Construction has started on a $950 million water purification plant in Santee that will provide enough drinking water to serve an estimated 500,000 people and businesses in East County.
The East County Advanced Water Purification Program will daily produce up to 11.5 million gallons of potable water which amounts to about 30% of the drinking water used by East County residents and businesses.
When undertaking a WaterSmart landscape renovation, strive to continuously feed as much organic matter as possible to the landscape soil to keep it healthy. Start first with compost and mulch to jump-start the process. Eventually, your plants will feed themselves with their own leaf litter. Organic matter feeds microbes living in the soil that make soil fluffy. It’s similar to bread rising because of yeast.
Healthy, water-saving soil consists of elements we don’t typically think of as soil at all. In fact, one of the most critical aspects of soil is the space between the particles. Soil space results from a process called aggregation. Solid matter will aggregate under the right conditions, forming space between the masses. This allows air and water to fill this area.
During a U.S. Senate hearing on Western drought earlier this week, the commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation told the states in the Colorado River Basin that they have 60 days to create an emergency plan to stop using between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water in the next year or the agency will use its emergency authority to make the cuts itself.
For context, the entire state of Arizona is allowed to use 2.8 million acre-feet of Colorado River water each year.
As California’s drought deepens, it is worth checking in on the status of water supplies and what might be in store for the rest of the summer, and beyond.
What started with the promise of a wet water year, ended up dry, again. In January, the 8-Station Index showed precipitation totals keeping pace with the wettest year on record. Then it got dry and accumulated totals flat-lined. The final result is a below average water year, although not one of the driest years on record.
Colorado River water managers are facing a monumental task. Federal officials have given leaders in seven Western states a new charge — to commit to an unprecedented amount of conservation and do it before an August deadline.
Without major cutbacks in water use, the nation’s two largest reservoirs — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — are in danger of reaching critically low levels.
On June 14, Bureau of Reclamation commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton came to a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing with a prognosis, a goal and a threat.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants the public to weigh in on a $630 million plan to fix the region’s cross border pollution problems.
Federal officials have completed a draft environmental impact review on a project that would treat sewage in the waters along the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego and they are looking for public comment.
The agency is recommending a sweeping plan to bolster the capture and treatment of sewage tainted flows on both sides of the international border.
A historic new program in California will allow water right holders in the Russian River watershed to share water allocations among one another this year as they face near-inevitable curtailments on water use. Ukiah played a leading role in developing the new initiative, and its city council voted unanimously to participate in the program on Wednesday night.
In presenting the program before councilmembers, Ukiah Water Resources Director Sean White suggested that it arose as an alternative to possible litigation against the State Water Resources Control Board.
A thriving, water-efficient yard in La Mesa is the winner of the Helix Water District’s 2022 WaterSmart Landscape Contest.
Homeowner Nick Voinov worked for a decade to transform his turf into its current WaterSmart residential landscape. It didn’t always look as bright and colorful as it does today.
“I love plants and found them more appealing than a lawn,” said Voinov. “I thought it was a bit of a waste because I had to water it every day, and then once you mowed it, it was hauled off to the dump. It was like a crop that you grew and then threw away.”
They’ve been part of the American Dream, Southern California style for decades. But verdant lawns are disappearing more and more thanks to shrinking water supplies.
The Golden State is now in its third year of drought. A study published by the journal Nature Climate Change in February found this is the worst drought in what is now the western United States in 1,200 years.
