More than a year after instituting the strictest water conservation orders Los Angeles has ever seen, the L.A. Department of Water and Power announced Monday that it was loosening watering rules for its 4 million customers. Effective immediately, all Angelenos can return to three-day-a-week watering schedules after being placed on two-day-a-week limits in June 2022, the agency said.
Wiest Lake has reopened to the public for recreational activities, the county of Imperial and Imperial County Department of Public Works announced in a press release on Monday afternoon, July 31. The county is thanking the Imperial Irrigation District administration and staff for its collective efforts in restoring water flow to the lake.
Free water use surveys offered through the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California provide both residential and commercial customers with recommendations to improve landscape and indoor water use efficiency. The surveys are available throughout Southern California, including San Diego County.
For much of the last 23 years, the Colorado River has been ravaged by unrelenting dryness, its reservoirs falling to their lowest levels since they were filled. New research shows that global warming is a major culprit, shrinking the river’s flow and robbing the region of a vast amount of water.
A team of scientists at UCLA estimated that from 2000 to 2021, rising temperatures led to the loss of about 32.5 million acre-feet of water in the Colorado River Basin, more than the entire storage capacity of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir.
Phoenix sizzled through its 31st consecutive day of at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) and other parts of the country grappled Sunday with record temperatures after a week that saw significant portions of the U.S. population subject to extreme heat.
The National Weather Service said Phoenix climbed to a high of 111 F (43.8 Celsius) before the day was through.
Five years from now, if all goes to plan, Arizona will have conserved 5 million acre-feet of water.
That’s enough to fill about 2.5 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Or about 70% of what the state is estimated to use in a year, from all sources.
Or a little less than double Arizona’s annual Colorado River allotment (that is, if we were getting our full allocation, which hasn’t happened in a while).
The drought-stricken Colorado River is in critical condition. Almost two years ago, the federal government declared the first ever shortage on the river, triggering cuts to water supplies in the Southwest. Today, the river remains unsustainably low. The Colorado is the lifeblood of the region. It waters some of the country’s fastest growing cities, nourishes some of our most fertile fields, and powers $1.4 trillion dollars in annual economic activity. The river runs more than 1,400 miles, from headwaters in the Rockies to its delta in northern Mexico where it ends in a trickle.
Floods and their consequences are a reality for many worldwide, including those living in California. This reality is evidenced by pictures of people stranded on roofs surrounded by water, people paddling down water-filled streets in makeshift boats, and farm fields and orchards covered in standing water. However, there is also growing acceptance that floods are natural, recurring events that have positive aspects, especially where they support migratory waterfowl, enhance fisheries, and sustain wetlands and their high diversity of organisms (Mount et al 2023).
The Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors took a hard look at their On-Farm Efficiency Conservation Program (On-Farm) in the hopes that they can become more efficient at providing water efficiency savings for farmers.
IID Senior Program Manager Ben Brock, along with Water Department Manager Tina Shields, updated the Board of Directors on the lengthy and complicated process that the On-Farm program currently has perform in order to determine how much to pay farmers for the water they conserved during the IID Board of Directors meeting on Wednesday, July 26.
Part-time Windansea resident Brad Owens recently experienced a one-two punch that some others in La Jolla can empathize with. First, his water bills skyrocketed as much as 12-fold, even in a time when he wasn’t in San Diego. Then he learned his sewer rate for the coming year will be based on the water rate from that time, so his sewer bill will be 10 times its normal amount.
But perhaps more frustrating for Owens is the lack of information available about the policies and procedures of the San Diego Public Utilities Department, which handles water issues, and what can be done about unexplained rate spikes.
