The promise of job security and work-life balance drew Fernando Gonzalez to become a water operator. Now that he’s worked as one for a few years, he sees his job as much more than fining people for using too much water. On a given day, he’s patrolling neighborhoods spanning from farmland to Malibu mansions, looking for evidence that residents are wasting water.
Rincon del Diablo Municipal Water District reports that it completed an initiative to provide nearly $1.2 million in rebates to customers and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the program.
In the fall, rice fields in the Sacramento Valley usually shine golden brown as they await harvesting. This year, however, many fields were left covered with bare dirt. “It’s a disaster,” said rice farmer Don Bransford. “This has never happened. Never. And I’ve been farming since 1980.”
More than 500 households in the rural Arizona desert are set to be without running water starting January 1, 2023, as first reported by NBC News. The homes, located in Rio Verde Foothills—an affluent, unincorporated community in the state’s Maricopa County, were built without complying to Arizona’s usual 100-year water supply requirement.
Snowcapped mountains not only look majestic — They’re vital to a delicate ecosystem that has existed for tens of thousands of years. Mountain water runoff and snowmelt flows down to streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans — and today, around a quarter of the world depends on these natural “water towers” to replenish downstream reservoirs and groundwater aquifers for urban water supplies, agricultural irrigation, and ecosystem support.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) have released a final environmental impact statement for a set of proposed projects to mitigate transborder water pollution between San Diego and Tijuana.
Five small islands roughly the size of backyard swimming pools float next to the concrete riverbank of Bubbly Creek, a stretch of the Chicago River named for the gas that once rose to the surface after stockyards dumped animal waste and byproducts into the waterway. Clumps of short, native grasses and plants, including sedges, swamp milkweed, and queen of the prairie, rise from a gravel-like material spread across each artificial island’s surface.
The nation’s drinking water and wastewater systems are warning that a nationwide rail strike could snarl shipments of critical chemicals like chlorine and imperil their ability to provide safe drinking water and sewage services across the nation. The threat of a national freight rail strike spiked yesterday after the country’s largest rail union rejected a tentative deal with railroads that are critical to shipping chemicals needed for disinfecting drinking water and wastewater.
The San Diego County Water Authority has been named a Top Workplace for 2022 by The San Diego Union-Tribune – the second straight year the agency has been recognized. The newspaper’s honor roll is based solely on employee feedback through third-party surveys by Energage LLC, an employee engagement technology firm.
San Diego County Water Authority board member Lois Fong-Sakai has been elected secretary of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Fong-Sakai, who represents the City of San Diego on the Water Authority board, is a registered civil engineer in California and Nevada. She becomes the first Asian-American to service on the board of the Los Angeles-based water wholesaler serving nearly 19 million people in six counties.
