Do you know if your landscaping really needs water? Even if you have waterwise irrigation on a properly timed schedule for your individual landscaping plan, it’s a good idea to make sure it’s really needed. You could be wasting water assuming it’s necessary. Appearances can be misleading.
Ramona Municipal Water District directors unanimously agreed Tuesday to refund Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church $27,343, acknowledging that there was a lack of clarity in determining how and when building projects should be assessed for emergency services.
The decision brings closure to a request the church has been making to the water district since November 2019.
Entire channels of the Mississippi River are caked dry. Rocks, riverbeds and islands of the St. Croix and Minnesota rivers are visible for the first time in decades. Dozens of streams are at their lowest recorded levels since at least 1988, or even the Dust Bowl.
On Wednesday, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) put much of the state in a “restricted phase” as the drought continues to get worse. That means water utilities and suppliers will need to cut down the total amount of water used to no more than 25% above what they used in January.
Three massive loans from the federal government totaling nearly $200 million were announced Tuesday to help fix up aging clay pipes in the East Bay and to fund a new water treatment facility in Redwood City, a sum which Environmental Protection Agency Administrators Michael Regan said could increase if Congress passes the hotly debated trillion-dollar infrastructure bill.
At an event hosted by Silicon Valley Clean Water Tuesday at the agency’s new wastewater treatment plant currently under construction in Redwood Shores, Regan announced two Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loans totaling $143 million to SVCW and $25 million to the Oro Loma Sanitary District supporting projects expected to create more than 2,500 jobs.
Kelly O’Brien’s drinking water well had been in its death throes for days before its pump finally gave out over Memorial Day weekend.
It wasn’t a quiet death at O’Brien’s home in Glenn County, about 100 miles north of Sacramento.
Spigots rattled. Faucets sputtered. The drinking water turned rusty with sediment. In the end, two houses, three adults, three children, two horses, four dogs and a couple of cats on her five acres of land were all left with no water for their sinks, showers, laundry, troughs and water bowls.
As extreme drought spread across the state, O’Brien feared that the water underneath her property had sunk so low that it was out of the reach of her well.
In this summer of wildfires, heat waves and drought, there was another bit of bad environmental news out of the West this week. Federal officials declared a water shortage at Lake Mead, the huge reservoir on the Colorado River near Las Vegas, setting off sharp cuts in water to Arizona farmers next year.
California’s current voluntary water restrictions may soon become mandatory.
Governor Gavin Newsom said this week that statewide restrictions may be imposed in late September, roughly two weeks after the September 14 recall election.
In San Diego County, residents and businesses have managed to cut their water use by half since the early 1990s. While our region as a whole has done a strong job saving water, a historic drought continues to intensify throughout California and the western United States.
Surveying the recently scorched earth of Big Basin Redwoods State Park with the nation’s top environmental official this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged that it might be time for mandatory statewide water restrictions — in six weeks or so.
What is he waiting for?
With more than a million acres burned fairly early in the fire season, California is entering uncharted territory as the record dry conditions that have fueled so much destruction will soon combine with seasonal winds that fire officials fear will bring unprecedented dangers.
Officials have attributed warming temperatures and worsening drought to the explosive growth of fires, mostly in the mountains of Northern California, this summer.
As the drought crisis worsens throughout California, Fresno and Clovis leaders, as well as residents, are answering the challenge.
Both cities are recycling water through “purple pipe” systems to offset non-potable usages like landscape irrigation, cooling towers, and agricultural irrigation.
