Last month, the San Carlos Area Council hosted Sami Sweis (pictured above), a water resources engineer with the San Diego County Water Authority, for an overview and update from the agency.
The Salton Sea is a terminal saltwater lake. It’s a flooded basin with no natural outlet, similar to the Great Salt Lake or the Aral Sea. And the Salton Sea is shrinking.
One of the reasons for that is the Imperial Water Transfer deal that has brought hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water to San Diego over the last two decades. The deal, signed 21 years ago, meant the Imperial Valley began transferring excess water from the valley’s farm fields to San Diego’s water taps.
An honest-to-goodness map of the American West would show L.A.’s tentacles everywhere.
You’d see canals — the Los Angeles Aqueduct, running along the base of the Sierra Nevada, carrying water from the Owens River; the State Water Project, meandering through the San Joaquin Valley, supplying many Southern California cities and farms; and the Colorado River Aqueduct, cutting through the desert on its mission to deliver water from desert to coast.
The board of the agency that delivers water to nearly half of Californians will consider firing its top leader over claims of retaliation, harassment and cultivating a toxic work environment at a special meeting Thursday morning, according to an agenda and three people with knowledge.
U.S. drinking water is among the world’s safest and most reliable, but aging infrastructure across the country is posing challenges. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that there’s a water main break every two minutes. Shannon Marquez, professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, joins John Yang to discuss why these problems are so common.
A $38 million state grant awarded this week will be used to increase rebates to businesses and institutions that replace turf with water-efficient landscaping as a deadline looms to phase out turf at commercial, industrial, municipal and institutional properties.
In addition to the rebate program, the money will also be used to help thousands of low- income households install water-efficient irrigation systems.
The policymakers working on a new management plan for the Colorado River say they need more time to bridge disagreements about how to share its water.
State negotiators from Wyoming to California are under pressure to agree on new guidelines for managing the river. The current rules expire in 2026, but state leaders disagree about who should bear the brunt of cutbacks to water demand. At a meeting this week in Colorado, John Entsminger, who manages water in Nevada, says those hard decisions probably won’t come soon.
Farmers in San Diego County say proposed water quality regulations that establish updated general waste discharge requirements for commercial agricultural operations are burdensome, costly and duplicate work by growers participating in other regulatory programs.
Tasked with protecting water quality, the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board on March 29 released a proposed draft that creates new monitoring and reporting requirements for nitrogen applications and removals. It also identifies paths to compliance for individuals or use of third-party programs to help farmers achieve the order’s objectives.
The city of Bakersfield and California Water Service Co. on Sunday lifted the do-not-drink, do-not-use advisory issued Tuesday to 42 commercial customers south of Lake Truxtun after an oil company reportedly allowed pressurized natural gas and crude oil into the municipal water system.
A notice shared shortly before 4:30 p.m. said that after multiple rounds of intensive, one-way flushing, “test results have confirmed that it is safe to resume normal water use from the water distribution system.”
Water is a commodity held captive to the laws of supply and demand. High rains mean less water usage, which means fewer sales and higher prices. Also additional fixed fees.
In 1989, when the current Valley Center Municipal Water District (VCMWD) Gen. Mgr., Gary Arant, came to work in VC, 93% of the district’s 55,000 acre feet sales was for agriculture. This year, due to two years of extremely wet winters, the water district is looking at selling about 12,000 AF, with 55% for ag.
