Host Dave Schlom is joined by two members of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California to discuss one of the most important issues for the Golden State: water!
Letitia Grenier is the Director of the PPIC's Water Policy Center, Jeffrey Mount is a senior fellow there, and Professor Emeritus of Earth and Planetary Sciences and founding director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences are also there.
In a wide-ranging discussion, we talk about water in the West in general and in California specifically. As someone (the quote is attributed to Mark Twain but that's possibly apocryphal) once said, "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over."
In the arid west, that is certainly true, and water wars have been a huge part of California's history. But there are ways that managing water with science as a guide can lead to better outcomes for communities and fisheries -- especially the imperiled Chinook salmon fishery which has basically collapsed in the state.