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Rainbow, FPUD, Camp Pendleton Shares of CWA Vote Entitlement to Decline

/in /by /Fallbrook and Bonsall Village News Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

The weighted vote entitlements for San Diego County Water Authority agencies at 2018 San Diego County Water Authority meetings were approved by the CWA board Dec. 7, and the shares for the Rainbow Municipal Water District, the Fallbrook Public Utility District, and Camp Pendleton will all be less than those agencies’ 2017 weighted vote. Rainbow’s share will decrease from 4.04 percent to 4.00 percent. The FPUD weighted vote was 2.35 percent for 2017 meetings and will be 2.32 percent during 2018. Camp Pendleton had a share of 0.10 percent of the weighted vote in both 2016 and 2017 and will account for 0.09 percent of the 2018 vote total.

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Oceanside Raises Water, Wastewater Rates, Again

/in /by /The Coast News Group (Encinitas) Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

City Council unanimously approved increased water and wastewater rates Dec. 20. There was no discussion prior to the vote of approval. Two weeks earlier numerous speakers addressed City Council about rate increases, and the city received more than a dozen letters of protest. Most Dec. 6 speakers shared their frustration over decreasing their water use and still seeing a rise in rates. Residents also criticized the high cost of fixed rates, and not having adjustable rates for low-income households.

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Time’s Up: Race Against Receding Salton Sea Is On

/in /by /Imperial Valley Pressby EDWIN DELGADO

When the largest farm-to-city water transfer was approved in 2003, the state of California gave itself a 15-year period to find a solution to the receding Salton Sea waterline — an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Those 15 years are up. The mitigation water the Imperial Irrigation District was obligated to divert to the Salton Sea has come to an end, and it’s expected the lake’s receding water rate will speed up starting this year, increasing the risk of developing respiratory diseases through the Imperial and Coachella valleys.

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Nudging Progress on Funding for Safe Drinking Water

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)

This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics went to Richard Thaler, who pioneered “nudging” to help people volunteer to make more personally and socially beneficial decisions. As an example, having employees automatically enrolled for retirement contributions and then allowing them to lower their contributions results in considerably more retirement savings than having them “opt-in” to retirement contributions with no default contributions. Similarly, informing water users that their water use substantially exceeds their neighbors’ significantly reduces their water use.

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‘Strange Season’: Is It Really Winter?

/in /by /The Record (Stockton)

Not since 1959 has Stockton staggered into the new year with less than an inch of total rainfall. But that’s exactly what’s just happened. It almost seems like we’ve gone from drought, to flood, right back to drought. That may be premature. Our reservoirs are well above average, still flush with last year’s bounty. And there’s still plenty of winter left to add to that supply. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed here, too,” said Hannah Chandler, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

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Beginning of 2018 Drought?

/in /by /California Water Blog

Every year is different for water management in California. The 2012-2016 water years were among the driest and warmest on record. 2017 was the wettest year of record for much of California, with thousands of water managers struggling to store as much water as possible in reservoirs and aquifers. So far for this 2018 water year (which began October 1), Northern California precipitation is about 67% of average for this time of year.  Further south, the San Joaquin Basin precipitation is about 38% of average and Tulare basin is about 25% of average.  Snowpack statewide is about 27% of average for this time of year.

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Could Portable Treatment Centers Fix Rural America’s Water Problems?

/in /by /Pacific Standard Magazine

One of the hard truths revealed by California’s five-year drought is that many small, rural communities lack the resources to adapt to water shortages. In this case, that means both money and expertise. It can be very expensive, for instance, to build a new water treatment plant or connect with one in the next closest town. Even if a community finds the money to build a small treatment plant, it may not have anyone locally with the expertise to operate it.

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Trump Considers Sending More Water to California farmers

/in /by /The Associated Press (As published by Visalia Times-Delta)

The Trump administration said Friday it will look at revving up water deliveries to farmers from California’s Central Valley Project, the largest federal water project in the United States, in what environmental groups called a threat to protections for struggling native salmon and other endangered species. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation formally served notice it would begin looking at changing the operation of the massive California water project to maximize water deliveries. Spokeswoman Erin Curtis called it the first step in what would likely be an 18-month analysis.

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‘Farm To City’ Deal To Dry Out Stretches Of California’s Legendary Salton Sea

/in /by /National Public Radio

Unfortunately, since the late 1970s, the Desert Riviera has been ravaged by what Johnson calls a “slow-motion apocalypse.” Hotels and marinas were ruined by floods, then left high and dry by drought. Giant, stinky algae blooms linked to farm pollutants drove people out of the water. Rising salinity levels linked to evaporation helped kill nearly all the fish. Traces of everything from DDT to arsenic have been detected in the mud beneath the lake, and in dried-out stretches of lakebed exposed by drought.

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Three Years on, How California Is Spending Its $7.5 Billion Water Bond

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)

Three years ago, California voters passed Proposition 1, a bond that provided $7.12 billion for water projects and reallocated another $425 million. The funds had to be split among seven categories: safe drinking water, water storage, flood management, water recycling, drought preparedness, ecosystem and watershed protection and groundwater sustainability. Ellen Hanak and Jelena Jezdimirovic at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) dove into the numbers to see how the proposition money has been spent throughout the state.

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