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
Just last year the Fleiner family moved to Calabasas. The family built a pool and finished landscaping their backyard just last month.
The outdoor upgrades cost them about $150,000, Deena Fleiner told KTLA. Now the local water supplier is telling them they’re using too much water.
Their story is not unlike like many other families at risk of severe restrictions.
Ventura has struck a 20-year deal with a Riverside County water wholesaler that would save the city millions of dollars in costs to maintain its rights to imported state water.
Under the agreement approved last month, the city would lease its share of imported water to the San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency in Beaumont, an arrangement that would reap $1.1 million this year and cover nearly half of the $2.27 million it will owe to keep its state water entitlement. San Gorgonio would increase its share of the costs starting next year.
A handful of state lawmakers gathered last week on the side of the Tijuana River Estuary that’s not visibly clogged by plastics and tires spilling from Mexico down canyon gullies or down the river itself to ask the governor for money to, well, stop trash from spilling over the border.
Southern California lawmakers hope Gov. Gavin Newsom will put $100 million in next year’s budget to be split equally between the Tijuana River and the Mexicali-to-Salton-Sea-flowing New River, both sewage-plagued water bodies.
Using water efficiently is a way of life and an important responsibility in San Diego County’s beautiful Mediterranean climate. WaterSmart landscaping rethinks the way limited water resources can be used by making smart choices to reduce outdoor water use. But saving water is just one benefit of low-water-use landscaping. WaterSmart landscapes are attractive and in balance with the regional environment and climate.
San Diego County has started using new ocean water-quality testing technology intended to produce faster results and earlier warnings when bacteria reach unhealthy levels.
During a rollout of the DNA-based technology last week, county Board of Supervisors Vice Chairwoman Nora Vargas said the county plans to expand its use of the testing technology, known as droplet digital polymerase chain reaction, or ddPCR, to more than 70 miles of shoreline that the county samples and tests to help protect the public.
San Diego County is using new, high-tech tests that will allow officials to test ocean water and find out if that water is safe for swimming, in just one day. County supervisor Nora Vargas said the county is the first local government to get U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approval to use the new, sophisticated tests. The switch is the culmination of years of testing.
