You might wish you had as much power to affect the environment and the economy as the delta smelt. Enemies have blamed the tiny freshwater fish for putting farmers out of business across California’s breadbasket, forcing the fallowing of vast acres of arable land, creating double-digit unemployment in agricultural counties, even clouding the judgment of scientists and judges.
Citing a “long-term systemic failure” at the California Department of Water Resources, independent forensic investigators released their final report Friday on the nearly-catastrophic emergency last February at Oroville Dam. In a 584-page dissection of the disaster at America’s tallest dam, the investigative team said Oroville Dam was designed and built with flaws from the beginning, which were exacerbated by inadequate repairs in the years that followed.
Southern California’s Salton Sea, the largest lake in California, has seen its share of ups and downs since it was accidentally created in 1905 by Colorado River floodwaters. Now, already badly polluted by chemicals from agricultural irrigation runoff, which provides the lake’s inflow, the surrounding shoreline is in danger of becoming a toxic blight.
Below the streets of La Mesa, a big project is taking place. San Diego’s Water Authority is in the process of relining four miles of pipes that have been around for nearly 60 years. News 8’s Shawn Styles goes underground to give you a closer look at the work.
A winter storm is forecast to strike next week in Southern California that could bring up to 4 inches of rain and result in mudslides or flooding in some wildfire-scarred areas. Crews were scrambling this week to clean out debris in catch basins and prepare for heavy rains forecast to fall in burn areas Tuesday into Wednesday. The absence of vegetation and roots in burned-out hillsides and canyons makes them more susceptible to mudslides and even landslides, officials said.
Businesses and restaurants in Little Italy are asking the city of San Diego for money after a water main break last year. On July 30, 2017, a 16-inch concrete main broke at Kettner Boulevard and Juniper Street in Little Italy. “This was a pretty horrendous water break,” said Marco Li Mandri with the Little Italy Association of San Diego. Water flooded streets for hours. Normally busy restaurants and businesses were forced to close. “Kettner was shut down the entire day and you obviously can’t do any food service without water.”
Water customers across the city of San Diego have contacted NBC 7 Responds with complaints they are being charged by the city for more water than they actually used. These customers are not talking about their water rates, rather homeowners say their water use suddenly skyrocketed in one or more billing periods, leading to hundreds of dollars in higher charges.
San Diego’s weather, year after year, is more apt to be abnormal than “normal.” It’ll be wet one year, dry the next, dry the next, dry the next and then super wet the next. What San Diego really has is an average (10.34 inches of rain annually) that is a blend of the majority dry years and the occasional wet ones. No one would apply the word “normal” – or “average” – to 2017. It was both super wet and super dry at times, although consistently warm.
The water is back on now for the more than 60 businesses that were without water after a water main break in National City. It all started around 6 a.m. Thursday, when residents saw water running down West 16th Street and Coolidge Avenue. Water could be seen flooding several yards, but there was no damage to any property, just an inconvenience with no water for morning commuters. The Sweetwater Authority closed the affected area and forced drivers to find a way around the mess, while crews continued to fix the pipe and figure out what caused it to break.
The Trump administration, teeing up a fight with California regulators, is trying to pump more water through the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the southern half of the state despite fresh evidence of the estuary’s shrinking fish population. A proposal by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to “maximize water deliveries” represents the administration’s first concrete effort to make good on a promise Donald Trump made while campaigning for the presidency in Fresno, where he vowed to deliver more water to San Joaquin Valley farmers and derided protections for endangered fish species.
