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Public Water Now Appeals Monterey County’s Cal Am Desal Approval

/in , /by /Monterey Heraldby Jim Johnson

Public Water Now is challenging the Monterey County Planning Commission’s approval of a combined development permit for California American Water’s proposed desalination plant project. On Thursday, the organization best known for backing a public takeover of Cal Am’s local water system filed an appeal to the Board of Supervisors of the Planning Commission’s narrow approval of a permit for the 6.4-million-gallon-per-day desal plant north of Marina and associated infrastructure. The appeal argues the desal project proposal fails to properly address several key details, including groundwater rights, and calls for the county to require a supplemental environmental review before considering the proposal.

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There’s So Much Plastic, It’s Falling From The Sky

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

It is raining plastic, according to federal researchers. A new paper by the U.S. Geological Survey finds that plastic is circulating in the atmosphere and falling from the sky near Denver and in Rocky Mountain National Park. Similar research shows that tiny bits of plastic are being blown across the globe, landing in such remote places as the Pyrenees mountains.

 

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Final 100 Miles Of The Colorado Highlight How Badly The River Is Overtaxed

/in , /by /Cronkite News (Phoenix)by Luke Runyon

From above, tracing the Colorado River along the Arizona-California line in an airplane, it’s easy to see how it happened. As the river bends and weaves through the Southwest, its contents are slowly drained away. Concrete canals send water to millions of people in Phoenix and Tucson, Los Angeles and San Diego. Farms, ribbons of green contrasted against the desert’s shades of brown, line the waterway. Farther downstream, near Yuma, the river splits into threads, like a frayed piece of yarn. A massive multistate plumbing system sends river water to irrigate the hundreds of thousands of farm acres in Southern California and Arizona, hubs for winter vegetables, alfalfa, cotton and cattle.

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OPINION: A New Water Tax? California Has A $21 Billion Surplus, Use That Instead

/in , /by /The Daily Press (Victorville, Calif.)by Jon Coupal and Phillip Chen

California has a record $21.5 billion surplus. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we have all that money because you are being overtaxed. Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom released his revised budget proposal, the largest in California history. At a staggering $214 billion dollars, the budget is larger than that of most nations and every other state. The budget also includes a new $140 million tax on water customers to help all Californians have access to clean water.

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OPINION: When You Dream Of California, Does Water Come To Mind? It Should

/in , /by /WBUR-FM (Boston)by Meghna Chakrabarti

On a summer day in the San Joaquin Valley, 101 in the shade, I merge onto Highway 99 past downtown Fresno and steer through the vibrations of heat. I’m headed to the valley’s deep south, to a little farmworker town in a far corner of Kern County called Lost Hills. This is where the biggest farmer in America—the one whose mad plantings of almonds and pistachios have triggered California’s nut rush—keeps on growing, no matter drought or flood. He doesn’t live in Lost Hills. He lives in Beverly Hills. How has he managed to outwit nature for so long?

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California Strawberry Growers Lose Thousands Of Berries To Recent Rains

/in , /by /Times-Standard (Eureka, Calif.)by Elaine Ingalls

Strawberry fields for now, not forever, are losing good berries because of recent rains. Dane Scurich, president of Scurich Berry Farms Inc. and a Driscoll’s strawberry and blackberry grower, said he expects to start cleaning up the damage from the weather in the next day or so, but can knock growers out of production for four to five days depending on the climate. He said the intense rain of the past week damages the berry itself because its delicate skin makes it subject to decay and loss in quality, the flower on the strawberry plant is likely also damaged.

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NorCal Reservoirs Approaching Capacity With More Snow In Sierra

/in , /by /KCRA 3 (Sacramento)by Brian Hickey

With more rain and snow in the forecast this week, managers continue to release water from Northern California reservoirs. Most lakes in the northern half of the state are approaching capacity with significant runoff still pouring in from the snowcapped Sierra crest. On Tuesday morning, Folsom Lake was at 95% of capacity and 118% of average for this time of year. The lake’s elevation was at 461.63 feet above sea level at 2 a.m. Tuesday, just 4.37 feet below the lake’s rim. Water was being released at nearly the same rate it was coming in to maintain the current water level.

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OPINION: Why Orange County And California’s Drinking Water Should Not Go To Waste

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Garry Brown

California is in a drinking water crisis. Across the state, residents pay billions of dollars for clean drinking water and we use this water only once. We drink the water, then it goes to coastal sewage treatment plants, which carry out various levels of sewage treatment, then gets dumped into the ocean through outfall pipes as partially treated sewage, harming the ecosystem in the area. Billions of gallons of treated wastewater is dumped into our California coast each day, and with it, billions of resident dollars are quite literally going to waste

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Fresh Rain And Light Snow Expected In San Diego County Tuesday Night

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

Another unseasonably cold Pacific storm will blow ashore late Tuesday night, bringing showers to the coast, heavier rain to inland foothills and valleys, and about one inch of snow to the top of Mount Laguna, says the National Weather Service. The storm will produce sporadic precipitation at the coast until Thursday, producing roughly 0.25 of rain in San Diego. About twice as much will fall in the upper foothills. It’s also possible that some south-facing slopes will get one inch of rain

 

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As States Gather To Sign Colorado River Drought Plan, Focus Turns To What’s Next

/in , /by /The Arizona Republic (Phoenix)by Andrew Nicla

After months of tense, difficult negotiations, a plan to spread the effects of anticipated cutbacks on the drought-stricken Colorado River is nearing completion.  On Monday, representatives of the seven states that rely on the river will gather for a formal signing ceremony at Hoover Dam, the real and symbolic center of the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan. The plan is a blueprint for shortage sharing built around water levels in Lake Mead, the giant reservoir on the Arizona-Nevada border that has sunk to near-record low levels after two decades of drought.

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