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California’s New Desalination Plant Wins International Award

/in /by /Breitbart (Los Angeles) by By Joel B. Pollak Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

“The Claude ‘Bud’ Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant has been honored with a Global Water Award as the Desalination Plant of the Year for 2016 by Global Water Intelligence, publisher of periodicals for the international water industry,” the San Diego County Water Authority said in a press release on Friday.

“The largest seawater desalination plant in the nation, it started commercial operations in December 2015 and is providing the San Diego region with a drought-proof water supply during one of the most severe droughts in California’s recorded history.”

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California Desperately Needs New Surface Storage

/in /by /The Sacramento Bee by By Aubrey Bettencourt

Californians deserve rational and complete answers to their questions: Why has our state failed to initiate a meaningful response to not just one or two, but three catastrophic droughts we’ve experienced over the last 45 years?

California simply needs more water. Its people, fish, wildlife, food producers and others – all have been harmed by delays in our response to periodic droughts and climate change. What was an inconvenience in 1973 and a severe shortfall in the 1980s became an economy-stopping, public-health-threatening assault on our state’s residents in 2012-15.

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El Niño Came, So Why Didn’t It Bring More Rain?

/in /by /The San Luis Obsipo Tribune

Loren Eiseley, the great humanist and naturalist, wrote, “If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in water. … Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air.”

Eiseley’s beautiful essay is correct on many levels. Water vapor in our atmosphere condenses into precipitation and releases latent heat that can have profound implications for severe weather in California. The warmer the atmosphere, the more water vapor it can hold.

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2 San Diego-Area Water Projects Win International Recognition

/in /by /Times of San Diegoby By Chris Jennewein Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

The $1 billion desalination plant in Carlsbad and San Diego’s innovative water recycling program both received international recognition earlier this week at a global water summit in Abu Dhabi.

The Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant was honored as the desalination plant of the year, and the City of San Diego’s Pure Water program was recognized as the water reuse project of the year. The awards came at the 2016 Global Water Summit in the capital of the United Arab Emirates on the Arabian Gulf.

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Lawsuit Accuses Regulators of Loosening Sacramento Delta Water Rules

/in /by /The Sacramento Bee by By Ryan Sabalow

Three environmentalist groups filed a lawsuit Friday alleging that to increase water flowing to farms and cities, state and federal regulators in the drought have repeatedly relaxed water-quality standards on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the detriment of its wild fish species.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco claims the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency failed to enforce the Clean Water Act.

 

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City of Santa Barbara Sets Record Straight on Desalination Misinformation

/in /by /KEYT (Santa Barbara)

The City of Santa Barbara released an update on a future possible agreement with the Montecito Water District for the sale of desalinated water.

In the press release, the City says: “In response to inaccurate information in today’s Santa Barbara News Press concerning the assertion of an agreement between the City of Santa Barbara and the Montecito Water District regarding the sale of desalinated water, the City would like to clarify that there has been no agreement reached on the sale of desalinated water to the Montecito Water District.”

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Optimistic “Beyond Drought” Report From Water Authority

/in /by /San Diego Reader Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Despite an ongoing drought, the San Diego County Water Authority is boasting in its annual report — released April 21 and titled “Beyond Drought” — that the region’s water supply is stable and in excess of current demand, despite mandatory conservation measures remaining in place.

“While some areas of the state suffered serious water supply shortages after four years of drought, the Water Authority and its member agencies had enough water to meet demands,” reads a statement from the authority’s board of directors accompanying the report.

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OPINION: Creating new sources of water

/in /by /Valley Road Runner (Valley Center)by Marie Waldron

Since agriculture in our region depends largely on imported water, I have long supported initiatives to increase local supplies, including the use of recycled water.

As many of you know, as a member of the Escondido City Council, I was an early supporter of a plan to use treated wastewater to irrigate citrus and avocado groves on the city’s outskirts.

This year I introduced Assembly Bill 2438 to help speed construction of recycled water pipelines along existing rights of way by streamlining costly, time consuming regulations that have delayed or prevented these projects statewide.

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OPINION: Must Fight Metropolitan Water’s Purchase of Islands

/in /by /Marin Independent Journal

Predictions that La Nia conditions may deepen the drought in California this winter would be more alarming if the results of a Field poll released last week had been different.

Fortunately, the poll showed an overwhelming majority of Californians continue to believe that the state faces an extremely serious water shortage and are continuing to conserve water. With two notable exceptions: Los Angeles and San Diego. They’re failing to do their part.

 

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Plan Would Pipe Alaska Water to California

/in /by /Associated Press (As Published by Capital Press - Salem, Ore.)

A Juneau entrepreneur is asking the state to approve his plan to collect fresh water from the Pacific Ocean south of Ketchikan and transport it to drought-stricken California.

Steven Bowhay’s application to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, which he filed four years ago, has gone through two public comment periods. The second ends Wednesday, The Ketchikan Daily News reported. Under Bowhay’s River Recycler System plan, a system of buoys, anchors and sheeting would be deployed to trap fresh water on the ocean surface in Boca de Quadra, an inlet between the Ketchikan and Canadian border.

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