You might have to start paying more for water and sewer utilities in the City of San Diego. The City Council’s Environment Committee wants to increase rates by more than 60% for water and more than 30% for sewer over the next four years.
We all need clean drinking water but for those in the City of San Diego, it might be getting more expensive to get it.
John Allen has an addiction, and he readily admits it. He can’t live without cycads. He has planted dozens of varieties of them across his 1-acre hillside property in rural Vista. Allen bought the house back in 2007 and lives there with his partner, Bob. Almost immediately after moving in, he started to redo the landscape.
“I turned off the outside water, killed the grass lawn in front and back, had juniper shrubs, hedges and some ice plants removed, along with dying avocado trees,” he recalled. “The only two plants remaining are Beaucarnea recurvata (ponytail palms).”
Relief from huge proposed rate hikes for San Diego water and sewer customers is looking less likely, after a consultant recommended no rate changes and after a City Council committee tentatively endorsed the increases Thursday.
City officials are proposing 62% hikes to water rates and 31% hikes to sewer rates over four years to cover sharply rising costs for workers, imported water, chemicals, energy, construction projects and other priorities.
The settlement will save millions in legal fees and will pave the way for San Diego to sell some of the expensive water it has secured over the last 30 years.
The Imperial Irrigation District, which provides water to farmers in the southeastern corner of California, drew a figurative line in the sand earlier this month, calling for a halt to the conversion of agricultural fields into solar panel farms.
Noting that more than 13,000 acres of fertile land had already been converted, the water district asked the Imperial County Board of Supervisors to protect productive farmland.
Nebraska is suing Colorado over the amount of water it draws from the South Platte River, the latest in a long history of water rights disputes between the states that have been left increasingly dry by climate change.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and state Attorney General Mike Hilgers held a news conference Wednesday to announce the lawsuit, which was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Oceanside residents and business owners can expect a bump in water and sewer rates beginning Jan. 1 under a proposal headed to the Oceanside City Council for approval in September.
The city’s Water Utilities Department has proposed an average 6% increase for water rates across all categories of users in 2026 and the same amount again in 2027, and 4% more each year for sewer rates, officials said Tuesday.
Some National Weather Service offices in California are among those hit hardest by meteorologist vacancies, according to new data from an employee union — heightening concerns as the state contends with another potentially devastating fire season and the ongoing threat of extreme weather.
The staffing shortages have forced some offices to outsource overnight operations to neighboring offices or reduce how often they issue forecast products that help keep decision-makers and first responders abreast of potentially hazardous weather conditions.
Patrick Golling yanked the pull cord, and the Honda engine roared to life. Seconds after it began sucking water out of his father’s pool, a powerful stream erupted from an agricultural irrigation nozzle fixed atop a bright red pole a few feet away, connected with a fire hose.
In a minute flat, the system meticulously jerked across the landscape, drenching the ravine in 50 gallons of water. The demonstration on a hot July afternoon left the blackened sticks below the property — once trees before the Palisades fire ripped through — dripping with chlorinated water.
At first read, a water recycling plan coming out of California sounds tough to swallow.
That’s because the Groundwater Replenishment System in Orange County intends to mass-produce drinking water from purified sewage to combat shortages in dry regions, according to The Guardian. It builds on similar work already being done that churns out clean water by the millions of gallons.
