In California’s San Joaquin Valley, one of the most productive farming regions in the nation, an estimated 150,000 people are stuck living with contaminated drinking water. When they open a tap to fill a cooking pot or take a shower, the water that gushes out is contaminated with nitrates, hexavalent chromium, arsenic and other nasties from polluted wells.
A plan to hit Californians with a first-of-its-kind statewide tax on drinking water is on ice, for now. The proposed tax would cost most Californians about $1 per month on their residential water bills. Businesses would pay $4 to $10 per month. Although California voters just approved another $4 billion in bonds including funds for clean water, and the November ballot will ask voters to approve about $8 billion more, Gov. Jerry Brown says it wasn’t enough. He pushed for the tap-water tax to raise another $140 million per year to clean up contaminated drinking water for 360,000 rural Californians, mostly in the San Joaquin Valley.
In a May 10 column on Temperance Flat Reservoir, Bee columnist Marek Warszawski called out local lawmakers who supported the project and said we were in a “state of denial.” Let me be clear: I am not in denial. California’s water issues are complex and not easy to solve. For more than 30 years, I have worked to improve water supply reliability for the San Joaquin Valley and all of California. I take every opportunity to explore solutions to California’s water woes.
Satellite data and images are provocative, even disturbing. They confront us with a global view that can be at once breathtaking, like a piece of art, and yet, in this era of rapidly changing climate, they paint a picture of the demise of the environment. How and if we will respond to what we see is uncertain. That uncertainty lies at the root of our perilous future.
Construction crews broke ground on a new drought-resistant water supply on Friday in Templeton. The “Upper Salinas River Basin Conjunctive Use Project” will capture existing wastewater that is currently being released outside of the Atascadero Basin and returns the water to the Meadowbrook Wastewater Treatment Plant. Templeton Community Services District officials say this essentially increases the water supply by an additional 242 acre-feet per year.
A proposed tax on California’s drinking water, designed to clean up contaminated water for thousands of Californians, was abandoned by Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders Friday as part of the compromise on the state budget. Lawmakers and Brown’s office scrapped the “Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Act,” which would have taxed residents 95 cents a month to raise millions for cleaning toxic wells. Instead, legislative leaders agreed to spend $5 million from the general fund to deal with lead in drinking water at child care centers.
San Diego city officials are reminding residents of an upcoming hike to their water rates. Starting Aug. 1, city water rates will go up 2.16 percent — pending a San Diego County Water Authority vote on June 28. The rate increase was approved by the San Diego City Council in 2015, with funding from the hike to be used for “water reliability and infrastructure improvements,” according to city officials.
Ventura County has spent five straight months under severe drought conditions, despite some big storms earlier this year. That’s not expected to change anytime soon – at least not for the better. “California has gone into its dry season now,” said Adam Allgood, meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The days leading up to a key funding vote on the delta tunnels project were marked by intense politicking and head-counting by board members at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The behind-the-scenes campaign to get the board to approve nearly $11 billion in financing for the water delivery project is spelled out in a series of texts and emails that Metropolitan released Thursday in response to a Public Records Act request filed by two groups that challenged the April 10 approval.
The citizens of Cape Town, South Africa are breathing a sigh of relief. “Day Zero,” when water taps for citizens and businesses shut off, had been projected to arrive in April. Restrictions on personal and agricultural water use have bought the city a reprieve. Yet a delay is not a solution. The city’s 4 million people, already constrained to 90-second showers and a meager 13 gallons of water a day, will eventually face a day of reckoning when the taps run dry.
