In its ongoing effort to keep ratepayers and the community informed, the Olivenhain Municipal Water District produced its first “Year In Review” video report for 2021.
The video showcases key achievements of the District, using an accessible digital video format to share details, images, and key facts with ratepayers through a familiar, trusted online platform posted to the District’s YouTube channel.
Sunny skies. Balmy temperatures. Walks on the beach. Umbrellas back in the closet.
After a soaking wet December that ended fire season, delivered more 15 feet of snow to the Sierra Nevada, and boosted hopes that California’s severe drought might be coming to and end, dry weather is back, in a big way.
Like a baseball player stuck in a hitting slump, it hasn’t rained significantly in the Bay Area for 14 days, since Jan. 4. Although reservoirs received a nice boost from big storms in December and late October, they still remain well below normal levels in most parts of the state.
In a wealthy enclave along the Santa Monica Mountains that is a haven for celebrities, residents are now facing more aggressive consequences for wasting water.
The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District northwest of Los Angeles hopes to spur water savings by making it easier to fine households that go over their allotted “water budgets” and threatening to vastly limit water flow to customers who repeatedly fail to conserve.
Silicon Valley is known for its startup culture where so-called angel investors provide financing to launch companies that aspire to change the world.
Innovations spawned in Silicon Valley have indeed changed the world, and in the process, made the San Francisco Bay Area home to thousands of near-billionaires and billionaires.
With wealth like that comes social responsibility and political power, and many of the individuals wielding this wealth have stepped up. Powerful individuals from Silicon Valley are changing the destiny of the world.
The heavy rains that soaked California late last year were welcomed by farmers, urban planners – and endangered coho salmon.
“We’ve seen fish in places that they haven’t been for almost 25 years,” said Preston Brown, director of watershed conservation for Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (SPAWN).
California received more precipitation from October to December than in the previous 12 months, according to the National Weather Service.
Sweeping cutbacks in water allocations to farms are leading to widespread underemployment in some of California’s most vulnerable communities. Lawmakers are scrambling for policy solutions.
The impact to paychecks has been raising food insecurity and malnutrition issues as food prices soar, while the reduced spending is reverberating through local businesses and economies. And the situation is exacerbating a mental health epidemic already made worse by the pandemic.
“Too often, these human impacts are overlooked,” said state Senator Melissa Hurtado of Sanger, in opening a recent hearing for the new Select Committee on Human Security. “We sometimes miss the impacts that drought has on food security, health, labor and the communities themselves.”
Deep in the Southern California desert, a massive drill rig taps into what could be the energy of the future.
Temperatures in the region can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and residents live under the threat of toxic dust caused by decades of agricultural runoff depositing chemicals into the Salton Sea, a saltwater lake.
But in the brine lies lithium, a key ingredient for electric vehicle batteries, and the billion-dollar drilling project promises to not only transform an impoverished region, but also help the United States gain energy independence.
The Sweetwater Authority calls on high school student photographers to enter its 2022 High School Photo Contest. This year’s contest challenges students to creatively photograph the many ways people use water.
The 2022 theme is “Water In Daily Life.” Water supports our daily lives. It flows into our homes, helping to quench our thirst, cook, clean, grow food, and keep us healthy. Students are encouraged to answer this question with their work: What ways do you interact with water?
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced last week that it plans to adjust management protocols for the Colorado River in early 2022 to reduce monthly releases from Lake Powell in an effort to keep the reservoir from dropping farther below 2021′s historic lows.
As of Jan. 6, the nation’s second-largest reservoir — part of a Colorado River system that provides drinking water to approximately 40 million people throughout the West — sat at an elevation of 3,536 feet, the Spectrum reported.
This past summer, as California faced a historic drought, reservoirs used by the small city of Healdsburg dropped to record lows.
“It puts us in a situation where we just simply don’t have enough water to go about our normal daily practices,” says Terry Crowley, the city’s utility director.
He says to conserve water, Healdsburg needed to slash consumption by 40%. City officials limited household use and banned watering ornamental lawns.
