A coalition of water stakeholder organizations from across California joined together to send a letter addressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom and six key legislators requesting action to address water issues.
The nine page document dated April 19, 2022 was signed by 18 organizations and entities including the San Joaquin Valley Water Blueprint and 10 Southern California, four Bay Area and three trade groups.
The Metropolitan Water District said Wednesday that the unprecedented decision to reduce outdoor watering to one day a week for about 6 million Southern Californians could be followed by even stricter actions in September if conditions don’t improve, including a total ban in some areas.
“If we don’t see cutbacks, or conditions do not get better, the Metropolitan board has given me the authority to ban all watering as soon as Sept. 1,” MWD general manager Adel Hagekhalil said Wednesday. “We know what this means to communities, we know what we are requiring here, but we’re facing a challenge. We do not have the supply to meet the normal demands that we have.”
As part of continuing efforts to maintain and invest in City of San Diego infrastructure, repair work starts within the next two weeks on Hodges Dam, at the Hodges Reservoir north of Rancho Bernardo.
“It’s been over a century since Hodges Dam was constructed, and we are making significant investments to maintain this vital asset,” said Alia Khouri, Deputy Chief Operating Officer.
Southern California officials on Tuesday took the unprecedented step of declaring a water shortage emergency and ordering outdoor usage be restricted to just one day a week for about 6 million people in parts of Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties.
The outdoor watering restrictions will take effect June 1 under the decision by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and will apply to areas that depend on water from the drought-ravaged State Water Project.
In observance of growing drought conditions statewide, the Vallecitos Water District has declared new water conservation requirements for thousands of customers in San Diego County’s inland area under a Level 2 drought alert.
A proposed La Quinta resort with a hotel, homes and a wave basin — which has brought loud opposition from people saying it is a poor use of water during a drought — narrowly won the planning commission’s endorsement Tuesday and will now move to the city council for final consideration.
The vote for the Coral Mountain project came in two motions: The first was for certification of the environmental impact report, which passed 5-2 with Vice Chairperson Loretta Currie and Commissioner Michael Proctor voting no.
Mona Rios, a National City councilwoman for 12 years, told Voice of San Diego Tuesday that she won’t be seeking reelection. In fact, she said she’s departing politics altogether in part, to have more time to take care of her elderly parents.
“I think it’s time for me to allow other voices to be at the table,” Rios, 69, said.
For the past year, California’s Department of Water Resources has been taking measurements of aquifers in central and southern parts of the state. The same will be done for the Sacramento Valley over the next several weeks.
This project, which is known as an Airborne Electromagnetic (AEM) Survey, is a direct result of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which calls for local and state water agencies to work together to better understand and manage groundwater supply.
AEM surveys are taken using a helicopter that carries a special set of instruments suspended on a large ring below the aircraft, shown below.
The country’s largest man-made reservoir, Lake Mead, has dropped to such a historically low level that Las Vegas water officials have completed the process of turning on a pump station that will allow Southern Nevada to retrieve water, even under extreme conditions.
The move — to turn on the pump station full bore — is an indication of how low Lake Mead has fallen over the past decade and serves as a bulwark against the possibility of Las Vegas losing physical access to its water as regional issues on the Colorado River become increasingly dire.
As California’s wildfire season nears amid another year of drought, Folsom Lake looks much different than it did a year ago when a low water level left an exposed lakebed. Now, splashing, swimming and boats have returned—but will it last?
“We couldn’t do anything at all. We couldn’t go swimming or anything like that. The water was really, really low,” lake visitor Robert Morpanini said of last year’s levels.
