercy of a confusing technology system that hampered deployments.
Many stood by at mostly empty “surge” facilities, including the Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento, while some hospitals and nursing homes went without qualified the Health Corps workers they had requested, a Sacramento Bee review of state documents shows
When California flattened the curve on COVID-19 during the summer, many Health Corps members took jobs at hospitals or more lucrative traveling nurse programs, further dwindling the state’s recruitment pool.
All told, just 900 Health Corps members are now ready to be deployed.
“That’s kind of a drop in the bucket relative to our workforce size,” said Joanne Spetz, associate director of research at the Healthforce Center at the University of California, San Francisco.
There are roughly 300,000 nurses in California, she said. There is no good way to forecast the exact staffing help facilities could need in coming weeks, but Spetz said what’s concerning is how every corner of the state is seeing COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations surging simultaneously.
“The concern that we’re all having from a workforce standpoint is the prior surges were much more localized, so you could send people around,” Spetz said.
Administered by the California EMS Authority, the Health Corps was intended to address the very staffing woes threatening to hit some hospitals and healthcare facilities this winter. The group was designed to deploy frontline workers — including EMTs, administrative workers, nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, behavioral health specialists and pharmacists — who would help handle a crush of patients and offset losses when employees got sick.
But with cases surging across the country, some hospitals, especially in rural California, are already feeling the crunch. That will worsen in the coming weeks.
“There’s been no progress whatsoever,” Stephanie Roberson, government relations director with the California Nurses Association, said about the Health Corps program.
Roberson described the original announcement as a “laudable effort.” But, she said, the state overestimated how many people would have both the qualifications and the experience necessary to help out in a meaningful way.
Not long after the launch, it became clear that tens of thousands of people who had applied didn’t actually have the proper certifications to get involved.
“That’s good that the governor went to the masses right away to see if folks who have other health experience can come and lend their time to this effort,” Roberson said. “It sounds great. But when you start to sift through the paperwork, you find out that people just aren’t qualified.”
Thousands of applicants who made it through the first round did not complete the process, possibly because they had second thoughts as more became known about the spread of COVID-19 in hospitals and nursing homes.
Many of those who were hired early on ended up staffing empty facilities, like Sleep Train Arena, waiting for a surge in patients that, fortunately, never arrived. The inconsistent schedule, lack of benefits and haphazard on-the-job training at facilities dealing with crises, like nursing homes, made it difficult to stick with the program, members said.
“If you think about nurses and physicians, you can work locum tenens, or temporary traveler, in a lot of different parts of the country,” Spetz said. “So it’s pretty easy to imagine that you’ve got a chunk that has kind of disappeared for that.
In response to a California Public Records Act request from The Bee, the EMS Authority, which administers the Health Corps and other state medical responses, provided deployment documents. The records show dozens of hospitals and nursing homes had requested Health Corps resources but received no help from the group or fewer people than they had requested.
The state later said that data might not mean facilities were actually denied any state resources. That’s because there’s a constellation of local and state emergency medical response teams that can respond during disasters. Some have been used in place of Health Corps requests during the pandemic.
One, California Medical Assistance Teams, is a disaster response program that helps during emergencies like wildfires — it helped prepare for a potential Ebola outbreak in 2014.
Throughout the pandemic, it is CAL-MAT personnel more than Health Corps volunteers who have been sent to nursing homes. (On its website, CAL-MAT says it is “conducting immediate hires to support COVID-19 response.”)
Officials say the Health Corps is a distinct part of the pandemic response because it is focused more on getting volunteer health workers, some of them lesser trained, into facilities that need them, rather than deploying highly skilled medical teams to crises.
Since it started, Health Corps personnel have worked 2,538 shifts, spanning 109 facilities statewide. The state has spent at least $2.2 million to staff it, budget records show.
When members did respond to nursing homes, well-intentioned Health Corps members were not always especially helpful, said one nursing home administrator who worked with its members.
During an outbreak at Saint Claire’s Nursing Center in Sacramento, Rusty Blankenfeld, the administrator, requested help as his team of nurses got sick or called out.
The state gave him three Health Corps members who had little experience working at a nursing home with a very different population than a hospital. In an interview, Blankenfeld said he appreciated the effort, but working in a nursing home is “a completely different beast.”
“You almost have to have someone here babysitting them,” Blankenfeld said of the Health Corps team that responded. “It didn’t work out great.”
Deborah Pacyna, spokeswoman for the California Association of Health Facilities, an industry group that represents about 80% of the state’s nursing homes, said she had not heard concerns from facilities about the Health Corps because, to her knowledge, facilities had not requested help from that program. The separate CAL-MAT teams, on the other hand, “have provided outstanding support.”
