COG September Meeting Report
Posted by Kern Lewis
on Sep 21, 2015
Join us for another great lunch this Tuesday at Redwood Canyon. We welcome Jim O'Connor, Assistant General Manager for Operations for the East Bay Regional Park District. He will discuss the current tenant situation at Redwood Canyon (Willow Park) and what the next steps are for securing the future of the park. That will include a new RFP for a long-term management contract.
Please invite anyone of the community you know who has an interest in the future of Redwood Canyon (and might also be a prospective member!) You can always buy them lunch to make it easy for them to say "yes"!
Please invite anyone of the community you know who has an interest in the future of Redwood Canyon (and might also be a prospective member!) You can always buy them lunch to make it easy for them to say "yes"!
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Those that missed lunch last Tuesday missed a really great, informative presentation by Jeff Shields (an Irrigation District General Manager and a Manteca Rotarian) on how the 4-year drought is impacting California in general and the San Joaquin Valley in particular. I have attached the presentation for you to view. Just some key facts:
-We have one year of water left in our reservoirs. If it doesn't rain this winter, we run out.
-Groundwater pumping has caused severe land subsidence in the Central Valley, with the land in some farmers' fields dropping seven feet already. Regulation of groundwater use is a necessary move going forward. (BTW: Once the water is pumped out and an aquifer collapses, you cannot pump it up again.)
-One of the canals that takes water from Northern California to Southern California has seen a section drop 15 feet due to subsidence. This means that canal can no longer carry a full load of water (it would top the lowered levees and flood the surrounding land.)
-California 99 used to run flat through the valley. Now it rolls up and down as some of the land beneath it has sunk.
-All options for increasing our long-term water supply are expensive (desalination, irrigation system overhauls, etc.) We may have no choice but to spend the money.
-California has seen two-hundred and seven-hundred year dry periods over the last 2000 years. We have had a particularly wet period over the last 200 years. So living with drought may simply be a fact of life that we should plan seriously for.
See what you missed? Don't miss another great Tuesday with Rotary!
All the best,
President Kern