When it comes to the view of desalination as a tool to drought-proof local water systems in California, 2022 has been a roller-coaster year. In May, the California Coastal Commission, a 12-member appointed board responsible for overseeing the state’s 1,100 miles of coastline, rejected on environmental grounds a $1.4 billion desalination facility proposed for Huntington Beach.
Paloma Aguirre has fought to clean up the sewage-plagued waters of Imperial Beach for the better part of the last two decades — first as an activist and most recently as the city’s first elected woman of Mexican descent. The city’s newly minted mayor says her highest priority next year will be working with officials in Baja California to stem the pollution that routinely spills over the border and floats up the coastline.
The first of two Pacific storms will push into San Diego County on Tuesday night and likely drop a half-inch or more of rain at and near the coast and slightly more in the foothills and mountains by early Wednesday, says the National Weather Service. The rain represents the tail of a much larger system that is soaking the Bay Area and is expected to bring heavy snow to the Sierra Nevada, benefiting many of the state’s reservoirs.
San Diego’s southernmost beaches are blighted by sewage that spills into the cross-border Tijuana River and flows to the ocean. Before 2022, the best available coastal water testing technology took so long to furnish results that public health officials couldn’t surmise how safe the water was until days after visitors swam in it.
The city of San Diego and East County leaders have resolved a months-long dispute over a planned water recycling project, heading off a potentially expensive court fight over what to do with the plant’s waste.
Scientists have discovered that the pace of groundwater depletion in California’s Central Valley has accelerated dramatically during the drought as heavy agricultural pumping has drawn down aquifer levels to new lows and now threatens to devastate the underground water reserves. The research shows that chronic declines in groundwater levels, which have plagued the Central Valley for decades, have worsened significantly in recent years, with particularly rapid declines occurring since 2019.
On a crisp day this fall I drove southeast from Grand Junction, Colorado, into the Uncompahgre Valley, a rich basin of row crops and hayfields. A snow line hung like a bowl cut around the upper cliffs of the Grand Mesa, while in the valley some farmers were taking their last deliveries of water, sowing winter wheat and onions. I turned south at the farm town of Delta onto Route 348, a shoulder-less two-lane road lined with irrigation ditches and dent corn still hanging crisp on their browned stalks. The road crossed the Uncompahgre River, and it was thin, nearly dry.
With climate change and drought, the state of California is incentivizing not using farmland or fallowing it. The move comes as irrigation in some areas is damaging residential wells. Katie Staack farms 3,500 acres of almonds in Stanislaus County. She is one of the hundreds interested in the newly created LandFlex program. “The program is really unique because it’s focused on wet water, making sure we have wet water for our communities and aquifers, our ecosystems and farms,” Aubrey Bettencourt said.
The outskirts of Kingman, Arizona, used to be a place where pilots would train and recreationists tested their all-terrain vehicles. The dry and empty landscape has since morphed into something much more green that supports pistachio and almond orchards, and garlic and potato fields in a climate similar to California’s Central Valley. The crops are fed by groundwater that also serves the city of Kingman.
More than $63 million in proposed federal funding was announced Tuesday to support nearly two dozen projects across the San Diego region.
Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, said in a statement that the Fiscal Year 2023 appropriations package that will deliver funding for 22 projects slated for the San Diego region will head next to both chambers of Congress for final passage.
Among the projects expected to receive funding in the package are:
— $3.45 million for the City of Oceanside‘s Loma Alta Creek Sewer Relocation, which will move a sewer main from a creek bed to a roadway to minimize environmental damage in the event of a sanitary sewer overflow.
— $3.45 million for the Smuggler’s Gulch Dredging Project, which will clear trash and sediment to protect downstream communities, and protect human and environmental health in the Tijuana River Watershed and coastal waters.
— $3.39 million for Borrego Water District‘s Borrego Spring Transmission Main, which will update the water distribution system and reduce water pipeline breaks.
— $3.06 million for the Valley Center Municipal Water District‘s Lilac Road Pipeline Replacement, which is aimed at reducing water loss and improving water conservation, among other benefits of the 60-year-old pipeline’s replacement.
