Months after a judge ruled the City of San Diego is overcharging some water customers, the city has yet to pay up, or make changes to its rates.
Attorneys say the delay is costing taxpayers millions in penalty fees.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria on Tuesday signed off on a loan with the Environmental Protection Agency to fix up the city’s aging storm drain system.
The loan will allow for up to $733 million to be invested in stormwater infrastructure projects over the next five years. It’s one of the biggest infrastructure investments in recent years. The mayor’s signature kicked off the first installment of $225 million.
The loan will fund more than 80 projects.
“Our storm drain system is largely underground and out of sight, but the implications of this aging infrastructure failing are massive – from serious flooding in our neighborhoods to pollution of our bays and the ocean,” Gloria said in a statement. “While replacing storm drains and upgrading pump stations doesn’t capture the public’s attention like fixing potholes, these major investments in critical infrastructure are incredibly important to our neighborhoods and quality of life.”
Three San Marcos families invested their time and effort into transforming their front yards into beautiful water-efficient designs. Their hard work has paid off in lower water bills and being named the winners of the 2022 Vallecitos Water District Landscape Makeover Contest.
The Olivenhain Municipal Water District received the WateReuse Association of California’s 2022 award for Recycled Water Community Outreach. The award was presented at WateReuse’s annual conference in San Francisco.
Californians should brace for another year of La Niña as the stubborn climate pattern in the tropical Pacific is expected to persist for a third consecutive year, forecasters say.
The latest outlook, published Thursday by the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center, has increased the chances of La Niña sticking around through November to 91%, a near certainty. The pattern may also linger into winter, with an 80% chance of La Niña from November to January and a 54% chance from January to March.
On October 13, 1893, Major John Wesley Powell, celebrated explorer, geologist and Civil War veteran, addressed delegates of the Second Irrigation Congress in Los Angeles, declaring to the capitalists, politicians and boosters attending (and whose main agenda was to develop the arid West), “What matters it whether I am popular or unpopular? I tell you, gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply these lands.” Powell’s blunt prophetic statement did not win support. The delegates booed him off the stage.
In the parched Colorado River basin, water managers are turning over every stone looking for ways to keep the taps flowing. Now, they’re finding more water in some unusual places – shower drains and toilet flushes.
At a sprawling sewage treatment plant in Carson, California, the occasional breeze delivers a pungent whiff of a reminder of how used water becomes “reused.” Here, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is planting the seeds for a massive new facility, where a multi-billion-dollar installation could help recycle wastewater and keep drinking supply flowing for the agency’s 19 million customers.
Water cuts could be coming to the Golden State.
“Right now there are currently no cuts in California, however, it’s being discussed,” said Robert Schettler, Public Information Officer for the Imperial Irrigation District.
California is negotiating whether or not to voluntarily conserve hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water due to the drought that’s stressing the Colorado River and its reservoir – Lake Mead.
California’s drought regulators have lost a major lawsuit that could undermine their legal authority to stop farms and cities from pulling water from rivers and streams.
With California in its third punishing year of a historic drought, an appeals court ruled Monday that the State Water Resources Control Board lacks the power to interfere with so-called “senior” water rights holders and curtail their diversions of water from rivers.
The case stems from orders imposed by the state board in 2015, during the previous drought, when it halted farms and cities throughout the Central Valley from taking water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.
Raúl Monterroso of San Fernando knows that he can do little to help the struggling garden patio in front of his house. After all, he takes the new water restrictions seriously.
“Here, everything is dry, we have the entire irrigation system closed, my poor wife is crying over her plants,” said the Guatemala native, who stopped watering the grass on June 1 when instructions to cut outdoor watering to once a week were issued.
