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In The California Desert, A Farm Baron Is Building A Water And Energy Empire

/in , /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by Sammy Roth

Far from the highways of Los Angeles and the shipyards of San Diego, in California’s southeastern corner, nearly half a million acres of lush green farmland unfold in the middle of the bone-dry Sonoran Desert. Sprawling fields of lettuce and sugar beets and onions, irrigated by water from the Colorado River, brush up against the U.S-Mexico border in a region once known as the Valley of Death but today called the Imperial Valley. A few hundred landowning families dominate the Imperial Valley and its lucrative agriculture industry, which produces much of America’s winter vegetables.

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California’s Gov. Brown: Wildfires Are Evidence Of Changing Climate ‘In Real Time’

/in , /by /National Public Radioby Scott Neuman

California Gov. Jerry Brown says his state is in “uncharted territory” with the current slew of intense wildfires and he warns that climate change has made the situation “part of our ordinary experience.” “[The] predictions that I see, the more serious predictions of warming and fires to occur later in the century, 2040 or 2050, they’re now occurring in real time,” Brown said at a news conference on Wednesday in Sacramento.

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Deeply Talks: Water Conservation And Efficiency Challenges

/in , /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Lindsay Abrams

In this month’s episode of Deeply Talks, Water Deeply managing editor Tara Lohan discussed California’s statewide and local conservation and efficiency efforts with Cynthia Koehler, cofounder and executive director at WaterNow Alliance, and Erik Porse, a research engineer in the Office of Water Programs at California State University, Sacramento.

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Record-Shattering Warm Ocean Waters Creating Rare Humidity Across San Diego

/in , /by /10 News (San Diego)by Megan Parry

This summer has been a muggy one, and it feels like it’s been a trend the past several summers here in San Diego.  “The humidity is just horrid,” says Delia Pollara who is visiting from Riverside with her grandkids, enjoying the warm waters off our coast.  The warm ocean waters are the main reason it has been feeling extraordinarily muggy in Southern California.

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Temperatures Stay High, But Weekend Brings Humidity Relief

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Robert Krier

San Diego County can expect some humidity relief over the weekend, but that’s about it. “We should have above-normal temperatures for the foreseeable future,” National Weather Service meteorologist Adam Roser said. “The weekend will be slightly cooler, but there’s not much change in the pattern.” Thursday should be last day of high humidity levels and the threat of thunderstorms in the mountains and desert this week. Monsoonal moisture, which contributed to storms that dropped 0.81 of an inch of rain on Mount Laguna and 0.41 in Ranchita on Wednesday, should be in short supply until next week.

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San Diego’s Scripps Pier Records Highest Ocean Temperature In Its 102 Year History

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

The sea surface temperature at the Scripps Pier in La Jolla hit 78.6 degrees on Wednesday, the highest reading in the pier’s 102-year history, according to UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The reading broke the previous record of 78.4 degrees, which was set in 1931. Scripps Oceanography officials say that sea surface temperatures had been running above normal for several days, but the record was not broken until Wednesday. The institute has been taking sea surface temperatures at that spot since August 1916 as part of its scientific research.

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San Diego Council Committee To Consider Utilities Department Code Amendments

/in , /by /KPBS

The San Diego City Council’s Environment Committee Thursday will consider code amendments intended to improve Public Utilities Department operations following public unrest over inaccurate water billing from late 2017 into this year. Recent audits found that meter-reading employee errors, lack of oversight and insufficient quality control led to billing complaints, in addition to scheduled rate increases, higher water use after drought restrictions were lifted as well as a longer billing cycle between September and December.

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1990s: Drought Prompts Supply Diversification Strategy

/in /by by Water News Network Staff

In the early 1990s, the Water Authority received 95 percent of its water from a single source — the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — making the region vulnerable to supply shortages. In February 1991, worsening drought conditions forced MWD to cut deliveries to the San Diego region by 31 percent. The cutbacks lasted for more than a year, prompting local business and community leaders to ask the Water Authority why it depended on a single source for virtually all of its water. Since then, the Water Authority has aggressively diversified the San Diego region’s water supply portfolio to ensure reliability. Today, the region relies on MWD for about 40 percent of its supplies.