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Satellite Image Captures The Unusual Warmth Of San Diego’s Coastal Waters

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

Sea surface temperatures in Southern California — especially spots in San Diego like Solana Beach — have been unusually warm for weeks. The National Weather Service issued a computer graphic late Monday that shows where the hottest temperatures are being recorded (the areas in red.) “Water temperatures from lifeguards are 72 to 78F and this is shown in satellite imagery depicting much above normal readings (anomaly) in the California Bight,” the weather service said on Facebook.

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City Launches App To Help Customers Monitor Water Bills

/in , /by /10 News (San Diego)by Amanda Brandeis

Painful, inaccurate water bills have eroded trust in the City of San Diego’s Public Utilities Department. However, the city says it is committed to earning that trust back, vowing to fix major problems. They’ve launched a tool customers can use immediately to take control of their water usage and bills.

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High Water Bills: San Diego City Council Committee Reviews Performance Audit

/in , /by /CBS8 (San Diego)by Ashley Jacobs

The recent audit on the city’s sky-high water bills was under review Monday. The San Diego City Council’s audit committee held a special meeting to look into it after more than 2,700 incorrect water bills were sent out last year. In that special meeting Monday morning, the committee reviewed performance audits on the Public Utilities Department’s water billing operations. This all comes months after hundreds of San Diego residents were over charged for water usage.

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San Diego Water Rates Increase 2 Percent This Week, Part Of Larger Multi-Year Spike

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby David Garrick

Water rates in San Diego will increase just over 2 percent on Wednesday, part of a five-step incremental spike over four years that will amount to a compounded rate hike of 35 percent. The rate increase comes one week after an audit found 2,750 individual water bills last year were incorrect and had to be readjusted because of errors by meter readers.

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California Says This Chemical Causes Cancer. So Why Is It Being Sprayed Into Drinking Water?

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Ryan Sabalow

A year ago, the active ingredient in Roundup, the nation’s most widely used weed-killing herbicide, was added to California’s official list of chemicals known to cause cancer. The state’s warning about glyphosate followed a similar caution issued by the World Health Organization and coincided with hundreds of lawsuits across the country focused on the herbicide. The first very jury trial to involve Roundup recently started in San Francisco —the plaintiff is a groundskeeper who believes he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma by using the weedkiller on the job.

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Hot Weather, Land Abuses Fueling Algal Blooms In Western Waters

/in , /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Matt Weiser

The West is known for summer wildfires. Now it seems Western summers will be distinguished by another kind of flare-up: algae blooms. This summer has witnessed an explosion of algae problems in Western water bodies. Usually marked by a bright green mat of floating scum, the blooms are unsightly and unpleasant for water lovers. More concerning are potentially toxic cyanobacteria often produced by the algae, which can be deadly to pets and livestock and cause illnesses in people. These harmful algal blooms have popped up in freshwater lakes and streams for years.

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Big Water Moves Mark Brown’s Final Months

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Dan Walters

Nearly six decades ago, shortly after becoming governor, Pat Brown persuaded the Legislature and voters to approve one of the nation’s largest public works projects, the State Water Plan. New reservoirs in Northern California, including the nation’s highest dam at Oroville on the Feather River, would capture runoff from snowfall in the Sierra, and a miles-long aqueduct would carry water southward to San Joaquin Valley farms and fast-growing Southern California cities.

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This Summer’s Heat Waves Could Be The Strongest Climate Signal Yet

/in , /by /InsideClimate News (New York)by Bob Berwyn

Earth’s global warming fever spiked to deadly new highs across the Northern Hemisphere this summer, and we’re feeling the results—extreme heat is now blamed for hundreds of deaths, droughts threaten food supplies, wildfires have raced through neighborhoods in the western United States, Greece and as far north as the Arctic Circle. At sea, record and near-record warm oceans have sent soggy masses of air surging landward, fueling extreme rainfall and flooding in Japan and the eastern U.S. In Europe, the Baltic Sea is so warm that potentially toxic blue-green algae is spreading across its surface.

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OPINION: In Response: Water Cost Story Missed Key Points

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Mark Muir Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Re “County water move has its costs” (July 1): The San Diego Union-Tribune addressed an important regional question on whether the San Diego County Water Authority’s decades-long strategy to create a reliable portfolio of water supplies is worth the cost. Unfortunately, the story omitted clear-cut evidence that the region’s supply reliability strategy is an unqualified success: Our independent water supplies from the Colorado River are both less expensive and more reliable than supplies from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which have been cut twice in the past decade by drought.

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With State Allocation Set, Sites Reservoir Officials Begin Securing More Funding

/in , /by /Appeal Democrat (Marysville)by Jake Abbott

The Sites Reservoir project will move forward, according to officials, despite being awarded in a recent California Water Commission announcement about half what project backers sought. They will spend the next few months securing the necessary financing to begin the next phase. The Commission announced Tuesday that Sites could expect $816 million in state funding. “We are pleased to reach this milestone,” said Jim Watson, general manager of the Sites Project Authority.

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