The U.S. Navy announced Wednesday it was again instrumental in helping California avoid power outages during Labor Day weekend’s statewide extreme heat event. The Navy’s efforts contributed a potential savings of approximately 16 megawatts (MW), keeping the peak load on Sunday under 47,000 MW, and saving enough energy to help prevent rolling blackouts through local neighborhoods and California.
The CZU Lightning Complex Fire’s threat to water quality in Santa Cruz came into sharper focus Tuesday as a Cal Fire emergency watershed response team neared completion of a damage study.
The most pressing risk is debris that could clog the San Lorenzo River near River Street and Highway 1 where water enters the city’s system, said Santa Cruz Water Director Rosemary Menard. The San Lorenzo River is the city’s largest water source. It represents about 45% of the water supply.
Encinitas, Calif.—Olivenhain Municipal Water District’s Board of Directors recognized the winners of the 2020 North County water agencies’ Water Awareness Poster Contest at its September 9 meeting.
Six student artists from schools in the Otay Water District’s service area were named as winners of the district’s 2020 Water is Life Student Poster Contest. Entries were selected as those best demonstrating creativity and awareness of water-use efficiency through art.
California’s mega-drought officially ended three years ago but may have turned the Creek Fire into a monster. By killing millions of trees in the Sierra National Forest, the historic drought that ended in 2017 left an incendiary supply of dry fuel that appears to have intensified the fire that’s ravaged more than 140,000 acres in the southern Sierra Nevada, wildfire scientists and forestry experts said Tuesday.
North Carolina, the EPA, and an international standards organization want to use a method for detecting known and unknown “forever chemicals” in water that the chemical industry opposes for being too broad. The test they want to use measures total organic fluorine amounts in water and can provide a broader picture of all per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in a sample instead of testing for one or a few substances at a time.
Utah’s Great Salt Lake is shrinking every year, but experts are implementing measures to slow the water loss, a new report said. The Great Salt Lake Advisory Council says the water depth has dropped about 11 feet over the past 10 years, KSTU-TV reported Sunday. “It will continue to decrease at about the same amount over the next couple of decades if more is not done to bring water to the lake,” Great Salt Lake coordinator Laura Vernon said. The lake is crucial to the region’s recreation, migratory birds and billion dollar economy.
Nevada officials raised numerous concerns Tuesday about permitting a proposed project to pipe large quantities of Colorado River water roughly 140 miles from Lake Powell to southern Utah, a controversial plan that would place new demands on the river.
A Kern County groundwater bank proposal just at the starting blocks has been hit with 1,2,3-TCP contamination. Irvine Ranch Water District and Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District had just begun the environmental review process for their joint banking project this past April when TCP reared its head.
Work to build the nation’s largest solar farm in Tulare County may begin by the end of this year. At its Aug. 26 meeting, the Tulare County Planning Commission unanimously approved environmental documents for the Rexford Solar Farm in southeastern Tulare County.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
