You are now in San Diego County category.

San Diego Unified Found Lead at a School – and Told One Parent

/in /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

Last fall, months before San Diego Unified School District began testing all schools’ drinking water for lead, it did a special round of tests a Sunset View Elementary in Point Loma. The district found lead but didn’t tell parents. Rather, it told one parent – the one who’d requested a lead test. The lead was coming from a key device known as a backflow preventer. All the water the school uses passes through the device before it reaches sinks, faucets and fountains at the 480-student school.

Full Story

Controversial California Water Project Has New Life In Trump Era

/in /by /Huffington Post by Joseph Erbentraut

Cadiz Inc., which for decades has sought the federal government’s green light to pump groundwater from the Mojave Desert and pipe it to Southern California, has seen the project’s prospects brighten under the Trump administration. In April, a potential backer of the project was nominated by President Donald Trump to a high-ranking Interior Department post. In late March, the department’s Bureau of Land Management rescinded two legal directives the Obama administration used in a 2015 decision to block Cadiz from building the 43-mile pipeline.

Full Story

‘Lethal Arrogance’? Oroville Dam Crisis Sprang From Pat Brown’s Towering Ambition

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler

America’s tallest dam was built from earth, stone and concrete – and the towering ambition of Gov. Pat Brown. Sixty years before a crisis at Oroville Dam sent thousands fleeing for their lives in February, the late governor brought an almost evangelical zeal to erecting the structure that would hold back the Feather River to deliver water to the parched southern half of the state. Hundreds of pages of state archives, oral history interviews and other documents reveal a portrait of a man hell-bent on building Oroville and the rest of the State Water Project.

Full Story

How They Voted, May 14

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Laura Groch Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

The Carlsbad City Council met in closed session Tuesday to discuss litigation. In open session, the council held a hearing and approved a plan to demolish three office/commercial buildings and build 33 residential condos on three floors at 800 Grand Ave. A resolution to start the process for by-district council elections was approved 3-2. The council discussed transparency in how it appoints people to the Historic Preservation and the Planning commissions, which differs from the way appointments are made to other boards and commissions. The council agreed to add information explaining the process to applicants.

Full Story

New Diamond Valley Lake Recreation Plans Moving Forward

/in /by /Valley News (Fallbrook) by Tony Ault

It has been many years, but for the cities of Hemet and San Jacinto the dream of creating an area surrounding Diamond Valley Lake into a major regional recreation park is finally taking shape with a memorandum of intent signed by the five major entities involved. The long-sought MOI now signed by the city of Hemet, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Valley-Wide Recreation and Park District, Riverside County Regional Park & Open Space District and Eastern Municipal Water District was revealed Tuesday, April 25, at the Hemet City Council meeting.

Full Story

OPINION: Lois Henry: Groundwater Repayment Coming Due Early For Some Valley Farmers

/in /by /The Bakersfield Californianby Lois Henry

Fixing our groundwater deficit will be painful. No way around it. And growers in the massive Semitropic Water Storage District are learning that sooner than most.Though the state has set a series of short- and long-term deadlines to restore the depleted water table, Semitropic is so far in the hole it got special legislation passed in September allowing it to ramp up its own timeline — and landowner fees. It’s holding a vote on Wednesday to slap a $500-per-acre surcharge on any “new” ground developed for farming and is proposing to use satellite imagery to determine exact water consumption by crop.

Full Story

Are Floating Solar Panels Energy’s New Frontier?

/in /by /KQED News by David Gorn Quoted: Kelly Rodgers

When you’re trying to generate a lot more solar power, you’re limited by the size and heft of those big solar panels. Where can you put them? The answer so far has been the desert, or on rooftops. There have even been efforts to put panels on top of landfill sites. Solar entrepreneur Troy Helming of the San Francisco-based solar company Pristine Sun has a new idea: floating on water.

Full Story

OPINION: The Value Of Water Independence

/in /by /The Orange County Register by Carolyn Cavecche Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Twenty years ago, the elected officials who served on the boards of the Orange County Sanitation District and Orange County Water District had a visionary idea to recycle treated wastewater to drinking water standards and percolate that water into our underground aquifer where it could eventually be used again for drinking water. The project — which would be known as the Groundwater Replenishment System — was not without opposition, much of it surrounding the cost of the project and the water it would produce.

Full Story

Court Wary of Earlier Water Authority Win

/in /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

On Wednesday, a state appeals court expressed skepticism about a San Diego County Water Authority’s court victory over the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. At stake is up to $7.4 billion in San Diego ratepayer money. The Water Authority’s earlier victory is “in jeopardy,” according to the Daily Journal. Last year, a San Francisco judge handed the Water Authority a major win by ruling that Metropolitan, which supplies most of San Diego’s water, had been overcharging the Water Authority to deliver some water from the Colorado River. The two water agencies are locked in a series of expensive and high-stakes legal and political battles.

Delta Levees Still At Risk From Water-Heavy Snowpack

/in /by /The Delta Confluence

While the levees in the Delta are currently holding, heavy rains accompanied by increased temperatures in the spring and early summer could cause further damage. Over the winter, there were numerous levee breaks and breaches throughout the system. This year’s record-breaking precipitation levels have caused millions of dollars in damages in the lower basins of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley and Delta.

Full Story