Items of interest include a presentation by the County Water Authority on its lawsuit against the Metropolitan Water District, a proposal to adopt a resolution declaring an end to drought level 1 restrictions but keeping in place other permanent water use restrictions. The board will also consider spending funds on a customer satisfaction survey.
The Otay Water District has filed a lawsuit against the city of San Diego challenging the amount the city charges Otay for reclaimed water. The suit, filed May 30 in San Diego Superior Court, claims that there has been a breach of contract by San Diego and excess charges of more than $16 million to Otay since the beginning of 2016. San Diego more than doubled its reclaimed water rate in November 2015, from $350 per acre feet to $753 per acre feet. One acre foot is about 326,000 gallons.
Salmon are at the heart of tribal cultures up and down the West Coast—their diet, commerce, ceremonies, and spirituality. They appear in cave art of 10,000 or more years ago. Salmon are not just a way of life. They are life.
And in California, they may soon be extinct. Three quarters of the state’s salmonids, as salmon and trout are called, could be gone in a century if conditions don’t change. That’s according to a new scientific assessment released on May 16. Nearly half of all salmon species face extinction in 50 years if trends in the state stay the same.
Californians are in deep water — dirty water, to be more precise. Over half a million residents are neglected the same basic access to clean drinking water enjoyed by the rest of the state. Hardest hit are children (a quarter of California schools fail to meet water provision standards) and farmworkers in the Central Valley, particularly low-income Latino communities. The toxic groundwater in these communities often features lovely chemicals such as arsenic, pesticides, uranium, bacteria, nitrates and even carcinogens.
The first step toward sustaining one of San Joaquin County’s most precious resources took nearly two years. And it may have been the easiest part of the journey. Still, local officials sound optimistic about their efforts to comply with the state’s new groundwater mandate,largely because the county’s diverse, sometimes feuding water agencies have agreed to at least sit down at the table and talk about it. “We’ve gotten this far,” San Joaquin County Supervisor Chuck Winn said last week, ahead of a major deadline at the end of this month.
Pieces of the Feather River Fish Hatchery have been patched back together in time for the return of spring-run chinook salmon. However, the shoveling, shifting and trucking will continue for a while until its smooth swimming for the important fish-rearing station on Table Mountain Boulevard. This week, staff has begun to trap spring-run fish that will be tagged before being released back to the river. “They’re coming in really slow,” said Penny Crawshaw, a fish hatchery manager. High volume releases of water from the dam continued until recently, which encouraged fish to hold lower in the river, she explained.
Dan Morain suggests the proposed Delta tunnels offer a solution for managing California’s water in our changing climate. (“Brown sends a message on the Delta tunnels,” Insight, June 1).This argument misses the mark. The engineering report for the California WaterFix project indicates that the proposed new intakes at the town of Hood are being designed for 18 inches of sea level rise, yet the Delta Stewardship Council indicates that we should be planning for 55 inches of sea level rise. The $17 billion tunnels will likely become a stranded asset.
California is emerging from one of the worst droughts in its modern history, a dry spell that prompted emergency regulations and some deep reflections on the fragile nature of our water supplies. The recent rain and snow across much of the state seem to have given water agencies breathing room to think long and hard about one oft-floated solution that came up a lot during the drought: desalination.
June 4, 2017 (San Diego’s East County) – The Otay Water District filed a lawsuit in Superior Court on May 30th against the City of San Diego alleging breach of contract, overcharges on recycled water rates and lack of transparency. The suit accuses San Diego of becoming “unjustly enriched at Otay’s expense,” according to Mark Robak, president of the Otay Water District, and asks the court to rescind a January 2016 rate hike and repay that money to the district.
The Salton Sea is a fascinating camping location with an amazing history. Previously known as the Salton Sink, directly above the San Andreas fault, the introduction of river water changed all of that. The Salton Sea was created in 1905, when spring flooding on the Colorado River Broke through canal gates that empty towards the Imperial Valley. It was nearly a year and a half before the breech was finally repaired. The result was the creation of a mammoth sea that is 20 miles wide and 45 miles long.