But having untrained people, like with the Health Corps, stepping into unfamiliar health care situations was a major concern from the onset, Roberson said.
“You just can’t say ‘Calling all nurses.’ You can’t say ‘Calling all doctors.’ ” Roberson said. “They’re a specialty.”
Officials have been concerned about the Health Corps’ operations for months.
The Emergency Medical Services Authority noted in a June meeting that officials and health care providers were often confused about how the Health Corps differed from long-existing health care teams that respond during disasters and other public health emergencies, including to nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic.
Taking on new Health Corps volunteers while also deploying existing medical personnel and overseeing medical responses across the state was overwhelming the EMS Authority, officials wrote.
“EMSA does not have adequate staffing to support large scale disaster responses without risking burning out existing staff,” they said.
Plus, the technology platform for disaster healthcare volunteers was also being used for the Health Corps. Tweaks to the system “created numerous problems for local coordinators.”
Efforts to revamp the Health Corps are ongoing. Officials at the California Department of Public Health recently signed a contract with Slalom LLC, a Seattle-based tech consultant firm, to help manage Health Corps staff deployments and improve data analysis during the state’s pandemic response.
Newsom on Monday warned of increasing pressures facing the health care system and said the state was working to revamp the Health Corps. “We’re going to be dusting that off,” he said.
Officials with the EMS Authority declined a request for an interview for this story. In a statement, the group said it has “maintained frequent, routine contact with local public health agencies and regional disaster medical health coordinators and specialists regarding meeting local needs related to COVID-19.”
They vowed to “work closely with local and regional stakeholders to respond to requests” and onboard additional members “should they be needed.”
Despite some challenges, the program has not been a failure, people who worked for it said.
“I was happy to help with the response,” said Hailey Van Vorhis, a nurse who graduated in February. Like many people who applied for jobs in a frozen-in-place pandemic economy, Van Vorhis struggled to find permanent work.
She signed up for the Health Corps and deployed to Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento. In the summer, she found a full-time job in her field and said she’s hopeful the Health Corps can operate smoothly in the future.
“I don’t think it’s easy to plan,” she said. “I feel like, because there were so many moving parts, we didn’t know what to expect.”
Will Cronan, who lives in San Diego County, also signed up after he graduated from nursing school this year. The Health Corps was an entry point in hospital-based health care for Cronan, who served more than two decades in the U.S. Navy SEALs as a combat medic.
https://www.sacbee.com/article247508320.html#storylink=cpy
Governor Dissolves Economic Recovery Task Force
Politico
Despite a Covid-19 resurgence that is forcing widespread business closures, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he has dissolved his star-studded economic task force co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer.
The group of more than 100 leaders concluded its work with a final report that outlines general principles and findings — but no specific new initiatives to protect California businesses in the pandemic. Newsom later announced the launch of a California Rebuilding Fund intended to help small businesses obtain loans to restart their operations when possible, which he said was one product of task force discussions.
The task force co-chaired by Newsom chief of staff Ann O’Leary and billionaire Democratic activist Steyer was launched with fanfare by the governor in April, and it included internationally famous leaders from business, labor, academia and philanthropy. All four former living California governors agreed to participate as honorary members.
Facing an unprecedented pandemic and economic closures, the Governor’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery provided not just input to Newsom, but the political benefit of showing residents he had buy-in from across the economy.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff were among those participating. One of the other big names was Disney’s Robert Iger, who initially was celebrated as a task force member. But his relationship with the effort and Newsom went south this fall as the governor maintained a ban on large theme parks, including Disneyland, and Iger ultimately resigned from the group.
It was not immediately clear why Newsom was shutting down his task force just as California enters a new round of business closures and a first-time curfew to fight a surge in Covid-19 infections statewide. The new restrictions have already prompted complaints from some business owners and community leaders who say it will further damage business recovery, but the governor has pointed to an unprecedented sharp rise in infections, as much as 50 percent during the first week of November.
The governor’s office, in a release Friday, said the task force “advised the administration on rebuilding as quickly and safely as possible from the pandemic-induced recession,” and “has helped shape the state’s reopening guidelines,” including spearheading “proposals to address a host of pandemic impacts.”
Among the key findings of the group, according to Newsom’s office, were the need to “pursue inclusive regional strategies,” “continue to support essential workers,” and “expand support and provide flexibility to small businesses.” The task force also backed efforts to “close the digital divide,” “promote telemedicine,” and “incorporate equity and sustainability” into its work.
