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Escondido Incubator Could Revive North County’s Ag Industry. UC Could Be Partner

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Joe Tash

A vacant, city-owned industrial building could become a hub for new businesses in the field of agricultural technology under a proposal now being explored by Escondido officials.

The idea is to turn the empty building at 455 N. Quince St. — most recently used as a mattress factory and warehouse — into an incubator where researchers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists could come together to hatch new companies that would serve North County’s agriculture industry.

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Colorado OKs Drinking Treated Wastewater: Getting Over the ‘Ick Factor’

/in , , /by /Denver Gazette by Jero Smith

Colorado regulators, after years of study, negotiations and testing, approved a new rule that clears the way for drinking treated wastewater this week, one of only a handful of states in the country to do so.

The action came in a unanimous vote of the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission Oct. 11.

Direct potable reuse (DPR) involves sophisticated filtering and disinfection of sewage water for drinking water purposes, with no environmental buffer, such as a wetland or river, between the wastewater treatment plant and drinking water treatment plant. That water is then sent out through the city’s drinking water system.

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Shasta Lake Helped Water California; Now its Dryness is a Threat to the State

/in , , /by /Wall Street Journalby Jim Carlton Mentioned: https://www.wsj.com/articles/shasta-lake-helped-water-california-now-its-dryness-is-a-threat-to-the-state-11665864898

Few places are more critical to the water supply in California than this immense northern reservoir in the foothills of the Cascade Range.

Fed by runoff from 14,163-foot Mount Shasta and other peaks, California’s largest reservoir opened in 1945 as part of the federal Central Valley Project, an elaborate system of man-made dams, pumps and aqueducts that aims to reduce flood risks and deliver water to farms and cities in the heart of the semiarid state.

Opinion: The Feds Can Curb a Foolish California Water Giveaway

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Editorial Board

About 15 miles north of Fresno sits Millerton Lake, a reservoir created in the 1930s when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation built Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River. The dam provides irrigation water for fields and groves in much of the San Joaquin Valley, but it wiped out the Chinook salmon migration that had existed on the river for tens of thousands of years.

It also threatened the rights of landowners to divert naturally flowing San Joaquin River water for their fields. Instead of losing their rights, though, farmers who had land near the river agreed to trade their water to the federal dam project in exchange for “substitute water,” delivered to them from the Sacramento River.

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If You Don’t Already Live in a Sponge City, You Will Soon

/in , /by /Wiredby Matt Simon

Like anything else, water is great in moderation—urbanites need it to survive, but downpours can flood streets and homes. And as you might have noticed, climate change isn’t good at moderation. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, supercharging storms to dump more water quicker, which can overwhelm municipal sewer systems built for the climate of long ago. Thus you get the biblical flooding that’s been drowning cities around the world, from Zhengzhou, China, to Seoul, South Korea, to Cologne, Germany, to New York City.

In response, urban planners are increasingly thinking of cities less as rain jackets—designed to whisk water away as fast as possible before it has a chance to accumulate—and more as sponges. By deploying thirsty green spaces and digging huge dirt bowls where water can gather and percolate into underlying aquifers, “sponge cities” are making rain an asset to be exploited instead of expelled.

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“Shutdown Season” for Regional Aqueducts in San Diego County

/in , , /by /Water News Network Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

Sections of the regional aqueducts in San Diego County will be shut down over the next six months for maintenance projects to ensure a safe and reliable water supply for the region. The San Diego County Water Authority and its member agencies are coordinating on the annual “shutdown season” to minimize impacts to residents and businesses, who are not expected to face service disruptions.

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Los Angeles is Running Out of Water, and Time. Are Leaders Willing to Act?

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Hayley Smith

On a clear afternoon recently, Mayor Eric Garcetti looked down at the Hollywood Reservoir from 1,200 feet in the air.

“It’s as low as I can ever remember it being,” Garcetti said of the reservoir from the back seat of a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power helicopter. “You can see the bathtub ring.”

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Feds are Putting a Price Tag on Water in the Colorado River Basin to Spur Farmers to Conserve

/in , , /by /KUNCby Alex Hager

The federal government is designating $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act for drought mitigation work in the Colorado River basin.

On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior announced that total, indicating that $500 million will go to efficiency upgrades in the river’s Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Another chunk of IRA money will be set aside for direct payments to farmers and ranchers to forgo water deliveries from Lake Mead in the river’s Lower Basin, primarily in Arizona and California. Federal officials are not specifying how much money will be available for that first round of payments.

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As Drought Persists, Crucial Groundwater Supplies Dwindle

/in , , /by /Capitol Weeklyby Liam Gravvat

More than 60% of California’s groundwater wells are operating at below-normal levels, endangering much of the Golden State’s population that relies on the precious resource.

Although relatively unknown to many Californians, who see water supply in terms of rivers, streams and reservoirs, groundwater is a hugely vital source that is largely invisible.

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Amid Historic Drought, California Expected to Approve $140 Million Desalination Plant

/in , /by /Reutersby Daniel Trotta

A $140 million desalination plant is expected to be approved by California regulators on Thursday as the U.S. state contends with how to convert ocean water into drinking water amid the worst drought in 1,200 years.

Just five months ago, the Coastal Commission by an 11-0 vote rejected a privately owned plant that would have been 10 times the size of the proposed South Coast Water District’s Doheny Ocean Desalination Project in Orange County, just south of Los Angeles.

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