You are now in California and the U.S. Home Headline Media Coverage category.

Weary but Determined, California’s Small, Family-Owned Farms Fight Through the Pandemic

Vince Bernard loves his trees. He’ll tell you as much. They are what have sustained him and his family for decades at Bernard Ranches. Bernard grows mostly citrus with his wife, Vicki, in Riverside, where a pair of navel orange trees planted in 1871 marked the beginning of the area’s storied citrus industry.

Board Approves Next Phase of Regional Water Conveyance System Study

The San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors authorized staff to launch the next phase of a study assessing options for long-term water deliveries to sustain the region’s economy and quality of life.

The decision follows months of community dialogue about Phase A of the Regional Conveyance System Study, which was released in August. The study demonstrated the technical viability and economic competitiveness of two routes for an aqueduct to transport the Water Authority’s independent, high-priority Colorado River water to San Diego County.

Rep. Ruiz Introduces Salton Sea Bill in Congress to Provide Funding, Increase Air Quality Requirements

Southern California Democrats Rep. Raul Ruiz and Rep. Juan Vargas introduced a new bill on Thursday that would force the federal government to take a more active role in funding and managing Salton Sea habitat restoration and dust suppression.

HR 8775, the Salton Sea Public Health and Environmental Protection Act, would create an interagency working group called the Salton Sea Management Council to coordinate projects around the lake’s receding shoreline.

Colorado River Users Expect Biden to Put Focus on Climate Change

The incoming Biden administration will lead efforts to craft a new water-management regime for the seven-state Colorado River Basin, and people involved in the process expect any changes to reflect the impact of climate change in the basin.

The Bureau of Reclamation, under the Interior Department, will lead negotiations to replace 13-year-old interim guidelines used to operate the basin’s two major reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The Interior secretary also manages the lower basin, containing all the water below Hoover Dam.

Revisions should reflect ecological values, water rights of American Indian tribes, and the need for more conservation measures by users in the seven states—Arizona, California and Nevada in the lower basin and Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the upper basin, those involved in the process said.

Oceanside Receives $175K Grant to Boost Restoration of Loma Alta Slough

The National Fish & Wildlife Foundation awarded Oceanside’s water utilities department a $175,000 grant to assist with the city’s Loma Alta Slough wetlands project, officials said Thursday. The project is intended to restore and enhance approximately six acres of coastal wetland and upland habitat near Buccaneer Beach in south Oceanside.

Water District Adopts Defensible Space Ordinance, Accepts Auditing Report

The Ramona Municipal Water District Board of Directors at its Nov. 10 meeting unanimously agreed to adopt the county’s defensible space for fire protection ordinance and accepted an auditing report that gives the district a favorable “unmodified” rating.

California Wants Its Imperial Valley to Be ‘Lithium Valley’

Dust storms laced with toxins sweep across California’s Imperial County, where mud volcanoes spit and hiss near the shores of the slowly shrinking lake known as the Salton Sea. The county is one of California’s poorest, most of its jobs tied to a thin strip of irrigated land surrounded by desert. San Diego and the Golden State’s prosperous coast lie only 100 miles away across a jumble of mountains, but it might as well be another world.

Opinion: Our Future Rests on Climate Action

California is on fire. And the wildfires we’ve seen already this year are not just alarming – they’re a forewarning. In 2020 alone, record temperatures and tens of thousands of dry lightning strikes led our state to experience five of its six largest wildfires in recorded history.

State Water Board Official Urges Cal Am to Seek Water Supply Resolution

A top State Water Resources Control Board administrator is “strongly encouraging” California American Water to “resolve disputes” and pursue both short-term and long-term water supply solutions for the Monterey Peninsula while pointing out that the Carmel River aquifer pumping cutback order deadline at the end of next year is approaching with no additional water supply project expected to be operational by then.

Federal Water Rule Expected to Stay Murky Through Biden Term

A Biden administration won’t be able to untangle the legal and regulatory “mess” under part of the Clean Water Act that determines which streams, wetlands and other waters get federal protection, legal scholars and litigators say.

Any move the Biden administration takes to clarify the definition of Waters of the United States, known as WOTUS, will continue the decades-long “merry-go-round” of administrative rule changes and litigation, said Larry Liebesman, a former Justice Department environmental lawyer who is now a senior adviser at the environmental and water permitting firm of Dawson & Associates.