Residents of Compton have complained about brown, smelly water coming out of their taps for more than a year. And when officials began talking about dissolving the troubled local water district, the area’s congresswoman scheduled a town hall meeting so community members could weigh in.
The City of San Diego has received an “Award of Excellence for Events and Observances” for using recycled water to make beer. Last year, the City partnered with Stone Brewing to create the beer, “Full Circle Pale Ale.”
When using mulch in your landscaping, how much mulch do you need? It depends on what job you want it to perform.
Remember to keep mulch one to six inches away from plant stems. Mulch can cause plants to rot.
A few simple measurements and calculations will help you determine your mulch needs. Graphic: Water Authority
You first need to know these numbers:
Then take your square footage, multiplied by mulch thickness, and divide it by 12. This will give you your amount of mulch in cubic feet.
For instance, 891 square feet of land, multiplied by one inch of mulch, divided by 12 = 74.25 cubic feet of mulch.
Inorganic mulches don’t decompose to feed soil microbes and keep your plants and garden healthy and thriving. There are also some organic mulches containing dyes or other chemicals. Other mulches, such as shredded redwood, take a very long time to break down. These are the types of mulches you should use only in areas without plants, such as in pathways or dry decorative areas:
This article was inspired by the 71-page Sustainable Landscapes Program guidebook available at SustainableLandscapesSD.org. Hardcopies are available free of charge at the Water Authority’s headquarters, 4677 Overland Ave., Kearny Mesa. The Water Authority and its partners also offer other great resources for landscaping upgrades, including free WaterSmart classes at WaterSmartSD.org.
While the 2017 fire season was a perfect storm culminating five years of drought, a heavy rain year and a hot summer, the 2018 fire season has already begun. This year, with the relatively light snowpack, CalFire officials are keeping a close eye on elevations above 6,500 feet that have already begun to dry out.
Don’t call them the weather gods, but this company can actually make it rain. North Dakota-based Weather Modification International uses planes to target clouds and draw out more rain from them. The concept, called cloud seeding, has been around for decades. But there is new urgency due to climate change and a rapidly growing global population, which have disrupted global water supplies.
A project underneath Long Beach Airport that will transform stormwater runoff into drinking water received $7.5 million Tuesday, June 19, from Los Angeles County supervisors. “Every time it rains, we lose millions of gallons of drinkable water by allowing it to run into the ocean,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn. “Innovative projects like this mean we can capture rainwater and use it to replenish our local water supply.”
A new map-based tool was released Monday allowing parents of students in California public schools to see if their child’s school has been tested for unsafe lead levels in drinking water.
On June 23, 1988, a sultry day in Washington, James Hansen told Congress and the world that global warming wasn’t approaching — it had already arrived. The testimony of the top NASA scientist, said Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley, was “the opening salvo of the age of climate change.” Thirty years later, it’s clear that Hansen and other doomsayers were right. But the change has been so sweeping that it is easy to lose sight of effects large and small — some obvious, others less conspicuous.
California irrigation districts that supply water to farms are required by state law to annually report to the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) the amount of water actually delivered to farmers’ fields. However, as of 2017, only 12 percent of the state’s largest irrigation districts had turned in all of the required reports, and 28 percent never turned in any report. What’s more, DWR has not monitored or enforced compliance with this reporting requirement. There is effectively no accurate or complete documentation of drought response from the agricultural sector during California’s driest consecutive years in the historical record, stretching from 2012 to 2016.
West Sacramento’s recent decision to accept greater responsibility for maintaining levees and drainage systems along the Sacramento River has some residents worried that the city could be swamped financially if the area floods. The West Sacramento City Council voted 4-1 last month to begin a process that would convert an independent district in charge of levee management into a subsidiary of West Sacramento, and allow the council to replace the district’s board of directors with appointees or the council members themselves. Reclamation District 900 has operated independently since 1911, managing 13.6 miles of levees that provide flood protection along the Sacramento River.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
