As Shawntrel McCoy closes out his 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, he’ll be spending his last six months pursuing his passion for environmental science in the SkillBridge Program at the San Diego County Water Authority. The program is helping military veterans transition to career-track training opportunities, including work in the water and wastewater industry.
California has awarded the wholesaler San Diego County Water Authority $3 million to help financially strapped households install high-efficiency toilets and upgrade irrigation systems, state officials announced last week.
The money comes from the Department of Water Resources as part of $46 million in grants doled out across six counties in the state. Projects include recycling efforts, flood risk and groundwater management, pipeline construction and turf rebates.
The ongoing dispute over Colorado River water comes down largely to math: How much water should each state and region lose as reservoir levels continue to decline?
California has one interpretation of how to divvy up the cuts, and six other states that depend on the river have a different formula.
The Arctic is seeing a rapid decline in sea ice even during the cold winter months when it should be recovering from the summer melt. Scientists say that one often-overlooked factor is playing a bigger role than previously thought: Atmospheric rivers.
These long, narrow bands of moisture in the atmosphere transport warm air and water vapor from the tropics. They can extend for thousands of miles and dump rain and snow when they make landfall.
The Consulate of Mexico in Calexico hosted a presentation Thursday, February 2 announcing a collaborative effort with the Imperial Irrigation District to raise awareness about the risk of the All-American Canal involving undocumented and illegal border crossings.
IID General Manager Henry Martinez opened by welcoming all in attendance and introducing dignitaries.
The powerful storms that clobbered California for weeks in December and January dropped trillions of gallons of water, flooding many communities and farms. But throughout the state, the rains have done little to nourish the underground supplies that are critical sources of California’s drinking water.
Thousands of people in the San Joaquin Valley have seen their wells go dry after years of prolonged drought and overpumping of aquifers. And a two-week deluge — or even a wet winter — will not bring them relief.
As rain clouds swelled over Fort Stockton, Texas, last summer, a little yellow plane zipped through the sky. It was on a mission.
Equipped with tanks of water and special nozzles on its wings, the craft soared beneath the gray-white billows. Then, at just the right moment, it released a spray of electrically charged water particles into the cloud.
What happens after you flush your toilet? For 2.6 million county residents, the answer to that question can be found at a 110-acre plant in Fountain Valley operated by the Orange County Sanitation District.
The industrial site, along with a similar setup in Huntington Beach, is where approximately 185 million gallons of sewage is treated in a complex process that essentially digests biologic material into its basic components.
Figuring out where the Colorado River’s water goes after Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam can be challenging to understand and is often incorrectly stated. So when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation published forecasted use of Colorado River water it is essential to analyze the numbers.
According to the USBR, the forecasted use for 2023 in the lower Colorado River basin is divided four ways: Nevada, Arizona, California and Mexico.
As Shawntrel McCoy closes out his 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, he’ll be spending his last six months pursuing his passion for environmental science in the SkillBridge Program at the San Diego County Water Authority. The program is helping military veterans transition to career-track training opportunities, including work in the water and wastewater industry.
There wasn’t originally a SkillBridge position in the environmental section of the Water Resources Department, but after discovering that the Water Authority was looking for SkillBridge interns McCoy decided it was worth looking into.
“That’s when I realized they [the Water Authority] had a whole webpage dedicated to SkillBridge. So that’s when I made the phone call and started working on the process,” McCoy said.
This phone call led to an interview, which ultimately landed McCoy his spot as the Water Authority’s newest SkillBridge intern. McCoy’s education – Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Science with a concentration in Fish and Wildlife management and sustainability – gave him most of the background needed to start off strong in his new position.
Since joining the federal program in June 2020, the Water Authority has had six SkillBridge interns working in various departments. The program is a win-win for both employers and the transitioning military service member – the military service member can work fulltime in a participating agency for the last 180 days of their active duty gaining valuable civilian work experience, and the employer gains early access to the extensive experience, skills, and unmatched work ethos service members bring to the workforce, all at a very low cost. The service member continues to earn his wages and benefits from the military during the internship.
Even though his official start date wasn’t until early January, McCoy opted to begin preparing for his role two months before his first day as a part of the SkillBridge program. The environmental section of the Water Resources Department is a very specific niche, McCoy said, and he didn’t want to spend more time than he had to “trying to play catch up.” McCoy remembers the support he received during these early months:
“There’s only two people under the environmental section and they’ve both taken me under their wings and have been mentoring me. Just yesterday we visited three different sites to make sure that they were close to being complete. They’ve been doing great with the mentoring aspect.”
With McCoy’s internship well underway, a typical day of work can involve anything from planning meetings with contractors, screening documentation and analyzing data as well as the occasional site visit, which McCoy said is his favorite aspect of the job. His main project right now is tied with the newly finished FRS II structure in Mission Trails Regional Park.
“I’m currently helping the contractors to implement revegetation at that site so all the bare soil, after five years, can establish native vegetation,” McCoy said.
A job in the water industry was an option that stood out to McCoy when he was going through school since it involved social, economical and environmental factors. What drew McCoy into working specifically in the environmental section of the Water Resources Department was the opportunity to give back to the community, just like in his military service, while pursuing his passion for science in nature conservation.
“Ideally I’d love to stay at the Water Authority. I love it right now, it’s exactly what I wanted to do,” McCoy said. “I would love to stay with the company that’s teaching and mentoring me right now and just keep it going.”
The opportunities for both transitioning servicemembers and local water agencies are significant. More than 30,000 service members separate from the military each year in California, and more than half are transitioning out of active duty in the San Diego region.
Roughly half of the current water industry workforce in the San Diego region will be eligible to retire in the next 15 years – and approximately 1,400 water and wastewater industry jobs are expected to open in the region in the next five years.
