Mother Nature is being very generous this year.
Record-setting rain totals this year means landowners and municipalities, alike, are enjoying some serious savings on their water bills.
In a press release Thursday, Denver Water said customers hadn’t used this little water in the month of June since 1969. And many reservoirs are full.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria joined with regional agriculture, business, water, and elected leaders on July 7 to oppose a potential $200 million water bill increase for ratepayers across San Diego County.
“The proposed action will have significant, long-term economic impacts to most households in San Diego County. Nearly every family and business will see an increase in their water rates,” Mayor Gloria said. “The cost of living is a continuous struggle for many San Diegans and these proposed rate increases are unacceptable.”
Ahead of next week’s controversial vote on the detachment of two North County water districts from the San Diego County Water Authority, several local leaders voiced their concern for how the proposed divorce could impact water rates.
The San Diego County Water Authority warned Wednesday that it could cost county water customers nearly $200 million over a decade if two rural districts detach from the authority.
In an email to county political leaders, Water Authority Board Chair Mel Katz said a proposed exit fee of $4.8 million a year for five years “isn’t close to covering the actual costs that will be shifted to residents elsewhere in the county.”
The Fallbrook Public Utility District and the Rainbow Municipal Water District are seeking to join the Eastern Municipal Water District in Riverside County in hopes of securing lower-cost water for farmers.
After a winter of historic rains, California’s reservoirs are filled to the brim. Rivers are supercharged—and have flooded much of the Central Valley. With the water came a deluge of news voicing worries that California is letting all that water wash into the sea after years of drought—and heralding the idea of capturing it to recharge our long-parched groundwater aquifers. The political will is strong: Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued three separate executive orders aimed at amping up recharge efforts.
Solar farms stretch out mile after mile along Interstate 10 around Palm Springs, creating one of the densest areas of solar development in North America in the heart of California’s Colorado Desert. But the area’s success in meeting the state and the nation’s renewable energy goals is running up against the Southwest’s biggest climate challenge: having enough water.
California lawmakers on Wednesday approved Gov. Gavin Newsom’s infrastructure package that aims to make it easier and faster to build renewable energy, water and transportation projects in the state. The State Senate gave the bills the final stamp of approval with bipartisan support on most of the measures. The package of bills aims to cut down on the process, paperwork and litigation time for infrastructure projects that are subject to California’s Environmental Quality Act.
The Cuyama Valley, the driest region in Santa Barbara County, is awash in discontent. The world’s largest carrot producers, newly subject to restrictions on over-pumping, are suing all other landowners over water rights, and legal fees are mounting. The Cuyama groundwater basin, which covers 380 square miles east of Santa Maria, overlapping with Kern, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura counties, is on the list of the state’s 21 basins in “critical overdraft.”
In the lowlands of the San Joaquin Valley, last winter’s torrential storms revived an ancient body of water drained and dredged decades ago, its clay lakebed transformed into a powerhouse of industrial agriculture. Rivers swollen with biblical amounts of rainfall overwhelmed the network of levees and irrigation canals that weave through the basin diverting water for farm and livestock use. Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River, was reborn, swallowing thousands of acres cultivated for tomatoes and cotton and vast orchards of almond and pistachio trees.
Drinking water from nearly half of U.S. faucets likely contains “forever chemicals” that may cause cancer and other health problems, according to a government study released Wednesday. The synthetic compounds known collectively as PFAS are contaminating drinking water to varying extents in large cities and small towns — and in private wells and public systems, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
