While rain is usually a very welcome sight for officials who oversee the City of San Diego’s drinking water supply, Monday’s storm will, at least in part, not provide its usual benefits. That’s because the Lake Hodges Dam is in such bad shape, it’s not capable of holding its regular supply of water, meaning much of the runoff from this storm may have to be released.
Cathy and Mike Godfrey’s most recent front yard landscape project was not their first rodeo. The couple, who bought their Carlsbad house in August 1997 and are empty nesters with two adult daughters, are avid gardeners and DIYers.
Twenty years ago, Cathy dug 40 holes to sink posts for the white picket fence that encircles their small front yard. They reduced the scale of the lawn (mostly to discourage neighborhood dogs being walked from pooping on their property) and, for a tropical look, added palms and decorative plants like red fountain grass, which Cathy said they regretted.
(Editor’s Note:This is the second in an occasional series on winners of the annual WaterSmart Landscape Contest, conducted in partnership with the San Diego County Water Authority. To learn about entering the next contest, visit landscapecontest.com.)
Seventy-five years ago, on Dec. 11 1947, the 71-mile San Diego Aqueduct was dedicated and put into operation, bringing water from the Colorado River to San Diego. By 1949, 85 percent of all water consumed in San Diego was Colorado River water. Today, after conservation, desalination, and other efforts to add to local water supplies, some 70 percent of the region’s water supply still flows through the aqueduct system.
State officials on Friday cleared the final major regulatory hurdle for the Doheny desalination plant, which aims to use ocean to help shore up drinking water supplies for drought-ridden Southern California. The California State Lands Commission unanimously granted South Coast Water District a 20-year lease for land off Doheny State Beach, in Dana Point.
It’s hard to be blasé about the Sink Twice. I don’t want to oversell a plastic sink that sits over a toilet tank, but this ingenious, relatively low-cost device could help save the world. Why? Because it saves water. It saves money. It motivates children and adults to wash their hands. It’s a great conversation starter. And it’s really fun, which by itself makes the Sink Twice worth the $83.99 price tag.
A new analysis says San Diego must raise water rates 17.6% over the next two years to fund the city’s Pure Water sewage recycling system and cover rising costs to buy imported water and replace aging pipes.
The average monthly bill for a customer in a single-family home would increase from $81.07 to $95.03 in November 2023, and then to $103.06 in January 2025. Bills for high-volume water users would likely climb even more.
Last week, California announced initial allocations of just 5 percent of requested supplies from the State Water Project in the coming year. That was actually an improvement from last December, when the state called for zero allocations for 2022. The eventual allotment for this year eventually rose to 5 percent.
An expanded Atmospheric River Reconnaissance program began last month as a result of the unexpected “bomb cyclone” in October 2021 that hit North America’s West Coast, followed by another atmospheric river less than a month later that caused severe flooding in Washington.
“Climatologically, November and December can bring some of the worst floods for that part of the world,” said research meteorologist Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E) at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Ralph leads the AR Recon program, along with Vijay Tallapragada, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center, in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the California Dept. of Water Resources, NOAA Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, and the U.S. Air Force Reserve 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron “Hurricane Hunters.”
Higher utility rates will be here starting on Jan. 1. NBC 7 has already talked about higher energy rates, but water and wastewater rates are rising too. That means higher utility bills are on the way for many San Diegans. But just how much are they going up? Some, like water and wastewater increases, are set in stone, while others are being modified right up to the last minute. That can make it hard for families to plan.
