Another new tax is headed for your water bill as if it wasn’t high enough already. Gov. Jerry Brown has been trying to push through a statewide tax on drinking water, the first ever in California history, and as you might imagine, it has been a challenge for him. People are fed up with new taxes. That was demonstrated very convincingly in the June recall of state Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton.
The Colorado River is running low on water. The lifeline that slakes the thirst of 40 million southwestern residents is projected to hit a historic low mark within two years, forcing mandatory cuts to water deliveries in Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. Facing exceptional drought conditions, cities throughout the watershed this summer have imposed mandatory water restrictions, ranchers have begun selling off cows they’re unable to feed, and the river’s reservoirs are headed toward levels not seen since they filled decades ago.
A historic achievement for the San Diego region passed almost unnoticed when the San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors adopted new wholesale water rates in late June. The rate-setting process highlighted how the water authority’s independent water supplies from the Colorado River are now both less expensive and more reliable than supplies from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. It’s an accomplishment that the region’s water officials started working toward two decades ago, and one that will bear fruit for decades to come.
Across California, Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) are devising plans to reduce long-term overdraft. As part of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, GSAs will submit plans in 2020–22, which detail strategies to bring groundwater use into balance by 2040. Planning processes must assemble stakeholders and estimate sustainable yields of groundwater, quantify existing pumping, describe future options to limit overdraft and identify funding.
A new forecast from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation shows signs that water levels at Lake Mead, which supplies water to three southwestern states and northern Mexico, could drop so low by next year that it could eventually result in a demand for more water from the Colorado River and from the upper basin states, including Colorado, that rely on the big river. The ever-increasing shortages in those three southwestern states could eventually mean water shortages in Colorado, too.
The summer heat that wouldn’t relent is finally relenting, at least for most of San Diego County. “It’s going to be a pattern for late August that is a little unusual,” National Weather Service forecaster Mark Moede said. “It’s going to give us a break from the heat and humidity, with an onshore flow. And it’s going to be with us for awhile, at least through early next week.”
Chula Vista has joined the city of San Diego and a number of other West Coast cities in an attempt to force chemical giant Monsanto to pay tens of millions to clean up waterways polluted with a class of cancer-linked chemicals, known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. The city filed a lawsuit against the St. Louis-based corporation on Tuesday alleging it should help pay for costs associated with cleaning up PCB in its municipal stormwater system.
Two new directors representing the San Diego County Water Authority have joined Metropolitan Water District’s Board of Directors. Longtime labor union leader Jerry Butkiewicz and Tim Smith, an engineer in the water industry for 28 years, succeed directors Keith Lewinger and Elsa Saxod, who served on the Metropolitan 38-member board for nine years and nearly two years, respectively. Butkiewicz will serve on the Communications and Legislation Committee and the Water Planning and Stewardship Committee. Smith was named to the Engineering and Operations Committee and the Finance and Insurance Committee.
In 2007, the small town of Lanare in California’s Central Valley finally got what it had desperately needed for years — a treatment plant to remove high levels of arsenic in the drinking water. But the victory was short-lived. Just months after the $1.3 million federally funded plant began running, the town was forced to shut it down because it ran out of money to operate and maintain it. More than a decade later, the plant remains closed and Lanare’s tap water is still contaminated — as is the drinking water piped to about a million other Californians around the state.
Some students plant trees. Some hug them. This summer, eight Cal State Fullerton students sampled trees. Really, the students were listening to what trees had to say about the droughts and fires they had lived through. Specifically, the students extracted cores from trees in the Sierra Nevada – including some in Yosemite that had burned a few years ago – and are now examining the cores back on campus. A new laboratory, the Cal-Dendro Tree Ring Laboratory, has been set up to conduct research on the cores, which are expected to reveal valuable data going back 500 to 1,000 years.
