Mono County Board of Supervisors will get briefed today on the details and process of the Owens Valley Pumped Storage Project. Currently Premium Energy Holdings is in stage one toward a preliminary permit to explore the possibility of reservoirs on Wheeler Crest and the Owens River and/or Rock Creek gorges in a closed loop system to generate approximately 5,200 MW of energy.
In 2011, Harvard University and a small private company began buying up rights to the West’s most important water source: the Colorado River. Within a year, they owned nearly 13,000 acres near the small Riverside County farming community of Blythe. Farmers in Blythe and the surrounding Palo Verde Valley are supposed to keep getting water even after nearly everyone else in the Southwestern United States runs dry. That’s thanks to a complex and bizarre system of water rights that California, six other states and Mexico use to share the Colorado.
Poseidon Water, a national leader in the development of water supply and treatment projects using a public-private partnership approach, furthered its commitment to protect and preserve San Diego’s coastal environment by assuming stewardship of the Agua Hedionda Lagoon in Carlsbad.The Agua Hedionda Lagoon encompasses over 400 acres of marine, estuarine and wetlands habitat teeming with hundreds of fish, invertebrate and bird species.
Pasadena Water and Power is partnering with the City’s Department of Public Health in celebrating the month of May as Water Awareness Month, and Wednesday, May 8, as Rethink Your Drink Day. PWP General Manager Gurcharan Bawa said the utility plans to engage with community organizations in Pasadena during the entire month in an effort to educate people about the importance of water as a precious resource.
Helen Robbins-Meyer, San Diego County’s Chief Administrative Officer released the county’s 2020 proposed budget yesterday, that totals six point two billion dollars. The Board of Supervisors will spend a month dealing with amendments and public hearings that begin June 10. KUSI’s Steve Bosh has a preview. A new era in leadership is broadening the County of San Diego’s outlook on how to grapple with some of our region’s core issues, meet new challenges and remain prepared for whatever the future may bring.
The California Independent System Operator the nonprofit that maintains reliability for the bulk of the state’s power grid has become one of the first wholesale power markets to connect an innovative battery storage technology to its system. Located at the Miguel substation in Bonita, a flow battery system installed by San Diego Gas & Electric has undergone testing and fine-tuning as part of a four-year pilot project to develop storage technologies aimed at integrating more renewable energy sources into California’s grid.
The San Diego County Water Authority on Monday praised Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to cut one of the two planned Bay-Delta tunnels and invited him to tour San Diego’s facilities. Board Chair Jim Madaffer thanked the governor for “wisdom and leadership” in officially scrapping the Brown administration’s plans for an $18 billion two-tunnel system for moving water through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta to Southern California in favor of a less-expensive single tunnel.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California provides grants for water conservation projects which are administered to MWD member agencies, and those member agencies including the San Diego County Water Authority provide the grants to the retail agencies. The Fallbrook Public Utility District will be receiving two MWD grants through the County Water Authority. “We’ve secured the funding and now we’re in the process of fully developing and implementing the programs,” FPUD engineering technician Mick Cothran said.
A new report is accusing the regional board that regulates the quality of Los Angeles’s water of not taking enough action against cities and industrial facilities that pollute coastal waters and inland watersheds. When it rains in a city like Los Angeles that is largely paved over, the water passes over streets and sidewalks, collecting bacteria, trash, metals, herbicide and other pollutants, eventually draining into rivers and the ocean.
Water is more critical than ever in California. That’s why we need the Twin Tunnels project, called the California Water Fix and Eco Restore, WaterFix for short. It would bring 9,000 cubic feet per second of water from Northern California to Southern California while solving ecological problems. Building only one tunnel would bring south just one-third the water. Yet Gov. Gavin Newsom in an April 29 executive order summarily called for only “a new single tunnel project.” It’s obvious that the O.J. jury spent more time considering the evidence than the governor when considering Twin Tunnels.
