“I love the rain,” the Encinitas woman said as she walked through her backyard. “Anytime it rains I get excited about my plants.”
Robin Reid-Anderson has dedicated years to creating a backyard that’s sustainable in San Diego’s dry Mediterranean environment.
With the federal government poised to force Western states to change how they manage the alarming shortfall in Colorado River water, there is one constituency with a growing interest in the river’s fate that’s little known to some: Wall Street investors.
Private investment firms are showing a growing interest in an increasingly scarce natural resource in the American West: water in the Colorado River, a joint investigation by CBS News and The Weather Channel has found. For some of the farmers and cities that depend on the river as a lifeline, that interest is concerning.
The San Diego County Water Authority Board of Directors welcomed seven new members from across the region at its first regular Board meeting of the year on January 26, expanding the agency’s leadership and policy making skills during a critical period for water in the West.
Each of the Water Authority’s 24 retail member agencies are represented by at least one member of the 36-member Board of Directors, which sets the Water Authority’s strategic direction.
When the Colorado River reaches the U.S.-Mexico border, it pushes up against Morelos Dam. Nearly all the remaining water is shunted aside into an immense canal and flows toward the farmlands and cities of Baja California.
South of the dam, the last of the river disappears in the desert.
Experts from NASA say a previously unmeasured underground source accounts for about 10% of all the water that enters the highly-productive Central Valley farmland each year.
The NASA study shows an average of four million acre-feet of water is delivered through the soil and fractured rocks under California’s Sierra Nevada mountains to the Central Valley annually.
Months of bitter negotiations between seven states that rely on the Colorado River’s vanishing water have collapsed along a clear fault line over the past week: California versus everyone else.
The multi-state talks, which have been ongoing in fits and starts for months, were focused on achieving unprecedented water cuts to save the Colorado River – a system that provides water and electricity to more than 40 million people in the West.
Exposed to the beating sun and hot dry air, more than 10% of the water carried by the Colorado River evaporates, leaks or spills as the 1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) powerhouse of the West flows through the region’s dams, reservoirs and open-air canals.
For decades, key stewards of the river have ignored the massive water loss, instead allocating Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico their share of the river without subtracting what’s evaporated.
Encinitas, Carlsbad and Oceanside representatives on the San Diego County Water Authority Board of Directors are among seven new members who participated in their first formal meeting Jan. 26.
Encinitas Deputy Mayor Joy Lyndes, Carlsbad Councilwoman Teresa Acosta and Oceanside Water Utilities Director Lindsay Leahy are part of the Water Authority’s 24 retail member agencies, which are represented by at least one member of the 36-member Board of Directors, according to a Jan. 27 agency news release.
The rain in December and January is still paying off for 200,000 South Bay residents.
The Sweetwater Authority, which provides water to customers in Western Chula Vista, Bonita, and National City, just opened a massive valve in the Loveland Dam Thursday to send water to the Sweetwater Reservoir for the second time in two months.
