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.
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.
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.
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.
The highly anticipated and overdue re-opening of San Vicente Reservoir – San Diego County’s most popular recreational reservoir – continues to be held up for the same unresolved issue; cables that attach the marina’s two docks to land. Shocking, isn’t it? A project that involved raising the dam 117 vertical feet (the tallest dam raise of its type in the entire world), construction of an entire new marina and parking lot, a 900 foot long launch ramp that is 114 feet wide, new concession building, office buildings, restrooms, pump stations and more…and they still can’t get the docks tied to land correctly.
When engineer Bruce Townsend walks around this hot and dusty construction site in El Centro, it is not the massive gas-fired power plant nearby that catches his imagination. His eyes are planted firmly on the future of energy — and the low-slung metal building that will house it.
“This is really going to take off,” Townsend said. Townsend was referring to a nearly $38 million battery, the largest battery of its kind in the western U.S. He was the venture’s original project manager.
At today’s 2 p.m. meeting of the Helix Water District Board (7811 University Ave., La Mesa), directors will consider addition of fees and other changes at Lake Jennings, including adding kayak rentals and a tee-pee rental venue at the campground. These are the latest improvements proposed by a committee led by director Joel Scalzitti. As a result, the lake that some board members sought to close due to budget shortfalls is now operating at a profit.
California may be in its fifth year of drought, but on Tuesday, state water regulators effectively turned back the clock to 2013.
MICHAEL GEORGE HAS called the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta “highly important, highly complex, highly compromised.” George serves as Delta watermaster, a position created as part of the Delta Reform Act of 2009 to administer water rights in the Delta, where there are some 2,800 separate water diversions.
A state board’s proposal to help fish populations by increasing water flows down the Merced River would hurt the local ag industry, according to a new report done for the Merced Irrigation District. If the State Water Resource Control Board’s proposed Bay-Delta Plan is approved, the report predicts Merced County’s economy would shrink by up to $231 million. “This magnitude of change in long-term surface water supply reliability could lead to a structural change in the agriculture section,” the report said. “Such a drastic reduction could likely result in a countywide contraction in the agricultural sector.”
