The city of San Diego will be completely shutting down a portion of Friars Road between Napa Street and Sea World Drive Friday evening to accommodate work on the Morena Pump Station project part of the sweeping Pure Water San Diego project. From 9 p.m. Friday to 9 p.m. Saturday, the aforementioned portion of Friars Road will close.
DOGE-ordered firings at the federal agency responsible for delivering water to farms and cities across California are getting in the way of President Donald Trump’s order to maximize the state’s water supplies. The Bureau of Reclamation’s California office has lost 10 percent of its staff due to buyouts and orders by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency to fire short-tenured employees, according to three people close to the office who were granted anonymity because they feared retaliation.
Fitch Ratings downgraded the outlook for San Diego’s water fund from “stable” to “negative” this week because of rising debt and concerns that city water rates won’t be able to go much higher once proposed 61% rate hikes have taken effect. Other factors in the downgrade are sharp increases in what the city pays for imported water and falling demand for water among city customers, especially during the rainy fiscal year that ended last June.
A new report from the nonprofit Environmental Working Group shows millions of Americans are drinking water tainted with unsafe levels of chemicals, metals and radioactive substances.
The California Water Commission has $526.3 million to spend on water storage. At February’s commission meeting, options on how exactly they’ll do that were discussed, and it could mean more funding for two Northern California water projects.
Between the ongoing controversy around fluoridated water and the recent discovery of a chemical in our water systems that may or may not be toxic, the safety of American drinking water is murky, to say the least. And today, with a new report revealing that tap water is delivering harmful chemicals like PFAS (“forever chemicals”), heavy metals, and radioactive substances to millions of Americans—often at levels far beyond what scientists consider safe—it got even murkier.
President Donald Trump is obsessed with how California manages its water supply, demanding changes as one price of giving the state billions of dollars in aid to cope with Southern California’s deadly and destructive wildfires. However, Trump’s specific complaints are not grounded in hydrologic or managerial reality — such as his insistence that a lack of water from Northern California was a factor in either the fires’ eruption or the firefighting efforts. Hydrants dried up largely because systems were designed to deal with individual structure fires, not widespread wildfires involving thousands of buildings.
Southern California’s recent unusually warm temperatures are expected to ramp up over the next couple of days, peaking by midweek, when some areas will see highs reach into the low 90s. “There’s a possibility that a few locations could hit their daily record — or possibly exceed it,” said Paul Steward, a National Weather Service meteorologist in San Diego. He said a widespread ridge of high pressure will continue to strengthen through Wednesday, which is expected to be the region’s warmest day.
The San Diego County Water Authority is notifying residents in three cities that their water service could be impacted and to expect nighttime work this week during work on San Diego’s First Aqueduct. Work has been ongoing to extend the life of the historic First Aqueduct, and the San Diego County Water Authority announced the project has reached the halfway point. However, as crews transition to Phase Two of the project, construction will take place around the clock for 10 days from Feb. 23 to March 4.
Utah appears to be the first state ready to put a full ban on fluoride in public water systems under a bill that doesn’t allow cities or communities to decide whether to add the cavity-preventing mineral.
