Encinitas, Calif. — At its May 22 meeting, Olivenhain Municipal Water District’s Board of Directors accepted for its 2018-2019 fiscal year budget the Government Finance Officers Association’s Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. This marks the eighteenth consecutive year OMWD has achieved this award.
An abandoned iron mine on the doorstep of Joshua Tree National Park could be repurposed as a massive hydroelectric power plant under a bill with bipartisan support in the state Legislature. Senate Bill 772, which was approved by a panel of lawmakers last week with no dissenting votes, would require California to build energy projects that can store large amounts of power for long periods of time. It’s a type of technology the state is likely to need as utility companies buy more and more energy from solar and wind farms, which generate electricity only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.
Poseidon Water started pumping drinking water from its Carlsbad desalination plant 3 1/2 years ago, but the location of that first desalination plant might have been in Huntington Beach instead. Plans for Poseidon operations at both locations were launched in 1998, but company officials prioritized the Carlsbad site in 2006, according to company Vice President Scott Maloni. The slower timeline for Huntington Beach resulted in it facing new, stricter regulations and additional delays. The controversial plant still needs two major permits, opponents remain steadfast and a recent water-supply study raised questions about the cost and need for the project.
San Diego will soon have a 5G wireless network system thanks to major companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Qualcomm working to establish it. With 5G, speeds will be 20 times faster than what is possible on current 4G and LTE systems. “Speed is everything,” said Mayor Kevin Faulconer. “And it is going to fundamentally change how we use the internet.” But experts are concerned the frequencies on the broadband spectrum needed for 5G will interfere with those used for weather forecasting.
The California Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would require additional environmental review for groundwater transfers that would affect desert areas, which would put a major roadblock in front of a controversial water project proposed in the Mojave Desert by Cadiz Inc. The company has been trying to pump 16.3 billion gallons of groundwater out of the desert’s aquifer and transport it to the Colorado River Aqueduct.
Blame it on the jet stream.The high-altitude river of fast-moving air running from the Pacific across the United States is one of the key factors playing into California’s unusually wet and snowy May. By late spring, the Pacific jet stream is typically rushing over the Northwest, but this year its trajectory never shifted to the north and remains over California, hurling storms from the Pacific Ocean onshore.
The Environmental Protection Agency has canceled registration of a dozen pesticides, from a class of chemicals known to harm bees.The cancellations are effective as of May 20 for 12 neonicotinoid-based products produced by Syngenta, Valent, and Bayer. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act requires pesticides sold or distributed in the U.S. to be registered by the EPA. Under a December settlement agreement linked to an Endangered Species Act challenge by environmental groups, the companies voluntarily agreed to petition EPA to cancel 12 out of 59 products containing the active ingredients clothianidin and thiamethoxam.
As the focus on infrastructure retakes center stage in Washington, we hope lawmakers don’t overlook a prime opportunity to invest in Western water and irrigation systems. Here in the West, our dams, irrigation systems, canals and other infrastructure much of it more than a century old are past due for modernization. This is low-hanging fruit for infrastructure repair and it’s a bipartisan political winner, too. The 2018 Farm Bill recognized this opportunity to help prepare producers and watersheds for drought in the West.
Legislation from State Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, that would help the state manage its water, protecting the precious resource for people and the environment, cleared the full Senate Monday afternoon. “You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” Sen. Dodd said. “Stream gages provide important information in this era of droughts and flooding, driven in part by climate change. This bill is an important step toward managing our water for the long run.” California has one of the nation’s most complex water systems, moving millions of gallons across the state from north to south and east to west. The state’s 39 million residents and $47 billion farming industry — along with diverse wildlife from the Sierra to the sea — rely on that water.
