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A tax on water users that would take from ratepayers such as those in Valley Center to help subsidize water rates in poorer water districts, is on hold, but only until January, when it could be taken up again. State Senate Bill 623 — the water tax measure — is not moving ahead in 2017 after significant concerns were expressed by stakeholders statewide, including many groups from San Diego County. The Assembly Appropriations Committee decided against moving the proposed bill to the floor in late August, effectively pushing the issue into 2018.

This year, urban water use has settled into a pattern: Californians are consuming more water than in 2015 and 2016, when mandatory measures were in place to cut down on use during a five-year drought. At the same time, water use has remained below the levels reported in 2013 and 2014, cheering water regulators who hope to make conservation a habit. July 2017 numbers were released Wednesday by the State Water Resources Control Board, and they fit this pattern for the fifth month running.

For decades, water seeped below the spillway of the nation’s tallest dam unnoticed by operators, slowly eroding critical infrastructure until the spillway crumbled during heavy storm releases this past February, investigators said Tuesday. According to independent experts investigating the Oroville Dam’s spillway failure – which forced nearly 200,000 people to evacuate beneath the 770-foot dam – human error played a key role in the near-disaster.