The state of California soon will tell us what we’re worth. Don’t be surprised if the answer is “not as much as south Valley farmers,” or “not as much as San Francisco fishermen,” or simply “not much.”
In February, the State Water Resources Control Board will release its long-awaited revised Substitute Environmental Draft, laying out how much water it wants to flow down the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and Merced rivers to the ocean and the board’s projections of the costs of those increased flows to our region. Such reports are number-heavy and a bit boring, but stick with us because the state plans to take money out of every pocket in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.
The board’s first report in 2012 was so pathetically flawed it’s taken state number-crunchers four years to get over the embarrassment.