California
California College Data and Policy Project Awarded $200,000 Grant from College Futures Foundation to Study CalFresh Use by Students – California Policy Lab
January 28, 2025, Berkeley, California — A new grant from College Futures Foundation will support research to improve the take-up of CalFresh benefits by students in the state’s three main systems of higher education, including the University of California, the California Community College System, and the California State University.
This is the first external support for the research of the new California College Data and Policy Project. The Project is a joint initiative of the California Policy Lab and the Center for Studies in Higher Education, and is led by Professor Jesse Rothstein, the Carmel Friesen Chair in Public Policy and David Gardner Chair in Higher Education and a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at UC Berkeley.
“We’re thrilled to receive this grant, which will support our work with our partners to use enrollment, financial aid, and safety-net data to identify students who are eligible for these supports, and then target outreach with a goal of increasing the number of students who enroll,” explains Professor Rothstein. “We’re grateful to College Futures Foundation because this grant will also support our longer-term work to better measure if receiving CalFresh has an impact on student success outcomes like staying enrolled and graduating.”
CalFresh is California’s version of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and it provides a monthly benefit amount that can be used to purchase food. Research by the California Policy Lab has shown that among students who are likely eligible for CalFresh, only about 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 students enroll in the program.
Additional background
Student Supports Initiative
Across the country, many college students struggle to meet their basic needs while attending school. Public higher education institutions are well-situated to connect students to safety-net benefits, but data limitations have hampered previous efforts to quantify eligibility and take-up.
To address this, the California Policy Lab has partnered with the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC), the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO), the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), the California State University Office of the Chancellor (CSUOC), and the California Department of Education (CDE) to link anonymized data across these six agencies in order to help get more students the support they need to thrive at college.
This initiative has made it possible to link together data that had not previously been linked, which in turn allows the research team to unlock new insights about CalFresh and college students. This includes analysis showing how many students are eligible and enrolled in the UC and California Community College systems, testing outreach methods with partners, and more recently, showing the impact that temporary, COVID-era policy changes had on making more students eligible for CalFresh, and making benefits more generous. All of the research is available on the CCDPP web page.
The California College Data and Policy Project
The CCDPP is a new research initiative that brings together University of California researchers and government partners to advance equity and improve California’s world class higher education system.
CCDPP will generate new insights and research on what works to better support California students and their families as they transition through the education system. Initial CCDPP research will focus on student supports, college admissions, and transfer students.
California
Elias: California water agency supply estimates should be more realistic
The thousands of drivers traversing Interstate 5 on any given day this winter can see for themselves: Nothing even remotely like a water shortage currently plagues the State Water Project.
This is completely obvious from the major viewpoint off the east side of the interstate between Gustine and Patterson, from which it’s clear that all major canals of the project just south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta are full to capacity or nearly so.
It’s much the same a few dozen miles to the southwest, where the water project’s largest manmade lake, the San Luis Reservoir, is chock-full. Sand-colored margins that grew steadily larger during the decade of drought from 2010 to 2020 have long since been inundated, with the artificial lake shining bright blue on crisp, sunny winter days.
Water officials also promise the San Luis Reservoir will soon be expanded. So why does California’s Water Resources Department persist in providing preliminary farm water allocations that can only be described as small?
It may be due to insecurity, a sense that the Pacific Ocean is due for a long-running “La Nina” condition that could produce a new drought and lower State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project water volumes to the dangerously dry levels of seven and eight years ago.
It may also simply be bureaucrats reminding farmers that they control the lifeblood of America’s most productive agricultural region, also one of the five largest industries in California.
The reality, though — especially after heavy “atmospheric river” rains in mid-November and December drenched Northern California — is that farms will receive far more water than the 5% of requested amounts promised them in late December, when state officials behaved as if the November downpours would be the water year’s last precipitation.
Yes, it is the duty of water officials to husband California’s water supplies to make sure neither cities nor farms ever run completely dry. But 5% made no real sense. It’s as if the bureaucrats who work for Gov. Gavin Newsom wanted to put the lie to his post-election pledges to pay more heed to the Central Valley and its interests, whose sense of being disrespected was one reason that region was the only major part of California carried by President Trump in last fall’s election.
This adds up to a need to change some practices, including a few outlined by Karla Nemeth, the Water Resources Department’s director. “We need to prepare for any scenario, and this early in the season we need to take a conservative approach to managing our water supply,” she said.
That makes planning crops difficult, though, if not impossible, for farmers unless they depend greatly on ground water, a resource becoming increasingly depleted while ground levels above aquifers subside, which they have, as anyone can deduce from seeing onetime irrigation pipes that now rise several feet above current ground levels.
Compromising a bit would be better in years following a few seasons of heavy rain, today’s situation. Another way to put this might be to ask why state bureaucrats push a number and then essentially wink at farmers to tell them what they’re hearing is nowhere near what will eventually govern.
That’s what happened last year too, when the initial estimate of what farmers would get was 10% of requests and the ultimate amount was 40% — still using conservative allocations to make sure, unnecessarily, that reservoirs and canals remained full all year round rather than just partially full.
Even now, after a 2024 that was much drier than 2023 and an early winter with virtually no rain in Southern California, drinking water reservoirs remain nearly full. Diamond Valley Lake, near Hemet, the largest such potable water storage facility in Southern California, was at 97% of capacity shortly after Christmas.
All this makes the time high for California water bureaucrats to cut out their act and provide farmers and other citizens with realistic supply estimates, rather than constantly reserving the right to leave water districts and their people and industries high and dry, even when supplies are copious.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.
