San Diego residents and businesses could see their sewage rates rise four years in a row, starting with a 5% hike in January 2022, under a package of proposed water and sewage rate increases that the City Council’s budget committee send to the full council Wednesday.
The council will hold hearings and vote in September on a package that also includes a water rate increase from the San Diego County Water Authority.
Vista, Calif. — Vista Irrigation District Board of Directors adopted its 2020 Urban Water Management Plan (2020 UWMP) and amended its Water Supply Response Plan (WSRP). The 2020 UWMP details the district’s long-term planning efforts to ensure sufficient water supplies to meet existing and future water needs of its customers. The WSRP specifies water use efficiency and water conservation measures to be implemented during water shortage conditions resulting from drought and other emergencies.
Hydrozones are the different areas of your landscaping where plants with similar irrigation needs are grouped together. This allows you to apply water as efficiently as possible through rainwater catchment, supplemented by irrigation, while avoiding unnecessary and wasteful overwatering.
Sun exposure, slopes, and plant root depths need to be taken into consideration along with plant water needs. All these characteristics create specific hydrozones. Even when the soil is the same, a full sun area is one hydrozone, full shade areas are another, and mixed exposure areas create yet a third. Shade from buildings or trees can also raise or lower temperatures.
Each irrigation valve should water its own separate hydrozone populated by plants with similar water needs, living conditions, and root depths. Plants with high water needs such as vegetables or lawns need to be grouped into their own hydrozone. Sprinklers or emitters on this zone shouldn’t overwater anything else.
Inspect your sprinkler heads regularly to make sure they are not obstructed or watering onto the pavement or other hardscapes. Photo: Irrigation Association
Each hydrozone must be able to handle enough water volume for every emitter to work properly. Hydrozones should have individual sprinklers or emitters delivering only the required amount of water, spaced out so every plant in the hydrozone receives an equal and accurate amount. If two sprinklers cross over one another, plants receiving water from both will receive more water than needed. In this example, sprinklers should be turned away from each other, or be reset farther apart. Professional landscapers call this “matched precipitation.”
This article is part of a year-long series inspired by the 71-page Sustainable Landscapes Program guidebook available at SustainableLandscapesSD.org. The Water Authority and its partners also offer other great resources for landscaping upgrades, including free WaterSmart classes at WaterSmartSD.org.
San Jose’s largest retail water provider on Tuesday announced new rules aimed at increasing water conservation as the state’s drought worsens and reservoir levels drop — chief among them a limit on watering lawns and landscaping to no more than two days a week.
San Jose Water Company, which serves 1 million people who live in San Jose, Campbell, Los Gatos, Saratoga, parts of Cupertino and Redwood Estates, said the new rules take effect immediately.
The summer of 2021 could go down as one of the hottest and driest summers in California’s history.
“In Northern California, where we get a lot of our water supply, it has been one of the driest 18 months on record in 120 years,” said Goldy Herbon, a Senior Water Resources Specialist for the San Diego County Water Authority.
Herbon said there is no snowpack in Northern California and the Colorado River is almost down to 60% of its normal water levels.
That’s usually very bad for counties that import a lot of their water. However, Herbon said the San Diego County Water Authority and its member agencies like the city of San Diego have invested billions of dollars in infrastructure improvements over the last 30 years that have given San Diego County enough to withstand any potential water restrictions brought on by drought.
In Los Angeles, people have been hearing about the dangers of drought for decades. But in this land of infinity pools and backyard putting greens — better suited for rattlesnakes and scrub — water never seems to run out.
Yet little Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, which gets a bountiful 38 inches of rain in an average year and sits near the headwaters of the Russian River, has been devastated by this year’s drought. Each resident has been told to use no more than 55 gallons per day — enough to fill a bathtub and flush a toilet six times.
And in San Jose, where less than half of its usual rain has fallen this year, people have been asked to cut water use by 15% — a target that could become mandatory if locals fail to comply.
When it comes to the impact of drought, location is key. Rain and snow vary greatly across California’s myriad microclimates, leaving some towns, mostly in the north, accustomed to yearly refills of their rivers, reservoirs and aquifers. Others farther south have fewer natural supplies of their own, and in parts of the Central Valley, the drought never really left.
Satellite images recently released by NASA show how drought has affected Northern California’s Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, the largest reservoirs in the state. NASA compared images taken earlier in June with images taken in the summer of 2019 to illustrate how water levels have declined over the two-year period.
California’s severe drought was made worse this year by a shocking surprise.
Every year, much of the drinking water that flows through the taps of millions of Californians begins in the Sierra Nevada. Snow and rain fall on the vast mountain range during the winter months, and the water moves downhill into streams, rivers and reservoirs in the spring and summer.
But this year, in a trend that startled water managers, much of that runoff simply vanished.
As California’s drought continues to intensify, thousands of water agencies across the state are now facing restrictions. For many large water districts, like those serving San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, this isn’t a huge problem, as they have ample water reserves. But many rural areas of the state and smaller water systems are more vulnerable, and the drought could have devastating consequences.
California’s last drought, which lasted from 2011 to 2017, was particularly hard on rural communities and small water suppliers, state officials say. In 2016, the California legislature passed a law tasking the state’s Department of Water Resources to identify the most vulnerable communities and make recommendations to help them plan for emergencies.
The Southwest, already the driest region in the United States, has become even drier since the mid-20th century, particularly on the hottest days, according to new research. Humidity has declined in summers over the past seven decades, the research showed, and the declines have accelerated since 2000, a period of persistent drought in the region. Extreme heat coupled with lower humidity increases wildfire risk, said Karen McKinnon, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead author of a paper in Nature Climate Change describing the research and findings.
