A Caithness man now living in the United States was hailed as a hero by the people of Calgary for helping fix a major water crisis in the city.
Martin Coghill originally hails from Stemster Mains and now lives with his family in California where he is the operations and maintenance manager for asset management at the San Diego County Water Authority.
The federal government has backed up California state regulators in ordering the company that bottles Arrowhead water to stop drawing from the San Bernardino Mountains.
Though BlueTriton Brands draws from springs in the mountains that have been used for bottled water since 1906, environmental activists have claimed the removal of that water is harming wildlife, particularly Strawberry Creek.
A new study has uncovered a disparity between the safety of drinking water in certain regions of California—serving majority Latino communities—and water from community water systems in other areas of the state. Led by University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara) researchers, the study uncovered that some drinking water systems have higher nitrate and arsenic contamination levels, and that the contamination is exacerbated by droughts, which may become more frequent with climate change.
Long-term exposure to contaminants such as arsenic and nitrate in water is linked to an increased risk of cancers, cardiovascular diseases, developmental disorders, and birth defects in infants. According to the study, in the U.S., there is an acknowledged disparity in exposure to contaminants in tap water provided by community water systems. Scientific literature demonstrates that, oftentimes, systems distributing water with higher contamination levels exist in areas that lack adequate public infrastructure or sociopolitical and financial resources.
A study released in May, The Magnitude of California’s Water Challenges, anticipated annual statewide water supply losses in the coming decades as follows: ending groundwater overdraft 2-3 million acre-feet (MAF), less from the Colorado River 0.5-0.8 MAF, climate change 1-3 MAF, and increases to required environmental flows 1-2 MAF. The total losses? 4.6 to 9 MAF per year. It’s easy enough to quibble over these estimates, but a more productive response is to propose ways we can sustainably harvest more water in California. So that’s what we have done.
The San Diego County Water Authority will supply the Mexican state of Baja California with 200 liters of water per second to support Tijuana residents during the summer. This water will be delivered through an international pipeline connecting San Diego, California, to Tijuana.
“There is a greater demand when it gets hot,” said Carlos Alberto Machado Parra, director for Baja’s Public Service and Planning Commission (CESPT) in Tijuana, according to Border Report. “We always maintain this binational connection so we can supply neighborhoods that may be short on supply. “
Back in 1994, Ace of Base and Boys II Men were chart-topping artists, “The Lion King” was the year’s most popular movie…and the Public Policy Institute of California drew its first breath. A lot has changed in California since then, so we sat down with key PPIC Water Policy Center staff to discuss what’s changed—and what hasn’t—in the California water world since the year the White House launched its first webpage.
Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Chair of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Fisheries, Water and Wildlife, announced that he secured several top water infrastructure priorities for California through the unanimous Senate passage of the Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2024. The legislation includes provisions Padilla fought for to address the Tijuana River transboundary sewage crisis, to invest in salmon recovery and habitat restoration around the Sacramento River Basin, and to provide the Army Corps of Civil Engineers with enhanced drought and flood control authorities.
The Senate and House of Representatives have each passed their respective versions of WRDA, which will now be conferenced to produce final legislation.
Imagine it’s a Saturday morning in Santa Monica in the year 2080. You brew your coffee, open your front door and breathe in the hot, dry air of … San Bernardino?
That’s the potential future if climate change continues unabated, according to a new mapping tool from researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The tool draws direct lines between an area’s projected climate in 60 years and the places that are experiencing that climate today.
In 2011, Conner Everts, one of California’s venerable water conservation advocates, wrote that ocean desalination is dead in California. His essay is posted below.
At about that time, the San Diego County Water Authority, the County’s water wholesaler, signed a 30-year take-or-pay contract with Poseidon Water to build the $1 billion Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad [ocean] Desalination Plant, described hagiographically on the official website.
