Last week Escondido’s Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator, Carrie Selby was featured as the Water Utility Hero of the Week by the San Diego County Water Authority SDCWA. Shelby was interviewed for the Water News Network and talked about her career and work life during the pandemic.
The Rainbow Municipal Water District will be rehabilitating its North River Road Land Outfall pipeline, and Hoch Consulting will be preparing the bidding documents and providing engineering support to the Rainbow district.
A 5-0 Rainbow board vote, June 23, approved a $151,180 contract with Hoch Consulting, which is headquartered in San Diego. The contract does not have a specific end period, although construction is anticipated to begin in early 2021 and take approximately eight weeks.
“It’s an important project to maintain a critical part of our wastewater infrastructure,” Tom Kennedy, Rainbow general manager, said.
Several state legislators have asked the Governor to extend his order prohibiting water shutoffs for nonpayment to even the smallest water utilities.
Right now, the Governor’s April 2 order applies to water utilities serving 200 or more connections.
A committee to review issues regarding the proposed detachment of the Fallbrook Public Utility District and the Rainbow Municipal Water District from the San Diego County Water Authority held its first meeting July 6.
Nearly half a century after a Gold Rush-era quicksilver mining operation shut down in northern California, mercury continues to flow into a nearby creek, and federal officials blame the mine’s state landmark status for cleanup delays.
The Salton Sea in California’s far southeast corner has challenged policymakers and local agencies alike to save the desert lake – a vital stop for migrating birds – from becoming a fetid, hyper-saline water body inhospitable to wildlife and a source of choking dust. The state of California, long derided for its failure to act in the past, says it is now moving full-bore to address the sea’s problems, with ambitious plans for wildlife habitat and dust suppression. Skeptics say addressing the sea’s issues is vital not only for the sea and surrounding communities, but for management of the Colorado River as well.
Two major water projects in San Diego County this week received a major financial boost to enhance the region’s water supply. The East County Advanced Water Purification Project was approved for up to $91.8 million and a project in the City of Escondido was approved for up to $23.4 million.
Federal regulators on Thursday threw a significant curveball at a coalition that has been planning for years to demolish four massive hydroelectric dams on a river along the Oregon-California border to save salmon populations that have dwindled to almost nothing.
California may see a 54 percent increase in rainfall variability by the end of this century, according to new research from the lab of Assistant Professor Da Yang, a 2019 Packard Fellow and atmospheric scientist with the University of California, Davis. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, Yang and his co-authors predict the entire West Coast will experience greater month-to-month fluctuations in extremely dry and wet weather, especially in California. The lead author is Wenyu Zhou, a postdoctoral researcher in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where Yang has a dual appointment.
The study explores the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO), an atmospheric phenomenon that influences rainfall in the tropics and can trigger everything from cyclones over the Indian Ocean to heatwaves, droughts and flooding in the United States.
Like a lot of the rural West, Yosemite National Park stood as a safe haven from the coronavirus. No park employees or residents tested positive. No visitors reported being sick. The fresh air and open space seemed immune.
