You are now in California and the U.S. category.

In May 2017, San Diego city officials made an important announcement regarding the future of the city’s water supply. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the city planned to blend treated sewer water with the regular drinking water supply. Fast forward to 2018 and the project is moving right along. On March 6, the State Water Board announced the approval of new regulations. These detail the use and quality of recycled sewer water that will later blend with surface water reservoirs.

Not if, but when. That’s the future of water desalination plants in Arizona, according to the head of the state’s water department. They are controversial and expensive, but Arizona’s current leadership views desalinated water – or “desal” – as key to the state’s long-term water plans. Arizona sits atop an estimated 600 million acre-feet of brackish water. “Desalination is in our future,” said Thomas Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. In late 2016, the state formed a committee to study the feasibility of desalination for a region with rising population and droughts exacerbated by climate change.

In my last post, I mentioned that upcoming storms would (finally!) start to chip away at the huge seasonal precipitation deficit that has accumulated this year throughout California–but that this storm series would be far from a “Miracle March.” So far, that expectation has largely been borne out: fairly prodigious multi-foot snow accumulations did occur throughout the Sierra Nevada, and the overall amount of water stored in the statewide snowpack doubled nearly overnight.

One of the easiest decisions for California voters on the June 5 ballot should be Proposition 68. Vote yes on the $4.1 billion bond plan to fund parks and water projects throughout the state. The ballot measure is the first statewide parks and water bond to appear before voters since 2006, when the $5.4 billion Proposition 84 was approved by 54 percent of voters. Prop 68 would authorize $2.83 billion for parks projects that would fund everything from building Bay Area hiking trails to upgrading California’s 110 state parks.