Outside of Mark Larson’s home are 12 acres of blossoming Bird of Paradise. Flowers have grown on his farm since the 1960s. “Once you get used to the country and all this open space it’s hard to go back to the city,” said Larson. However, he says agriculture is disappearing from San Diego County, due in part to the cost of and access to water.
A celebrity-studded, water-strapped region on the western edge of Los Angeles County has cleared a major hurdle for the construction of a water purification facility that officials say will help reduce local dependence on supplies imported from Northern California. The board of the Las Virgenes-Triunfo Joint Powers Authority this week approved a final impact report for the proposed Pure Water Project at 30800 Agoura Road in Agoura Hills — a facility that would purify the millions of gallons of treated wastewater that are used for irrigation or flushed into the Pacific Ocean.
San Diego County and the rest of Southern California are under a new drought emergency announced this week. Local waters officials are encouraging conservation but say our local water supply is stable.
The cost of desalinated water in San Diego is about to dramatically increase, as Poseidon scrambles to meet state environmental regulations for protecting fish and other marine life at its Carlsbad facility. An ongoing overhaul of the Claude “Bud” Lewis plant’s intake system is estimated to cost roughly $274 million, regional water officials announced Thursday.
As California faces the prospect of a fourth consecutive dry year, officials with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California have declared a regional drought emergency and called on water agencies to immediately reduce their use of all imported supplies.
The decision from MWD’s board came about eight months after officials declared a similar emergency for 7 million people who are dependent on supplies from the State Water Project, a vast network of reservoirs, canals and dams that convey water from Northern California. Residents reliant on California’s other major supply — the Colorado River — had not been included in that emergency declaration.
San Diego County supervisors voted 4-0 Wednesday in favor of a multi-year program to increase the use of native plants in the region.
The program was developed by the San Diego Regional Biodiversity Working Group, which formed via a proposal from Supervisors Nathan Fletcher and Terra Lawson-Remer.
Lawson-Remer said that more native plants aren’t just good for environment, they also benefit the regional economy in the form of more landscaping and related service jobs. She said the program will provide incentives to “residents, landscapers and businesses to protect the biodiversity that makes our region so beautiful and unique, as well as require native plants be used in many county projects.”
Brown and Caldwell, an engineering and construction services firm, announced that it has been hired by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to design a sectional replacement of a critical Southern California water supply pipeline, the Rialto Pipeline. The Rialto Pipeline, constructed in 1972, is approximately 30 miles long with a diameter ranging from 96 inches to 144 inches.
As we head into winter, and growing season is over in most of the country, it is California’s Imperial Valley that supplies many of the winter vegetables you count on to keep your family eating healthy. It supplies much of the country’s winter vegetables including lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and other healthy produce. The Imperial Valley also provides a critical food source that consumers never see, but greatly impacts what we eat.
What’s better than an ice-cold beer inside a perfectly air-conditioned room on a hot San Diego day? How about beer made from water condensation from those AC units? It’s an unusual partnership between the San Diego International Airport and East Village Brewing Company.
San Diego’s mountains have turned into a winter wonderland thanks to a storm system that dumped a layer of snow on the county’s peaks to start the week. The winter storm swept across San Diego County overnight Sunday and left snowfall on Julian, Mount Laguna and Palomar mountains. By 9 a.m. Monday, at least 4 inches fell at Mount Laguna and more than 4 inches on Birch Hill near Palomar Mountain, and 3 inches were recorded in Julian, the National Weather Service said.
