Cities across the U.S. Southwest recorded their driest monsoon season on record this year, some with only a trace or no rain.
The seasonal weather pattern that runs from mid-June and ended Wednesday brings high hopes for rain and cloud coverage to cool down places like Las Vegas and Phoenix. But like last year, it largely was a dud, leaving the region parched.
Two months after a wildfire burned through Paradise, Calif., in 2018, Kevin Phillips, then a manager for town’s irrigation district, walked from one destroyed home to another.
As our state has suffered through a summer of record-breaking heat waves, blackouts and wildfires, Gov. Gavin Newsom has rightly pegged what’s principally behind these challenges: “If you are in denial about climate change,” he said recently, “come to California.”
Who owns the water from the Colorado River that comes into the Imperial Valley?
It’s a question that divided the Imperial Irrigation District Division 2 runoff candidates in a forum hosted by the San Diego State University-Imperial Valley Borderlands Institute on Sept 26.
Linking floating solar panels with hydropower could produce the equivalent of 40% of the world’s electricity, according to a new study by researchers at the Department of Energy.
Published this week by a team at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the study provides the first global look by federal researchers at the technical potential of the hybrid concept.
The research found that by constructing solar panels on the surface of hydro reservoirs and feeding the power they generate into the same substation, both energy resources might become cheaper, more efficient and more reliable.
Four candidates are listed on the Nov. 3 ballot for three open seats on the Ramona Municipal Water District board. Incumbent Jeff Lawler is running unopposed for Division 1. Incumbent Thomas N. Ace and challenger Rex A. Schildhouse are vying for the Division 3 seat. And Gary Hurst is running unopposed for Division 5.
Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting, so goes the old saying.
And in San Marcos, the Vallecitos Water District has filed a lawsuit against the San Diego County Water Authority and is seeking $6.1 million in reimbursement regarding a dispute over a direct connection to desalinated water from the Carlsbad Desalination Plant.
San Diego County is again developing a new Climate Action Plan. On Wednesday County Supervisors unanimously directed county staff to develop a new plan and adopted a resolution vacating its 2018 Climate Action Plan, which the 4th District Court of Appeals struck down in June.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have provided funding to fix the ever-sinking Friant-Kern Canal. State Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) introduced the bill back in 2018 and had strong bipartisan support, especially among her fellow Valley lawmakers. SB 559 would have required the Department of Water Resources to report to the legislature by March 31, 2021, on federal funding approved by the federal government for the Friant Water Authority or any other government agency to restore the capacity of the Friant-Kern Canal.
Two lawsuits accusing the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority of ramming through a plan that ignores water rights and, according to one plaintiff, is intended to “destroy agriculture” were filed this week.
At issue is a controversial $2,000-per-acre-foot fee approved by the authority last month that would be charged to certain groundwater users over a five-year period. That money is intended to raise $50 million to buy Central Valley water and, somehow, bring it over the Sierra Nevadas to replenish the overdrafted desert aquifer.
