San Diego County’s Local Agency Formation Commission will hold a Dec. 6 hearing on municipal service review updates for Fallbrook special districts, and LAFCO analyst Priscilla Allen provided a presentation on LAFCO, municipal service reviews, and the context of the hearing during the Nov. 15 Fallbrook Community Planning Group meeting.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is urging nearly 3 million water customers throughout the Bay Area to cut water usage by 10%, as it declares a water shortage emergency due to the ongoing drought.
“With California still experiencing devastating drought and the uncertainty around this rainy season, we need to make tough decisions that will ensure that our water source continues to be reliable and dependable for the future,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement Tuesday.
Drought has tightened its grip on the Western U.S., as dry conditions tick on into their second decade and strain a river that supplies 40 million people. Experts agree that things are bad and getting worse. But how exactly do you measure a drought, and how can you tell where it’s going?
Brad Udall is an expert on the subject, studying water and climate at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center. Lately, his forecasts for the basin haven’t been particularly uplifting.
In actions that carry out President Biden’s economic agenda, the U.S. House of Representatives last week passed two pieces of significant legislation, including a $1.2 trillion bipartisan package that includes $8.3 billion for critical water projects in drought-parched California and the West.
On Friday, the House also passed the president’s social safety-net bill, the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, on a party-line vote. That bill, which funds universal pre-K, expansion of Medicare, renewable energy credits and affordable housing, now moves to the Senate.
A profound reduction in the Colorado River water earmarked for Arizona’s crops has at last triggered the rationing that irrigation farmers have dreaded. The Tier 1 shortage will prompt a 512,000-acre-foot reduction in Arizona’s Colorado River deliveries.
That amounts to about 30% of Central Arizona Project’s normal supply. Extrapolating from University of Arizona studies, it will result in a decrease of about $100 million in farmgate sales, and much more if the indirect effects are fully factored in.
As the application window for a near billion-dollar state program designed to help cash-strapped Californians with pandemic-related drinking water debt nears its close date, almost 50% of eligible water systems have fully completed the application, but nearly one quarter haven’t yet started the process — a scenario that could see many struggling households lose the chance to have their financial burdens alleviated.
The Biden administration’s proposal to bolster environmental permitting review is a good first step but doesn’t go far enough towards scrapping Trump-era rules, according to a coalition of Democratic attorneys general.
The changes included in President Joe Biden’s National Environmental Policy Act proposed rule fall short of undoing Trump-era regulations that undermined the environmental review process, the attorneys general said in their comment letter submitted Tuesday.
City and Caltrans crews remained at work in downtown Tuesday, cleaning up the mess after two water main breaks on Sunday closed freeway on-ramps and flooded businesses.
The first break came from a 76-year-old cast iron pipe near 11th and A street, which flooded local businesses and snarled traffic. Some time later, a 62-year-old concrete steel cylinder pipe failed near balboa park.
The mining company, Imperial Gold, is currently in the process of being approved by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to create a new gold mine by Black Mountain that would see new jobs and health benefits introduced into the Imperial Valley. The project is estimated to produce 1.2 million ounces of gold and has the potential for 20 years of production and economic activity that would include $1.1 billion in investment and more than $241 million in taxes and royalties paid to state, federal, and local governments at current gold prices.
Don’t hold your breath for California’s drought ending with this winter’s rains. Instead, you’d do well to hold your shower time to a minimum.
There’s less than a 40% chance of water supplies getting back to normal after this winter, with a slightly better than 50% chance that the state’s drought will worsen, according to forecasters at a Monday, Nov. 22, drought webinar hosted by the National Integrated Drought Information Center. The center is led by NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
