Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration is working to revive a controversial plan to tax water customers across the state.
The governor and others have been pushing to add a new $1 fee to water bills to help provide safe drinking water to more than 300,000 Californians in mostly rural areas.
A new version of the tax could pop back up in the next few days. It would make the fee a “voluntary donation” by allowing customers to opt out of paying it.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors Thursday unanimously voted to support current plans for California WaterFix, the state’s $17 billion proposal to address water supply constraints in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta.
The board’s backing is contingent on a financing plan that fairly allocates project costs to San Diego County taxpayers, according to the Water Authority. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the sole source of Bay-Delta water for the San Diego region, is responsible for such allocations.
San Diegans, yes, your body thermostats are operating properly. The nights have been hot. Extremely hot. Record-breaking hot.
San Diego has just had what is likely to go down as the warmest August night in city history. The low after 12:01 a.m. on Thursday was 77 degrees. No other August night has been that warm, going back to 1874.
(National Weather Service forecasters did not expect the low to drop below 77 before midnight Thursday, which is the cut-off time for official daily records.)
The fires raging across California are causing devastation on an unprecedented scale. Currently, 14,000 firefighters are battling 16 major fires, which have destroyed more than 2,000 homes and killed at least 10 people.
The San Diego County Water Authority approved a water service agreement with the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation.
The SDCWA approved the agreement on a July 26 board vote with no opposition and Padre Dam Municipal Water District general manager Doug Wilson, who is Padre Dam’s representative on the CWA board, recusing himself.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s board of directors gave conditional support Thursday to the California WaterFix, the state’s $17 billion plan to upgrade key water infrastructure.
San Diego joins the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles and Santa Clara County Water District in Silicon Valley in backing one Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature long-term projects.
The massive project would divert water from the Sacramento River as it enters the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and carry it to existing federal and state pumping stations in the southern part of the delta through one or two 35-mile tunnels.
Northwestern San Diego County got off to a smoky start Thursday after smoke from the Holy fire in Orange County drifted over the region Wednesday night. The weather pattern should clear out the smoke Thursday, but it will only add to the heat. The National Weather Service has issued an excessive heat warning, in effect until 8 p.m. Thursday, from the foothills to the coast. Highs at the beaches could reach the mid 90s, while the inland valleys could be as hot as 104. The culprit is a push of hot air from the east.
California experienced its hottest single month in 124 years of recordkeeping, according to NOAA’s monthly summary of United States climate released Wednesday. For the contiguous U.S. as a whole, it was the 11th-hottest July on record, with almost every state coming in warmer than average. The national average of 75.5 degrees Fahrenheit was 1.9 degrees above the 20th-century norm, said NOAA. In addition, several communities in California and adjacent Nevada had their all-time hottest single month.
Ending a five-year moratorium, the Trump administration Wednesday took a first step toward opening 1.6 million acres of California public land to fracking and conventional oil drilling, triggering alarm bells among environmentalists. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management said it’s considering new oil and natural gas leases on BLM-managed lands in Fresno, San Luis Obispo and six other San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast counties. Meanwhile, activists in San Luis Obispo are pushing a ballot measure this fall to ban fracking and new oil exploration in the county.
Despite firefighters saying there is no need for more water to fight California’s wildfires, the Commerce Department is paving the way for more water pumping. The move comes after President Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday and Monday that California’s water rules were leaving firefighters without enough water, a statement Cal Fire officials say isn’t true. The president appears to have confused firefighting efforts in California with the state’s water rights system and how water allotments are meted out to farmers and water agencies throughout California. Firefighters are able to draw water from nearby reservoirs and ponds if necessary.
