You are now in Media Coverage San Diego County category.

Environment Report: What to Watch as the City’s New Energy Agency Gets Off the Ground

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

Last week, the San Diego City Council took the big plunge and decided, in a 7-2 vote, to start buying and selling energy.

San Diego, along with several neighboring cities, will shortly form a “community choice” energy agency, or CCA. This is something I’ve written a lot about over the past two years, because it represents a major shift in who controls both literal and figurative power in the region.

Right now, energy decisions are made by a private company, San Diego Gas & Electric, which operates under the somewhat watchful eye of the California Public Utilities Commission and, of course, the shareholders of its parent company, Sempra Energy.

Full Story

California Mayor Calls Mexican Sewage From Imperial Beach ‘International Tragedy’

/in , /by /News 4

The mayor of Imperial Beach, which abuts Tijuana, Mexico at a point that is visible by a border wall marking the two countries, is fed up with sewage and toxic chemicals flowing into the United States, and he is heading to Washington, D.C., to ask the Trump administration to do something about it.

Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina left for the nation’s capital on Sunday with a congressional delegation. He told Border Report that he has meetings at the White House scheduled on Tuesday with top officials who he hopes will help this situation.

Full Story

The Next Big Effort In AI: Keeping L.A.’s Water Flowing Post-Earthquake

/in , , /by /USC Newsby Gary Polakovic

Can artificial intelligence save the L.A. water supply from a big earthquake?

USC researchers have embarked on an innovative project to prove that it can. Using federal funds, experts at the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (CAIS) are working with Los Angeles city officials to find solutions for vulnerable plumbing. The goal is to make surgical improvements to strategic pipelines to keep water flowing after shaking stops.

Full Story

Metropolitan Water District To Study Rainfall and Stormwater Runoff

/in , , /by /California Water News Daily

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has launched a new pilot program to provide vital data on the most efficient and cost-effective methods to capture and use rainfall and stormwater runoff. The $5 million pilot program will help fund the construction of new direct-use stormwater capture projects and the installation of monitoring equipment on existing projects.

Information on the costs and volume of water produced by different types of projects will be collected over three years and will inform the possible funding of stormwater capture efforts in the future. The goal is to understand the potential water supply benefits of local stormwater capture projects and how to best use that information.

Full Story

California’s Power Supply Is Getting Greener. It’s Still Got Far To Go.

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Mallory Moench

Over the past decade, California has become a globally acclaimed leader on renewable energy. Fueled by aggressive public policies, plummeting solar prices and evolving technology, the state has cut greenhouse gas emissions from its electric power supply in half since their 2008 peak, according to the California Air Resources Board.

“It’s really astounding how carbon dioxide emissions have been cut,” said Anthony Kovscek, chairman of the energy resources engineering department at Stanford University. “It’s been really remarkable how much renewable and solar we’ve been able to put on the grid and balance it.”

Full Story

Wifi Wires Will Run Through Water Pipes In Northern Washington Town

/in , /by /KUOW by John Ryan

A normally busy sidewalk on Seattle’s University Way Northeast has been cordoned off for an all-too-common reason: the concrete is being torn up to put in new fiber optic cable.

An hour north, the seaside town of Anacortes has found a way to avoid all that disruption: fiber optics cables in existing water pipes.

Sitting inside Anacortes’ main water pipe is a skinny plastic tube, like a drinking straw inside a glass of water.

“We have inserted a fiber optics cable inside of live water lines all the way from Mount Vernon to Anacortes,” said Fred Buckenmeyer, who runs the city’s public works department. “First in North America.”

Full Story

Sweetwater Authority Eyes Sand Mining, Material Dredging Opportunities

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune by David Hernandez

The board of the Sweetwater Authority is interested in sand mining and material dredging opportunities in and around the South Bay water agency’s two reservoirs.

The agency, which serves National City, Bonita and parts of Chula Vista, plans to solicit interest from sand mining companies to explore the concept — specifically, whether there are opportunities to leverage the Sweetwater and Loveland reservoirs by extracting materials to not only create a revenue stream but also increase the capacity of the reservoirs.

Full Story

The Long and Winding Road of Salmon Trucking in California

/in , /by /California WaterBlog by Ann Wills

Trucking juvenile hatchery salmon downstream is often used in the California Central Valley to reduce mortality during their perilous swim to the ocean. But is it all good? Researchers at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Francisco and NOAA Fisheries published an article in Fisheries this month exploring the history and implications of salmon trucking in a changing climate.

Full Story

California’s Chronic Water Overuse Leads To Sinking Towns, Arsenic Pollution

/in , , /by /CBC Newsby Kim Brunhuber

When you walk through Jeannie Williams’s sunny orchard, you don’t notice anything wrong. But the problem’s there, underfoot. The land around her — about 250 square kilometres — is sinking.

“It’s frightening,” Williams says. “Is the land going to come back up? I don’t know.”

She points out the well from which she obtains all of the water she needs to grow organic fruits and vegetables. The well is small and shallow; she only has two acres of crops to water. But her neighbours are far more thirsty, and have been for a very long time.

Full Story

Water District Approves Rate Increase, Fee Spending Plan

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune by Julie Gallant

Ramona Municipal Water District Board of Directors approved an increase to the general untreated water rates, updates to a fire mitigation fee facilities plan, and an agreement to use Mercy Medical for backup ambulance transportation services at their Sept. 10 meeting.

Water rate increases were approved by the RMWD directors on July 9. However, directors revisited the topic to correct a clerical error in the district’s public notice of proposed increases to general untreated water rates.

The original Proposition 218 notice, which informs property owners and customers of proposed water rate increases, incorrectly stated the general untreated water was set to increase from $4.88 to $5.46 per unit beginning Aug. 1. A unit is the equivalent of 748 gallons.

Full Story