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New Safe Drinking Water Plan for San Diego City Schools Approved

/in , /by /KUSI News by Ed Lenderman

The San Diego Unified School Board met today at 5 o’clock and unanimously approved a proposal to have “drinking water-filtration” in all of its schools.

The proposal is the result of something that happened in 2017. The state authorized California’s school districts to ask their water providers for a sampling of the schools’ drinking water.

The City of San Diego Water Department’s sampling of possible lead content in the water, particularly in the district’s older schools, was alarming.  It prompted a concerned district to ask the department to accelerate the testing. In all, 40 schools had to have their drinking water systems remediated because of lead content.

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SDUSD Approves New Filtered Water Stations Across District

/in , /by /NBC 7 (San Diego)by Lauren Coronado

New water filtration stations will be installed at all San Diego Unified School District campuses over the next four years in response to concerns over water quality in the wake of the discovery of high lead levels at several campuses.

Water quality has been a concern for SDUSD since 2017 when NBC 7 Investigates started tracking dangerous levels of lead in schools’ drinking water.

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D1 Candidates Split on the County’s Role in Addressing the Border Sewage Crisis

/in , /by /Voice of San Diego by Maya Srikrishnan

Though the flow of millions of gallons of sewage from Tijuana into San Diego has been happening for decades, local officials have been mounting pressure to address the issue over the last year.

Some of the candidates vying to represent District 1 on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, which encompasses the areas most acutely impacted by the sewage flows – including Imperial Beach, parts of San Ysidro and near the Tijuana River Valley – think the county should play a larger role in responding to the crisis. Others told VOSD they’d mostly continue the county’s current approach.

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San Diego Unified to Consider New Drinking Water Plan Proposal

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune by Andrea Lopez-Villafana

School board members of the San Diego Unified School District will consider a proposal Tuesday to install filtered water outlets in schools and update standards for lead in drinking water.

The district staff’s recommendation is for San Diego Unified to remove existing drinking fountains and install approximately 2,000 drinking hydration stations district-wide, according to agenda documents.

The proposal also includes changing the district’s drinking water policy so that all drinking outlets “reduce lead in water content to below 1 ppb,” or parts per billion.

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San Diego Approved $15M for Golf Course Renovations, Including Torrey Pines

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune by David Garrick

San Diego approved a $15 million contract Monday for upgrades and renovations to the city’s three municipal golf courses, including preparations at Torrey Pines to host next year’s U.S. Open.

The City Council unanimously approved the joint contract with four separate companies that will each perform parts of the work. Individual projects are expected to cost between $250,000 and $2.5 million each.

The city’s municipal courses include the north and south courses at Torrey Pines, 18-hole and nine-hole courses at Balboa Municipal, and the lighted Mission Bay executive golf course.

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$1.5 Million Grant to Help Oceanside Conserve Water, Monitor Water Use

/in , , /by /Times of San Diego by Debbie L. Skylar

A $1.5 million federal grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will help the city of Oceanside complete its $4.5 million project to replace more than 11,000 water meters to help conserve water and better monitor usage, it was announced Monday.

According to the city’s water utilities department, the upgrades will save 784 acre-feet of water or more than 255 million gallons. It will also reduce Oceanside’s dependence on imported drinking water, 85% of which comes from the Sacramento Bay Delta and the Colorado River, hundreds of miles away.

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Vallecitos Water District HAZMAT Team Ready to Respond

/in , , /by /Water News Network

To protect its employees, members of the public, and the environment from any accidental chemical releases or exposure, the Vallecitos Water District has established its own internal Hazardous Materials Response Team or HAZMAT team.

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One Idea, Two Cool Things: Desalinated Water and Renewable Energy

/in , , /by /Orange County Registerby Martin Wisckol

The contraption, reminiscent of Rube Goldberg, would produce two of Southern California’s most precious and essential resources: water and electricity.

The electricity would be renewable. And the drought-proof, desalinated ocean water could prove more environmentally friendly — and cheaper — than the water produced from three other desalters proposed for Southern California.

The idea, developed by Silicon Valley-based Neal Aronson and his Oceanus Power & Water venture, caught the attention of the Santa Margarita Water District. The agency quickly saw the project’s viability to fill a void.

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San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer to Leave More Than $1 billion in Polluted Rivers, Flood Issues to Successor

/in , /by /San Diego Union-Tribuneby Joshua Emerson Smith

Rainstorms routinely flush toxic chemicals, bacteria and even human feces through San Diego’s streets, canyons and rivers — ultimately polluting bays and beaches.

Those same downpours also regularly burst city stormwater pipes and overwhelm clogged waterways, inundating homes and businesses.

Under San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer the city laid out what it would cost to fix the problem — a financial blueprint over two decades for preventing undue flooding and coming into compliance with state mandates under the Clean Water Act.

 

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Water Fight About to Kick Into High Gear; Fallbrook, Rainbow to Take on County Water Authority

/in , , /by /San Diego Union-Tribuneby J. Harry Jones Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

Within the next few weeks, two water districts will be filing unprecedented applications to detach from the San Diego County Water Authority.

Instead, they intend to buy water directly from the Metropolitan Water District via the Eastern Municipal Water District in Riverside County, thereby saving both districts millions of dollars annually.

The Fallbrook Public Utility District and the Rainbow Municipal Water District say they are in a unique position to divorce themselves from the Water Authority because Metropolitan pipes run right past their geographic areas.

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