Americans ate 2 billion pounds of avocados last year. The majority of the green fruit comes from Mexico, and about 10 percent is grown in California. But researchers in California’s Central Valley are breeding avocado trees they hope will grow well in the state’s main agricultural region.
California is borrowing up to $500 million to pay for the crisis at Oroville Dam, although it expects to be reimbursed for its costs. The Department of Water Resources obtained a $500 million line of credit last week to cover expenses connected to the spillway fracture at Oroville, including the permanent repairs. DWR obtained a separate $300 million credit line last week to cover other capital improvements for the State Water Project beyond Oroville. Federal money is expected to pay for much of the repairs.
As San Diegans start to crank up their air conditioners, the city and the San Diego County Water Authority are developing a way to store energy by using water. Water officials said it’s expected to save ratepayers money in the long run, according to a May 4 report by the ABC-TV affiliate KGTV San Diego. The city and authority want to build an energy storage facility at the San Vicente Reservoir, about 25 miles northeast of San Diego.
An unseasonably strong spring storm hit San Diego on Sunday, postponing a Padres game for only the third time in the history of Petco Park, setting a number of rainfall records and dusting local mountain peaks with snow. The system moved ashore late Saturday. By 7 p.m. Sunday, more than 2 inches of rain had fallen in Fallbrook while Valley Center got 1.56 inches and Kearny Mesa got 1.18 inches. The National Weather Service said that 10 inches of snow had fallen on Palomar Mountain, and about an inch in Julian.
As former Sen. Barbara Boxer noted in her op-ed “South state desalination project is a ‘no-brainer’ ” (Viewpoints, April 30), California is facing a hotter and drier future. In order to keep our communities and economy thriving, we need to develop smart and reliable local water supplies. Fortunately, we can meet long-term needs without resorting to billion-dollar boondoggles like the proposed Huntington Beach desalination plant. There is a reason desalination companies are spending millions of dollars in lobbying. Proposals like the Huntington Beach plant can’t stand on their own merit.
California’s ambitious plan to tunnel under the West’s largest estuary has always had two primary goals: to restore imperiled native fish and to improve water deliveries to farms and cities. An early analysis by federal wildlife agencies, however, indicates the project might make life worse for fish. The so-called WaterFix project calls for building two giant tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a tidal estuary that nurtures the largest salmon run on the West Coast.
The drought is over, but that doesn’t mean the end of calamity for Northern California. The abundance of rain and snow could produce more wildfires and drownings, officials say. Fires already have burned nearly 10 times as much territory statewide as they did during the same period of 2016. And while forecasters say the record winter rainfall could delay the outbreak of major fires until July or August, it has also fed large swaths of grass, shrubs and other fire fuels that will soon begin drying out in the warmer weather.
The San Diego County Water Authority board of directors on Thursday authorized the Water Authority, in conjunction with the city of San Diego, to begin seeking detailed proposals for a potential energy storage facility at San Vicente Reservoir. The project could help ease pressure on power grids by producing locally generated renewable energy on demand, and also lessen upward pressure on water rates by providing a new source of revenue.
The lead-poisoned drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich., has gotten all the headlines, but California has a water contamination problem that endangers far more people, and it has existed for decades. State officials knew for a generation that many Californians lack access to clean, safe drinking water, yet, disgracefully, they did not begin to address the issue until five years ago. The state Legislature is now poised to chalk up a historic achievement as it negotiates Senate Bill 623, which would establish a fund to subsidize adequate water treatment for most of the roughly 1 million Californians who still need it.
In the first opportunity for Oroville residents to ask direct questions of state water officials in the city where the spillway disaster unfolded, a crowd of about 300 people fired off many good questions. They got a lot of good answers, too. At the end of it all, one thing was obvious: The state has much more to do than fix a spillway. The state Department of Water Resources, which hosted the meeting Tuesday and manages the Oroville Dam and hydroelectric project, has been focused on repairs to the spillway. That makes sense.
