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More than 80 percent of the water used in San Diego County is imported from Northern California and the Colorado River. The $1.5 billion E&CSP project, owned by the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA), is a system of reservoirs, interconnected pipelines and pumping stations that provide water system resilience and reliability to the San Diego region if imported water deliveries are interrupted due to events such as a prolonged drought or damaging earthquake.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the United States and Mexico are making important progress in talks on a new accord to share water from the Colorado River, which is badly over-tapped and approaching critical shortage levels.

American and Mexican officials have been negotiating an agreement to replace their current five-year accord, which expires in 2017. Jewell said she is optimistic about those talks, and also about recent negotiations between states on sharing cutbacks if the levels of reservoirs continue to drop.

Rainbow Municipal Water District board member Dennis Sanford is in the runoff election for the alternate special district member seat on San Diego County’s Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO).

Four special district board members sought the four-year term as the special districts alternate, but none received the necessary majority and a runoff between the two candidates with the most votes is now taking place. Judy Hanson of the Leucadia Wastewater District received 15 votes while Sanford received nine votes to qualify for the runoff election.

Los Angeles has officially stopped trying to make it rain—for now. During three separate storms in the past two months, contract workers for the L.A. County Department of Public Works ignited 25 special flares in the hills above Pasadena, sending columns of glittering smoke into the clouds to give them a literal silver lining that could boost precipitation.

The efforts mark the first time since 2002 that the parched metropolis has seeded clouds in an attempt to enhance rainfall; it is currently enduring a nearly five-year-long drought with this winter’s rainfall at just 40 percent of the usual amount.