You are now in San Diego County category.

Nearly Six Weeks After Oroville Dam Crisis, Authorities Lift Evacuation Advisory

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Joseph Serna

More than five weeks after erosion damage at Lake Oroville forced residents to flee to high ground, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday announced it had lifted an evacuation advisory. More than 100,000 Butte County residents were given an hour’s notice to evacuate on Feb. 12, when officials feared that a concrete weir on the reservoir could collapse and send a 30-foot wall of water into the valley below. The order took residents by surprise because Department of Water Resources officials had repeatedly assured them that erosion damage to the reservoir’s main and emergency spillways posed no threat.

Full Story

Flood Control Trumps Tunnels

/in /by /Stockton Recordby Alex Breitler

Californians are more likely to favor beefing up the state’s flood control infrastructure than building Gov. Jerry Brown’s Delta tunnels, according to the latest poll from the Public Policy Institute of California. Sixty-one percent of all adults think it is “very important” that the state spend more money on flood control, in the wake of the near disaster at Oroville Dam. Fifty-one percent consider the tunnels “very important,” with the $15 billion proposal enjoying much higher levels of support in Southern California (64 percent) than in the Central Valley (40 percent) or the Bay Area (49 percent).

Full Story

Shrinking Salton Sea Threatens wildlife

/in /by /Redding Record Searchlightby Linda Aldrich

Over the years, many of the birds that visit Shasta County have found a migratory fuel stop in the richness of the Salton Sea, a short hour’s drive from Palm Springs. The flood that re-created it must have been of almost Biblical proportions.  In 1905-07, canal levees were breached, sending the entire flow of the Colorado River into a vast basin – the bed of the ancient, dry Lake Cahuilla. Thus the modern Salton Sea was formed.

Full Story

Requiring Lead Testing Of Children In California Makes Sense

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune

Exposure to lead at an early age has been linked to cognitive impairment and behavioral problems, which is why the stories about officials allegedly covering up excessive lead in the water supply of Flint, Michigan, became a national scandal. But an alarming 2016 Reuters investigation documenting children’s exposure to lead in 21 states, including California, never got the attention it deserved. In Flint, 5 percent of children met the Centers for Disease Control elevated lead exposure threshold of 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood, double the national average.

Full Story

Southern California Is Drowning In Drought-Proofing Projects

/in /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

As California pulls out of the drought, expect to see a weird thing: water agencies opposing plans to help the state get through future droughts. Water agencies are working on dozens of projects to boost Southern California’s water supply. Combined, these projects could provide enough drinking water for several million people. But many of the agencies are simultaneously boosting their own projects and arguing that others shouldn’t be built – partly out of a fear that ratepayers will only tolerate so many projects, and partly because of politics and territorialism.

Full Story

Desal Loses Urgency Following Wet Winter

/in /by /San Diego Union-Tribuneby Thomas Elias, Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Here’s a cold, wet reality: the more water in California’s reservoirs, the less urgency there is to build new ocean-water desalination plants that became a major talking point during the state’s long, parched years of drought, an ultra-dry period some folks insist has still not ended despite months of heavy rains. Those record or near-record rains have replenished everything reservoirs lost over the last few years of drought, and sometimes more.

Full Story

Sierra Runoff to Refill LA’s Silver Lake Ahead of Schedule

/in /by /U.S. News & World Report

Residents of the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles will get their lake back months early, thanks to the massive Eastern Sierra snowpack. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power drained the 96-acre open-air reservoir in 2015 for construction to divert drinking water to a new, covered reservoir that complies with updated storage regulations. The department had planned to begin refilling Silver Lake Reservoir in May, using local water sources in a process that would have taken about 12 months.

Full Story

Sacramento’s Rainfall Year In Top 10 When It Comes To Wettest Ever

/in /by /Sacramento Beeby Bill Lindelof

The 2016-17 rainfall season is the ninth wettest on record for Sacramento – and more precipitation is on the way Friday. Nearly 30 inches of rainfall has fallen in Sacramento, 29.93 inches to be exact. Northern California rainfall has swollen rivers, filled reservoirs and ended drought conditions. “The main reason it’s been so wet is that we’ve had double the atmospheric river events that we typically see in a water year,” said Brooke Bingaman, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

Full Story

Another Reservoir Overflows As Northern California Receives More Rain

/in /by /Los Angeles Timesby Joseph Serna

The milestones marking California’s wettest year in decades continued to pile up Thursday, as state water officials said a reservoir high up in the Sierra Nevada has exceeded capacity for the first time in 21 years. Lake Davis began overflowing onto its earth-and-rock spillway Wednesday after a couple of light rainstorms this week, Department of Water Resources officials said. “While DWR does not anticipate problems downstream of the reservoir near Portola, flows below the lake could exceed what residents, businesses and anglers have experienced over the past three decades,” the agency said Thursday.

Full Story

LA’s Metropolitan Water District Overcharges, San Diego Leaders Say

/in /by /Times of San Diegoby Chris Jennewein Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority
Quoted: Mark Muir

San Diego County is calling on the powerful Metropolitan Water District to return what local leaders say is $250 million in illegal charges over a number of years. The Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution Wednesday supporting efforts by the San Diego County Water Authority to recover money the authority says was taken by a combination of overcharging, overspending and excessive borrowing.

Full Story