Windblown dust from the shrinking Salton Sea harms the respiratory health of children living nearby, triggering asthma, coughing, wheezing and disrupted sleep, USC research shows.
The findings also indicate that children living closest to the sea, who are exposed to more dust in the air, may be the most affected.
California is in the very early stages of making it easier for desalination plants along the coast.
The State Water Resources Control Board took the first step today toward changing its ocean protection standards to make it faster to permit desalination plants and to clarify how and when developers measure and mitigate the harm to marine life. The effort is part of Newsom’s strategy to boost supplies as the climate changes.
Walter Byrd remembers the first time sewage came bubbling out of his toilet like it was yesterday.
“It was just pumping up through there,” Byrd says. “One of the bathrooms was so full of waste, at least 4 inches high in there. It smelled just like a hog pen.”
State water regulators are in the early stages of easing environmental rules for desalination plants along California’s coast to boost water supplies as the climate changes.
The State Water Resources Control Board kick-started its process to amend its ocean protection standards for desalination plants at a scoping meeting Monday after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the regulator to consider streamlining new projects in August 2022.
It is almost impossible to be against a rule announced by the Environmental Protection Agency this month requiring utilities to replace all lead pipes within a decade. After all, who opposes the swift removal of a deadly toxin from drinking water? But there’s a tricky road ahead, and it’s an expensive one to travel.
The 9 million or so service lines across the United States pumping poison through our homes and into our bodies cause all manner of maladies, such as high blood pressure, kidney malfunction, cognitive disability and hyperactivity. The EPA estimates that, in a country without lead pipes, 1,500 fewer people every year would die early of heart disease and about 900,000 fewer infants would suffer from low birth weight. The shift could even prevent 200,000 lost IQ points in children annually.
The Biden and Newsom administrations will soon adopt new rules for California’s major water delivery systems that will determine how much water may be pumped from rivers while providing protections for imperiled fish species.
But California environmental groups, while supportive of efforts to rewrite the rules, are criticizing the proposed changes and warning that the resulting plans would fail to protect fish species that are declining toward extinction in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay.
The morning temperature is nearing 100 degrees Fahrenheit as Keith Seaman sweats beneath his bucket hat, walking door to door through the cookie-cutter blocks of a subdivision in Casa Grande, Arizona. Seaman, a Democrat who represents this Republican-leaning area in the state’s House of Representatives, is trying to retain a seat he won by a margin of around 600 votes just two years ago.
He wants to know what issues matter most to his constituents, but most of them don’t answer the door, or they say they’re too busy to talk. Those that do answer tend to mention standard campaign issues like rising prices and education — which Seaman, a former public school teacher, is only too happy to discuss.
With cities and farmers across the state trying to secure water supplies in an age of climate change extremes, the expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir was supposed to be a slam dunk.
Water agencies looking to it as a beacon of what’s still possible as supplies dwindle and costs rise are still scratching their heads at its unexpected demise last month.
Most of us operate on the calendar year — the 12 months that begin on January 1 and end on December 31. Many governments and major corporations use the fiscal year — typically beginning on July 1 and running until June 30 of the following year. However the federal government’s fiscal year, which began on July 1 for 132 years, was shifted in 1974 to an October 1 start to accommodate federal officials’ insistence on a month-long escape from Washington’s steamy summer weather.
In California, the most important calendar may be the “water year,” which also begins on October 1, because how much the state’s reservoirs have in storage and how much nature provides in the form of rain and snow are existential factors in the lives of nearly 40 million people.
As California prepares for future cycles of water scarcity, the Legislature continues to prioritize enhancing regulations to address critical water supply needs, secure the rights of diverse water holders, and protect essential environmental resources.
On September 22, 2024, Governor Newsom signed AB 460 into law, a bill that significantly increases fines for unauthorized water diversions and other violations of state orders related to water use.
