The San Diego County Water Authority was recognized with a national award from the Alliance for Water Efficiency for programs that help county residents and businesses conserve water. The Water Authority earned the 2023 Utility Innovation Award for developing and deploying of one of the first and most comprehensive multi-benefit water-use efficiency incentive programs in the nation, in partnership with the County of San Diego.
It’s been nearly a year since the California Coastal Commission gave an Orange County water district the green light to build a new desalination plant in Dana Point. So I decided to check in to see how the project is coming along.
The Bureau of Reclamation is analyzing future operations of Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell.
The Colorado River reservoir is facing record low water levels that threaten the current system, and conservationists are proposing a work-around: a tunnel to bypass the dam.
The Chino Basin Program (CBP), a program led by the Inland Empire Utilities Agency (IEUA) and partners, has reached a significant milestone as environmental engineering firm Brown and Caldwell completes the preliminary design of a new 13.4 million gallons per day Advanced Water Purification Facility (AWPF), a vital component of the innovative water program.
Dozens of California cities could be required to impose permanent water conservation measures starting in about a year — and keep them in place even when the state is not in a drought — under proposed new rules from state water regulators.
Clouds of thick white dust billowed through Death Valley National Park this week as crews maneuvered bulldozers and Big Cats to clear the remnants of a rare and record-breaking tropical storm.
On Aug. 20, Tropical Storm Hilary tore through the park near the border of Nevada, dropping more than a year’s worth of rain — 2.2 inches — in one day, forever transforming one of the hottest and driest places on Earth.
For years, environmentalists have argued that the Colorado River should be allowed to flow freely across the Utah-Arizona border, saying that letting water pass around Glen Canyon Dam — and draining the giant Lake Powell reservoir — would improve the shrinking river’s health.
Now, as climate change increases the strains on the river, this controversial proposal is receiving support from some surprising new allies: influential farmers in California’s Imperial Valley.
San Diego County supervisors have formally weighed in on a contentious — and increasingly costly — plan by two rural water districts to break away from a regional authority they say is too expensive.
The county board voted 3-1 this week in favor of a recommendation from Supervisor Joel Anderson to support state legislation that would require approval by a majority of all voters within the regional water authority — rather than only those residents of a breakaway district.
“This process would allow water customers of all (San Diego County Water Authority) member agencies to decide what is best for our region’s water future and the potential implications of their own water bills,” the former state senator told his board colleagues.
While the letter from Anderson to his board colleagues did not specifically mention the Boerner bill, the implication was clear.
The East County supervisor said county water authority members should not be able to withdraw from a broader group of water districts through a ballot measure limited to their own constituents.
Leaving the regional authority would unfairly stick fellow districts and their ratepayers with long-term capital costs, he said.
Oshun O’Rourke waded into the dark green water, splashing toward a net that her colleagues gently closed around a cluster of finger-length fish.
The Klamath River is wide and still here, making its final turn north to the coast as it winds through the Yurok reservation in Humboldt County. About 150 baby chinook salmon, on their long journey to the Pacific, were resting in cool waters that poured down from the forest.
A month after the U.S. Supreme Court severely restricted the federal government’s power to oversee wetlands, the Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature handed state agencies an order: Don’t give the ecologically crucial waters any more protection than newly weakened federal rules provide.
