J.F. Shea Construction, Inc., was given the San Diego County Water Authority contract to reline Pipeline 5 in San Luis Rey Canyon.
The SDCWA board voted unanimously May 23 to award J.F. Shea a $47,913,795 contract for the work. The project will reline approximately 9,000 linear feet of existing 96-inch diameter pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe.
When the region’s water importer said it was hurting for cash, the city of San Diego said: I’ll be your sugar daddy. That’s basically what happened last week after the San Diego County Water Authority – in charge of getting water from the Colorado River and northern California to San Diego – broke the news to its 22 customer water districts that its prices were going up 39 percent over the next two years. Mayor Todd Gloria pushed back on the increase, calling on his board members to find a way to soften the blow on San Diegans.
A three-year construction project on San Diego’s oldest aqueduct is underway, with the San Diego County Water Authority leading the $66 million effort to upgrade the infrastructure. Work on the project, known as the Southern First Aqueduct Facilities Improvement Project, is slated to run through summer 2026 and is intended to retrofit 99 structures connected to two water pipelines.
“There have not been enough investments into the water infrastructure since it was constructed. In 1977, 63% of the capital budget went to fund infrastructure repairs and by 2017 9% was going toward water, infrastructure and repairs. That is the biggest reason why we’re seeing issues on our existing infrastructure and more investment needs to be made now before the results become catastrophic,” said Burke, director of engineering at Inland Empire Utilities Agency.
Cyberattacks against water utilities across the country are becoming more frequent and more severe, the Environmental Protection Agency warned Monday as it issued an enforcement alert urging water systems to take immediate actions to protect the nation’s drinking water.
A series of water main breaks in Atlanta caused widespread disruption on Saturday, as outages and severely reduced water pressure forced some businesses to close and infuriated residents who criticized city officials for failing to provide timely updates.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued an enforcement alert to ensure community water systems comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act to prevent disruptive cyber attacks, including those by nation-state actors.
When desert winds stir up dust from the Salton Sea’s exposed lakebed, nearby communities suffer from increased air pollution. The deterioration coincides with reduced flows into California’s largest lake, finds a new research paper in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
The Biden administration on Tuesday announced it would invest $99 million in taxpayer funds to support the creation of the world’s largest water recycling center, a project aimed in part at easing California’s reliance on the drought-stricken Colorado River.
