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California Wildfires Roar Into ‘Uncharted Territory’

/in , /by /USA Today (McLean, Va.)by Jim Schultz, Chelcey Adami and John Bacon

The surging wildfires raging across Northern California represent a “new normal” and the state must be prepared to spend billions of dollars dousing, containing and trying to curb them in the future, Gov. Jerry Brown said. Brown, speaking at a news conference Wednesday, said the state’s exploding population combined with climate change has conspired to create ripe conditions for the prodigious blazes. “Nature is very powerful and we are not on the side of nature,” Brown said. “Every year is teaching the fire authorities new lessons. We are in uncharted territory.”

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State Sen. Hueso’s Interest In Water Runs Deep

/in , /by /Water News Network Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

San Diego County is a leader in water conservation and management strategies that will become even more critical in coming years, state Sen. Ben Hueso (San Diego) said during an Aug. 1 Legislative Roundtable at the San Diego County Water Authority’s headquarters. “San Diego is really a model in the state,” Hueso told an audience of about 90 water agency representatives, business and civic leaders and other stakeholders from around the county who attended the morning event.

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OPINION: Historic Water Deal Provides Less Expensive, More Reliable Supplies

/in , /by /Valley Roadrunnerby Mark Muir Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

A historic achievement for the San Diego region passed almost unnoticed when the San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors adopted new wholesale water rates in late June. The rate-setting process highlighted how the Water Authority’s independent water supplies from the Colorado River are now both less expensive and more reliable than supplies from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. It’s an accomplishment that the region’s water officials started working toward two decades ago, and one that will bear fruit for decades to come.

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Ocean Temperatures In La Jolla Measure Highest In Over 100 Years

/in , /by /NBC7by Danielle Radin

Surface water temperatures in August hit the highest they have ever been in at least a century, according to researchers with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. On Wednesday, August 1, water samples pulled from the end of Scripps Pier showed a reading of 78.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers said it broke an all-time record. Since 1916, scientists have been tracking water temperatures near the pier in La Jolla every single day. It’s one of the longest ongoing data sets in history. But why are the waters warm now? Researchers are not exactly sure but have theories.

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City Was Told About Smart Meter Problems Two Years Ago

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

There’s a lot the city doesn’t know about the extent of problems with its $67 million “smart” water meter program. But it did know at least two years ago that problems existed, emails released this week show – a fact that conflicts with earlier statements the city made about an April 2016 meeting between water department officials and the company that makes the smart meters. Since 2010, the city has spent roughly $7 million to buy 74,000 Hersey-brand water meters from Atlanta-based Mueller Water Products.

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Glitch in 57,000-Plus Smart Meters Prevents Them From Being Smart

/in , /by /NBC7by Tom Jones and Consumer Bob

Millions of dollars worth of smart water meters already installed in homes across the city of San Diego could have a glitch that prevents them from relaying water use wirelessly. And for more than two years, the city has no record of trying to fix or address the problem.  Last month, NBC 7 Responds and media partner Voice of San Diego first disclosed the “glitch”, which had never been discussed publicly by the Public Utilities Department. A department spokesperson told us the glitch, identified in Hersey Meters, was described as being “minor” and that “no corrective action was required”.

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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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