The decision comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted the statewide 15% water savings mandate.
Although several water restrictions have been lifted, officials said they still don’t want to see water wasters in the city.
They urge people not to water more than three times a week, regardless of the conditions.
An $8.2 million award for the Colorado River Basin’s Imperial Dam was announced on Wednesday.
Congressman Raul Ruiz joined Senator Alex Padilla and Deputy Secretary of the Interior Tommy Beaudreau.
Including Senior Advisor to the President and White House Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu and Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton to announce the award.
For most of California’s history, a record snowpack in the Sierra has been like money in the bank — filling reservoirs and keeping rivers healthy and flowing year-round. But in this era of climate change, there’s a real concern that some of that precious water could slip through our fingers.
“If we get a very warm rain, or a series of warm rains — if we get an extended period of warm weather, that’s going to trigger the snowmelt and the flooding potential for the river,” said Central Valley rancher Don Cameron.
Californians gave their irrigation systems the winter off in much of 2023 thanks to above-average precipitation. As the weather warms, the U.S. EPA encourages everyone to perform a maintenance check in April as part of its “Sprinkler Spruce Up” effort.
California water officials reported on Monday that preliminary data showed the water contained in the state’s April snowpack is near historic levels.
Officials previewed the results after a morning measurement south of Lake Tahoe, where the snowpack exceeded 10.5 feet deep at one of California’s 260 snow measurement locations.
A fund to help San Diego County residents pay their water bills still has $2.5 million sitting unclaimed. According to leadership of the nonprofit Metropolitan Area Advisory Committee on Anti-Poverty, or MAAC, which manages the fund, many people may not realize they qualify for assistance.
“We don’t want to leave money on the table when there are people that absolutely need these funds right now,” said Arnulfo Manriquez, MAAC’s president, who oversees the Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program.
As early as midnight, scores of Mexicali residents with U.S. citizenship or legal status line up at the port of entry. They cross into Calexico, walking past darkened storefronts, and gather near a 24-hour donut shop. Before dawn, they board buses for fields across the Imperial Valley.
Every year, some 15,000 people legally cross the border to work on farms in the region. In the winter, they join local residents in harvesting as much as 90% of the nation’s vegetables.
On Monday, California water officials slogged through deep snow 7,000 feet above sea level, west of Lake Tahoe, to affirm what everyone already knew: A series of Pacific storms has generated record-level amounts of precipitation, filling reservoirs, inundating low-lying towns and fields and threatening more disastrous flooding as the Sierra snowpack melts.
Its negative aspects aside, the immense amount of rain and snow is welcome relief from drought that has plagued the state for the past three years.
Public health officials have long known that sewage-ladened coastal waters threaten the health of swimmers and surfers. However, new research shows that this common form of water pollution might also pose health risks to those who stay ashore.
Bacteria and pollutants found in sewage-tainted water can be ejected into the atmosphere via sea spray aerosols—tiny droplets that form when waves break—according to a study published in Environmental Science and Technology.
Lake Hodges Dam has received the state’s worst possible safety rating, leaving the city with another delay in making repairs some say are decades overdue.
Last month, the state’s Division of Safety of Dams downgraded its condition from poor to unsatisfactory due to seismic issues, rating the hazard “extremely high.” The 105-year-old city dam is at the end of its lifespan.
