The San Diego County Water Authority this week received a prestigious international engineering award for using an innovative construction technology to raise the historic San Vicente Dam – a project that helps ensure regional water security for generations to come.
Tens of thousands of South Bay residents will pay more for water next year.
The Sweetwater Authority approved a .5% rate hike beginning Jan. 1 and another 6% hike the following year. By 2026, rates could go up another 6.5%, according to the agency.
A new law expanding California’s atmospheric river research program goes into effect next year. It connects flood and reservoir control operations with new technologies and strategies that can help operators accurately predict the arrival of these storms.
The Imperial Irrigation District in California, which uses more Colorado River water than any other farm district or city in the West, has agreed to conserve 100,000 acre-feet in 2023 in exchange for payments from the federal government. It’s less than half the amount of water the district originally proposed saving last spring.
In the wake of the arrival of a history-making year in weather, the San Diego County Water Authority is working with two other agencies and the federal government to implement lasting changes to regional water management.
The Biden Administration will pay the Imperial Irrigation District an estimated $77.6 million for conserving 100,000 acre-feet of water in the Colorado River this year, setting the stage for more than half a billion dollars in federal funds to be paid to the agency, the river’s largest user, to conserve far more through 2026.
For local breweries in San Diego, it’s becoming increasingly complex to brew beer due to a recent surge in water rates.
As part of the historic Lower Basin Plan between Arizona, California and Nevada to conserve 3 million acre-feet of water by 2026 to protect the Colorado River system from extended drought, the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors on Friday, Dec. 1 unanimously approved the 2023 System Conservation Implementation Agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
In recent decades, as water has grown increasingly precious, Californians have tried countless ways to find more of it and make it last longer, including covering agricultural canals with solar panels to prevent evaporation, building costly desalination plants and pulling out tracts of water-hungry grass.
When it comes to creating weather forecasts, one might picture thermometers, barometers, maps or charts. But a team led by the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla is using hurricane-hunting aircraft.
