The Fallbrook Public Utility District board approved an update for fees FPUD charges for new development or other new service. The 5-0 board vote Dec. 5 adopted miscellaneous engineering service and other related fees. The fees are based on the cost of materials, labor time and equipment used to perform the work. “Each fee is based on the actual typical time,” said FPUD senior engineer Aaron Cook.
The word “crisis” ended a Colorado River conference that drew representatives from Southwest U.S. states, tribes and Mexico to Las Vegas this week.
A top Interior Department official closed the Colorado River Water Users Association conference on Friday calling the next three months critical for agreements to deal with drought and climate change.
One deadline is next Tuesday, when federal water managers close public comment on an effort expected to yield a plan by summer to use at least 15% less river water split among seven Western U.S. states, 30 Native American tribes and Mexico.
Students in the Chula Vista Elementary School District learned about the science of hydroelectric power during their most recent Innovation LIVE! event. The online lesson, “Water + Wheel = Power!” was led by CVESD’s Hydro Station on December 2.
Conservation groups are going to court to try to bring back a flowing river in Bakersfield, where for years so much water has been diverted in canals to supply farms that the Kern River is usually reduced to a dry, sandy riverbed.
A coalition of California tribes and environmental justice groups filed a civil rights complaint Friday against the State Water Resources Control Board, charging it with discriminatory water management practices that it says have led to the ecological decline of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Chinook salmon haven’t spawned in the McCloud River for more than 80 years. But last summer, thousands of juveniles were born in the waters of this remote tributary, miles upstream of Shasta Dam.
For decades the San Francisco Estuary, which includes San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, has been routinely described as “the largest estuary on the west coast of North America.” This appeared in publications of all types, presumably to emphasize the importance and unique nature of the estuary. But this claim is wrong. While the San Francisco Estuary is quite large, with many unique features, the Salish Sea Estuary is the largest by far.
A drought emergency has been declared in Southern California amid dwindling water supplies in the region. NBC 7’s Audra Stafford has details on how San Diego County fairs in this predicament.
As parched California receives much needed rain and snow this winter, some local water officials are calling on state leaders to invest in new infrastructure projects that will store freshwater for inevitable dry times to come. The worst megadrought in 1,200 years is devastating the water supply in the Western United States.
The Colorado River’s largest reservoirs stand nearly three-quarters empty, and federal officials now say there is a real danger the reservoirs could drop so low that water would no longer flow past Hoover Dam in two years. That dire scenario — which would cut off water supplies to California, Arizona and Mexico — has taken center stage at the annual Colorado River conference in Las Vegas this week, where officials from seven states, water agencies, tribes and the federal government are negotiating over how to decrease usage on a scale never seen before.
