The value of water as a liquid is obvious. We can drink it, use it to clean ourselves and our things, swim in it to cool off and to play, and build dams across it to harvest its energy. Water as clouds are also essential: they are key for the way they deliver precipitation to cropland and forests. But scientists now say we may have been overlooking the most useful stage of the water cycle.
A cash crunch for public water utilities is creating an opportunity for the growing for-profit water companies—but it’s one that might drain customers’ wallets. Companies like American Water Works Co. and Aqua America Inc. are finding the time is right to purchase small, troubled water utilities from local governments that are facing political pressure to keep rates low—often by delaying infrastructure upgrades. Acquisitions like these are helping private water companies grow even while per capita water consumption continues its long-term downward trend.
The water project that north Delta communities fear will end their way of life may have met its own ending, after the plan to finance it collapsed unexpectedly in a Central California boardroom last week.
News of the twin tunnels’ setback came September 20, when the Westlands Water District, which serves farms in Fresno and King counties, voted not to participate in financing its share of the $17 billion project. The WWD’s manager told the Sacramento Bee that signing on would cause too much monetary pain. The district was expected to pay roughly $3 billion.
Toxic waste and sewage continue to flow from the Tijuana River to the Pacific Ocean, and California cities along the U.S.-Mexican border are ready to bring a lawsuit to halt it. Imperial Beach, Chula Vista, and the San Diego Unified Port District Sept. 28 notified the International Boundary and Water Commission and Veolia Water North America-West LLC which operate the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Diego, that they plan to sue over the discharges unless this issue is addressed within 60 days.
The California Water Fix/delta tunnels project is facing new challenges every day, most recently in regard to financing. Whether or not the state’s water suppliers support the plan, an essential piece is missing from the conversation: the potential of the state’s watersheds — the forests, meadows and streams that deliver water to our dams — to help solve California’s water problems.
Camp Pendleton officials swear that the water consumed by 55,000 Marines and their families is safe, despite a pair of scathing state and federal investigations indicating chronic problems in the treatment systems at the sprawling military base. Water safety inspectors visiting Camp Pendleton over several days in late June uncovered rats rotting on a reservoir gate, a desiccated frog clinging to a reservoir ladder and another rodent carcass floating in treated water.
A new, U.S.-Mexico agreement provides more Colorado River water to both countries, will require both countries to share inevitable river shortages and offers more certainty as to how much river water will be available for both countries. That’s how negotiators, federal officials and Arizona water officials see the upshot of the pact that was signed this week at a Santa Fe, New Mexico, ceremony following years of negotiations. The agreement, known as Minute 323, is aimed at establishing ground rules for managing the river for the two countries through 2026.
The state Supreme Court Wednesday refused to intervene in an ongoing rate dispute between the San Diego County Water Authority and Metropolitan Water District, leaving in place an appellate decision that gives both sides a partial victory. The Water Authority has sued the MWD, the primary water wholesaler in California, multiple times over costs, which are ultimately absorbed by San Diego County consumers. The California Supreme Court’s decision not to review an appellate court ruling was in one of three lawsuits.
The California Supreme Court effectively brought to end this week a longstanding, bitter fight between water managers in Los Angeles and San Diego — a ruling that means the loss of billions in potential savings for local ratepayers. The high court declined Wednesday to take up an appeal by the San Diego County Water Authority, leaving in place an appellate ruling that sided largely with the rival Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. San Diego was challenging the costs Metropolitan charged to deliver supplies from the Colorado River.
Beside the winding curves of the Colorado River, the Palo Verde Valley spreads out in a lush plain in the middle of the desert, a farming oasis filled with canals and fields of hay. For 12 years, the valley’s farmers have been participating in a program that pays them to leave some of their lands unplanted and fallow, helping to slake the thirst of Los Angeles and cities across Southern California. The arrangement has been widely praised as a model of how cities and farming areas can work together to stretch water supplies further while keeping agriculture alive.
