A project that might make much of the Sacramento River vanish into three giant holes in the ground will not jeopardize the waterway’s ailing salmon and smelt populations, according to new analyses from the federal government. The Delta Tunnels – which would be 35 miles long, cost at least $15 billion to build and be capable of sending much of the state’s biggest river to farmers and urban users – received a stubby thumbs-up from the Trump administration on June 26.
The health of many rivers and streams throughout San Diego County — which flow down canyons and wind through often contaminated urban landscapes — has improved after suffering during several years of drought conditions, according to a report released this week by the nonprofit environmental group San Diego Coastkeeper. While pollution continues to significantly impact all watersheds in the region, Coastkeeper’s annual water-quality monitoring report found markedly cleaner waters in 2016 compared to the previous two years. That includes monitoring done in the San Diego, Sweetwater and Otay watersheds.
After almost 50 years of vigorously contested litigation (that went all the way to the Supreme Court), settlement negotiations, several successful efforts in Congress and the California Legislature to obtain the essential legislation, and several more decades of negotiations to resolve all the issues presented in the litigation as well as other issues raised belatedly by the United States, the San Luis Rey Indian Water Rights Settlement finally became a reality and took effect on May 17, 2017.
California officials have ordered owners of 93 dams to reinspect their flood-control spillways following the Oroville Dam crisis,saying the spillways need a closer look following a preliminary review. The list released by the Department of Water Resources includes some of the largest dams in California, such as the New Exchequer Dam on the Merced River, New Bullards Bar on the Yuba River, and Lake Almanor Dam on the Feather River in Plumas County. Each holds back reservoirs roughly the size of Folsom Lake, which can store about 977,000 acre-feet of water.
The deadline is Aug. 14 to apply for water storage funding from the Proposition 1 bond measure voters approved in 2014, and while the folks working to build Sites Reservoir will be applying, they don’t need the money. Enough water agencies have agreed to invest in the reservoir near Maxwell that it can be built without taxpayer funds, according to Sites Project Authority General Manager Jim Watson. Twenty-eight agencies have signed on to support the construction in exchange for a share of the water that would be delivered from the lake, according to the authority’s website.
The San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) is moving forwarding with the $28.6 million Milestone Pipeline Relining project. The Board of Directors approved the project Thursday to rehabilitate more than four-miles of a pipeline between Lake Murray and Sweetwater Reservoir. “Pipeline relining is an important and often overlooked program that’s extending the life and reliability of the system we depend on every day to deliver water to our taps when we need it,” said Mark Muir, chair of the Water Authority Board.
Underlying the long-running battles between proponents and opponents of the proposed Poseidon Resources ocean desalination plant is an ideological war between two roughly defined factions: conservationists and free-marketeers. The Orange County Water District(OCWD), which manages theSanta Ana River and the Orange County Groundwater Basin (a collection of aquifers containing 60 million acre-feet of water), is ground-zero in that war. (The OCWD supplies 75 percent of the drinking water for 2.4 million residents of north Orange County).
Emerging from a wet winter, state water officials were able to set aside 50,000 acre-feet of water for the Santa Clarita Valley’s water wholesaler, the Castaic Lake Water Agency. How much water is that? It’s about 50,000 football fields each under one foot of water. This water earmarked for CLWA use is called “carryover” water. Unlike managing water in a drought year, when every drop of water is used, the agency couldn’t use its 50,000 acre-feet of “carryover” water in this current wet year. Consequently, about 35,000 acre-feet of water earmarked for the CLWA went unused.
Despite some initial concerns over cost and value by some members, the Municipal Services Committee unanimously agreed to adopt a resolution in support of the California WaterFix project and California Eco Restore. Mayor Terry Tornek, a member of the committee, questioned representatives of the Metropolitan Water District as to whether or not alternative plans such as water conservation, saving rain water and similar plans, might decrease the demand for the plan, but was told that while local conservation efforts have been successful, the demand for water continues to increase.
San Diego Unified School District will test every drinking fountain and kitchen sink on campuses for lead in the water over the next few years, greatly expanding on tests previously conducted by the City of San Diego. School district trustees adopted the testing plan, expected to cost $200,000, at Tuesday night’s meeting. Fixing all the faucets and sinks that are found to have a certain level of lead could cost more than $1 million over the next three to five years.
