Prompted by a 2015 state law, the State Water Resources Control Board has begun designing a program to provide state aid to individuals and families who need help paying their water bills. Due to the Legislature by February 1, 2018, California is determined to be the first to use state funds to subsidize water service for poor residents, water rate experts say.
Governor Jerry Brown and other state officials have constantly claimed the Delta Tunnels project will “restore” the Delta ecosystem, but they revealed their real plans on October 7 when the administration applied for a permit to kill winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other endangered species with the project. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) submitted an “incidental intake” application for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) in alleged “compliance” with the California Endangered Species Act (CESA) in order to build the Delta Tunnels, also known as the California WaterFix.
It’s called the California WaterFix. The project, formerly known as the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, would build two massive tunnels beneath the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, replacing the northern portion of the State Water Project, a 600-mile-long system of tunnels, reservoirs and canals that moves water from Northern to Southern California. The tunnel proposal has been in the works for years, and similar ideas have been kicked around for decades.
If you live in an apartment in California, you don’t pay for the water you use – not directly, anyway.
Apartments in California, with few exceptions, don’t have individual water meters, known as submeters. Instead, water usage is wrapped up in the rent payment, which means tenants have no idea how much water they’re using, and no direct financial incentive to conserve.This also means millions of Californians aren’t helping the state survive its ongoing drought.
Look out weather watchers: La Niña is lurking. And that could mean a warm and dry winter for the USA’s southern tier and a potentially cooler, stormier one across the north, federal scientists announced Thursday morning. The La Niña climate pattern — marked by cooler-than-average ocean water in the central Pacific Ocean — is one of the main drivers of weather in the U.S. and around the world, especially during the late fall, winter and early spring.
In a move that could have ramifications across the arid West, a government watchdog agency accused federal water regulators of wasting taxpayer funds when they gave Klamath Basin farmers more than $32 million to stop growing crops and to pump groundwater instead of drawing from lakes and rivers.The funds were spent in a failed bid to protect endangered fish and wildlife near the California-Oregon border, the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior said in a report this week.
La Niña, a phenomenon marked by the cooling of water in the equatorial Pacific, is a major driving force behind weather around the globe. Just last month, the forecast was neutral, which meant chances of Los Angeles getting its average of 15 inches of precipitation looked good. But the new report points to a 70 percent chance of La Niña development in the fall, sloping to 55 percent in the winter. That might mean a drier, warmer winter in the southern tier of the U.S., which doesn’t bode well for SoCal as it enters its sixth year of drought.
California has been trying to fill its reservoirs for 5 years, and it will get a little help from a storm expected to hit later this week. Right now, Lake Shasta is only at 60% capacity and Lake Oroville is at 44%, with other reservoirs across the state even lower. “So, there’s plenty of room in our reservoirs to accommodate runoff from the storms expected to arrive this weekend,” says Doug Carlson with the Department of Water Resources. “But really, the ground has become so dry that much of the rainfall is expected to be soaked up like a dry sponge.”
California’s drought has brought about a strange partnership that includes corporations like Coca-Cola and environmental groups like the Nature Conservancy. They’re partnering on projects aimed at helping increase water supply in California. The California Water Action Collaborative, or CWAC, has announced four projects to help create a sustainable water supply as the state enters its sixth year of drought. The projects include flooding farms to recharge groundwater, removing invasive species in watersheds and thinning trees in dense forested areas of the Sierra Nevada. The groups will also look at ways to implement the California Water Action Plan.
The editorial board of the Seaside Courier has studied the various candidates in key coastal North County races and has prepared its candidate recommendations for the Nov. 8 elections. We are not making recommendations in all races, and in other races we are not supporting a full slate of candidates. We are only asking that you give consideration to voting for the following candidates for the following stated reasons. Encinitas needs Paul Gaspar as its next mayor.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
