It’s been seven years since the Little Hoover Commission — a state watchdog agency — warned of disaster ahead because of deteriorating conditions at the Salton Sea. This intensely salty 300-plus-square-mile lake in Imperial and Riverside counties was created by Colorado River flooding in 1905-1907, which filled up the below-sea-level Salton Trough.
Four years ago, when the San Diego City Council approved paying tens of millions of dollars to relocate utility pipes and other equipment to make room for the ambitious Pure Water project, city officials insisted they would recover the money from San Diego Gas & Electric. That didn’t happen. The city sued San Diego Gas & Electric in 2020, saying that the company violated its franchise agreement by refusing to pay to move its equipment.
One of the Ramona Municipal Water District water tanks is getting a new name to honor Director Jim Robinson, who helped nurture a community park and the fairgrounds. The ID-5 water tank off Old Julian Highway between downtown Ramona and San Diego Country Estates is now known as the “Robinson Tank.”
Southern California’s powerful Imperial Irrigation District voted late Tuesday 3-2 to ink an agreement with federal and state officials that could yield as much as $250 million for Salton Sea restoration projects in exchange for not using another 250,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water. An acre-foot is enough to supply about two households.
Following recent rains, the city of San Diego started releasing water from Lake Hodges this week. The move, mandated by state safety officials, is part of ongoing maintenance at the reservoir’s deteriorating century-old dam. About 250 million gallons of water will flow into the San Dieguito River using valves in the dam, according to city officials.
A cold storm sliding in from the Pacific Northwest will impact San Diego County later in the week and going into the weekend, but forecasters were uncertain Monday whether the precipitation would produce significant rain and snow. According to the National Weather Service, a trough of low pressure will push down from the Gulf of Alaska and reach Southern California Thursday.
The city will release around 250 million gallons of water from Hodges Reservoir into the San Dieguito River over a two-day period starting Monday. The water release, using valves in Hodges Dam, will begin Monday and is intended to reduce the reservoir’s elevation by around two feet to 275 feet, according to the city.
Drought, human-caused climate change, invasive species and a “legacy” of environmental issues are permanently altering California’s landscape and placing some communities and ecosystems at increasing risk, a panel of experts told water officials recently. Invasive species and decades of disruptions from massive land and water developments are partly responsible for a continuous decline in native California species, experts told the California Water Commission on Nov. 16.
A lot has changed for California’s reservoirs over the last five years. In April 2017, then-Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order that declared California’s drought state of emergency over in most counties (Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Tuolumne counties were initially excluded). The emergency order had been in place since 2014 following several years of historic drought conditions.
The promise of job security and work-life balance drew Fernando Gonzalez to become a water operator. Now that he’s worked as one for a few years, he sees his job as much more than fining people for using too much water. On a given day, he’s patrolling neighborhoods spanning from farmland to Malibu mansions, looking for evidence that residents are wasting water.
