No country is immune from water scarcity issues—not even wealthy countries like the United States.
Population growth and climate change are stretching America’s water supplies to the limit, and tapping new sources is becoming more difficult each year—in some cases, even impossible.
People from Truckee to South Lake Tahoe will be gearing up for blustery conditions for trick or treating as Halloween nears.
A cold storm system is set to arrive from the Gulf of Alaska with decent moisture. A Weather Impact Alert was issued for Thursday and Friday in the Sierra for inches of snow at pass level and as much even one to two feet for the peaks and summits.
Voters in the November election will decide whether to borrow billions of dollars for climate and environmental programs.
Proposition 4, also called the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness, and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024, would issue $10 billion in bonds for various projects.
Windblown dust from the shrinking Salton Sea harms the respiratory health of children living nearby, triggering asthma, coughing, wheezing and disrupted sleep, USC research shows.
The findings also indicate that children living closest to the sea, who are exposed to more dust in the air, may be the most affected.
California is in the very early stages of making it easier for desalination plants along the coast.
The State Water Resources Control Board took the first step today toward changing its ocean protection standards to make it faster to permit desalination plants and to clarify how and when developers measure and mitigate the harm to marine life. The effort is part of Newsom’s strategy to boost supplies as the climate changes.
Walter Byrd remembers the first time sewage came bubbling out of his toilet like it was yesterday.
“It was just pumping up through there,” Byrd says. “One of the bathrooms was so full of waste, at least 4 inches high in there. It smelled just like a hog pen.”
State water regulators are in the early stages of easing environmental rules for desalination plants along California’s coast to boost water supplies as the climate changes.
The State Water Resources Control Board kick-started its process to amend its ocean protection standards for desalination plants at a scoping meeting Monday after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the regulator to consider streamlining new projects in August 2022.
It is almost impossible to be against a rule announced by the Environmental Protection Agency this month requiring utilities to replace all lead pipes within a decade. After all, who opposes the swift removal of a deadly toxin from drinking water? But there’s a tricky road ahead, and it’s an expensive one to travel.
The 9 million or so service lines across the United States pumping poison through our homes and into our bodies cause all manner of maladies, such as high blood pressure, kidney malfunction, cognitive disability and hyperactivity. The EPA estimates that, in a country without lead pipes, 1,500 fewer people every year would die early of heart disease and about 900,000 fewer infants would suffer from low birth weight. The shift could even prevent 200,000 lost IQ points in children annually.
With the recently completed AgX MFRO, the new $64M two-million-gallon-per-day facility membrane filtration (MF) and reverse osmosis (RO) water reuse treatment plant, the City of Escondido has achieved an important milestone in its goal of creating a high-quality alternative to potable water for local agriculture growers.
With this facility beginning operations, the City and its partners the Filanc Brown and Caldwell (FBC) Joint Venture, held a dedication ceremony on August 28, 2024. Among the more than 100 attendees were Director of Utilities Angela Morrow, Mayor Dane White, City Manager Sean McGlynn, Deputy City Manager Chris McKinney, and other city representatives along with State Water Resources Control Board representatives, and key members of the FBC team and agriculture community. The ceremony concluded with a ribbon cutting and a facility tour.
The Biden and Newsom administrations will soon adopt new rules for California’s major water delivery systems that will determine how much water may be pumped from rivers while providing protections for imperiled fish species.
But California environmental groups, while supportive of efforts to rewrite the rules, are criticizing the proposed changes and warning that the resulting plans would fail to protect fish species that are declining toward extinction in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay.
