On Tuesday, La Mesa Mayor Mark Arapostathis delivered an optimistic State of the City, in which he cited low crime, a 2017 survey that said 91% of La Mesa residents rate the quality of life in La Mesa as being excellent or good, and $8.5 million in local infrastructure improvements, plus further investments from SDG&E and San Diego County Water Authority that strengthen the “long-term stability for the infrastructure under our streets.”
West Shores High School principal Richard Pimentel slips on a cowboy hat before stepping outside. It is a nod to fashion as a response to the region’s harsh desert sun. The school sits about halfway up the western side of California’s Salton Sea. Modern buildings, concrete patios and walkways and an artificial turf sports field stand in stark contrast to the desert community that surrounds the campus. Tumbleweed and sand are common fixtures of the town’s yards. “We are about 30 miles from anywhere,” Pimentel said.
A piece of Carlsbad history will disappear this month — and with it a small chunk of the beach. Utility company contractors have begun the removal of an underwater pipeline used by ships to offload fuel oil for the Encina power plant for more than 50 years. The pipeline and the rock jetty that covers it across the beach are being removed because they are no longer needed.
When a rainstorm slammed California’s Russian River watershed in December 2012, water rushed into Lake Mendocino, a reservoir north of San Francisco. The cause? An atmospheric river, a ribbon of moisture-laden air that can ferry water thousands of miles across the sky. When the tempest hit, the state was on the brink of an exceptional drought. But instead of storing the surge the storm brought for the dry days to come, the reservoir’s owner, the US Army Corps of Engineers, let it run downstream.
Riverside County officials on Thursday unveiled a possible $400-million remedy for some of what ails the shrinking Salton Sea: record-high salinity levels, die-offs of fish, fewer birds and an immense “bathtub ring” of smelly playa prone to toxic dust storms. The so-called North Lake Vision proposed by Riverside County Supervisor Manuel Perez calls for creation of an in-lake barrier, or dam, on the north end of the sea that would be filled with enhanced flows from the White Water River to create what he described as “a 4,200-acre healthy lake within a much larger not-so-healthy one.”
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will be undertaking comprehensive assessments of the spillways and dam structures at Lake Mathews and Lake Skinner along with preliminary design of upgrades to the dam monitoring systems at both lakes. The MWD board vote, Dec. 12, also approved an agreement with AECOM, an international design firm, for technical support of those activities. The $2.86 million appropriation for the project covers $2,000,000 for the study and $860,000 to upgrade the monitoring systems and includes $1.53 million for AECOM’s consultant work.
Faced with a shortage of money and political support after seven years of work, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration is working on a plan to scale back one of his key legacy projects — a $17 billion proposal to build two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to make it easier to move water from Northern California to the south.
Despite the fierce rains and deadly mudslides that have struck California, water officials are concerned about the possibility of a renewed drought. But they caution that is too early to tell. Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, measured snowpack levels with a team last week in the bare Phillips Station area of the Sierra Nevadas, about 90 miles east of Sacramento. He didn’t find much
When a rainstorm slammed California’s Russian River watershed in December 2012, water rushed into Lake Mendocino, a reservoir north of San Francisco. The cause? An atmospheric river, a ribbon of moisture-laden air that can ferry water thousands of miles across the sky. When the tempest hit, the state was on the brink of an exceptional drought. But instead of storing the surge the storm brought for the dry days to come, the reservoir’s owner, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, let it run downstream.
The recent fires and rains in Southern California have led to mudslides, debris flows and rock falls along the Santa Barbara County coast. At least 17 people have died, dozens of homes have been destroyed and, in the coastal village of Montecito, the water system was severely damaged. With extreme weather becoming the norm in California, Take Two reached out to Stanford University earth science professor, Noah Diffenbaugh, to learn more about the state’s infrastructure and its level of preparedness for natural disasters.
