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Recharge Alone Won’t End California’s Groundwater Drought

/in , , /by /Bay Natureby Guananí Gómez-Van Cortright

After a winter of historic rains, California’s reservoirs are filled to the brim. Rivers are supercharged—and have flooded much of the Central Valley. With the water came a deluge of news voicing worries that California is letting all that water wash into the sea after years of drought—and heralding the idea of capturing it to recharge our long-parched groundwater aquifers. The political will is strong: Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued three separate executive orders aimed at amping up recharge efforts.

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Solar Farms Are Booming in the California Desert—but They Could Make the Drought Much Worse

/in , , /by /Fast Companyby Wyatt Myskow

Solar farms stretch out mile after mile along Interstate 10 around Palm Springs, creating one of the densest areas of solar development in North America in the heart of California’s Colorado Desert. But the area’s success in meeting the state and the nation’s renewable energy goals is running up against the Southwest’s biggest climate challenge: having enough water.

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California Lawmakers OK Newsom’s Push to Build Energy, Water and Transportation Projects Faster

/in , , /by /KCRAby Ashley Zavala

California lawmakers on Wednesday approved Gov. Gavin Newsom’s infrastructure package that aims to make it easier and faster to build renewable energy, water and transportation projects in the state. The State Senate gave the bills the final stamp of approval with bipartisan support on most of the measures. The package of bills aims to cut down on the process, paperwork and litigation time for infrastructure projects that are subject to California’s Environmental Quality Act.

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A Water War is Underway in Santa Barbara County’s Carrot Country

/in , , /by /Santa Barbara Independentby Melinda Burns

The Cuyama Valley, the driest region in Santa Barbara County, is awash in discontent. The world’s largest carrot producers, newly subject to restrictions on over-pumping, are suing all other landowners over water rights, and legal fees are mounting. The Cuyama groundwater basin, which covers 380 square miles east of Santa Maria, overlapping with Kern, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties, is on the list of the state’s 21 basins in “critical overdraft.”

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Tulare Lake’s Ghostly Rebirth Brings Wonder — and Hardship. Inside a Community’s Resilience

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Robert Gauthier and Melissa Gomez

In the lowlands of the San Joaquin Valley, last winter’s torrential storms revived an ancient body of water drained and dredged decades ago, its clay lakebed transformed into a powerhouse of industrial agriculture. Rivers swollen with biblical amounts of rainfall overwhelmed the network of levees and irrigation canals that weave through the basin diverting water for farm and livestock use. Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River, was reborn, swallowing thousands of acres cultivated for tomatoes and cotton and vast orchards of almond and pistachio trees.

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Study Says Drinking Water from Nearly Half of U.S. Faucets Contains Potentially Harmful Chemicals

/in , /by /AP Newsby John Flesher

Drinking water from nearly half of U.S. faucets likely contains “forever chemicals” that may cause cancer and other health problems, according to a government study released Wednesday. The synthetic compounds known collectively as PFAS are contaminating drinking water to varying extents in large cities and small towns — and in private wells and public systems, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

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Water ratepayers-LAFCO decision-detachment-San Diego County Water Authority-water rates

LAFCO Decision Could Raise Region’s Water Bills by Nearly $200 Million

/in , , /by /Water News Networkby San Diego County Water Authority Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority Board Chair Mel Katz

Updated figures released July 3 show that disadvantaged communities, working families, farmers, and others across San Diego County will be forced to pay nearly $200 million more over the next decade for water service unless agencies seeking to leave the San Diego County Water Authority are required to fully cover their costs.

On July 10, the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission’s board is expected to vote on a plan for the Fallbrook and Rainbow water agencies to leave the Water Authority, possibly with the inclusion of an “exit fee.” However, LAFCO’s figures are based on years-old data and flawed projections that understate the annual costs of detachment by at least 50%. Like everything else, costs related to water supplies have inflated significantly over the past three years.

LAFCO decision and data

LAFCO’s data don’t reflect the inflationary realities or the fact that the financial impacts of detachment will continue far beyond LAFCO’s five-year horizon, which does not reflect the actual lifespan of water infrastructure or the debt used to finance it. The LAFCO staff report acknowledges impacts will continue far longer than five years, suggesting that the rest of the county should pay for benefits to Rainbow and Fallbrook.

“From the start of this process, one of our top priorities was making sure that residents across the region aren’t harmed financially. It’s critical that ratepayers who are struggling to make ends meet, independent farmers, and small businesses aren’t forced to subsidize Fallbrook and Rainbow for years to come,” said Water Authority Board Chair Mel Katz. “We encourage the LAFCO Commissioners to require Fallbrook and Rainbow to fully cover their costs.”

LAFCO’s staff recommendation to approve the detachment proposals by the Fallbrook and Rainbow water agencies does not include substantive analysis of impacts to disadvantaged communities, or to agriculture in the Water Authority service area. Nor does it include environmental analysis required by law.

The LAFCO staff recommendation includes an exit fee of about $4.8 million a year for five years, which isn’t close to covering the actual costs that will be shifted to residents elsewhere in the county.

Here’s how much retail water agencies in the region may have to pay each year to cover the projected $18.9 million bill from Fallbrook and Rainbow leaving:

(Editor’s Note: The San Diego County Water Authority response to the proposals by the Fallbrook and Rainbow water districts to leave the Water Authority and annex into the Eastern Municipal Water District in Riverside County addressed the wholesale water agency’s concerns in September 2020. San Diego LAFCO’s website provides addtional details on the detachment process.)

Nana’s Garden Wins Otay Water District’s 2023 Landscape Makeover Contest

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

Lois Scott transformed her El Cajon home’s green front lawn with rose bushes into a colorful water-wise landscape with a little help from her friends. Now called “Nana’s Garden,” it is this year’s Otay Water District Landscape Makeover Contest winner.

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Tijuana, Reliant on the Colorado River, Faces a Water Crisis

/in , , /by /AP by Suman Naishadham Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Luis Ramirez leapt onto the roof of his bright blue water truck to fill the plastic tank that by day’s end would empty into an assortment of buckets, barrels and cisterns in 100 homes.

It was barely 11 a.m. and Ramirez had many more stops to make on the hilly, grey fringes of Tijuana, a sprawling, industrial border city in northwestern Mexico where trucks or “pipas” like Ramirez’s provide the only drinking water for many people.

“Each time, it gets farther and farther where we have to go,” he said, blaming the city’s water problems on drought and population growth, before jumping into the driver’s seat next to 16-year-old assistant Daniel Alvarez.

Among the last cities downstream to receive water from the shrinking Colorado River, Tijuana is staring down a water crisis driven also by aging, inefficient infrastructure and successive governments that have done little to prepare the city for diminishing water in the region.

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Climate-Heating El Niño Has Arrived and Threatens Lives, Declares UN

/in , , /by /The Guardianby Damian Carrington

The arrival of a climate-heating El Niño event has been declared by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), with officials warning that preparation for extreme weather events is vital to save lives and livelihoods. The last major El Niño was in 2016, which remains the hottest year on record. The new El Niño comes on top of the increasing global heating driven by human-caused carbon emissions, an effect the WMO called a “double whammy”.

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