Originally Published:
California
Northern California’s dry January only put a minor dent in region’s water supply
The incoming storms follow what has been an exceptionally dry January for the Bay Area, with the lack of rain having an impact on the region’s water supply.
Healdsburg residents Tom and Molly Nicol visited Lake Sonoma to see where its water levels stood before they rise again with the rain from this weekend’s atmospheric river.
“Yeah, when the water is up to the bottom of those trees over there, you know it’s full,” laughed Tom. “And you can see that it’s dropped a little bit from the last storm we got in December. So it’s down a little, but it’s full.”
There is still room in the lake, with a good chunk of winter yet to come.
“That’s the thing. You need more storms,” explained Jeffrey Mount with the PPIC Water Policy Center. “We need somewhere in the order of five to seven big storms. That makes up the bulk of our precipitation. Just the difference of two storms can be the difference between an average year and a wet year.”
Mount cautions that this winter’s full story is yet to be written.
“We can tell what kind of year it’s gonna be by the end of February,” he said of California’s water year. “That’s it. And then we kinda know what it’s gonna be like.”
So where do things currently stand? After significant rains in November and December, the dry January has landed Northern California right back at an average winter. But looking at reservoirs like Lake Sonoma, the situation is better than average.
For that, Californians can thank the current streak of wet winters, which could turn into something very out of the ordinary.
“Shasta and Oroville are well above their historical averages,” Mount said of the state’s largest reservoirs. “So we’re about average, and our reservoirs are in really good shape right now. That’s the one thing. Even in the dry parts of the state.”
It is the continued payoff of the good year, and then an average year. Throw in another average year and — as far as recent decades — that’s a pretty decent three-year stretch.
“Yeah, and in two ways,” Mount explained. “One is we don’t get back-to-back wet years. It just doesn’t happen in the system. We usually have intervening dry years. 2017 was very wet. 2018 was dry, 2019 was wet. So yeah, ’23 and ’24 were really unusual. And if we come up with an average year on top of that, that is unprecedented in the 21st-century, is the best way to describe it. We haven’t seen that.”
California
Largest ever treasure under the California desert: 50 tons per day for centuries
A vast and sun-drenched area of California’s Mojave Desert is about to deliver a renewable energy breakthrough. Spanish solar developer RIC Energy has announced plans for the state’s largest green hydrogen facility, which would generate a staggering 50 tons of green hydrogen a day. This over-sized endeavor was conceived as a key to unlocking the desert’s potential for California’s transition to renewable energy and revolutionizing the future of electricity generation in the state.
How the Mojave Desert will produce 50 tons of green hydrogen daily
The Mojave Desert has ideal conditions for renewable energy deployment because of its abundant sunlight and wide-open areas. At the core of this ambitious project is the manufacturing of green hydrogen through electrolysis, which uses solar-powered electricity to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.
Unlike conventional fossil fuel-based hydrogen production methods, which produce significant CO2, this method is carbon-free. Producing 50 tons of energy daily, this facility will change the energy business. This output will fuel vehicles, heat industrial processes, and balance out the electricity grid.
The project imagines a future illuminated by renewable energy lighting up the globe and transforming fossil fuels from the cornerstone of globe’s energy systems to a relic of the past. It also provides a reliable source of constant and stable energy by capitalizing on the sun-soaked desert land of the Mojave.
This breakthrough demonstrates how we can make the most of eco-friendly design, solar power technology, and modern water management. When combined, they create a very low environmental impact while increasing energy production.
Decarbonizing the desert: Mojave’s 50 tons of green hydrogen with no environmental harm
The Mojave project isn’t just a renewable energy facility; it liberates an immense, sustainable resource. Referred to as “the biggest treasure underneath the California desert,” these 50 tons of green hydrogen output have long-term benefits that could span centuries.
All project partners, including Cadiz Ranch, a privately owned water company, have committed to using innovative water conservation techniques to provide the facility’s water needs sustainably. This allows for green hydrogen production without endangering the fragile desert ecosystem.
What is unique about this project is its scale and sustainability. Hydro-producing 50 tons of green hydrogen daily for decades (just like this Nevada desert, which has liquid hydrogen flowing underground) will make the Mojave installation a key pillar of California’s renewable energy plan. It also highlights large-scale green hydrogen production as a viable, long-term solution to increasing energy demand that does not aggravate climate change.
Energy independence: Mojave hydrogen is the key to California’s future
The Mojave Green Hydrogen project has significant benefits and serves as a model for replication for the rest of the world seeking the same energy transition. This project demonstrates that merging cutting-edge technology with the natural world can create sustainable energy systems.
This project will also benefit California economically. By reducing dependence on foreign energy sources and locally producing hydrogen, California would not only have energy, but the state would also create jobs in construction and operation, putting California at the forefront of the green hydrogen economy.
Green hydrogen has also been strongly criticized for the costs involved in its production and for replacing existing infrastructure with new installations. The Mojave project, however, tackles these challenges head-on. Developers can now optimize this by hosting the installation in a location with substantial solar resources.
The project also aligns with California’s climate goals, which calls for the state to become carbon-neutral by 2045. The Mojave installation demonstrates that renewable energy infrastructure can be an asset in building a cleaner and more comprehensive energy future by providing reliable, emission-free electricity generation.
The 50 tons of green hydrogen produced daily will be a monumental leap for global sustainable energy, using the Mojave Desert’s vast energy potential. It establishes a gold international standard for renewable energy, serving as a model of innovation and collaboration in the fight against climate change (like this pink hydrogen, which was produced for the first time in history). Aside from being an energy source, it shall also be a long-term legacy of sustainability and progress for future generations.
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