A few hundred people attended the annual Graze at the Fields in Carlsbad on April 13 to experience the variety of San Diego agriculture while interacting with local farmers and purveyors.
Hosted by the San Diego County Farm Bureau representatives from a wide variety of agricultural industries shared with attendees information about the diversity and role agriculture plays in the county.
When white settlers forayed into what came to be known as the Imperial Valley at the dawn of the 20th century, they found a barren desert in California’s southeastern corner, unpopulated except for a few members of the Kamia clan of the Kumeyaay tribe.
San Diego’s proposal to sharply raise water rates over the next two years may be putting too much financial burden on single-family home customers and not enough on businesses and condominium and apartment complexes, a new analysis says.
City officials are proposing 17.6 percent overall water rate hikes over the next two years based on a consultant’s analysis last fall that said annual revenue must increase from $566 million to $602 million to cover rising expenses.
An hour east of San Diego, there’s a lonely stretch of dry, barren land. There’s not much here but sand, dirt, and some wiry shrubs.
But keep driving east and the landscape suddenly shifts.
Colorado River water from Lake Mead makes its way to Southern California through the California River Aqueduct.
Once this water arrives in Lake Mathews, it’s then distributed to a water treatment plant owned by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
The Department of Interior has indicated that if states don’t cooperate on dividing Colorado River water, more cuts may be on the way.
The agency indicated that California could also face cutbacks, which means that the state’s wait-and-see strategy may have fallen short.
California has senior water rights to the Colorado River, and so far, that has worked in its favor.
It’s coming. Winds are weakening along the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Heat is building beneath the ocean surface. By July, most forecast models agree that the climate system’s biggest player – El Niño – will return for the first time in nearly four years.
El Niño is one side of the climatic coin called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. It’s the heads to La Niña’s tails.
Although much of California no longer suffers from drought conditions thanks to the recent record rainfall, the Golden State isn’t quite yet out of the woods when it comes to a scarcity of water.
And that means sustainable water management must continue to be top of mind for executives in a variety of industries, including turf management, agriculture, and hotel and resorts.
While drought conditions have improved on the Central Coast following our wet winter —saving water is still a priority. That’s why the city of Soledad is getting creative when it comes to how they water their public sports fields and parks.
Soledad is using a $16 million state grant to build a pipe system from their wastewater treatment plant to deliver recycled water to public fields across town. The city made history a few years back with the construction of a wind turbine that powers the treatment plant Their newest accomplishment comes in the form of purple pipes.
The atmospheric rivers may have dried up as April began, but coastal San Diego County now has to contend with a heavy marine layer bringing cool weather and drizzle.
“Basically no clearing has occurred in the San Diego coast and valleys, with only partial clearing elsewhere from the lower coastal slopes to the coast,” the National Weather Service said in its Monday afternoon update. “As a result, it was another unseasonably cool day west of the mountains.”
