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Supervisors Receive San Diego County Fire 5-year Strategic Plan

/in , /by /County News Centerby Gig Conaughton

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.

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Environment Report: What to Watch as the City’s New Energy Agency Gets Off the Ground

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

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.

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California Mayor Calls Mexican Sewage From Imperial Beach ‘International Tragedy’

/in , /by /News 4

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.

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The Next Big Effort In AI: Keeping L.A.’s Water Flowing Post-Earthquake

/in , , /by /USC Newsby Gary Polakovic

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.

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Metropolitan Water District To Study Rainfall and Stormwater Runoff

/in , , /by /California Water News Daily

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.

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Sweetwater Authority Eyes Sand Mining, Material Dredging Opportunities

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

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.

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Water District Approves Rate Increase, Fee Spending Plan

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune by Julie Gallant

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.

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Climate Change: Strengthening Atmospheric Rivers

/in , /by /ABC 10 San Diegoby Megan Parry

Ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit next week, 10News is diving deeper into the affects of climate change. Climate change is leading to more dangerous and deadly wildfires and so often after fires scorch the ground in the fall, the heavy winter rains in atmospheric rivers lead to mudslides and flooding.

The scary reality is that these types of storms are going to get stronger. According to Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD, “we know for certain that atmospheric rivers are going to get stronger in the future, in a warmer atmosphere more water vapor can be held so atmospheric rivers are basically plumes of very intense concentrated moisture and they just going to get wetter as they get warmer.

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OPINION: How Bill Defends Against Trump Environmental Rollbacks

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune by Matt O'Malley

If you’re a local and have hosted a visitor to San Diego, you’ve probably felt pride as you’ve guided people to take in Coronado Beach, Pacific Beach, La Jolla Cove, our parks and swimming holes along Mission Bay, and perhaps the new and growing waterside paths along Chollas Creek. Our beaches, bays and waterways are central to who we are as San Diegans and to our unique way of life. But in a heavily urbanized region clean water doesn’t just happen; it takes hard work and stewardship.

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OPINION: Why Atkins Bill Would Hurt California’s Water Progress

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune by Jeffrey Kightlinger

California’s contemporary effort to modernize the water system in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta officially began in 2006.

George W. Bush was president of the United States and Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California. Their administrations signed a planning agreement. And the search for a solution was on.

Thirteen years, two governors and two presidents later, we are all still at it.

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