In many ways, California has stepped up in its commitments to the Salton Sea as tens of millions of dollars have flowed toward restoration efforts for smaller-scale projects planned over the next 10 years. Those projects will largely address potentially hazardous conditions to human and animal life brought on by exposed seabed and loss of bird habitat from ever-shrinking inflows of water.
The Advisory Committee on the Fallbrook/Rainbow Detachment convened by San Diego’s Local Agency Formation Commission met Feb. 1, and by the next advisory committee meeting scheduled for April 5, consultant Michael Hanemann will have a recommendation on the supply reliability issue associated with the Fallbrook Public Utility District and the Rainbow Municipal Water District plans to detach from the San Diego County Water Authority and annex into the Eastern Municipal Water District.
Carlsbad beaches will soon have more sand as a result of the Agua Hedionda Lagoon dredging project – starting this February until mid April, informs the City of Carlsbad, California. The lagoon has been dredged every one to four years since 1954 as part of the Encina power plant operations. The last time the lagoon was dredged was three years ago, in 2018. Now that the Encina plant has been retired, Poseidon Water is taking over the dredging, as part of an agreement when the seawater desalination plant was built and came online in 2015.
Tish Berge is joining the San Diego County Water Authority as assistant general manager, bringing experience from every aspect of water utility management to serve the region, it was announced Thursday.
Berge is general manager of the Sweetwater Authority, one of the water authority’s 24 member agencies. Berge starts her new role Feb. 22 alongside Deputy General Manager Dan Denham and General Manager Sandra L. Kerl.
For the fourth year in a row, the number of water main breaks has decreased in the city of San Diego, officials reported Wednesday. There were 33 water main breaks in 2020, the lowest total in more than 15 years and far fewer than the peak of 131 breaks in 2010. The city credited the continued downward trend to increased maintenance efforts and a multi-year program to replace old cast-iron pipes.
Over two decades, I’ve watched opponents resist San Vicente Dam, the Carlsbad Desalination Plant, Olivenhain Reservoir, San Diego Pure Water and other projects because they refused a meaningful, fact-based dialogue. Thankfully, in each of those cases, a rational, long-term approach to securing our future prevailed.
The plants are thriving at Helix Water District’s demonstration landscape just eight months after the project was completed. The WaterSmart plants at the District’s administration office in La Mesa beautify the neighorhood while inspiring people to install sustainable, WaterSmart landscaping.
Ramona Municipal Water District directors agreed Tuesday, Feb. 9, to three changes that will make them and their meetings more accessible to the public, including moving their meeting times from afternoons to evenings and setting up email accounts on the district website.
San Diego has pretty much shed its image as a big small town, at least by the measure of potentially transformative proposals that could reshape the region for decades to come. Some of them are big and exciting, some big and scary— and often they are both. All of them are costly in terms of dollars and, potentially, in their impact on the land.
Whether they are the right things to do will be endlessly debated, even after some come to fruition — if they get that far.
The California Energy Commission has awarded a $1.5 million contract to three University of California campuses, including UC San Diego, that will work in tandem to better simulate climate change scenarios that can be used by utilities and others to anticipate the effects.
