Construction on the City of Poway’s clearwell replacement is anticipated to begin this fall following the award of contract to Gateway Pacific Contractors, Inc. The contract was awarded at the Sept. 19 Poway City Council meeting.
The clearwell is Poway’s major storage reservoir for water treated at the water treatment plant, prior to being distributed to Poway water customers.
On the heels of a record-setting wet and warm August, forecasters on Thursday announced that El Niño is gaining strength and will almost certainly persist into 2024.
El Niño, the warm phase of the El Niño-La Niña Southern Oscillation pattern, is a major driver of weather worldwide and is often associated with hotter global temperatures and wetter conditions in California.
A moisture-rich atmospheric river that’s being called the first storm of the season is forecast to deliver rain to Northern California as early as Sunday night with the chance for showers continuing into Monday and Tuesday. Eureka and areas to the north are expected to see the heaviest rainfall with totals of 1 to 3 inches, while the Bay Area is likely to receive only light showers, according to the National Weather Service.
Conditions were much warmer than average this summer across the Pacific Northwest, AZ and NM, and across much of far northern California. Elsewhere in CA, summer temperatures were mostly near long-term averages or even somewhat below in some of the SoCal coastal counties.
Remember that boat that was sticking up out of the dried-up bed of Lake Mead last summer? Recent photos have shown the water has risen to almost cover the boat again.
So hallelujah, right? Not really.
Engineers with the city of San Diego say local neighborhoods are always one rainstorm away from disastrous flooding. They say it’s because our storm system is decades past its lifetime. And right now, they say, the city doesn’t have enough money to set aside to fix problems that keep them up at night.
After three years and a contentious fight, ratepayers in Fallbrook and Rainbow will finally have their say on whether to leave the San Diego County Water Authority in November’s special election.
But for a while, that vote was in jeopardy.
When the San Diego County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) approved the detachment in July, there was a bill making its way through the California Legislature that could have upended that.
The United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission held a citizens forum in Yuma about restoration efforts for the Colorado River Delta. Local leaders say it’s going to take a binational effort from Mexico and the U.S. to restore higher water levels in the Colorado River.
The Colorado River is the lifeblood of the Southwestern U.S., providing billions of gallons of water to cities and farms in states including Arizona and eventually down to Mexico. Estuaries along the river in Mexico dried up, losing vital habitats along the way. “Along the course of the Colorado River, most of the water isn’t there anymore,” said Karl Flessa, geosciences professor at the University of Arizona.
The Tijuana River sewage emergency has reached the state level once again.
All 18 mayors in San Diego County have sent another letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking for his help to address the ongoing sewage and chemical pollutants flowing into the ocean from the river.
Oceanside’s water rates could climb 6 percent in 2024 and another 6 percent in 2025 under a proposal outlined this week by the city’s water utilities director.
The increases are the result of rate hikes by the Metropolitan Water District, Southern California’s biggest water wholesaler, and the San Diego County Water Authority, which buys water from Metropolitan and sells it to local agencies.
“We are directly passing through those rates,” Oceanside Water Utilities Director Lindsay Leahy said Tuesday in a presentation to the city’s Water Utilities Commission. The proposal is scheduled to go to the Oceanside City Council for approval Nov. 15.
