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Joe Biden Wants 100% Clean Energy. Will California Show that it’s Possible?

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Sammy Roth

The undersea power line would run south from San Luis Obispo County, hugging the California coast for 200 miles before making landfall in or near Los Angeles. It would be able to carry electricity from a fleet of offshore wind turbines, providing Southern California with clean power after sundown and helping to replace fossil-fueled generators.

Fewer planet-warming emissions, less risk of blackouts and no chance of igniting the wildfires sometimes sparked by traditional power lines: Those are the arguments for the $1.9-billion Pacific Transmission Expansion.

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Scripps Researcher Finds Ozone-Eating Chemical Level Falling

/in , /by /KPBS San Diegoby Erik Anderson

A San Diego scientist says a surge in outlawed ozone-depleting gasses appears to be easing. Scripps Institution of Oceanography researcher Ray Weiss says levels of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere began rising a few years ago, even though they had been outlawed by the Montreal Protocol. The chemical was once used as a refrigerant and in the manufacture of foam, but CFCs were outlawed more than a decade ago.

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Hoch to Design Rainbow’s Hutton and Turner Pump Stations

/in , /by /Fallbrook Village Newsby Joe Naiman

Hoch Consulting has been given the Rainbow Municipal Water District contract to design the Hutton and Turner pump stations.

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Rainbow MWD Approves Lift Station Replacement MND

/in , /by /Fallbrook Village Newsby Joe Naiman

The work which includes the replacement of the Rainbow Municipal Water District’s Lift Station No. 1 will have an environmental Mitigated Negative Declaration along with a Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program.

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Hamilton Chosen as Rainbow MWD Board President

/in , /by /Fallbrook Village Newsby Joe Naiman

The Rainbow Municipal Water District board selected Hayden Hamilton to be the board president for 2021 and 2022 meetings.

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California’s Aging Dams Face New Perils, 50 Years After Sylmar Quake Crisis

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Louis Sahagún

It was a harrowing vision of the vulnerability of aging California dams — crews laboring feverishly to sandbag and drain the lower San Fernando Reservoir, as billions of gallons of Los Angeles drinking water lapped at the edge of a crumbling, earthquake-damaged embankment that threatened catastrophe on the neighborhoods below. Although the 1971 San Fernando earthquake and the near failure of the Lower Van Norman Dam have given rise to construction improvements — the much newer Los Angeles Dam survived an equivalent shaking in the 1994 Northridge quake — the overwhelming majority of California dams are decades past their design life span.

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Water Plant Cyberattack Is Wake Up Call, 20 Years in the Making

/in , , /by /Bloomberg Lawby Jake Holland and Bobby Magill

A cyberattack on a Florida water treatment plant underscores the need for strong security protections at the municipal level, attorneys and industry professionals say.

A hacker gained access to an Oldsmar, Fla. city computer on Feb. 5 and changed the level of sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, local authorities said. It isn’t yet known whether the breach originated from the U.S. or from outside the country. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is working with local authorities.

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Colorado’s Water Plan has Made Progress Toward Ensuring Supply, but the Work’s Far From Done

/in , /by /The Colorado Sunby Sarah Kuta

In the five years since Colorado’s Water Plan took effect, the state has awarded nearly $500 million in loans and grants for water projects, cities have enacted strict drought plans, communities have written nearly two dozen locally based stream-restoration plans and crews have been hard at work on improving irrigation systems and wastewater treatment plants. But there are big challenges ahead — drought, population growth, accelerating climate change, budget cuts, wildfires and competing demands for water, among others.

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County Supervisors Declare Public Health Crisis in Tijuana River Valley

/in , /by /Times of San Diegoby City News Service

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to declare pollution at the Tijuana River Valley a public health crisis.

Supervisor Nora Vargas said the action is needed because of the decades-long contamination of River Valley, which has resulted in environmental and health damage. According to the county, the region has long suffered from poor air quality, sewage leaks, waste from industrial plants, tire waste, plastic pollution, sediment, and trash.

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Drowning in Debt: Nearly 70,000 San Diego Families are Behind on Water Bills

/in , /by /CBS8by Richard Allyn

A new report finds that nearly 70,000 San Diego families are behind on their water bills during the pandemic, with more than 11,000 owing over a thousand dollars.

That same study by the state’s Water Resources Control Board finds that one in eight California households are behind on their water bills: a a tsunami of debt adding up to more than a billion dollars.

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