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Environment Report: Slow Rollout For San Diego’s Smart Meters

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

For years, San Diego has wanted to install 280,000 “smart meters” across the city. The goal was to improve meter accuracy, provide real-time data on water use and eliminate the need for human meter readers. That’s all behind schedule. In 2016, the city guessed it could complete the project by the beginning of 2018 at the cost of about $60 million. So far, the city has installed only about 90,000 meters that it considers “ready” to begin transmitting water use data. Of those, less than a fifth actually are.

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OPINION: The Next Big Front In California’s Water War

/in /by /The Fresno Beeby Dan Walters

After one year of torrential respite, drought may have returned to California, and with it, a renewal of the state’s perpetual conflict over water management. State and federal water systems have told farmers not to expect more than a fifth of their paper allocations, the state Water Resources Control Board is weighing a new regime of mandatory conservation, and supporters of more reservoirs are complaining about the glacial pace of spending $2.7 billion set aside in a water bond for more storage.

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San Diego Faces Another Week Of Cold, Damp Weather

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Gary Robbins

San Diego County is going to be unusually cold for a second straight week as a pair of low pressure systems bring showers and possibly light snow to the region, says the National Weather Service. The first system will arrive on Monday and will prevent the daytime high from rising above 62 in San Diego, which has an average high of 65 this time of year. The temperature will be 57 on Tuesday and 60 on Wednesday. Inland valleys and foothills will mostly be in the 50s, with some areas 5 to 10 degrees below average.

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Some Say California Drought Cuts May Harm Water Rights

/in /by /Las Vegas Review-Journalby Jonathan J. Cooper

A proposal to make California’s drought-era water restrictions permanent could allow the state to chip away at long-held water rights in an unprecedented power grab, representatives from water districts and other users told regulators Tuesday. Members of the state Water Resources Control Board delayed a decision about whether to bring back what had been temporary water bans from California’s drought, spanning 2013 to 2017. The plan is part of an effort to make water conservation a way of life, with climate change expected to lead to longer, more severe droughts.

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Study Says Delta Tunnel Plan Would Pay Off For Farmers, Cities

/in /by /The Sacramento Bee (As Published by Ventura County Star)by Ryan Sabalow

Even a single water tunnel burrowed under the California’s Delta would be worth it for urban ratepayers and farmers who would to pay to build and maintain the project, according to an analysis released recently by Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration. The Department of Water Resources commissioned David Sunding, a professor of natural resource economics at UC Berkeley, to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of Brown’s Delta tunnel project. His report concludes that benefits outweigh the costs to ratepayers in every scenario he analyzed under a one-tunnel approach.

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Will California’s Water Wars Create A Constitutional Conundrum?

/in /by /KQEDby Amel Ahmed Quoted: Jeff Stephenson

With nearly half the state back in drought, California’s water regulator held a contentious hearing in Sacramento on Tuesday on whether to make permanent the temporary water bans enacted by Governor Jerry Brown during the 2014-2017 drought. The board announced it will revisit the proposed measures in March while it makes some minor revisions to the draft proposals.

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Crews Nearly Complete Construction On Oroville Dam’s Emergency Spillway

/in /by /Construction Equipment Guide (Fort Washington, Penn.)

According to Kiewit Infrastructure West Co., the company contracted to perform the repairs, work stopped heavy construction on the main spillway over the winter, but plans to start back up in the coming months to meet its January 2019 deadline, Appeal-Democrat reported. “Our crews will be ready to go May 1, weather permitting, said Kiewit Project Director Jeff Petersen.

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Alarming Dry Conditions In California Setting New Records

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Rong-Gong Lin II

California is headed to a dry finish to February, historically one of the state’s wettest months. The state has been getting cold storms in recent days, which have been responsible for plunging temperatures, but the systems have been dry because they’ve been coming inland, from Canada, instead of over the Pacific Ocean, where they can soak up moisture.

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Snow Today In The Sierra Nevada, More Storms To Follow

/in /by /The Mercury News (San Jose)by Mark Gomez

A winter storm is expected to drop several inches of new snow Thursday in the Sierra Nevada, and meteorologists with the National Weather Service are optimistic more systems will follow in the coming days. Thursday’s storm, which could deliver 6 to 10 inches of snow in the higher elevations, comes on the heels of a system Monday that brought as much as 7 inches of fresh powder to Tahoe area ski resorts.

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Drought Of Common Sense

/in /by /The American Spectator (Arlington, Vir.)by Steven Greenhut

hadn’t been living in arid Southern California for long before I toured the Colorado River Aqueduct — the 242-mile system of dams, pumps, and channels that divert water through the Mojave Desert to the sprawling 20-million population Los Angeles region. It’s a vast engineering marvel and something that, in concept, is remarkably simple. The New Deal-era Parker Dam — a magnificent Art Deco structure that straddles the California-Arizona border — traps water from the river and pumps it to a holding pool at the top of a mountain.

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