Since 2014, SOURCE Global has been aiming to provide clean drinking water to thousands of people across the world.
The company has reached 53 countries. Now, they are looking to help the Central Valley.
“I think it is very important to avoid ingesting contaminants like uranium, arsenic and nitrates that are very common in the Central Valley,” says Clara McBane, Senior VP or SOURCE Global.
The Oroville Dam in northern California is the nation’s tallest dam and it creates the state’s second-largest reservoir. In February of 2017, an atmospheric river dumped a huge amount of snow then a huge amount of rain into the reservoir’s watershed.
A 30-foot wall at the top of the dam, called the weir, nearly gave way to the volumes of water and 188,000 people had to be evacuated.
After a series of storms drenched the region with a record 9.4 inches of rain in December, the Los Angeles River became a roiling, violent torrent in its concrete channel, before finally spilling into the Pacific Ocean.
The storms transported an estimated 29.5 billion gallons of fresh water into Long Beach Harbor — 62% more water than the nation’s largest desalination plant in San Diego produces in an entire year. It was enough to supply as many as 181,000 families annually.
Recent rains have poured into the Tijuana River, blasting Imperial Beach with more than a billion gallons of heavily polluted water since mid-February, according to federal estimates.
Pumps operated by Mexico that suck water out of the Tijuana River have been turned off for several weeks as rains overwhelmed the system’s capacity and debris clogged the intake. Officials said it should be cleaned out and running in about a week.
No rain or snow in January and February certainly added to the drought in California. L.A. Times reporter Ian James reported on Feb. 24 that many farmers in the federal Central Valley Project will not receive water from the federal system this year. In mid-February, the federal Bureau of Reclamation announced a zero-water allocation for many irrigation districts that supply farmers throughout the Central Valley. Makes one wonder: Where our food will be grown?
Away from the lights and fountains of the Las Vegas Strip, bulldozers are working overtime as the suburbs of Sin City are bursting out of their seams.
Las Vegas is growing at a staggering rate. Clark county, where the city is located, is home to roughly 2.3 million people, but forecasts predict the population could go beyond 4 million by 2055.
Attracted by the lure of cheaper costs of living, lower taxes, and newly built homes, more than half a million people are expected to flock to southern Nevada in just the next 15 years.
Farming is in 30-year-old Jace Miller’s blood.
“I love my job, it’s the greatest way of life,” Miller said. “It’s the best profession in the world, in my opinion.”
His great great grandfather came to Arizona in 1917 and started a farm in Gilbert. Four generations later, Jace is still doing it. But that 100-year run is at risk of ending — Triple M Farms, named for the three Miller generations that work there today — is losing access to its most important resource: water.
Spring is beginning sooner in the United States, with 97 percent of 242 locations across the country experiencing temperature increases since 1970, according to a new analysis from Climate Central.
The analysis showed that close to half of the 242 locations have warmed by at least 2 degrees F. Reno, Nevada saw the greatest increase of any city, warming by 6.8 degrees F, followed by Las Vegas, Nevada and El Paso, Texas, which warmed by 6.2 degrees and 5.9 degrees, respectively.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s water-energy partnership with San Diego Gas & Electric is seeking $1.8 million in additional funding through 2026 to continue saving water and energy for thousands of income-qualified residents across the San Diego region.
For more than 25 years, the Water Authority’s Water-Energy Nexus Program, or WEN, has maximized energy savings while supporting water efficiency in the San Diego region. SDG&E and the Water Authority have worked together to trim water and energy use and costs in one of the longest-running partnerships of its kind in California.
As the pressure on California’s water supply grows more intense this summer, another urban area could begin the process of producing their own. The California Coastal Commission is set to vote later this spring on what would be the state’s second major coastal desalination plant in Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles.
Glenn Farrel is with the industry group, CalDesal.
