Residents and businesses in Poway soon could be paying more on their water bills.
Poway City Council on Tuesday unanimously voted to set a public hearing on a proposed four-year rate increase for water, recycled water and wastewater rates. It comes as the city grapples with how to deal with the future of water for its residents, challenged by rising costs to import water and the need to pay into capital improvement projects.
As I walked along the ocean at Imperial Beach enjoying the sun casting shadows on the waves, several families were wading into the water seemingly not noticing the patrolling lifeguard warning them that the water was too polluted for swimming. I wondered if some swimmers heard the warning so many times – often over 200 days a year – that they became immune to the notice. After all, there was no smell and the ocean looked normal.
With much of California and other western U.S. states experiencing significant drought, the need to pursue further advancements in desalination has never been greater. This was a central theme of an Aug. 11 webinar, titled “Discussion on Desalination — Treatments, Research, and the Future,” conducted by the WateReuse Association.
Dangerously low water levels at Shasta Lake were captured on drone video by ABC10 reporter John Bartell and photojournalist Tyler Horst on Tuesday.
Shasta Lake is California’s largest reservoir, capable of holding 4,552,000 acre feet of water. Right now, it has 1,186,057 acre feet of water stored. Breaking that down into percentages, the reservoir is at 26% capacity and 42% of average for this date.
It’s like a magic trick for poop. Put it in one end of the machine, and out the other comes electricity, distilled water and a small amount of ash. And there’s none of the greenhouse gas — namely methane — produced by traditional sewage treatment and sewage sludge decomposition.
Though it might seem futuristic, this innovative blueprint has attracted grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission, the latter to the tune of $1.6 million. The money is helping to fund a demonstration project at south Orange County’s Santa Margarita Water District. Partners include Stanford University’s Codiga Resource Recovery Center.
The Bureau of Reclamation recently declared a water shortage on the Colorado River, but that hasn’t stopped states from proposing new water projects.
Just about every drop on the Colorado River is accounted for. But climate change has reduced the amount of water in the system.
Gary Wockner is with Save the Colorado, a conservation group that is tracking new projects.
On June 9, as California’s historic drought deepened, the largest water agency in Santa Clara County declared a drought emergency and asked the county’s 2 million residents to cut water use by 15% from 2019 levels to preserve dwindling supplies.
As drought-stricken California considers constructing new dams, a new study finds that many of the state’s existing structures— despite efforts to prioritize healthy water temperatures— are failing the cold-water ecosystems that depend on them.
San Francisco, along with a handful of Central Valley irrigation districts, is suing the state for enacting drought restrictions that are keeping thousands of landowners and suppliers from drawing water from rivers and creeks.
San Francisco, along with a handful of Central Valley irrigation districts, is suing the state for enacting drought restrictions that are keeping thousands of landowners and suppliers from drawing water from rivers and creeks.
As California coastal cities look for methods to avert the harsh realities of the state’s second drought in a decade, desalination has returned as a hot topic. In San Diego County, the drought makes the argument that the controversial choice to build a coastside desalination plant was correct. The Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant opened in Carlsbad in 2015. It supplies water to the San Diego County Water Authority, a wholesale agency that supplies about three-quarters of the water used within its 3.3 million population service area for 24 member agencies.
