Just a block away from La Mesa’s downtown is a residential street lined with sweet vintage Craftsman and Spanish-style homes. Most have lawns in their front yards, but there are some unique gardens that show off the owners’ distinctive style. One of them belongs to Joy Andrea, a petite, retired phys ed teacher who spent her career at Sweetwater Union High School District.
At a special board meeting April 30, the Fallbrook Public Utility District and Eastern Municipal Water District celebrated switching water wholesalers in a move that allows Eastern to provide water service to FPUD. FPUD also recognized many community leaders who worked hard spreading the message of the benefits of detaching. They made phone calls, posted Measure A signs around town, ran ads, and created a campaign to inform people that made the switch go from a possibility into a reality.
The U.S. government is dedicating $60 million over the next few years to projects along the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico and West Texas to make the river more resilient in the face of climate change and growing demands.
The American Southwest recently experienced its driest period in 1,200 years. Storms in the winter of 2023 eased some of California’s extreme drought conditions, but officials stress that conservation should remain a way of life.
This page tracks hydrological conditions, precipitation, the Sierra snowpack and the largest reservoirs serving the state.
California’s reservoirs are not only vital to the state’s complex water systems, providing millions of people and the state’s agricultural economy with needed access to water; they’re also important gauges for how healthy the state is overall. This year’s at-capacity reservoirs have been a boon for a region besieged by drought over much of the past decade, but more work is needed to help ensure a plentiful and water-wise future for the most populous state in America.
Mexico City is parched.
After abysmally low amounts of rainfall over the last few years, the reservoirs of the Cutzamala water system that supplies over 20 percent of the Mexican capital’s 22 million residents’ usable water are running out.
The Delta Tunnel proposal exemplifies California’s political dysfunction. It will probably never get built, but it promises to dominate all discussions of major state and federal spending on water infrastructure for the next decade, preventing any other big ideas from getting the attention they merit.
After another wet winter, record rainfall has turned California green and replenished the state’s reservoirs, which had been perilously low during the worst days of the drought.
Lake Oroville, the state’s second-biggest reservoir, often serves as a rainfall barometer. As of Tuesday, Oroville was at 100% capacity, according to data from the state Department of Water Resources.
After years of pervasive declines, groundwater levels rose significantly in much of California last year, boosted by historic wet weather and the state’s expanding efforts to replenish depleted aquifers.
California’s vital groundwater reserves grew by a record 8.7 million acre-feet — twice the volume of giant Shasta Lake — in the official water year ended Sept. 30, the Department of Water Resources reported this week.
