They’ve been part of the American Dream, Southern California style for decades. But verdant lawns are disappearing more and more thanks to shrinking water supplies.
The Golden State is now in its third year of drought. A study published by the journal Nature Climate Change in February found this is the worst drought in what is now the western United States in 1,200 years.
Regional leaders have reached a broad agreement to resolve a dispute threatening a massive East County water recycling plant, but many details still need to be worked out.
The conflict between the city of San Diego and the Advanced Water Purification Project emerged publicly earlier this year, just weeks before officials broke ground on the $950 million plant.
We have “operational solutions” that meet both parties’ needs, Jay Goldstone, San Diego’s chief operating officer, said in a recent phone interview.
As the record-breaking drought continues to worsen in California, water districts across the state have issued a series of restrictions in an effort to curb water waste.
Joining the throngs of regions already impacted by these water conservation efforts are Kagel Canyon, Acton, Val Verde, the Antelope Valley and Malibu, which are all provided retail water service by Los Angeles County Waterworks Districts.
Sewage is now a commodity, a drinking water resource in the world of California drought, and the city of San Diego and a bloc of eastern San Diego County water agencies have been fighting over it.
Both parties will be recycling wastewater into drinking water but they need to cut a deal with each other to make that happen and it’s gotten fairly complicated, as Voice of San Diego’s MacKenzie Elmer previously reported.
The Poseidon desalination plant in Carlsbad — by far the San Diego region’s most expensive supply of water — is about to get even more costly.
Under pressure from state environmental regulators, the company is now scrambling to complete an estimated $159-million overhaul of its system for pulling ocean water from the Agua Hedionda Lagoon up to its $1-billion reverse-osmosis facility perched atop a nearby hill.
The San Diego County Water Authority is taking strategic steps to minimize 2023 rate increases for its 24 member agencies and their customers while ensuring a safe, reliable, and affordable water supply as drought grips California for a third consecutive year.
Water Authority staff proposed increasing 2023 rates and charges for member agencies by 5.2% for treated water and 3.7% for untreated water. The increases are attributable to historically high inflation, significant energy cost increases from SDG&E, and continued cost increases by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
As a historic drought grips southern California, one district is getting tough on water usage violators by reducing their supply directly from the source so that sprinklers and outdoor hoses no longer work.
The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District in Calabasas, north of Los Angeles, places metal disks with a small hole into the main water supply lines to offending homes. Flow per minute drops from around 30 gallons to just one gallon – enough for cooking, washing dishes and showers, but not gardening.
If you take a boat ride to Catalina Island, you’ll notice it’s surrounded by the ocean.
“We’re about 4,000 people on a year-round basis, but we get up to a million visitors a year, and so of course that impacts a lot of our infrastructure because we have these visitors and thank God we do because we’re an entirely tourist-based community,” said Avalon Mayor Anni Marshall.
The Colorado River provides water to seven states in the western part of the country and serves about 40 million people, including Southern California.
But as of Tuesday, the Bureau of Reclamation is urging three major water districts, including the Imperial Irrigation and Coachella Valley Water Districts, to cut back by mid-August.
So, how does a desert even get its water in the first place?
Every individual landscape sits in one of San Diego County’s 16 watersheds. The watershed approach to landscaping considers every garden its own mini-watershed, holding onto or cleaning the water falling on it and nurturing a diverse habitat of plants and insects.
