Gusty Santa Ana winds and high temperatures will slightly increase the danger of fire Tuesday in San Diego County, according to the National Weather Service.
A low-pressure system hanging over Southern California will produce Santa Ana winds with gusts that could reach 30 mph in San Diego County, meteorologist Stefanie Sullivan said.
Humidity could drop as low as 20% Tuesday in the county mountains and 15% in the deserts, forecasters said.
Crews from the Fallbrook Public Utility District are helping rebuild water services in Paradise, Calif. after the devastating November 2018 Camp Fire.
The Camp Fire burned 153,336 acres, destroyed 18,793 structures, caused 85 deaths and three firefighter injuries. The Camp Fire is the deadliest, most destructive fire in California’s history, according to CAL FIRE.
Colter Shannon and Austin Wendt left the FPUD yard Sept. 22 to make the 565-mile, 10-hour drive to Paradise. On Sept. 29, two more FPUD crew members, Toby Stoneburner and Matt Perez, will depart for the Butte County town. Each two-member team will spend two days driving and five days working on repairs for a total of seven days.
The Santa Fe Irrigation District board recommended moving forward with a new five-tier rate structure for its proposed three percent water rate increase. The vote was 4-1 with Director Marlene King opposed.
The Santa Fe Irrigation District (SFID) board is expected to make a final decision on the rates by January 2020 to ensure the financial stability of the district and meet its objectives of equity across customer classes and encouraging conservation.
San Diego County supervisors received a five-year strategic plan Tuesday to continue improving firefighting and emergency medical services in unincorporated areas, provided by San Diego County Fire, the County Fire Authority-CAL FIRE entity the County has supported with more than $500 million since 2008.
The new plan runs from 2020 through 2025. It focuses on four objectives for the unified fire and emergency medical response Fire Authority that the County created in 2008 to unify and improve the uneven, disconnected administrative support, communications and training of individual rural fire agencies.
Last week, the San Diego City Council took the big plunge and decided, in a 7-2 vote, to start buying and selling energy.
San Diego, along with several neighboring cities, will shortly form a “community choice” energy agency, or CCA. This is something I’ve written a lot about over the past two years, because it represents a major shift in who controls both literal and figurative power in the region.
Right now, energy decisions are made by a private company, San Diego Gas & Electric, which operates under the somewhat watchful eye of the California Public Utilities Commission and, of course, the shareholders of its parent company, Sempra Energy.
The mayor of Imperial Beach, which abuts Tijuana, Mexico at a point that is visible by a border wall marking the two countries, is fed up with sewage and toxic chemicals flowing into the United States, and he is heading to Washington, D.C., to ask the Trump administration to do something about it.
Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina left for the nation’s capital on Sunday with a congressional delegation. He told Border Report that he has meetings at the White House scheduled on Tuesday with top officials who he hopes will help this situation.
Can artificial intelligence save the L.A. water supply from a big earthquake?
USC researchers have embarked on an innovative project to prove that it can. Using federal funds, experts at the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (CAIS) are working with Los Angeles city officials to find solutions for vulnerable plumbing. The goal is to make surgical improvements to strategic pipelines to keep water flowing after shaking stops.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has launched a new pilot program to provide vital data on the most efficient and cost-effective methods to capture and use rainfall and stormwater runoff. The $5 million pilot program will help fund the construction of new direct-use stormwater capture projects and the installation of monitoring equipment on existing projects.
Information on the costs and volume of water produced by different types of projects will be collected over three years and will inform the possible funding of stormwater capture efforts in the future. The goal is to understand the potential water supply benefits of local stormwater capture projects and how to best use that information.
The board of the Sweetwater Authority is interested in sand mining and material dredging opportunities in and around the South Bay water agency’s two reservoirs.
The agency, which serves National City, Bonita and parts of Chula Vista, plans to solicit interest from sand mining companies to explore the concept — specifically, whether there are opportunities to leverage the Sweetwater and Loveland reservoirs by extracting materials to not only create a revenue stream but also increase the capacity of the reservoirs.
Ramona Municipal Water District Board of Directors approved an increase to the general untreated water rates, updates to a fire mitigation fee facilities plan, and an agreement to use Mercy Medical for backup ambulance transportation services at their Sept. 10 meeting.
Water rate increases were approved by the RMWD directors on July 9. However, directors revisited the topic to correct a clerical error in the district’s public notice of proposed increases to general untreated water rates.
The original Proposition 218 notice, which informs property owners and customers of proposed water rate increases, incorrectly stated the general untreated water was set to increase from $4.88 to $5.46 per unit beginning Aug. 1. A unit is the equivalent of 748 gallons.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
