Beneath California’s Salton Sea, there is so much metal essential to rechargeable batteries that Gov. Gavin Newsom calls the vast lake “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”
An estimated $500 billion worth of lithium here could help power our smartphones, electric cars and electricity grids. And a so-called white gold rush could bring jobs, tax dollars and economic revitalization to one of the most impoverished places in the nation.
The Santa Fe Irrigation District and San Dieguito Water District held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 31 to mark the completion of a new solar project at the R.E. Badger Filtration Treatment Plant in Rancho Santa Fe, expected to produce about 80% of the jointly owned plant’s annual energy needs.
According to a news release, the new solar installation atop the plant’s clearwell structure will generate 574 KW of clean, renewable energy to help power facility operations, reduce long-term electricity costs and lower both districts’ carbon footprint. The project will provide a total benefit of approximately $4 million over the solar panels’ 25-year lifespan.
The largest capital improvement project in Poway’s history is almost complete, reports NBC 7’s Joe Little.
For more than a century, shoreline stations operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have measured water temperatures along the California coast. This year, they are flashing a warning sign.
Over the last three months, several stations have repeatedly posted record-breaking daily high temperatures – with the La Jolla station registering temperatures a full 10F above historical average at one point last month.
As climate change intensifies droughts, disrupts rainfall patterns and fuels wildfires, more regions are turning to the sea for drinking water.
Desalination, which is the process of removing salt from seawater, offers a way to produce freshwater in regions that lack sufficient rain, rivers or groundwater to meet demand. Today, it supplies water to hundreds of millions of people worldwide, from the Middle East to the U.S., and its use is growing as water scarcity deepens.
Cathy Spence didn’t grow up gardening. She attributes that to the multiple moves her military family made when she was growing up — before they settled in Chula Vista. Now, she lives with her husband David in the same area — with their cute scruffy terrier mix rescue, Skipper.
They bought their house in 2018 after both retired from the military. David had been an emergency manager in the Army Corps of Engineers, while Cathy was a Department of Defense worker in the family services side of the Army and Air Force in Alaska, then in Germany, Georgia and Japan.
Winter is more than just a season in the Western U.S. It is a savings account to get farms and homes through the long, dry summer ahead. As the snowpack that accumulates in the mountains through winter slowly melts in late spring and summer, it feeds into rivers and reservoirs that keep communities and ecosystems functioning.
The April 1 snowpack measurement has long been the single most important number in Western water management, considered a strong proxy for how much water the mountains are holding in reserve.
Pasadena Water and Power announced that the city’s two-day-per-week outdoor watering schedule is now in effect through October 31 as part of the City of Pasadena’s ongoing Level 2 Water Supply Shortage Plan. This measure limits outdoor irrigation to conserve water during the dry season.
Under the schedule, residents and businesses with even-numbered addresses may irrigate their landscapes on Mondays and Thursdays, while those with odd-numbered addresses may water on Tuesdays and Fridays. All outdoor watering must occur before 9 a.m. or after 6 p.m. Exceptions are made for hand-watering, tree maintenance, and irrigation systems that use low-flow drip emitters producing no more than two gallons per hour.
The recent rupture of a massive pipe at the New Colgate Powerhouse on the Yuba River, about 50 miles north of Sacramento, was not a natural disaster. It was an infrastructure failure.
The rupture of the penstock pipe in February sent a torrent of water down a steep hillside, triggering erosion that carried sediment and man-made debris into the Yuba River. An oil sheen was detected. The emergency also triggered the shutdown of another powerhouse downstream, causing a sudden drop in river flows, killing hundreds — possibly thousands — of young Chinook salmon at a time when the state has been trying to help struggling salmon populations recover.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to propose to study microplastics and pharmaceuticals in what could be the first step toward drinking water limits for these substances.
The Trump administration is touting the move as a win for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, a subset of voters that is skeptical of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries — and has at times been critical of the Trump administration EPA.
