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City of San Diego Says It Will Check Every Single Water Meter

/in /by /10 Newsby Jonathan Horn

The city of San Diego is expanding its probe into complaints over mysteriously high water bills by checking the 250,000-plus meters across the city. City spokesman Jerry McCormick said the expanded investigation has already begun into both smart and manually-read water meters. The announcement comes less than a day after the city divulged that more than 300 families were overbilled by an average $300 in four neighborhoods – Carmel Valley, Rancho Bernardo, Mira Mesa and Rancho Penasquitos.

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City Probe Finds ‘Human Error’ Responsible For Spiking Hundreds Of Water Bills

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Kristina Davis and Joshua Emerson Smith

The city overcharged residents by more than $100,000 in January for water they didn’t use, officials said Thursday following a months-long public outcry over skyrocketing bills. The findings are the result of an internal review by the Public Utilities Department this week that officials said traced the billing errors back to a single worker who had misread 343 meters in November and December.

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BLOG: ‘Ridiculously Resilient Ridge’, Climate Change And The Future Of California’s Water

/in /by /Water Education Foundation (Sacramento)by Gary Pitzer

Every day, people flock to Daniel Swain’s social media platforms to find out the latest news and insight about California’s notoriously unpredictable weather. Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, famously coined the term “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” in December 2013 to describe the large, formidable high-pressure mass that was parked over the West Coast during winter and diverted storms away from California, intensifying the drought.

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La Niña Is On Its Way Out. What Does That Mean For California?

/in /by /89.3 KPCC (Pasadena)by Jacob Margolis

Scientists regularly look for the formation or absence of the system when predicting weather in the American Southwest. La Niñas are driven by changes in ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, as is the El Niño climate system that typically brings wetter, cooler winters to Southern California. This winter, La Niña predictions of less rain and snow have been spot on as counties across SoCal have dipped back into to moderate-to-severe drought conditions.

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State Plans To Stagger Construction Of $16 Billion Delta Water Tunnels

/in /by /Times of San Diegoby Chris Jennewein

State water officials announced Wednesday they will pursue staged construction of a proposed multibillion-dollar water-delivery project, leaving water agencies in Southern California to decide if they want to continue supporting the effort. The $16.3 billion project, known as California WaterFix, would divert water from the Sacramento River as it enters the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and carry it to existing federal and state pumping stations in the southern part of the delta through two 35-mile tunnels.

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BLOG: The Incredible Shrinking Delta Conveyance: A Timeline

/in /by /The Record (Stockton)by Alex Breitler

Delta “isolated conveyance” proposals — be it a canal, tunnels, whatever — have generally gotten less ambitious over the years, at least in terms of capacity. But they don’t seem to be any less controversial, if the reaction to the state’s latest announcement is any indication. Just for perspective: 1970s/80s Peripheral Canal: 22,000 cubic feet per second (cfs).

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Brown Tried To Smooth The Way For Delta Project. All He Got Was More Friction

/in /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler

California officials tried to smooth the way for the Delta tunnels project by slicing it in half. Instead they’re facing more pushback and the possibility of additional delays. One day after Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration downsized the Delta tunnels project, a host of project opponents tried Thursday to halt a state regulatory hearing that’s crucial to getting it built. They argued that Brown’s decision, after a decade of planning, creates such a monumental change that they need time to analyze the potential impacts on fish, agriculture and the rest of the Delta’s troubled ecosystem.

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How Dry Is This Winter? Sierra Snowpack On Pace To Shatter Record Low Of 2015

/in /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

As relentless sunshine continued to pound California on Thursday, the Sierra Nevada hit a reckoning point: There’s less snowpack now than on the same date three years ago, when the winter went down as the driest in recorded history and sent shudders through cities, farmlands and the state Capitol. The troubling lack of snow during the winter of 2014-15 not only shortchanged the state’s drinking-water reservoirs but left the Sierra nearly unrecognizable.

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California’s Water Savings Dwindle When Drought Fears Subside

/in /by /Earth and Space Science News (Washington)by Emily Underwood

California’s population has almost doubled over the past 4 decades, growing from 22 million people in 1976 to 40 million in 2016. During that time frame the state experienced four major droughts, including the driest period on historical record, from 2012 to 2016. Now a new study examines how the public perception of water scarcity affects Californians’ urban residential water consumption.

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Butte County Prosecutor Wants State Agency Fined Up To $51 Billion For Oroville Spillway Failure

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Joseph Serna

Butte County prosecutors are seeking up to $51 billion in fines and penalties against California’s water agency for damage caused to local river-based wildlife after the Oroville Dam spillway failure last year, officials said. In a civil complaint filed Wednesday, Dist. Atty. Mike Ramsey accused the Department of Water Resources of failing to build the Oroville Dam’s spillway on sturdy bedrock, which led to its rapid deterioration last February amid the heaviest winter storms the region had seen in years.

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