With a Monday deadline looming, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has offered to break an impasse on a seven-state Colorado River drought contingency package by contributing necessary water from its own reserves on behalf of the Imperial Irrigation District. It’s not help that IID is seeking, but Metropolitan general manager Jeffrey Kightlinger said he had no choice.
Ten years ago, the state and region were facing a water crisis — snowpack levels were below normal and water restrictions were in place. Thinking outside the box, the Water Authority sweetened its conservation outreach efforts by partnering with the San Diego-Imperial Council of the Girl Scouts to distribute water conservation tip sheets across the region with the scouts’ popular cookies. In March 2009, 400,000 conservation cards were handed out with 2 million boxes of cookies. “Please take a few moments to implement one or more saving tips,” the cards said. “The amount of water saved could have a huge impact on our region!”
The tail of the storm that’s been dropping heavy rain and snow in Northern California will slump into the southern part of the state on Wednesday. But the National Weather Service says the system will mostly — or entirely — bypass San Diego County. Forecasters say it appears that only a few hundredths of an inch of rain will fall locally, and most of it will be in northern San Diego County. There is no significant snow in the forecast for the region’s mountains.
After the first few days of the aqueduct shut-down, things are going very well in the parts of the Valley Center Municipal Water District affected by the aqueduct shutdown that began February 23 and will continue until March 5. VCMWD Gen. Mgr. Gary Arant told The Roadrunner, “Consumption has been minimal, reflecting only inside domestic use. With the ideal weather condition for having the majority on you imported water supply shut-off. Finally, this is a case where our large water storage volume really pays off.”
Some residents in the Southern California city of Lake Elsinore fear power lines from a proposed $2 billion hydro electric dam project could ignite a brush fire. Residents are worried electrical towers and power lines could impact the area as part of the Lake Elsinore Advanced Pump Storage Dam project. “In the last two years, there have been two wildfires that have burned in the location of the proposed transmission line locations,” said Joe Folmar, who heads up a group of residents who oppose the project. “The Wildomar fire in 2017 and the Holy Fire in 2018 are the two fires, both of which required mandatory evacuations.”
Elected officials throughout the San Diego region are ramping up efforts to form a public alternative to San Diego Gas & Electric, with the city of San Diego leading the way and even the county Board of Supervisors now looking at signing up. California’s three large investor-owned utilities have since 2010 seen more than 8 million customers defect to so-called community choice aggregation programs, from Humboldt to Los Angeles to Solana Beach. However, SDG&E is now facing the largest displacement of a utility’s customer base in the state — raising question about everything from grid reliability to whether the public alternative can deliver more renewable energy as promised.
The water gushed from a valve near the base of the Loveland Reservoir’s dam at 146,300 gallons per minute, cascading into the Sweetwater River below. The impressive sight near Alpine — which occurred, purposely, at 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 15 — marked the start of an ongoing transfer of water from the Loveland Reservoir to the Sweetwater Reservoir, where the water will be treated by the Sweetwater Authority and later supplied to the water agency’s customers in National City, Chula Vista and Bonita.
Local environmental activists, hoping to catch a wave of national attention on a so-called Green New Deal in Congress, are starting to rally for a San Diego version of the plan. The nonprofit Climate Action Campaign rolled out the idea of a “San Diego Green New Deal” last week alongside an annual report that rated the various plans to fight climate change already adopted by local governments.
For the next 75 days, Cindy Berglund will be traveling around Southern California in her motor home, lugging rain barrels with her. Last weekend, her company, Rain Barrels International, joined with the city’s Office of Sustainability to offer a free class on rainwater harvesting. More than 80 people signed up in advance for the class at Recreation Park but the presentation ended up being to a standing room only crowd.
The heavy rainfall of early 2019 has been a welcome sight for many in San Diego County hoping for an improvement in California’s drought conditions. However, with that rainfall comes some concern about the structural integrity of county dams and the potential for catastrophic flooding on par with a devastating event that happened over 100 years ago in the South Bay.
