In fields on the Arizona-California border, farmers draw water from the nearby Colorado River to grow alfalfa, irrigating crops as they have for decades.
That could change soon. An investment company has purchased nearly 500 acres of farmland and wants to strip it of its water and send it 200 miles across the desert to a Phoenix suburb, where developers plan to build thousands of new houses.
Delegates and activists from nearly 200 countries returned from the COP26 global environmental forum in Glasgow, Scotland, with a long list of climate-related promises and targets to discuss and implement. While many countries made a renewed commitment to climate-resilient and sustainable agricultural systems, some groups accused leaders at COP26 of not doing enough to improve water security globally.
Augustine Godinez is standing on a walkway that extends over a large water storage basin. Below him, a huge metal arm swirls the water in order to separate the sludge out. What’s happening here is that wastewater is being recycled.
The weighted vote at 2022 San Diego County Water Authority board meetings will increase slightly for the Rainbow Municipal Water District while decreasing slightly for the Fallbrook Public Utility District and Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
The Nov. 18 SDCWA board meeting approved the 2022 weighted vote allocations for the CWA member agencies. RMWD will have 3.926% of the weighted vote, FPUD will have a weighted vote of 2.238%, and the Camp Pendleton weighted vote will be 0.081%. For the 2021 board meetings, RMWD had a weighted vote of 3.923%, FPUD’s share was 2.256%, and the Camp Pendleton weighted vote was 0.084%.
Studying the complexity of mud on the ocean floor is a life’s work for Timothy Lyons, so when the tall and lean biogeochemist asks you to join an expedition in search of chemical mysteries buried deep beneath the waves, be prepared to get wet and dirty.
On a recent foray onto California’s largest and most troubled lake, Lyons rode a Zodiac skiff with a 15-horsepower engine across the Salton Sea against a backdrop of desolate mountains, dunes and miles of shoreline bristling with the bones of thousands of dead fish and birds.
Autumnal rain has sent a surge of Chinook salmon swimming up Bay Area creeks, a sharp reversal in fortune for an iconic species that has struggled after years of drought.
A living link between our mountains and coast, the fish responded to late October’s fierce atmospheric river by rushing up the region’s once-parched rivers, say biologists, frequenting spots where they’ve never been seen.
San Diego County’s Local Agency Formation Commission will hold a Dec. 6 hearing on municipal service review updates for Fallbrook special districts, and LAFCO analyst Priscilla Allen provided a presentation on LAFCO, municipal service reviews, and the context of the hearing during the Nov. 15 Fallbrook Community Planning Group meeting.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is urging nearly 3 million water customers throughout the Bay Area to cut water usage by 10%, as it declares a water shortage emergency due to the ongoing drought.
“With California still experiencing devastating drought and the uncertainty around this rainy season, we need to make tough decisions that will ensure that our water source continues to be reliable and dependable for the future,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement Tuesday.
Drought has tightened its grip on the Western U.S., as dry conditions tick on into their second decade and strain a river that supplies 40 million people. Experts agree that things are bad and getting worse. But how exactly do you measure a drought, and how can you tell where it’s going?
Brad Udall is an expert on the subject, studying water and climate at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center. Lately, his forecasts for the basin haven’t been particularly uplifting.
In actions that carry out President Biden’s economic agenda, the U.S. House of Representatives last week passed two pieces of significant legislation, including a $1.2 trillion bipartisan package that includes $8.3 billion for critical water projects in drought-parched California and the West.
On Friday, the House also passed the president’s social safety-net bill, the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, on a party-line vote. That bill, which funds universal pre-K, expansion of Medicare, renewable energy credits and affordable housing, now moves to the Senate.
