When you think about renewables, it’s natural that solar power and wind may come to mind. But have you ever thought about how to generate energy when the sun is down and the winds are calm? Neena Kuzmich, with the San Diego County Water Authority, explains with big climate goals on the horizon, cities like San Diego are tapping into the world of pumped storage hydropower.
Recognizing that a reliable water supply is critical to all economies and communities relying on the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin, more than 30 water agencies and providers have committed to take additional actions to reducing water demands and helping protect the Colorado River system.
Staff and board members from the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River Water Conservation District, along with other water managers from across western Colorado, this month visited the lower basin states — Nevada, Arizona and California — on what they called a fact-finding trip. The tour took participants by bus from Las Vegas though the green alfalfa fields of the Fort Mohave Indian Reservation, past the big diversions serving the Central Arizona Project and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and to the hot, below-sea-level agricultural expanse of the biggest water user on the river: the Imperial Irrigation District.
With the federal government calling for major cuts in water use to address the historic shortage on the Colorado River, the leaders of 30 agencies that supply cities from the Rocky Mountains to Southern California have signed an agreement committing to boost conservation, in part by pledging to target the removal of one especially thirsty mainstay of suburban landscapes: decorative grass.
This third year of extreme drought is taking a devastating toll on agriculture in California. We see pictures of orchards being removed, dry canals and fields that should be a verdant green now a sunburned brown. The impacts on the farm are easy to see. The effects on our communities and on the wildlife that depend on agricultural lands in production are no less real, even if they are harder to observe.
The Santa Margarita Water District is getting started on its first drinking water treatment plant, which will be in Rancho Mission Viejo. SMWD representatives and local officials celebrated the coming new plant with a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday, Nov. 16. The Ranch Water Filtration Plant will be located near the intersection of Ortega Highway and Antonio Parkway, and near the Chiquita Water Reclamation Plant.
They looked down at the water blasting through the Loveland Dam and called it “Pennies from Heaven.”
Sweetwater Water Authority engineers opened a valve at the base of the dam shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday.
For at least a decade, off and on, state water managers and local water agencies have pursued the holy grail of a master agreement to improve the environmental health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by increasing its water flows.
California is enjoying fewer extreme wildfires than it has in years, which experts attribute to a combination of summer rain, calm weather and increased forest management.
Despite recent rain storms across the state, California’s historic drought shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
