The stuff to write about is coming faster than I can work on it, but in the near term, I want to write more about:
A trio of reports on California agricultural water use.
Two rival lawsuits that are actually pretty amazing. As far as I can tell, both sides are going all in. Cental Valley farmers are suing to abandon endangered smelt protections. “Fuck ’em, they’re ugly minnows and they aren’t worth the cost of shutting down pumps.” Enviros are suing to have a judge shut down several hundred thousand acres of farms on the west side of the valley. “If the public trust doctrines and reasonable use mean anything, use them now.” This is a long-avoided challenge to what several legal doctrines mean, but I guess people want decisions bad enough to file high stakes suits.
I might write more on either of these, but I don’t have a lot to add:
The Legislative Analyst’s Office doesn’t trust the economic analyses in the AB 32 Scoping Plan:
We conclude that (1) the scoping plan’s overall emissions reductions and purported net economic benefit are highly reliant on one measure—the Pavley regulations, (2) the plan’s evaluation of the costs and savings of some recommended measures is inconsistent and incomplete, (3) Macroeconomic modeling results show a slight net economic benefit to the plan, but ARB failed to demonstrate the analytical rigor of its findings, (4) economic analysis played a limited role in development of scoping plan, and (5) despite its prediction of eventual net economic benefit, the scoping plan fails to lay out an investment pathway to reach its goals for GHG emissions levels in 2020.
A report from a well-regarded fish professor at UC Davis who says that most California fish species are DOOMED. DOOMED! I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of California fish species, but I will say that two of my friends who are out in the field all the time (one river-side, one ocean-side) told me separately and unprompted that wild California salmon will be gone within ten years. Ouch.
On the public record 
Back when I was in the orange business, my father in law told me that the water would eventually be taken for the cities. ( In fact the Gage Canal (irrigation)had been condemned by the city of Riverside to keep it out of the hands of the city of San Bernardino). It was just a matter of time, water rights be damned. First in time won’t mean anything when people are dying of thirst. Hosing off the driveway, well, that’s another story.