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Water Authority Loses Long-Running Bid Against Arch-Rival to Lower Water Costs

/in /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Quoted: Mark Muir

For years, San Diego water officials argued the region’s major supplier of water, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, charges too much to deliver water to San Diego from the Colorado River. On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court declined to take up the case, leaving a lower court ruling siding with Metropolitan in place.The Water Authority picked up smaller savings, amounting to an estimated $1.1 billion in the next several decades. But that’s about $6 billion less than it had hoped.

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‘Horizontal Hurricanes’ Pose Increasing Risk for California

/in /by /San Francisco Chronicle

As increasingly intense hurricanes batter the Southeast and the Caribbean, heightening some of the worst fears about a changing climate, California is facing its own threat of bigger and more destructive storms. Mounting research, much of it done in the wake of the near-record rains that pulled California out of a five-year drought this past winter, shows that seasonal soakers may not come as often as they used to, but could pack more punch when they do arrive.

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U.S. and Mexico May be at Odds, But They’ve Reached Agreement on Managing the Colorado River

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby David Montero

The United States and Mexico expanded a long-term agreement Wednesday that will allow both nations to continue using the Colorado River while also pushing more conservation efforts to ensure that water is available during droughts. The nine-year deal, which expands on a 1944 water treaty between the two countries, would see the United States spend $31.5 million on conservation efforts in Mexico, according to water agencies that are familiar with the plan.

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BLOG:OPINION: What Innovation Looks Like When Water Is A Strategic Resource

/in /by /Green Biz (Oakland)

Practitioners in the water sector are familiar with the statistics on water management in Israel. An estimated 90 percent of the wastewater generated there is reused, making it the global leader in this practice. For comparison, Spain is second at about 20 percent reuse; the United States reuses about 1 percent of its water. In addition to water reuse, Israel supplies about two-thirds of its domestic water from desalination.

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Major Quake Disaster in Southern California Could Cause $300 Billion in Losses

/in /by /CNBCby Jeff Daniels

Mexico City’s earthquake disaster is a reminder of the serious risk of Southern California’s “Big One” striking at any time and causing widespread damage that some estimate could approach upwards of $300 billion. Experts say Southern California is long overdue for a major earthquake along the 800-mile San Andreas Fault, which could cause extensive damage and loss of life to the nation’s second-largest city and the region.

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Feinstein Contends that Cadiz Project Would Contaminate Water Supply

/in /by /San Bernardino County Sun

As the Cadiz project seems increasingly likely to go forward, Sen. Dianne Feinstein issued a statement contending the underground desert water could ultimately contaminate much of Southern California’s water supply. The project involves the transfer of ancient groundwater in a remote part of San Bernardino County’s Mojave Desert to parts of Orange County and other locations, where it could serve as many as 400,000 people.

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State Supreme Denies San Diego County Water Authority Request to Review Appellate Court’s Rate Decision

/in /by /East County Magazine Quoted: Mark Muir

Today the California Supreme Court denied a request by the San Diego County Water Authority (CWA) to reverse a Court of Appeals decision in June that allows the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) to include its State Water Project costs in rates it charges to transport CWA’s independent Colorado River supplies through MWD’s pipeline and aqueduct.

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Corporations Have Rights. Why Shouldn’t Rivers?

/in /by /New York Timesby Julie Turkewitz

Does a river — or a plant, or a forest — have rights? This is the essential question in what attorneys are calling a first-of-its-kind federal lawsuit, in which a Denver lawyer and a far-left environmental group are asking a judge to recognize the Colorado River as a person. If successful, it could upend environmental law, possibly allowing the redwood forests, the Rocky Mountains or the deserts of Nevada to sue individuals, corporations and governments over resource pollution or depletion.

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The Wet Winter Brought Lots of Water to California. But Fighting Over fish Continues

/in /by /The Sacramento Bee

The wettest winter on record for Northern California filled most of the state’s reservoirs and had the massive Delta water pumps roaring at full tilt for the first half of the year. Despite this seeming abundance of water, the never-ending dispute continues between farms and cities wanting to receive more water and environmental groups fighting for the Delta’s fragile population of tiny smelt. Environmentalists are opposed to a proposal championed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Southern California water interests to ramp up pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta starting next week.

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Farmworkers’ Dilemma: Affordable Housing, but Undrinkable Water

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)

September is the time of year that country clubs become ghost towns in Southern California’s Coachella Valley. It’s still too hot for tee times at the valley’s golf courses with temperatures often soaring to the century mark. And while most tourists aren’t flocking to posh Indian Wells or parties in Palm Springs, it’s the busy season for the region’s other industry: date farming. There are veritable forests of date palms growing here – tufts of green feathery fronds poke the horizon in almost every direction.

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