In California, farms have not been immune to COVID-19. A Farm Bureau Federation survey recently found that more than half of farms across the state have lost customers or sales due to pandemic. Small family farms are especially vulnerable.
Much like solving a mystery, making informed water management decisions in California involves finding and investigating all necessary information. With data scattered across multiple locations, the process of accessing and analyzing the information can be an arduous task.
Pre-construction activities at the North City Water Reclamation Plant and the future Pure Water Facility are underway as part of Phase 1 of the Pure Water San Diego program. More than 80,000 cubic yards of soil have been moved to date during initial site work, the equivalent of approximately 25 Olympic sized swimming pools.
Last month, the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted an order granting a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES permit, to the City of San Diego to add purified water to the Miramar Reservoir for Phase 1 of Pure Water San Diego. The approval is a major milestone for the program.
NPDES permits contain discharge limits, monitoring and reporting requirements, and other provisions to ensure water quality and public health. The NPDES permit issued to the City is the first for a reservoir augmentation project in the state of California.
By implementing Phase 1, the City will be able to produce and store 30 million gallons per day of local water supplies and decrease its reliance on imported water.
More than 80,000 cubic yards of soil have been moved to date during initial site work on the Pure Water San Diego project, which is the equivalent of approximately 25 Olympic sized swimming pools. Photo: City of San Diego
Phase 1 includes a series of pipelines and facilities to convey purified water to Miramar Reservoir. Adding the purified water to Miramar Reservoir will increase the reservoir’s beneficial use and optimize protection of water quality. The purified water will blend with the City’s imported sources and be treated again at the Miramar Water Treatment Plant and distributed to the public.
The purified water distribution area will include the portion of the City of San Diego that receives potable water from the Miramar Water Treatment Plant in addition to the City of Del Mar.
Phase 1 of Pure Water San Diego includes several projects: the Morena Pump Station and Pipelines, the North City Water Reclamation Plant Expansion, the North City Pure Water Facility, and the North City Pure Water Pump Station and Pipeline.
There is no tougher playground than California’s water world.
Just take a look at the zingers flying back and forth between water districts on one another’s groundwater sustainability plans posted on the Department of Water Resources’ website.
“It’s like a giant game of dodgeball,” said Dana Munn, General Manager of Shafter-Wasco Irrigation District.
About 200 million Americans, nearly two-thirds of the population, drink water containing fluoride to fight tooth decay. That could be changed by a case now on trial in a San Francisco federal court.
Water suppliers in San Diego County say future COVID-19 federal and state stimulus packages should include funding for shovel-ready projects that would create jobs in the region.
In a letter to members of California’s congressional delegation, a group of 13 agencies, including the San Diego County Water Authority and 10 of its member agencies, and the cities of Del Mar, Oceanside and Poway, say the region’s water utilities have dozens of infrastructure projects that could be launched with an infusion of state and federal stimulus funding.
The first slide of Daybreak Power’s first-ever presentation to potential investors quotes Paul Allen, the legendary co-founder of Microsoft, asking what he calls the most exciting question imaginable: “What should exist? … What do we need that we don’t have?”.
The answer I reached in the years leading up to co-founding Daybreak in 2018 is this: A bunch of big-honkin’ pumped storage hydropower projects, for the simple reason that we’re going to need a ton of cost-effective, proven, long-duration energy storage if we, as a society, are to have any hope of integrating high levels of intermittent wind and solar power, and thereby slash greenhouse gas emissions to put the brakes on catastrophic climate change.
Plus, we can create a lot of jobs and maybe make some money on it!
Joyce Patry, a former MBA classmate, and I founded Daybreak in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, as an early-stage developer of these massive infrastructure projects.
Despite extremely limited resources, we pulled together some engineering and cost-configuration studies that had previously been conducted on potential pumped storage sites at US Bureau of Reclamation dams around the West. In late 2018 we filed a FERC preliminary permit application for the 1540MW Next Generation Pumped Storage project near Hoover Dam/Lake Mead, and followed that up with a July 2019 application for the 2210MW Navajo Energy Storage Station near Glen Canyon Dam/Lake Powell on the border of Utah and Arizona.
Scientist have found an unexpected ally in the fight against COVID-19 — a tool so powerful, it might help zero in on coronavirus outbreaks before they happen.
It’s your poop.
The science of sewer surveillance, also called wastewater epidemiology, is being harnessed by the largest university in the county to help stay on top of COVID-19 cases among students.
And while San Diego is not actively using feces to try and predict COVID-19 hot spots, the city is participating in several studies to better understand this potential monitoring technique.
Mounting public concerns and new state regulations in the U.S. are compelling water & wastewater utilities to address health risks associated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – a class of pervasive chemicals found in drinking water and wastewater biproducts.
Any potential alignment of the Lake Powell pipeline would pass through lands that hold spiritual and cultural significance to Southern Paiutes, who fear the project would jeopardize their culture and upset the balance of nature.
