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Permit to Reduce Wastewater Discharges to the Ocean in San Diego Proposed by EPA, State

/in /by /WaterWorld (Tulsa, Okla.)

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board proposed a City of San Diego wastewater discharge permit to increase ocean water quality protection and water reuse. The proposed permit for the City’s Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant would ensure that all federal and state water quality standards are met.

In 2014, the City and environmental organizations signed an agreement for the City to implement a potable water reuse plan.

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Desalination: Why Tapping Seawater Has Slowed to a Trickle in California

/in /by /KQED (San Francisco)by David Gorn Mentioned: Carlsbad Desalination Plant

Once thought to be the wave of the future, turning seawater into drinking water is proving to be a tough sell in California. Desalination of ocean water has long held promise, but the dream of sticking a straw in the ocean and getting unlimited clean water by simply opening the spigot of technology — that’s looking less and less likely here.

Scarcely a decade ago, when “desal” was relatively new to the state and optimism was high, there were 22 different proposals for plants up and down the California coast.

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Sacramento Region Sees One of Wettest Octobers on Record

/in /by /FOX40 (Sacramento)by Lonnie Wong

Rainfall totals in October in the Sacramento area have reached 4 and one-third inches, a whopping 493 percent above normal. But that doesn’t mean California’s five year drought is over. “One good wet month does not a drought buster make,” said Doug Carlson, spokesperson for the Department of Water Resources.

Although in the past a wet October is followed by a wet winter, long-range forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aren’t betting on it. All that rain isn’t affecting California reservoirs much since the ground is so dry that it is absorbing most of the rain.

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Reservoir Levels Rise In California With Record October Rainfall

/in /by /Capital Public Radio (Sacramento)by Amy Quinton
Rains have drenched Northern California, where most of the state’s largest reservoirs are located. The state had the second wettest October since the Department began keeping records in 1921.
“We are almost 400 percent of the normal amount of rain in October here in the north and even the San Joaquin and Tulare regions are well above their averages as well,” says Doug Carlson with the California Department of Water Resources. “But if history tells us anything it’s don’t predict what the weather is going to be two or three weeks from now.”
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Study Blames High Temperatures For Low 2015 Snowpack

/in /by /CBS (San Francisco)

The western United States set records for low winter snowpack levels in 2015, and a new report blames high temperatures rather than low precipitation levels, according to a new study.

Greenhouse gases appear to be a major contributor to the high temperatures, according to the study published Monday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Scientists looked at snow-measurement sites in California, Oregon, Washington, western Nevada and western Idaho. They found that in 2015, more than 80 percent of those sites experienced record low snowpack levels as a result of much warmer-than-average temperatures.

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Encinitas City Council Candidate Mark Muir

/in /by /Del Mar Timesby Chris Saur Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority
Quoted: Mark Muir

Encinitas City Council candidate Mark Muir, who is running for reelection after five years on the Council, has truly been serving the public for his entire adult life.

A native San Diegan, Muir was a career firefighter who eventually rose to the rank of fire chief for the city of Encinitas. In his five years on the Council, he has not accepted the retirement salary because “I’m retired and have the time to dedicate myself to protecting, preserving and promoting our wonderful city.”

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OPINION: Ignored Problems Facing San Diego’s 79th Assembly District

/in /by /The San Diego Voice

The real water crisis in California is water management. Two northern California reservoirs have been delayed for a decade or more. The citizens living near the proposed reservoirs want the jobs they will provide. California taxpayers have funded Water Bonds almost every two years since 1970 (40 years) but still no new northern California reservoirs.

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Power Company to Remove Oil Pipeline

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Phil Diehl

An undersea oil pipeline that for more than 50 years supplied Carlsbad’s Encina power plant with fuel and helped keep the lights on across San Diego County soon will be history.

NRG/Cabrillo Power has applied to the California Coastal Commission for permission to remove the 20-inch-diameter steel-and-concrete pipeline that extends out from beneath the power plant on Carlsbad Boulevard more than half a mile into the ocean at a depth of roughly 60 feet.

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California State Considers New Rules For Waste Water Recycling

/in /by /Capital Public Radio (Sacramento)by Daniel Potter
California is moving forward with rules for how water districts can turn what goes down your toilet back into drinking water. State regulators are taking comments on a kind of water recycling where wastewater sits in a lake before being treated. Next up might be a way to skip the wait. The state already has rules in place for groundwater recharge – where wastewater goes in an aquifer and later comes out for drinking water. Randy Barnard heads the recycled-water unit for the State Water Resources Control Board. He says both aquifers and surface reservoirs act as ‘environmental buffers,’ killing pathogens and diluting chemicals.
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BLOG: ‘The Blob’ Is Back: What Warm Ocean Mass Means for Weather, Wildlife

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Matt Weiser

The blob is back. Since 2014, a mass of unusually warm water has hovered and swelled in the Pacific Ocean off the West Coast of North America, playing havoc with marine wildlife, water quality and the regional weather. Earlier this year, weather and oceanography experts thought it was waning. But no: The Blob came back, and it is again in position off the coast, threatening to smother normal coastal weather and ecosystem behavior. The Blob isn’t exactly to blame for California’s drought, though it certainly aggravated the problem.

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