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Wifi Wires Will Run Through Water Pipes In Northern Washington Town

A normally busy sidewalk on Seattle’s University Way Northeast has been cordoned off for an all-too-common reason: the concrete is being torn up to put in new fiber optic cable.

An hour north, the seaside town of Anacortes has found a way to avoid all that disruption: fiber optics cables in existing water pipes.

Sitting inside Anacortes’ main water pipe is a skinny plastic tube, like a drinking straw inside a glass of water.

“We have inserted a fiber optics cable inside of live water lines all the way from Mount Vernon to Anacortes,” said Fred Buckenmeyer, who runs the city’s public works department. “First in North America.”

Sweetwater Authority Eyes Sand Mining, Material Dredging Opportunities

The board of the Sweetwater Authority is interested in sand mining and material dredging opportunities in and around the South Bay water agency’s two reservoirs.

The agency, which serves National City, Bonita and parts of Chula Vista, plans to solicit interest from sand mining companies to explore the concept — specifically, whether there are opportunities to leverage the Sweetwater and Loveland reservoirs by extracting materials to not only create a revenue stream but also increase the capacity of the reservoirs.

The Long and Winding Road of Salmon Trucking in California

Trucking juvenile hatchery salmon downstream is often used in the California Central Valley to reduce mortality during their perilous swim to the ocean. But is it all good? Researchers at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Francisco and NOAA Fisheries published an article in Fisheries this month exploring the history and implications of salmon trucking in a changing climate.

California’s Chronic Water Overuse Leads To Sinking Towns, Arsenic Pollution

When you walk through Jeannie Williams’s sunny orchard, you don’t notice anything wrong. But the problem’s there, underfoot. The land around her — about 250 square kilometres — is sinking.

“It’s frightening,” Williams says. “Is the land going to come back up? I don’t know.”

She points out the well from which she obtains all of the water she needs to grow organic fruits and vegetables. The well is small and shallow; she only has two acres of crops to water. But her neighbours are far more thirsty, and have been for a very long time.