Construction recently began on a well designed to inject water back into the groundwater basin beneath Long Beach.
The groundbreaking last week took place at the Water Replenishment District’s advanced water treatment facility, on the southeastern border of Long Beach, next to the San Gabriel River. The plant further treats sewer effluent from the Los Angeles County Sanitation District to create purified recycled water.
The Imperial Irrigation District is preparing a water apportionment plan for Imperial Valley growers to rein in a projected water overrun after the federal government declared a water shortage, reducing the amount of water that Arizona, Nevada and Mexico can claim from the Colorado River.
The IID holds the largest and most secure federal entitlement on the Colorado River, but current Bureau of Reclamation projections show the district exceeding its allocation by more than 92,000 acre-feet of water this year as grain prices reach record highs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Fallbrook Public Utility District declared three FPUD-owned parcels to be surplus property.
The 5-0 FPUD board vote April 25 makes the findings that the properties are surplus land but does not authorize any sale. An interested public agency will have the first priority to purchase the property. If no public agency expresses interest or if good faith negotiations do not determine a mutually agreeable sales price and terms, the land can be sold on the public market.
Local residents spoke out at a packed standing room only town hall meeting last week about a proposal by the Fallbrook Public Utility District and Rainbow Municipal Water District to switch water suppliers, a change that they are reportng would save ratepayers millions of dollars.
Following years of escalating water costs from the San Diego County Water Authority, averaging 8% per year, FPUD and Rainbow are seeking to change water suppliers – through a process known as detachment – from the Water Authority.
Despite official calls to increase conservation amid worsening drought, urban water use across California increased by nearly 19% in March, according to the State Water Resources Control Board.
The startling conservation figure was among a number of grim assessments water officials offered reporters Tuesday in a California drought outlook. Others included critically low reservoir levels and major shifts in the water cycle due to climate change.
Nearly 4 million Angelenos will be reduced to two-day-a-week watering restrictions on June 1 under drought rules released by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on Tuesday.
The highly anticipated announcement came two weeks after the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California called for the strictest-ever water cuts in the region due to worsening drought conditions and reduced supplies from the California State Water Project. The MWD action left many to wonder just how the rules would be applied in L.A.
Anyone who has shivered through an overcast Memorial Day at the beach knows that Southern California has a tendency to serve up gray days at this time of the year. Locals call it May gray and June gloom. But the heavy-looking gray clouds that blot out the sun aren’t just the bane of beachgoers. They serve an important environmental role.
Poseidon Water, the company that runs the seawater desalination facility in Carlsbad, is pushing to build another desalination plant in Huntington Beach.
“We developed the project in Carlsbad and have been operating that facility since we came online in 2015. In that time, we have produced almost 90 billion gallons of fresh water for San Diego County residents,” said Jessica Jones, director of communications for Poseidon Water.
The first ever outdoor water restrictions have recently been announced for sections of Los Angeles and other Southern California counties.
Due to an increasingly severe drought that’s drastically reduced the sierra snowpack, watering will be cut back to one day a week in those areas.
San Diego, however, is being spared such measures.
Millions of Southern Californians will wake up to the region’s most severe water restrictions ever on June 1, with local water agencies under orders to slash the use of supplies from the State Water Project by 35%.
Many water experts say that the cuts are achievable and that reducing outdoor watering to one day a week can help yield immediate savings. At the same time, researchers and water policy experts say, the region needs to adapt to the severe drought because climate change, extreme heat and dwindling snowpack will only serve to exacerbate the issues in years to come