During its short life, the task force faced criticism from some business leaders who said that it appeared to be rudderless and provided little substance in terms of detailed planning.
The report notes in summary that “the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers has identified a number of headwinds that California will continue to face in the near future,” which include “the coming expiration of unemployment benefits like Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, ongoing need for federal relief and the changes to life and work brought on by the rapid shift to telework.”
It says that the challenges “are especially severe for lower-income Californians who were disproportionately impacted by job losses in 2020, as well as small businesses that have gone through an entire year of unpredictability and lower revenues.”
But it wraps up with the observation that “though the future is uncertain, one thing in California has always been true: we grow when we expand opportunity for all — in every region, ZIP code and income level — and invest in our innovators. California will not rely on past successes to push forward, but instead, rise to the challenge of building a recovery for all.”
New Corner Office Legislative Secretary
Office of the Governor
Governor Gavin Newsom today announced the appointment of Angie Wei as Legislative Affairs Secretary in the Office of the Governor.
“From the first day of my Administration, Angie has been a trusted advisor who comes to her work with the interest of the people of California in her heart,” said Governor Newsom. “I can think of no one better to serve in this important role of partnering with the Legislature as we continue to help lead California through this unprecedented time toward a healthier, safer and more inclusive future for all.”
Angie Wei, 49, of Sacramento, has served as Special Advisor to the Governor since January, having previously served as Chief Deputy for Policy in the Office of the Governor from 2019 to 2020. Prior to joining the Governor’s office, Wei was Chief of Staff at the California Labor Federation from 2011 to 2018, where she held several positions from 2000 to 2011, including Legislative Director and Public Policy Director. She was a Program Associate at PolicyLink in 2000, Policy Analyst at the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative from 1998 to 1999 and Policy Director at the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights from 1996 to 1998. Wei earned a Master of Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. This position does not require Senate confirmation and the compensation is $207,000. Wei is a Democrat.
Overwhelming Voter Opposition to Tax Increases, Poll Finds
UC Berkeley Institute for Government Studies
In another sign that California’s tax revolt is alive and well, a record 81% of voters said state and local taxes are high, up 20% from 2008, according to a poll released Friday by UC Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies. Another 78% of voters said that California taxes were so high they were driving many people and businesses out of the state. The distaste for higher taxes likely drove the failure of Prop. 15, which would have hiked commercial property taxes and funneled revenue into local governments and schools. And although voters approved a majority of local tax measures to support schools in November, they defeated at least half of 236 local tax measures in the March primary, including one-third of school bond proposals.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/13z4j1zq
CA Election Post Mortem: Vintage Biden, With Republican Undertones
CalMatters commentary
It is remarkable — even amazing — that as Democrat Joe Biden rang up a nearly 2-to-1 victory over Republican President Donald Trump in California this year, Trump’s party regained four of the seven congressional seats it lost two years ago.
California’s outcome was a big share of the Democrats’ nationwide loss of congressional seats that reduced them to a bare majority.
The GOP comeback was solidified this week when the last few votes were counted in the 25th Congressional District, one of the state’s most contentious political arenas in suburban Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
In 2018, Democrat Katie Hill ousted Republican Congressman Steve Knight in the 25th district, one of seven GOP-held seats to flip that year in a wave of anti-Trump voting. But Hill became enmeshed in a scandal over her personal conduct and resigned.
Republican Mike Garcia, a former Navy pilot, recaptured the seat for the GOP in a special election, defeating Democratic Assemblywoman Christy Smith, and the two squared off again this year. This week, in the final count, Garcia eked out a paper-thin victory, just a few hundred votes.
Two of the GOP’s congressional comeback wins came in Orange County, where Republicans Young Kim and Michelle Steel defeated one-term Democrats Gil Cisneros and Harley Rouda.
Historically, the county has been solid Republican territory but Democrats have been making inroads lately. Democrat Hillary Clinton won it in 2016, the first Democrat to do so in 80 years, and Biden won it this year.
The fourth Republican comeback was in the San Joaquin Valley’s 21st Congressional District, where former Congressman David Valadao narrowly defeated Democrat TJ Cox, who had ousted Valadao two years earlier.
Of course, what happened this year merely sets the stage for 2022’s election, when Trump will be gone and outcomes will be even less predictable.
For one thing, we don’t even know how many seats California will have after the 2020 census is complete.
Demographers believe it’s likely that California’s slow population growth could reduce its allotment, now 53 seats, by one or two. However, it could lose even more if the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case that was argued just this week, supports Trump’s position that undocumented immigrants should be excluded from congressional seat calculations.
