November 4, 2011

The House Natural Resources Committee held an oversight hearing on President Obama’s National Ocean Policy on Oct. 24. President Obama signed an executive order creating an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force in June 2009. 

The U.S. EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System pesticide general permit for aquatic pesticide applications went into effect Oct. 31 but has little regulatory effect on California water agencies.

EPA has assigned California primacy for the implementation and enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act, including NPDES permits. This authority has been assigned to the State Water Resources Control Board, which had previously adopted several NPDES permits for aquatic pesticide applications.  

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a final research plan today to assess impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources.

The study, requested by Congress, will look at the full cycle of water-related activities in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, from the mixing of chemicals to the injection of fracturing fluids to the treatment and disposal of wastewater.

California’s Bay-Delta system will see changes in habitat, sea level and freshwater availability over the next century as a result of global climate change, according to a new assessment of climate warming scenarios by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has extended the deadline for comments on proposed requirements for water-related contracting activities.

Comments originally were due today, Oct. 28. The new deadline is Nov. 30.

ACWA is working on a comment letter on this issue. 

Here is the Bureau's extention press release.  

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will open the National Levee Database for public access by hosting a series of public webinars beginning tomorrow.

The database is a real-time, dynamic information source that provides visualization and search capability for the first time on the location and condition of Corps-operated levee systems nationwide. It includes attributes of levees and floodwalls relevant to flood fighting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, repair and inspection.

Federal representatives in the Delta region urged the Obama Administration to withdraw a recent BDCP planning agreement in a letter sent Oct. 24.

The new legal agreement was signed in August by the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, state Department of Water Resources, and state and federal water contractors and identifies how the remaining planning activities will be funded.