The Imperial Irrigation District has filed its opening brief in a case against the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California that it launched last year in an attempt to halt the implementation of the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan for the Colorado River. IID wants to see it paused until the Salton Sea is also considered.
As Covid-19 and social unrest dominates news headlines, another problem beneath Central Valley residents’ feet is coming to surface. This was the first year plans had to be submitted for many irrigation districts through the state of California as part of 2014’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
The coronavirus pandemic has touched nearly every corner of California’s society and its economy — including the state’s nut farmers, who are blessed with a bounty of ripe fruit but cursed by plummeting demand for their product.
House lawmakers presented an extensive amendment to the annual defense spending bill targeting harmful chemicals that have contaminated hundreds of military bases.
Around 170 battery storage systems larger than 1 MW are currently operating in the U.S., but the 62.5 MW first phase of the Gateway project is already the largest in the country, CAISO said in a press release.
Storage resources are becoming more competitive, but installations are really being driven by carbon reduction and clean energy goals, Mohit Chhabra, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean energy program, told Utility Dive.
California’s state budget includes $47 million to help the Salton Sea. The new budget was signed by Governor Newsom last month. The ongoing crisis at the Salton Sea has created environmental and human health concerns that have been discussed for decades. “Already we have the largest rate of pediatric asthma hospitalization in the entire state,” said Congressman Dr. Raul Ruiz, 36th district.
The EPA is facing two separate challenges from environmental groups over its water rule that narrows the ability of states to veto energy infrastructure projects such as oil and gas pipelines if they adversely affect water quality.
Among being big, bold and beautiful, the Torrey Pine tree could also be the solution when it comes to helping with the world’s water crisis.
“As a child we would go hiking there [Torrey Pines] every single weekend and see how there were giant puddles under the tree.”
The world’s most relied-upon renewable energy source isn’t wind or sunlight, but water. Last year, the world’s hydropower capacity reached a record 1,308 gigawatts (to put this number in perspective, just one gigawatt is equivalent to the power produced by 1.3 million race horses or 2,000 speeding Corvettes). Utilities throughout the globe rely upon hydropower to generate electricity because it is cheap, easily stored and dispatched, and produced with no fuel combustion, meaning it won’t release carbon dioxide or pollutants the way power plants burning fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas do.
n article in the local newspaper caught Andrea Amico’s eye in May 2014. It reported that one of the three drinking-water wells at a sprawling business and industrial park nearby was shut down because of high levels of chemical contamination.
“Instantly, my heart sank,” says the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, woman. Amico recalls her reaction to the news: “My husband works there and he drinks water all day, and my two kids go to daycare there and they drink water all day.”
She’d never heard of the substances tainting the tap water—Portsmouth was one of the first communities in the US to discover these chemicals in public drinking water. Amico, who holds a master’s degree in occupational therapy and works in health care, started researching health effects from these contaminants and at first found little information.
Today, the situation has changed.