California is home to as many as three million undocumented immigrants and traditionally the decennial census has included them, along with citizens and legal immigrants, in the complete count used to determine the number of each state’s congressional seats.
Were undocumented residents excluded, it would translate into roughly three fewer seats for California, on top of the one or two seats the state might lose due to its overall slow population growth.
That’s why California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has joined the Supreme Court battle over Trump’s directive.
“For hundreds of years, the U.S. Constitution has been clear: everyone counts,” Becerra said in a statement. “Here in California, we know that fundamental value extends beyond the census. No matter the color of your skin or where you come from, you count.”
However many seats California winds up having, their districts will be redrawn by a 14-member independent commission with five Democrats, five Republicans and four independents, and its first foray into redistricting a decade ago proved that its actions are not predictable.
We may not know how many congressional seats California will have in 2022, and we don’t know the shape of those districts. However, we do know that California will, as it did in 2018 and this year, play a significant role in determining which party controls Congress.
Multi-Year Drought Probability Increasing
Capital Public Radio
With no rain in the forecast for the rest of 2020 — thanks to a La Niña weather pattern pushing storms north of the state — the probability of California entering a multi-year drought is increasing.
“We did fortunately get some rain in November,” said Michelle Mead, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “However, since that time, it has been drying, and we even had some wind events. So we’re very quickly back into fire season.”
An autumn with little rain and a forecast for a dry December is reminding weather and climate experts of the patterns that took place before last year’s mild winter. That season, much of the state only got about half of what’s normal, bringing a majority of Northern California into what could be two years of below average precipitation.
With more than two-thirds of the state experiencing some sort of drought and water supplies just below average, another dry year wouldn’t break the bank. But it could point to a trend — mulit-year droughts — not too far back in California’s memory.
But what happens with La Niña heavily determines what the water year will look like, said Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh.
”It’s not just bad luck. There are configurations that tend to tip the odds towards more dry conditions,” he said. “It’s very consistent with a climate that gets warmer and is more prone to prolonged warm, dry conditions punctuated by wet conditions.”
La Niña historically has meant drier, colder winters in California. The weather pattern occurs in the Pacific Ocean where strong winds blow warm water at the surface of the ocean from South America to Indonesia. As the water moves west, cold water moves to the surface near the coast of South America. This results in storms mostly landing in the Pacific Northwest versus California.
Climate scientists and meteorologists are mulling this question because it’s common for California to go from drought years to wet years. But the past few years have all been very warm, which increases drought severity, says Dan McEvoy, a climatology research professor with the Desert Research Institute in Reno.
“There’s not a single storm expected in the next week and if you look out to about two weeks, it’s staying quite dry with very, very minimal precipitation,” he said. “We’re starting to kind of get into overlapping dry seasons, where we had last year ended up being really dry and we’re falling into drought this year again.”
McEvoy recently co-authored a paper that found warming temperatures mean a 2-fold increase by 2039 in the likelihood of a multi-year drought occurring. That grows to 15-fold by the end of the century.
“As we go into the future we can expect more of those severe multi-year droughts … even in years or locations where we have precipitation not changing that much in the future because the temperatures are changing,” he said.
But when should Californians start to worry about another multi-year drought? California leaders begin to worry once there are two years of drought conditions, because the system is designed to weather three years of drought.
“For the reservoirs, they can sustain California water supply for up to three years without any degradation,” said Mead with NWS. “But after three years, if we don’t have a good winter, then of course we look to the state to figure out water restrictions and things of that nature.”
Michael Anderson, state climatologist with the California Department of Water Resources, says it is too early to worry because of how variable the state’s climate can be.
“It’s very tricky for California,” he said. “We have the largest year to year variability anywhere in the United States. We can go from 2019, that had one of the wettest February’s on record, then 2020 comes along and it’s the driest February on record and we have a dry year.”
That back and forth nature of California’s climate, amplified by warming temperature, is what UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain calls climate whiplash. He says it will most likely get worse as the globe warms and that the state “will likely experience an increase of anywhere from 50% to 150% (highest in the south) in the frequency of very dry November-March periods similar to 1976-1977 (and only slightly drier than 2013-2014), which have historically occurred about once per century.”
California reservoirs are just starting to dip below average, Anderson says, and he hopes the ridge of pressure pushing storms to the north weakens as autumn turns into winter.
“What we don’t know is as we get into winter, which starts [December ] 21st, we might see that pattern shift,” he said. “Where the high may move to the west, which would open the door for those cold storms to drop in out of the Gulf of Alaska.”
