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Opinion: Is RMWD Doing Right by Customers?

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Gary Hurst

At this month’s board meeting, Ramona Municipal Water District (RMWD) approved “the Proposition 218 Notice for Untreated Water Pumping Rates.” Twenty-five years after the passage of Proposition 218, RMWD is finally admitting that its treated and untreated water systems are separate. As a result, RMWD calculated “(non)uniform pumping rates” for all water customers. The notice will be sent only to about 200 untreated water customers whose “pumping rates” RMWD proposes to increase. At the meeting, Matthew Prickett, among the largest water users, urged that the notice be delayed—not to avoid paying his fair share of such costs, but because the rates were not fairly calculated.

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Ocean Protection Plan Charts Course for Defending California Coast

/in , /by /San Diego Union-Tribuneby Deborah Sullivan Brennan

A new ocean protection plan sets out steps to safeguard California’s coast against rising seas, while shoring up public access and building coastal economies.

The Ocean Protection Council on Wednesday approved the Strategic Plan to Protect California’s Oceans, a five-year roadmap for navigating threats including climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity. The council, a policy body within the California Natural Resources Agency, wanted to distinguish the new plan from previous editions, by focusing on specific timelines and funding sources.

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Generating Sodium Hypochlorite On-Site in South San Diego

/in , /by /WaterWorld Magazine

SAN DIEGO, CA — Located in southern San Diego County, the Otay Water Treatment Plant, with a capacity of 34 million gallons per day provides drinking water to an estimated 100,000 customers. The plant is operated by the City of San Diego and located less than two miles from the United States – Mexico border, north of Tijuana. Despite being 15 miles from the Pacific Ocean, the arid region is considered part of the Colorado Desert and receives an average of only ten inches of rain each year.

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California Natural Resources Agency Lays Out Aggressive Salton Sea Mitigation Goals

/in , /by /Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.)by Mark Olalde

The California Natural Resources Agency this week released its Salton Sea Management Program annual report, which trumpeted the first completed dust suppression project and set ambitious goals for upcoming mitigation efforts.

The report lays out an aggressive target of 3,800 acres on which the agency hopes to complete efforts to tamp down dust by the end of 2020 to catch up with its long-term benchmarks.

“We’re well-positioned and have identified a suite of projects that will help us accomplish that goal by the end of this year,” said Arturo Delgado, the agency’s assistant secretary for Salton Sea policy.

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Water is Life. It’s Also a Battle. So What Does the Future Hold for California?

/in , /by /CalMatters (Sacramento, Calif.)by Alastair Bland

Water plays a lead role in the state’s political theater, with Democrats and Republicans polarized, farmers often fighting environmentalists and cities pitted against rural communities. Rivers are overallocated through sloppy water accounting. Groundwater has dwindled as farmers overdraw aquifers. Many communities lack safe drinking water. Native Americans want almost-extinct salmon runs revived. There is talk, too, of new water projects, including a massive new tunnel costing billions of dollars.

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California Abnormally Dry After Low Precipitation Winter

/in , /by /The Associated Pressby Olga R. Rodriguez

A winter with little precipitation has left most of California abnormally dry and officials are bracing for the possibility of an early and more intense wildfire season amid record-breaking temperatures.

Drought has expanded to nearly a quarter of the state, mainly in central California, the heart of the state’s agricultural sector, according to a U.S. Drought Monitor map mad public Thursday. The map shows 70 percent of the state is abnormally dry.

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Everything You Need to Know About California’s Historic Water Law

/in , /by /The Guardian by Susie Cagle

California began regulating surface water in rivers and streams in 1914, but it took the state another 100 years to look underground.

In 2014, for the first time in its history, California passed a law regulating the use of groundwater – the resource on which 85% of its population and much of its $50bn agriculture industry rely.

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Carlsbad Flower Fields Prepped for Spring’s Arrival

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Carolina Gusman

The March through May wonderment that we know as The Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch will once again explode with tissue-like petals of Tecolote ranunculus, Mother Nature’s sign that spring is on the way.

Seven million flowers — in hues of red, purple, orange, gold, rose, pink and white — will fill row upon row of the more than 50 acres of hillside that overlooks the Pacific Ocean.

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Opinion: Climate Change and Water Supply

/in , /by /CalMatters (Sacramento, Calif.)by Dan Walters

California, as everyone knows, receives virtually all of its precipitation during a few fall and winter months and in 2019, some early rain and snow storms promised a bountiful water year.

This year, Mother Nature kept that promise in Southern California, where precipitation is running at or above the normal, but Northern California — far more important from a water supply standpoint — has been a different story.

The north has seen almost no precipitation since Christmas, the all-important Sierra snowpack is less than half of its average depth, and the region’s balmy, springlike weather shows no signs of ending.

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California Drought: Northern California Having Driest February Since 1864

/in , /by /The Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)by Paul Rogers

With unusually dry, hot weather continuing for weeks on end and the driest February in the Bay Area in 156 years, nearly a quarter of California’s land area now is under drought conditions, federal officials announced Thursday.

Altogether, 23.3% of the state is in “moderate drought” — up from 9.5% last week, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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