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Most Water Agencies Can Ease Up on Conservation Under New Standards

California may be in its fifth year of drought, but on Tuesday, state water regulators effectively turned back the clock to 2013. Staff members of the State Water Resources Control Board announced that 343 of the state’s 411 water districts reported having enough water to meet their customers’ demands — even if the next three years are unusually dry. To blunt the impact of drought, the state required water providers to reduce their consumption compared to 2013 levels. Each provider was assigned a so-called conservation standard, which was expressed as a percentage.

Close Call: Feds See 2018 Shortage in Lake Mead Water Supply

Amid punishing drought, federal water managers projected Tuesday that — by a very narrow margin— the crucial Lake Mead reservoir on the Colorado River won’t have enough water to make full deliveries to Nevada and Arizona in 2018. A federal report shows the surface level of the lake behind Hoover Dam is expected to remain high enough this year to avoid a shortage declaration in 2017. But it’ll still be a mere 4 feet above a 1,075-foot elevation action point. For 2018, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects the lake level could fall short — by less than 1 foot.

Metropolitan Makes $6.67 mil. Solar Investment at Water Treatment Plant

The Metropolitan Water District‘s board of directors voted Tuesday to invest $6.76 million to develop a 1-megawatt solar power generating facility on six acres at the district’s Joseph Jensen Water Treatment Plant in Granada Hills. The solar installation is expected to produce 2.3 million kilowatt-hours of clean, renewable energy a year, enough to power about 325 homes, according to the MWD. As part of Tuesday’s action, Metropolitan’s board awarded a $4.88 million contract to Riverside-based Sol Construction Co. to construct the solar facility. Construction is slated to begin next month, with plans to start up the solar plant in late 2017.