Senator Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) has introduced the State Water Resiliency Act of 2021 – legislation that could provide up to $785 million to restore the capacity of California’s critical water delivery infrastructure and repair aging roads and bridges.
The water industry is among the sectors that are classified as essential. Phil Stevens, Padre Dam Municipal Water District Senior Lab Analyst, is the Water Utility Hero of the Week.
A government agency that controls much of California’s water supply released its initial allocation for 2021, and the numbers reinforced fears that the state is falling into another drought.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that most of the water agencies that rely on the Central Valley Project will get just 5% of their contract supply, a dismally low number. Although the figure could grow if California gets more rain and snow, the allocation comes amid fresh weather forecasts suggesting the dry winter is continuing.
Southern California farmers spend their winters watching the snowpack in the Colorado Rockies, and what they see is the climate crisis hitting hard. When it melts, the snow that falls on these peaks will, eventually, make its way into the Colorado River, which connects the Southwest like a great tendon, tying the Continental Divide in Colorado to Southern California’s hayfields, where the Imperial Irrigation District is one of the country’s largest, and pouring from the faucets of urban users in Los Angeles and San Diego.
The Helix Water District plans to raise rates for its East County customers starting in July.
While actual dollar amounts won’t be set until a cost of service study and the budget for the coming year are approved by the board in March, the Helix Water District Board of Directors last week proposed increasing rates to the district’s average single family residential customer by $3.45 per month.
Sierra snowpack is so vital to California as it provides one third of the state’s water supply and it seems more and more lately we are seeing this dwindle. You can see from 2002 to 2011 60% of the time the Sierra snowpack was 100% or better, a pretty good trend.
Picture the desert landscape of a Mad Max movie populated with vigilantes devoted to acquiring not gasoline — but water. This scenario isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. “Water wars” describes conflicts between countries, states, or groups over the right to access water resources, usually freshwater. Freshwater is necessary for drinking, irrigation, and electricity generation, and conflicts occur when the demand for potable water exceeds the supply, or when allocation or control of water is disputed.
Tensions grew in a series of back-and-forth exchanges between attorneys for the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District and the Imperial Irrigation District regarding the Red Hill Bay project site during a third day of hearings over an air-pollution violation order against the district.
A hearing board met Friday, Feb. 19, for the third part of its hearing to discuss a petition from Air Pollution Control Officer Matt Dessert for an order for abatement against the district for violations of air district rules and regulations. An order for abatement is an enforcement action that requires an owner or operator who is out of compliance to take specific action to get back into compliance with air district rules.
Conservation groups said 80 species were known to have gone extinct, 16 in the last year alone. Millions of people rely on freshwater fish for food and as a source of income through angling and the pet trade. But numbers have plummeted due to pressures including pollution, unsustainable fishing, and the damming and draining of rivers and wetlands. The report said populations of migratory fish have fallen by three-quarters in the last 50 years.
The state’s Ocean Protection Council has awarded $1.3 million to preserving and safeguarding estuary habitat at Elkhorn Slough, which boasts the second-largest tidal salt marsh in California. The wetland, once degraded by farming activities such as diking, is at risk of impacts from climate change — particularly rising sea levels.
