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Here’s How Much The Pure Water Project Could Raise Your Water Bill

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

San Diego water customers will soon pay $6 to $13 more a month to fund the first part of the city’s new recycled water project, according to a newly released estimate. The city is working on a multibillion-dollar plan to purify enough sewage to provide a third of the city’s drinking water by 2035. Most of Southern California’s water now comes from either the rivers of Northern California or the Colorado River, which are not only hundreds of miles away but prone to drought. The city’s wastewater recycling project, known as Pure Water, is meant to provide more reliable water. Of course, that will come at a cost.

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OPINION: Valley Voice: Why This Drought Contingency Plan Is No Friend To The Salton Sea

/in , /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by Norma Sierra Galindo

The March 26 opinion piece by Tom Buschatzke and 13 other Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan proponents to persuade the public that the DCP is good for the Salton Sea would have been better served – and made more believable – by a show of good faith rather than a show of force. People who know the Salton Sea as an actual place, rather than a place on a map, can tell the difference. That Buschatzke and his fellow river contractors would be defiantly for a plan that turns the Salton Sea into its first casualty is sad but unsurprising. For them, the Salton Sea was the final impediment on the road to the DCP, not the finish line.

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OPINION: Why Taxing Water Is Wrong

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Gary Arant Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

This year presents an ideal opportunity to solve a critical public health issue that our state must address, and one we cannot afford to miss. While most California residents have access to safe drinking water, there are some people living in disadvantaged communities do not. This is primarily because the water systems within these communities are unable to adequately fund the operation and maintenance of treatment facilities capable of providing water in compliance with state and federal standards. Everyone agrees with the urgent need to provide families in these communities access to safe drinking water and is supportive of Gov. Gavin Newsom making it a top priority for the state.

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OPINION: Why California Needs Water Tax

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Phoebe Seaton

California is the only state in the nation that has codified the human right to water. Along with the innovation that streams out of the Silicon Valley, the food that feeds the world that grows in the Central Valley, the creativity that flows from Los Angeles and the beauty that pours out of San Diego, Californians should be proud that we recognize the human right to water. Our pride, though, is diminished by the more than 1 million Californians who do not have access to safe, affordable drinking water in their homes and in their schools.

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Helix Water District Honors Students For Water-Themed Photos

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Karen Pearlman

Asked to “Highlight Water in Everyday Life,” students from the Grossmont Union High School District wowed judges as part of a contest sponsored by the Helix Water District. The annual photography contest, open to any student attending school or residing within the district’s service area in East County, drew 74 entrants from four schools. Ten of the students — from Monte Vista, Grossmont and Santana high schools — earned awards. They met with Helix Water District board members and staff, and were honored at a special Helix board meeting on March 20.

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California ‘Browning’ More In The South During Droughts

/in , /by /PHYS.orgby David Colgan

Like a climate chameleon, California turned brown during the 2012–16 drought, as vegetation dried or died off. But the change wasn’t uniform. According to research from UCLA and Columbia University, large areas of the northern part of the state were not severely affected, while Southern California became much browner than usual. “Southern California is more prone than the northern part of the state to getting severe droughts,” said UCLA climate scientist Glen MacDonald, one of the paper’s authors. “But that difference seems to be increasing.”

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High-Tech Tools Help Detect Possible Pipeline Problems

/in , /by /Water News Network Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

It’s a whole new ballgame for the San Diego County Water Authority when it comes to finding leaks in major pipelines with cutting-edge technology. One new tech tool deployed for the first time in February actually looks like a tennis ball that floats through water-filled pipelines scanning for potential trouble. Of course, the new device is much more complex inside than a tennis ball – in fact, the Nautilus is among the most advanced tools of its kind in the world. It not only detects defects that are invisible to the human eye, it does so without requiring pipes to be drained, which saves a significant amount of water and disruption to customers.

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OPINION: Higginson: The ‘Why’ Of Water Rates

/in , /by /Poway News Chieftainby Don Higginson

In 1959 we had just moved to San Diego from Taipei (Taiwan) where my dad had been stationed in the Navy. Out for a Sunday drive (something one actually did back then for family entertainment) we approached the old bridge spanning Lake Hodges. That Sunday drive remains a vivid memory sketched in my mind as my three young sisters busted out laughing when we read a sign on the bridge that simply read, “No fishing from the bridge.” Quite amusing to us as the lake was bone dry, without any water in sight.

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California Drought Over, Conservation Continues

/in , /by /The Press (Brentwood, Calif.)by Tony Kukulich

Last week, as snowpack in the Sierra Nevada measured more than 150 percent of its average, California was declared free of drought for the first time in more than seven years.
As reported by United States Drought Monitor on March 19, “California emerged from drought conditions for the first week since Dec. 11, 2011, breaking its 376-week streak.”
But California weather is nothing if not fickle, and boom-or-bust weather cycles appear to be the new norm for the state. During a speech at the American Water Works Association conference in Sacramento on Tuesday, March 26, California Secretary for Natural Resources, Wade Crowfoot, said that he expects wet winters will be wetter, and dry winters will be drier. Water managers across East County echoed that sentiment and stressed the importance of continued conservation.

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OPINION: The Salton Sea Is A Disaster In The Making. California Isn’t Doing Anything To Stop It

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Times Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

California’s largest internal body of water is steadily drying up, exposing a lake bed that threatens to trigger toxic dust storms and exacerbate already high levels of asthma and other respiratory diseases in Southern California. Yet there is something about the Salton Sea that leads many lawmakers to ignore the urgency and put off remediation programs. It’s just so far south — off the mental map of officials who represent more densely populated urban areas to the north, like Los Angeles. It is hydrologically unconnected to the Bay Area and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which supplies water for so much of the state’s agricultural and residential use. It is a disaster in the making, yet it is an afterthought.

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