If, like me, you live in Los Angeles — or Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix or Salt Lake City — you drink water from the Colorado River. You probably eat vegetables grown with Colorado River water, and maybe you eat beef fed on alfalfa grown with Colorado River water. When you switch on a light or charge your phone, some of the electricity may be generated by Colorado River water.
The economy might seem bad out there but San Diego may not have gotten the worst of California’s massive job losses. Roughly 67 percent of workers in San Diego County are considered essential and less likely to have suffered furloughs, shows a deep dive of unemployment data by Beacon Economics. That’s a higher percentage of the workforce than Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Burrowing owl homes maintained by the Otay Water District received a modern makeover this year. As part of its ongoing environmental mitigation efforts, the District managed construction of new nesting burrows to encourage breeding.
Ten acres of the 240-acre, District-owned San Miguel Habitat Management Area reserve and mitigation bank in eastern Chula Vista is a dedicated native grasslands area where the new artificial burrows are located. The California Department of Fish & Wildlife has designated burrowing owls as a “Species of Special Concern.”
The California legislature voted Monday to keep the Salton Sea in its budget proposal sent to Governor Gavin Newsom. Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia said he’s pleased the legislature found a way to allocate some funding for the Salton Sea despite the fiscal challenges created by the pandemic.
This summer, the Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park will turn curious kids into happy campers with science-themed summer camps. The Fleet’s Summer Camps provide exciting experiments, intriguing investigations and fantastic fun for kids. Virtual Summer Camps began June 15 and end Aug. 14. Details: https://www.fleetscience.org/events/summer-camps
With more people spending time at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, the city of San Diego launched a website Tuesday that provides information and assistance on how to become a successful “urban farmer.” Urban farming can come in many forms and sizes. It can be vegetables grown in containers on a home patio, a community garden that covers one or more city blocks, or raising certain animals such as chickens or bees.
A Cooper’s hawk chick and its nest received special attention after being discovered recently near a San Diego County Water Authority construction project.
Environmental surveyors spotted the nest on March 27 south of Gopher Canyon Road during the Pipeline 5 repair project in Moosa Canyon in North San Diego County.
Most people take it for granted. You turn the faucet on, and water comes out.
But it isn’t that simple. In fact, it’s far more complicated to fill a glass with clean drinking water.
That’s one of the reasons why the City of San Diego’s Public Utilities Department is mailing residents the annual Drinking Water Quality Report this week.
“A lot of people just think that when you turn the tap water on, it’s just coming from the lakes and the streams,” said Michael Simpson, the Senior Water Operations Supervisor at the Alvarado Water Treatment Plant near Lake Murray.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego will host a major research initiative funded by the federal government.
UC San Diego will host the Cooperative Institute for Marine, Earth and Atmospheric systems, and it will get up to $220 million in funding for research over a five-year period.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is making the investment locally after a competitive bidding process.
The urgent evacuation of 10,000 people from communities below two failing dams in central Michigan last month prevented the loss of life, but the collapsed dams expelled billions of gallons of water from two large lakes, sending them hurtling downstream in a powerful rush of destruction. Water ripped buildings off their foundations, smashed and twisted roads and bridges, damaged or destroyed an estimated 2,500 properties and triggered fears of contamination as it swept by a chemical plant and hazardous waste sites and submerged downtown Midland — a city of 40,000 people — under 9 feet of water.
