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California Homeowner Drought Relief Bill Passes Senate

/in /by /The Fresno Bee

A bill to let drought-stricken homeowners seek state grants or low-interest loans for water and wastewater projects has passed the state Senate and is now in the Assembly.

Assembly Bill 1588, authored by Assemblyman Devon Mathis, R-Visalia, passed the Senate unanimously on Wednesday. “This is an important measure for the Central Valley and I greatly appreciate the bipartisan support it has received,” Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, said in a statement. The bill now goes back the Assembly, where it passed 76-0 in June, for a concurrence vote following amendments to the bill.

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Smithsonian Exhibit Comes to Western Science Center

/in /by /The Friday Flyer

A new Smithsonian Institution exhibit, highlighting the importance of water, made its national debut at the Western Science Center in Hemet on August 13, where it will be on display until November 27, 2016. The exhibit, entitled “H2O Today,” is organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit Service (SITES). The Western Science Center is a Smithsonian affiliate. Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD) is a co-sponsor of the exhibit, along with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

 

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Riverside Could Increase Sale of Unneeded Water

/in /by /The Press-Enterprise (Riverside)by Alicia Robinson

Riverside’s utility hopes to make $3.5 million this year on a deal to sell water to a nearby water district. Last year, the city sold a small amount to customers of the Western Municipal Water District. Officials with Riverside Public Utilities and Western say the deal benefits both agencies’ customers by helping Riverside make up lost revenue and saving Western money. Under the pact, Riverside would sell up to 5,000 acre-feet of water to Western between September and February 2017. An acre-foot is about enough water to serve two households for a year.

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OPINION: Desalination Plant’s Critics Are Partly to Blame for Expensive Water

/in /by /Voice of San Diegoby Kevin Dayton Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Environmental activist Marco Gonzalez was irked to see the San Diego County Taxpayers Association recently give a Golden Watchdog award to the Carlsbad Desalination Plant. Besides arguing that the region should simply use less water, he argues that desalinated seawater is more expensive than imported water from the San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado River. It’s surprising to see an environmentalist prefer imported water over desalinated seawater. Extracting water from the Delta and Colorado River has negative impact on fish and birds, and some of that water is lost on its way to San Diego County through evaporation and seepage.

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Call for new Delta Tunnels EIR

/in /by /Central Valley Business Times (Stockton)

The draft environmental impact report for the governor’s tunnels fails to disclose and analyze adverse environmental impacts, says a coalition of ten environmental groups. The draft also fails to develop or even consider a reasonable range of alternatives to increase water flows in the California Delta, the groups say in a letter. The governor’s tunnels project as it stands violates both the National Environmental Policy Act and the California Environmental Quality Act, say the groups in a letter Thursday to Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell.

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Video: Ocean Could Rise 6 Feet in San Diego by 2100

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Daniel Wheaton

San Diegans are blessed with miles of beautiful coast and beaches, but all of that may be vastly different in a little more than one human lifetime. Children born today may see a San Diego with six more feet of sea by the time they are 84. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps track of various climate scenarios, and the six-foot-rise projection is the more dire calculated. Despite San Diego’s climate action plan, few communities are making concrete plans to deal with a future with more water, thanks to melting ice at the poles.

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OPINION: Change the Way California Farms for Water Safety

/in /by /Los Angeles Daily News

When it comes to the biggest environmental problems — global warming, ongoing pollution of the water we drink and irrigate our crops with — it’s always disheartening to hear scientists say that looming disaster is practically impossible to prevent. Makes it hard to work up the energy to conceive the cure if all hope is lost.

 

 

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Conservation Group Concerned Over Easing of Water Restrictions

/in /by /ABC 7 News (San Francisco)by Eric Thomas

Now that some of the tough water restrictions in California are being eased, a conservation group is sounding the alarm that we might be slipping back into our wasteful old ways. At the Pacific Institute, an environmental research group based in Oakland call it drought fatigue; and define it this way. “Feeling sort of overwhelmed and not knowing what sort of actions you can take and really not knowing when you can stop taking it,” Pacific Institute spokesperson Heather Cooley said.

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BLOG: Five Surprising Winners During California’s Drought

/in /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Tara Lohan Mentioned: Carlsbad Desalination Plant

Five years of drought in California have meant raging wildfires, dying trees, falling groundwater, dry wells, threatened wildlife and economic losses. It’s hard to imagine that there could be much to celebrate, but it turns out there are some people who are benefiting, even unintentionally, if you look closely enough.

Times of hardship often spur innovation and collaboration, and California has definitely seen some of that, along with some other benefits.

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OPINION: California Needs Drought Proof Water

/in /by /The Orange County Register

Although it’s not exactly news that California could use some more water, new research has revealed just how extensive the need has become – and at what cost for the state economy. The good news is, new research of a much different kind has revealed the answer: affordable, large-scale ocean desalination.

California’s water problem is so extensive that only a widely scoped solution will do. In a new UC Davis study reported by CNBC, water shortages this year were determined to threaten a whopping $550 million cost to the state’s agricultural industry, plus over 1,800 lost jobs.

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