There weren’t any smiles coming from panelists while addressing attendees at the Colorado River Water User Association’s annual conference at Caesars Palace on Thursday. The depletion of water in the Colorado River Basin has water officials alarmed, and they shared the facts.
Utah saw a snowy start to December, which is an encouraging sign for a state experiencing ongoing drought. But experts say it’s still early, and even if Utah has an above-average winter, it’ll take several strong years to make up for a multi-year water deficit.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has declared a regional drought emergency and called on water agencies to immediately reduce their use of all imported supplies. The reason? Drought conditions are limiting imported water supplies from the State Water Project in Northern California and the Colorado River.
Key questions resurfaced Thursday at a conference of Colorado River water administrators and users from seven U.S. states, Native American tribes and Mexico who are served by the shrinking river stricken by drought and climate change. Who will bear the brunt of more water supply cuts, and how quickly?
The San Diego County Water Authority‘s board has unanimously approved $275 million in upgrades to the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant to protect marine life.
New seawater intake and discharge facilities have been in the plans since construction of the plant began a decade ago. Originally the plant shared intake with the nearby Encino generating station, but that has since been dismantled.
Outside of Mark Larson’s home are 12 acres of blossoming Bird of Paradise. Flowers have grown on his farm since the 1960s. “Once you get used to the country and all this open space it’s hard to go back to the city,” said Larson. However, he says agriculture is disappearing from San Diego County, due in part to the cost of and access to water.
The annual conference of the Colorado River Water Users Association was founded and is held in Las Vegas, at Caesars Palace. This year, it sold out for the first time, but there’s no question why: the Colorado River is in trouble. The conference focuses on use of the river by the seven states, Mexico and tribes —all of whom take more water from the river than is refilled each year.
A celebrity-studded, water-strapped region on the western edge of Los Angeles County has cleared a major hurdle for the construction of a water purification facility that officials say will help reduce local dependence on supplies imported from Northern California. The board of the Las Virgenes-Triunfo Joint Powers Authority this week approved a final impact report for the proposed Pure Water Project at 30800 Agoura Road in Agoura Hills — a facility that would purify the millions of gallons of treated wastewater that are used for irrigation or flushed into the Pacific Ocean.
San Diego County and the rest of Southern California are under a new drought emergency announced this week. Local waters officials are encouraging conservation but say our local water supply is stable.
The cost of desalinated water in San Diego is about to dramatically increase, as Poseidon scrambles to meet state environmental regulations for protecting fish and other marine life at its Carlsbad facility. An ongoing overhaul of the Claude “Bud” Lewis plant’s intake system is estimated to cost roughly $274 million, regional water officials announced Thursday.
