The Olivenhain Municipal Water District Board of Directors will honor outgoing Division 4 Director Jerry Varty at the board’s Oct. 17 meeting. Varty announced his resignation from the board on Sept. 12, as he is moving out of OMWD’s service area. Upon receipt of the resignation, OMWD Board President Larry Watt thanked Varty for his nine years of dedicated service to OMWD and its ratepayers.
The replacement dam at Calaveras Reservoir has reached its full height, marking a major milestone in the Calaveras Dam Replacement Project in California. According to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, California Department of Water Resources Division of Safety of Dams and Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency, the earth and rock fill dam has been built to its full height of 220 feet, concluding the dam construction portion of the project.
San Diego County could get its first substantial rain since March early next week. Or not. The remains of Hurricane Rosa, a major hurricane with 125 mph winds southwest of the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula on Thursday night, are expected to drift northward. By Monday, Rosa should be downgraded to a tropical storm. By Tuesday, much of its moisture, if not its tropical-storm-force winds, should move into or close to Southern California.
October is expected to be rather cold in the north-central United States before the pattern flips for November and December, yielding warmer temperatures in the northern states and colder temperatures in the southern states as winter begins. Colder-than-average temperatures are expected in October from the northern Rockies to the northern Plains and upper Midwest, with far below-average temperatures likely in the Dakotas, eastern Montana, northeastern Wyoming and western Minnesota, according to the latest outlook from The Weather Company, an IBM Business.
Before the 20th century, much of the Owens Valley on the eastern edge of California was uninhabitable swampland, which shows how much water the Sierra Nevada are capable of producing. Starting in 1913, the city of Los Angeles began draining the Owens Valley, resulting in the high, dry desert we have become.
Nathan Morgan has been hanging over the side of side of Shasta Dam recently — sometimes upside down — making marks on the side of the dam. Morgan is part of a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation crew drilling holes in the side and on the top of the dam to test the strength of the concrete.
The San Diego City Council has approved borrowing $614 million to begin construction of the city’s innovative recycled drinking water project. The first phase of Pure Water — scheduled to begin construction in 2019 and open in 2021 — would use proven purification technology to recycle wastewater into 30 million gallons a day of drinking water. The loan comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and will cover 49 percent of the $1.25 billion project. There will be a second reading of the ordinance by the council in two weeks to officially authorize the loan.
Forecasters are continuing to predict an El Niño this winter in the tropical Pacific Ocean. An El Niño Watch was issued earlier this summer in June. One of El Niño’s common “downstream” impacts is above-average winter precipitation across the southern United States, the result of a stronger than usual Pacific jet stream.
Imagine the Silicon Valley without technology or Hollywood without the entertainment industry. Just as those areas depend on their foundations for prosperity, our ability to capture, move and store water for agriculture is a determining factor for our region’s prosperity. In the southern San Joaquin Valley, water is our lifeblood. When it flows, communities prosper. Without it, jobs disappear, families leave, services evaporate and communities suffer. Even if your job doesn’t have anything to do with agriculture, if you live in our Valley, water matters.
Concrete placement on the Oroville Dam spillway is likely to meet the Nov. 1 public safety construction deadline despite some setbacks, the California Department of Water Resources said on Wednesday. One of the slabs in the middle chute of the spillway needed to be replaced earlier this month due to hot weather and high winds affecting its surface. That slab is one of 221 that have been placed on the spillway through the work process and DWR doesn’t expect that to affect the schedule.
