The EPA won’t be able to set drinking water limits for two PFAS chemicals in the next year, agency administrator Andrew Wheeler told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Wednesday.
The Environmental Protection Agency determined that it’ll set maximum contaminant levels (MCL) for the two chemicals—PFOA and PFOS—in drinking water, but hasn’t proposed what those limits should be.
Despite its reputation as a conservative owner, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is piloting a bold new initiative to produce an additional regional water source through its Regional Recycled Water Program, which aims to take treated sanitation water and purify it to produce high-quality drinking water.
California isn’t running out of water,” says Richard Luthy. “It’s running out of cheap water. But the state can’t keep doing what it’s been doing for the past 100 years.”
Luthy knows. As a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, as well as director of a National Science Foundation center to re-invent urban water supply (known as ReNUWIt), he has spent decades studying the state’s metropolitan areas.
Nine states have sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for curtailing enforcement of rules on air and water pollution during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the pullback puts the public at even greater risk.
The City of Encinitas and the Olivenhain Municipal Water District are working together on a project that keeps water supply and traffic flowing.
To prevent water main breaks and ensure reliable service to its customers, Olivenhain Municipal Water District is proactive in its repair and replacement of aging water infrastructure.
Though the last couple of weekends have seen wet weather, it hasn’t been enough to keep up with the yearly average in time for summer in California. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which is tested regularly by employees of the California Department of Water Resources, has yielded some grim results so far in 2020 in terms of snow-water equivalent.
On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’re discussing a new study from Columbia University about an emerging climate-driven megadrought in the Western US.
In hundreds of cities across the USA, scientists hope monitoring systems will provide an early warning if coronavirus infections reemerge as communities in some states cautiously reopen.
These monitors don’t rely on testing patients or tracing contacts.
All that’s required? Human waste.
Over the past few months, private companies and university researchers have partnered with communities to collect sewage at treatment plants and test it for the presence of the novel coronavirus. The results are reported to municipal governments and state health officials to help them monitor the situation.
Testing wastewater can reveal evidence of the coronavirus and show whether it’s increasing or decreasing in a community, said Ian Pepper, a professor and co-director of the University of Arizona’s Water and Energy Sustainable Technology Center, one of the groups tracking the virus through different municipal sewage systems.
Farmers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta received some welcome news on Tuesday.
After a set of spring storms in April, water allocations from the Central Valley Project are increasing almost across the board at a rate of 5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced.
Water users on the westside of the San Joaquin Valley will see a five percent increase in water allocation – from 15 to 20 percent of their contracted amount.
Municipal and industrial users, similarly, saw a five percent bump to 70 percent of their contracted amount of water.
Summer always means water, whether it’s an ocean, lake, river, swimming pool or hot tub. But now that we’re worrying more about germs, it’s natural to wonder: Will this season’s swimming, surfing, floating and soaking be as safe as it used to be?
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
