Ann Hayden is a Senior Water Resource Analyst at EDF.

To many, all the news of the dire state of the Delta and the efforts underway to find solutions sounds all too familiar. Wasn’t this where we were over ten years ago? Parties came together to sign the Bay-Delta Accord and launch a multi-stakeholder effort known as CALFED. It was supposed to solve all the woes of the Delta and we would “all get better together.”

Haven’t we been here before? The answer is both yes and no.

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Spreck Rosekrans is an Economic Analyst at EDF.

Last week the Governor unveiled a 7-point water plan in his letter to Senators Steinberg, Machado and Perata [PDF].

Let's start with a look at the new plan to reduce per capita use by 20 percent by 2020 (we will opine later on the storage, conveyance and other proposals). Read more »

Thomas J. Graff is Senior Counsel at EDF.

Nearly a year ago an award-winning well-known albeit now himself "retired" water (b)logger announced to his readers that EDF Regional Director Tom Graff planned "to retire at the end of the year and return in an undefined avuncular capacity".

So here I am, no longer Regional Director, still active though no longer fulltime, still worried about proposals that would require massive taxpayer subsidies for projects without assessment of water supply benefits or environmental impacts. Yet I’m still optimistic that all the processes now underway to plan California’s water future (the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, the Governor’s Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force, and even Senator Simitian’s subversive SB 27 among them) might actually lead to a Nirvana in which environmental objectives are celebrated, promoted, and ACHIEVED.

Let’s hope that we can reach Nirvana even as our agricultural and urban friends continue to prosper (but maybe with just a little less water spread around for them to consume).