Chula Vista, Calif. – Sweetwater Authority customers are eligible for free admission to the Water Conservation Garden. An insert is being mailed in customers’ bills (including electronic bills) beginning Friday, November 20. Customers can take the insert with them and receive free admission to the Garden through April 4,2021.
A major landscape makeover is helping a San Diego County neighborhood save money during these uncertain economic times. The WaterSmart Contractor Incentive Program helps qualified landscape contractors as well as large homeowners associations, save money and improve water-use efficiency in large landscapes by retrofitting irrigation devices.
The San Diego County Water Authority and the Vallecitos Water District recently worked with the San Elijo Community Association and O’Connell Landscape Maintenance to install water-efficient devices throughout its entire association property. Photo: Vallecitos Water District
The San Diego County Water Authority and the Vallecitos Water District recently worked with the San Elijo Community Association and O’Connell Landscape Maintenance to install water-efficient devices throughout its entire association property, including 2,500 stations and 50 controllers. In addition, rebates allowed O’Connell Landscape to convert spray irrigation and rotor irrigation to drip irrigation, and add flow sensors.
Van Dyke Landscape Architects and its team of certified landscape irrigation auditors assessed the irrigation system in order to make recommendations for the system upgrades. Van Dyke performed initial irrigation audits to determine what types of irrigation upgrades would benefit San Elijo’s terrain and soil types best.
Through its report, the landscape architects recommended areas of opportunity for the San Elijo HOA to save its homeowners money and water long-term. Through the WSCIP, the project earned $24,000 in rebates. The amount of water savings from weather-based controllers can range from 10% to 30% of actual water applied, and another 20% to 40% water savings by changing to a pressure-regulated point source drip system.
O’Connell Landscape Maintenance performed the irrigation work for the San Elijo HOA. Photo: Vallecitos Water District
“The smart irrigation controllers help send an alarm when there is a break, and the controller will stop the master valve and stop the leak,” said Fabian Alejo, account manager for O’Connell Landscape Maintenance. “The smart controller makes it easier for us to monitor flow, water usage, and leaks.”
Alejo said that the software that comes with the controller allows crews to get alarms in real time.
“Getting the alarms in real time pinpoints exactly the controller and the station number where we have a high water or no flow reading, allowing us to make repairs immediately where water is being wasted,” said Alejo.
Van Dyke landscape architect Nick Concra managed the rebate process.
“The rebate program is incredible,” said Concra. “HOAs using this program can save a lot of money, and a lot more than they think.”
Participants in the WaterSmart Contractor Incentive program call it “priceless.” Photo: Vallecitos Water District
Yale Hooper, principal landscape architect with Van Dyke, said the teamwork among the participants with the Water Authority and Vallecitos Water District makes the program so successful.
“From our perspective as landscape architects, these programs are priceless,” said Hooper. “If I were a contractor or HOA, these are ‘must do’ programs.”
Forty million people, 5.5 million acres of farmland and the livelihood of residents in major metropolitan areas such as Salt Lake City, Denver and Las Vegas depend on the Colorado River, described as the workhorse of the West and under assault by drought.
The U.S. Geological Survey is in the beginning stages of learning more about this river via an expanded and more sophisticated monitoring system that aims to study details about the snowpack that feeds the river basin, droughts and flooding, and how streamflow supports groundwater, or vice versa.
This winter may seem colder than previous warmer winters Californians have experienced in recent history, because a moderate to strong La Niña is forming over the pacific.
But La Niña, an annual weather pattern off of the Pacific Ocean that often dictates California’s drier conditions in the winter, doesn’t buck global warming trends, according to Michelle Mead, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
Mead says since California is this long skinny state, La Niña’s impact will differ depending on where you live, just like the storm moving across Northern California this week.
Towering high tides hitting the Southern California coast were met with record-high temperatures Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
The astronomical tides, known as king tides, occur when the moon is closest to Earth and are often the highest tides of the year, said Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. Combined with high surf, king tides can bring tidal overflows, minor beach erosion and an increased risk of drowning.
Non-revenue water loss is among the biggest challenges facing the water industry and the world. Nearly one-third of all water, amounting to $39 billion annually, is lost before it ever reaches a customer, according to a report from Frost & Sullivan. Water scarcity will proliferate with the aging water infrastructure, rapid urbanization and worsening disaster seasons throughout the world.
Bodies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are doing their part to make strides toward improved infrastructure. Earlier this year, the agency announced the availability of $2.7 billion in funding to support infrastructure projects that help protect surface and drinking water. However, with AWWA’s estimated cost of more than $1 trillion to manage water infrastructure over the next 25 years, the responsibility must fall to the industry to understand these challenges and prepare a strategy to understand and respond to them.
Salk’s Harnessing Plants Initiative will receive $30 million from the Bezos Earth Fund to advance efforts to increase the ability of crop plants, such as corn and soybeans, to capture and store atmospheric carbon via their roots in the soil. This work will explore carbon-sequestration mechanisms in six of the world’s most prevalent crop species with the goal of increasing the plants’ carbon-storage capacity.
What makes Bear Republic Brewing Company special is just how conscious its chief operating officer and master brewer is of water’s impact on the business and its local community.
Bear Republic was established in Sonoma County, California, in 1995 by the Norgrove family, and opened its first brew pub in January of 1997 in Healdsburg, California. In November of that year, Peter Kruger was hired to the company, launching his career path to his current position as Bear Republic Brewing Company master brewer and chief operating officer.
At the time he was hired, Kruger said the wastewater from the beer making process was sent through the sewer system to the municipal wastewater treatment plant.
The world’s leading annual event on water, World Water Week, has decided to go fully digital in 2021 to ensure that this important conference can take place despite the ongoing pandemic. The Week will be held 23-27 August 2021 under the theme Building Resilience Faster.
World Water Week typically attracts 4,000 people from more than 135 countries to Stockholm, where the conference has been held since 1991. Next year, however, the organizers at Stockholm International Water Institute have decided to hold the entire event online.
Opposition is building against San Diego’s dream of erecting a $5 billion pipeline to the Colorado River in the name of resource independence.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
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