California American Water Co.’s effort to build its estimated $322 million desalination plant on the Monterey Peninsula has reached an important milestone with a state regulator and now sets the stage for what promises to be a contentious hearing in front of the full California Coastal Commission.
California water regulators today approved the world’s first requirements for testing microplastics in drinking water sources — a key step towards regulating tiny fragments that are ubiquitous in the environment.
“Look up to the El Peral mountains. That is where we do our ritual ceremony to call for rain,” says Josefina Santiago, 43, a Zapotec Indigenous leader. “We bury chocolate, flowers and a maize beverage called tejate to ask for gentle rainfall. We call ourselves water sowers: [we are] reclaiming our traditional rituals while developing absorption wells, water pans, and small dams.”
California came within a hair’s breadth of experiencing rolling blackouts Tuesday night, but the system operator that manages the grid for about 80% of the Golden State continued to keep the lights on.
The California Independent System Operator at 5:17 p.m. issued a stage 3 Energy Emergency Alert, a measure that warns energy users that rotating outages may be imminent due to sustained electricity demand eating into reserve margins.
A regional public opinion survey, released by the San Diego County Water Authority, finds that San Diego County residents have taken multiple actions to conserve water and nearly two-thirds feel they can do more to conserve.
An overwhelming majority (88 percent) of respondents agree that they have a civic duty to use water efficiently. Even though conservation has become a way of life in San Diego County, two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents feel they can do “a little more” or “much more” to conserve.
At his office whiteboard on this dam town’s desert edge, the water utility manager recited the federal government’s latest measures of the colossal reservoir that lay 4 miles down the road, then scrawled an ominous sketch showing how far it has shrunk.
In his stylized drawing of Lake Powell, the surface lapped just above where he marked his town’s drinking water pipe, bringing the Colorado River drought crisis uncomfortably close to home.
Microplastic is everywhere.
The tiny particles that shed from clothing, food packaging and tires are in the air, the soil, the ocean and, almost certainly, your drinking water.
As California grapples with drought, a record heat wave and persistent wildfires, one state agency is turning to the beaver in its battle against climate change.
The large rodents, according to researchers, are resourceful engineers capable of increasing water storage and creating natural firebreaks with their dams.
With California about to experience perhaps the hottest and driest start to September in its modern history, 16 of the state’s 17 major reservoirs entered the month below their historic average levels — several of them well below average, in another daunting reminder of California’s extraordinary ongoing drought and water concerns.
California lawmakers punted on a proposal to rein in agricultural groundwater pumping as drought continues to grip California and more than a thousand domestic wells have run dry.
A bill by Assemblymember Steve Bennett, a Democrat from Santa Barbara, would have added hurdles to obtain a permit to drill an agricultural well. Though the bill cleared the Senate on Monday, Bennett elected to not bring it up for a final vote in the Assembly before the Legislative session timed out Wednesday night. He said California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office told him the bill was no longer viable because of changes made.
