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.
Oceanside urged residents Monday to cut back their water use, following a similar move by the City of San Diego in response to the State Water Board and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order requiring water suppliers to implement mandatory restrictions.
“The Water Utilities Department is complying with state regulations as the drought progresses,” said Rosemarie Chora, the city’s Water Utilities Division manager. “As summer approaches, we ask residents and businesses to do their part and be mindful of water usage.”
Coronado’s tony seaside community and working-class Imperial Beach could be headed for a major reckoning with the sewage continuing to spilling over the border from Tijuana.
Beach closures that were once thought of as largely a wintertime occurrence now appear poised to become a year-round phenomena in San Diego’s South Bay.
However, that’s not because the cross-border pollution from Baja California’s overtaxed and crumbling wastewater system has dramatically escalated, according to county officials.
People in North Park reached out to CBS 8 about a standing water issue on their street. They say the puddles of water collect mosquitoes and carry a foul odor. CBS 8’s Brian White paid a visit to the 4300 block of 34th Street to talk with neighbors and get to the bottom of it.
“It’s an ongoing issue with mosquitoes, the smell, the eye sore looking at it,” said Page Carman. “It’s horrid.”
