Chula Vista, Calif. – To assist customers with costs associated with leak repairs, Sweetwater Authority is offering a rebate of up to $75 for repairs made from March 1, 2023 through June 30, 2023. The special rebate is in celebration of the national Fix a Leak Week, which serves as an annual reminder to check household plumbing fixtures and irrigation systems for leaks.
Torrential rains are periodically pounding California this winter and putting a dent in the most extreme drought conditions of the past 1,200 years. While that’s a relief for some 40 million residents, it’s also a reminder of the feast-or-famine climate that rules California and creates major challenges for water managers.
Fresh snow fell in the California mountains on Wednesday, adding to a staggering total that has blocked roads, stranded visitors for days, and left thousands of homes and businesses in the cold without electricity.
The Sierra Nevada range in the north and Southern California mountains were under blizzard warnings for a storm overnight into early Wednesday that snowed in some areas, dumped rain in others and chilled much of the state.
The Helix Water District recently completed an extensive rehabilitation of its Tunnel Hill water storage tanks. The two tanks are above Interstate 8 near the Los Coches freeway exit. The tanks play an important role in the water infrastructure system by storing and providing water to thousands of Helix Water District customers in Lakeside and El Cajon.
Soggy, snow-capped California faces the likelihood of yet another month of wet weather, but what remains uncertain is whether this late winter precipitation will augment weeks of record-setting snowpack, or cause it to vanish should warmer rains arrive.
Last week, a frigid storm transformed portions of the state into a white landscape while toppling trees, prompting power outages, spurring water rescues and leaving some residents trapped by heavy snow.
There is an old saying in the water world that it is better to be upstream with a shovel than downstream with a law book, which is the position California finds itself in as it stands apart from its neighbors on the Colorado River in negotiations over the use of the river’s water.
On Jan. 31, representatives for the six other basin states submitted a proposal to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, describing the measures by which the supply deficit on the Colorado River should be closed in the near term.
Recent rains have distinguished this winter as one of the wettest to hit California in years. But experts say it won’t erase the damage of the many years of drought the state has suffered.
Rains in the state have caused floods, forced road closures and initiated evacuation warnings. And the state has reached about 95% of its average water storage for February compared to the 70% range for the same month in each of the past two years.
As drought-weary Californians watched trillions of gallons of runoff wash into the Pacific Ocean during recent storms, it underscored a nagging question: Why can’t we save more of that water for not-so-rainy days to come?
But even the rare opportunity to stock up on the precious resource isn’t proving enough to unite a state divided on a contentious idea to siphon water from the north and tunnel it southward, an attempt to combat the Southwest’s worst drought in more than a millennium.
Meteorologist Bo Svoma hopped down into the 4-foot-deep pit he had shoveled and grinned like a school kid on a snow day.
“Bo is happy!” shouted one of his Salt River Project colleagues working snow survey duty on Tuesday.
There’s a lot for the metro Phoenix water supplier to be happy about this winter. What was supposed to be an unusually dry winter because of the return of the ocean and atmospheric phenomenon known as La Nińa has instead shaped up as the Arizona rim country’s second-snowiest season in 30 years.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (Metropolitan or MWD) has hired Brown and Caldwell to study alternative water conveyance options to provide supply diversity to the region during severe droughts.
MWD’s mission is to ensure a safe and reliable water supply for the 19 million people in Southern California in the face of climate change and extended drought.
Sweetwater Authority Logo 2019