If that happens, California could break the cycle of a potential multi-year drought. But Anderson says there are a lot of unknowns.
“We’ve had dry starts like this, and I’ve seen that kind of storm door open and that leads to then a wet December, January, February,” he said. “I’m really gonna have to wait and see how things evolve.”
This spring a group of researchers released a paper saying that the southwest portion of North America is dealing with something larger than droughts lasting three to five years. They say a larger trend of warming and drying has resulted in what they call a megadrought that’s lasted from 2000 through 2018.
They liken the current megadrought to medieval megadroughts and this one brings up major questions about human caused climate warming.
“What we’re seeing through this 20-year period corresponds with sort of mediocre precipitation,” said John Abatzoglou, a UC Merced climate scientist and co-author of the study. “That’s taken what would have been in pretty sort of, you know, normal-ish drought into making it the second worst mega drought in 1,200 years.”
He says climate change has played a significant role in creating this megadrought by drawing more water out of the soil and in turn stressing the environment.
“We haven’t recovered from the megadrought, that’s pretty clear to me,” he said. “If you look at groundwater levels in the Central Valley, they’re depleted. And we know that during drought years, we tend to pull more from groundwater. That limits our ability to have that buffer in future dry years. So, the last thing we need right now is to have years like this.”
https://www.capradio.org/159773
Time to Collaborate on Water Management? “We Think So”:
Cannon Michael, sixth-generation farmer and CEO of Bowles Farming Co., Los Banos
Ann Hayden, senior director of western water and resilient landscapes at Environmental Defense Fund
Commentary from CalMatters
Despite a seemingly endless era of upheaval – a surging pandemic, contentious election cycle and racial strife – we still have the responsibility to address pressing issues that cannot wait for calmer times. The future of California’s water is one of those issues.
While collaboration and relationship building have been made even more challenging due to distancing required by COVID-19, we believe that water is an issue where we can rise above party lines and entrenched perspectives.
Water is the backbone of California’s agricultural economy, supports our iconic rivers, and of course, is essential to our survival. Simply put, water is a lifeline that binds us together, and without it, we jeopardize our future and that of coming generations.
Could now be the time to collectively start down a better path for managing this precious resource and roll up our sleeves to make it happen? We think so.
For decades, fighting over water has stalled progress and sown deep mistrust across different water users.
We have forgotten that we are all stewards of California – a special place like no other, a rich connected tapestry of environmental beauty, diverse communities and productive agriculture.
We need to come together as Californians – not just farmers, environmentalists, rural community organizers and urbanites. We need to come together as Californians working for our children and future generations who are depending on us to leave them with a better California than we have today.
We need to come together to solve some admittedly difficult water challenges that affect the future of rural communities, cities, wildlife, farming in the Central Valley and consequently our country’s food supply. Drought and water scarcity are high on the list of these challenges.
During our last major drought, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was enacted as one major piece of the solution to ensure we have enough water for future generations.
Looking forward, 2021 will be an important year for moving ahead on implementation of this sweeping change to water law. The state will be rolling out its first assessments of sustainability plans developed by regions with the most critically overdrafted groundwater supplies.
Balancing groundwater supply and demand, as required by the law, will no doubt be challenging: Some models say San Joaquin Valley landowners may need to take equivalent acreage to Yosemite National Park out of production to balance groundwater supply and demand.
To reach durable, fair solutions to such large challenges, we need to drop the baggage we’ve amassed over time. We need to come together as Californians to start collaboratively tackling problems – not just talking and arguing them. We need to come together and break the cycle of mistrust and take the time to truly understand how each side views the challenges and potential solutions.
It’s unlikely we will agree on everything – if we did California wouldn’t be the dynamic, diverse state it is today. But there is significant common ground we can build from. For instance, we all agree every single person in California should have clean and affordable drinking water when they turn on their kitchen faucet.
We also agree that replenishing groundwater is one of many solutions we will need to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. But it’s not the only solution; it’s inevitable that we still will need to scale back some agriculture.
The question we need to address is, how can we make sure that agriculture can still thrive while some farmland becomes productive in new ways, whether it’s with less water-intensive ranching, low-impact solar projects, wildlife habitat or recreational areas for our families to enjoy on picnics and hikes?
Taking action to address these challenges may mean parts of our state and the very communities we live in will look different from how they look today. But if we can come together as Californians to get it right, California will evolve and endure as the special place it is today for generations to come.
We have decades of experience coming at water challenges from our silos. Let’s break down those silos, come together as Californians and see what happens. Isn’t it worth a shot?