President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the nation’s health agency, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has railed against the practice of adding fluoride to drinking water, a measure that public health experts and dentists credit with reductions in tooth decay. Seven out of 10 Americans who get their drinking water from public water systems receive fluoridated water, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Juana Valle never imagined she’d be scared to drink water from her tap or eat fresh eggs and walnuts when she bought her 5-acre farm in San Juan Bautista three years ago. Escaping city life and growing her own food was a dream come true for the 52-year-old.
Then Valle began to suspect water from her well was making her sick.
A recent bit of good news from the western United States is a welcome bright spot in the region’s long-running efforts to conserve precious water resources amid a growing population and an expanding agricultural industry.
Water levels in Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, have risen nearly 5 metres in the past two years after a sustained conservation effort in the state of California.
The Newsom administration is refining a contentious set of proposed rules, years in the making, that would reshape how farms and cities draw water from the Central Valley’s Delta and its rivers. Backed by more than $1 billion in state funds, the rules, if adopted, would require water users to help restore rivers and rebuild depleted Chinook salmon runs.
The administration touts its proposed rules as the starting point of a long-term effort to double Central Valley Chinook populations from historical levels, reaching numbers not seen in at least 75 years. But environmental groups have almost unanimously rejected it, saying it promises environmental gains that will never materialize and jeopardizes the existence of California’s iconic salmon and other fish.
By this time of year, Southern California has usually recorded some measurable rainfall. Santa Ana winds, meanwhile, are typically dying down.
But this December, neither is the case.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s skepticism about fluoride has become a focal point in the debate about whether he’s suitable to run the nation’s health department.
His pledge that the Trump administration would “advise all U.S. systems to remove fluoride from public water” has sparked outcry among dentists and some public health experts who say that fluoridated water is safe and essential for protecting oral health in children.
A board member of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has been censured for making a racist remark about an Arab American employee.
The MWD board of directors voted to censure John Morris, a member representing the city of San Marino, after an investigation found that he used a racist term when he referred to a staff member at a board event last year. The district said the investigation was conducted in response to an anonymous complaint and determined that Morris’ remark violated the MWD’s antidiscrimination policy.
An invasive species in the San Joaquin County Delta is putting water officials on high alert.
Despite its name, the golden mussel isn’t native to the Golden State, but instead to Southeast Asia. Now, some lake boat ramps and launches are closed, to try and keep the invasive species at bay.
Continued funding for a giant underground tunnel that would reroute part of drought-prone California’s water supply was approved by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
The $142 million in funds for pre-construction and planning costs is key to the Delta Conveyance Project, which state officials have described as critical to water supplies and transport around the state due to aging infrastructure and climate change-related shifts in precipitation.
Seven Western states that depend on the Colorado River are ending the year at an impasse in negotiations over the writing of new rules for dealing with chronic water shortages.
Representatives of California and other states who attended an annual Colorado River conference in Las Vegas last week said they remain deadlocked in their talks on long-term plans for reducing water use to prevent the river’s reservoirs from reaching critically low levels.
