Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected on Friday to send President Trump a detailed legal proposal to dramatically scale back an Obama-era regulation on water pollution, according to a senior E.P.A. official familiar with the plan. It is widely expected to be one of his agency’s most significant regulatory rollback efforts.
Projected infrastructure spending for the city of San Diego’s Storm Water Division isn’t even halfway sufficient to meet future needs, a deficiency that could increase the deferred maintenance backlog and affect the city’s ability to meet water quality requirements, according to an audit released Thursday. City Auditor Eduardo Luna said the division needs roughly $891 million to spend on water infrastructure over the next five years, but there’s only $433 million in funds identified over that span.
It’s 2018, not 1918, and the idea that an estimated 360,000 California residents don’t have access to clean, safe water in their homes is both appalling and hard to fathom. While this problem is concentrated in the Central Valley, it’s a concern in rural agricultural areas across the state, including in San Diego County.
Climate troublemaker El Niño is forecast for this coming fall and winter, the Climate Prediction Center announced Thursday. The agency said there’s a 65 percent chance it will form by the winter, prompting it to issue an El Niño watch. In the U.S., a strong El Niño can result in a stormy winter along the West Coast, a wet winter across the South and a warmer-than-average winter in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains.
Supporters of a bill that would raise monthly water bills for many residents rallied in Sacramento Wednesday. The money raised from the bill would pay for systems to clean water in areas, supporters say, suffer from unsafe drinking water. Central Coast Sen. Bill Monning introduced the bill last year. It would increase residential water bills by 95 cents a month and is projected to raise $100 million. Low income earners would be exempt.
The state Department of Water Resources has beefed up its response to the independent forensic report on what caused the Oroville Dam spillway failure last year. The report, released on Jan. 5, described how insufficient maintenance and repairs and faulty original design allowed water to seep through the spillway’s cracks and joints. It also blamed “long-term systemic failure” on the part of DWR, regulators and the dam safety industry at large.
Even in times of drought, California’s natural and human-made arteries run with the nation’s cleanest, most accessible water. So fundamental is the stuff to the state’s identity and to its residents’ daily lives that California law recognizes a human right to “safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.”
Fire stations throughout the City have said goodbye to water-guzzling grass and hello to drought-tolerant landscapes in a water conservation overhaul made possible by Pasadena Water & Power. The Community Demonstration Garden project is part of Pasadena’s continuing commitment to maximize water savings throughout the City and to support water-saving opportunities at city facilities. “It is the City’s effort to demonstrate to the community what is possible when you remove your water-thirsty turf and you replace it with drought-tolerant landscapes,” said Ursula Schmidt, Pasadena Water & Power Water Conservation Manager.
Between 60 and 90 percent of the world’s fresh water is frozen in the ice sheets of Antarctica, a continent roughly the size of the United States and Mexico combined. If all that ice melted, it would be enough to raise the world’s sea levels by roughly 200 feet. While that won’t happen overnight, Antarctica is indeed melting, and a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that the melting is speeding up.
A coalition of environmental groups has sued the California Delta Stewardship Council (CDSC) over what they say are violations of law affecting Delta environment restoration. The suit was filed May 25 in Sacramento Superior Court, where headquarters for the council are located. The plaintiffs include the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the River, Center for Food Safety, Sierra Club California, Planning and Conservation League and Restore the Delta.
