After more than a decade of planning, community meetings — and more planning — an ambitious $630 million effort to replace two aging underground wastewater pipes officially launched on Monday, June 21, as a two-story-high electric tunneling machine was lowered underground at the sanitation plant on the border of Carson and Wilmington.
In a new symbol of California’s worsening drought, construction crews are putting the finishing touches on a $10 million emergency project to build a massive rock barrier through part of the Delta in Contra Costa County to preserve water supplies for millions of people across the state.
The 800-foot long barrier — the size of San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid laid on its side — is essentially a rock wall, 120 feet wide, built in water 35 feet deep.
Its purpose: To block salt water from the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay from flowing too far east and contaminating the huge state and federal pumps near Tracy that send fresh water south to 27 million people — from San Jose to Los Angeles — and to millions of acres of farmland in the Central Valley and beyond.
Normally the cargo moving through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta contains expensive commodities meant for ports all around the world, but in drought-riddled California the most indispensable freight is currently destined for the river bottom.
Tugboats pushing and pulling barges loaded with boulders have suddenly become key performers in the state’s battle with a rapidly expanding drought, delivering supplies needed to reinforce California’s buckling water system. Around the clock crews dump the expensive cargo into the river strategically, racing to block salty tidal flows from the water pumps that sustain billions of dollars worth of crops hundreds of miles away.
Despite continued hot and dry conditions in California, the San Diego region is protected from drought impacts this summer and through 2045, the San Diego County Water Authority announced Monday.
Despite continued hot and dry conditions in California, the San Diego region is protected from drought impacts this summer and through 2045, the San Diego County Water Authority announced Monday.
According to a statement released by the Water Authority, “no shortages or regional water-use mandates are in the forecast, the result of three decades of strategic investments that create an aquatic safety net for San Diego County’s $253 billion economy and quality of life for 3.3 million residents.”
Despite continued hot and dry conditions in California, the San Diego region is protected from drought impacts this summer and through 2045, the San Diego County Water Authority announced Monday.
According to a statement released by the Water Authority, “no shortages or regional water-use mandates are in the forecast, the result of three decades of strategic investments that create an aquatic safety net for San Diego County’s $253 billion economy and quality of life for 3.3 million residents.”
Despite continued hot and dry conditions in California, the San Diego region is protected from drought impacts this summer and through 2045, the San Diego County Water Authority announced today.
According to a statement released by the Water Authority, “no shortages or regional water-use mandates are in the forecast, the result of three decades of strategic investments that create an aquatic safety net for San Diego County’s $253 billion economy and quality of life for 3.3 million residents.”
Almost half of the U.S. has been in a drought since the start of 2021.
Compounding factors, including low rainfall and snowpack, climate change and persisting droughts from previous years, have escalated into extreme dryness.
The prolonged dryness means low water levels are endangering fish species in Oregon and Colorado, 30% of California’s population is in a drought emergency, and the nation’s two biggest reservoirs on the Colorado River — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — are two-thirds empty.
Lake Powell’s water level is the lowest it’s been in decades, and the latest 24-month projections from the Arizona and Utah reservoir show that it’s likely to drop even further — below a critical threshold of 3,525 feet by next year.
Camille Touton, a veteran congressional water policy adviser, has been nominated to lead the agency that oversees water and power in the U.S. West.
President Joe Biden on Friday nominated Touton to be the next commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. If confirmed, the Nevada native will be a central figure in negotiations among several states over the future of the Colorado River.
Drought, climate change and demand have diminished the river that supplies 40 million people, and the agency is expected to mandate water cuts for the first time in 2022.
