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San Diego Unified Taps Into National Lead Fears In Bond Campaign

/in , /by /Voice Of San Diegoby Will Huntsberry and Ry Rivard

The San Diego Unified School District argues that any amount of lead in school drinking water is damaging to children. At the same time, it has found lead in water at some schools, does not remove all of it and is allowing kids to drink it. The argument that lead is in the water and is hurting kids has become the main selling point for Measure YY, the district’s school bond campaign. Though the bond is expected to generate $3.5 billion, only $45 million – less than 2 percent – would go to remove lead from school district water, district documents show.

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Water Talks Are On After Settlement Offer By San Diego

/in , /by /KPBSby Erik Anderson Quoted: Jim Madaffer

San Diego Water managers will meet with the Metropolitan Water District next week in a bid to end a long-running feud over water transfer costs. The San Diego County Water Authority made a surprise settlement offer a week ago. SDCWA Board Chair Jim Madaffer delivered a letter to MWD suggesting the two water agencies stop fighting over water fees. MWD’s initial reaction was cool, with the Los Angeles-based water wholesaler canceling a closed-door meeting on the issue that was originally scheduled for this week.

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The Biggest Share of Colorado River Water in the West is up for Grabs

/in , /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by Sammy Roth

A public agency and a powerful farmer are gearing up for a high-stakes court battle to determine who owns the largest share of Colorado River water in the West, complicating the river’s future as seven western states scramble to avoid severe water shortages. There’s a long history of fighting over water in California’s Imperial Valley, which has a legal right to more than 1 trillion gallons of Colorado River water each year — twice as much as the rest of California, and as much as Arizona and Nevada combined.

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Southern California To Face Enhanced Fire Danger Through Start Of November

/in , /by /AccuWeatherby Kristina Pydynowski

Locally gusty winds, warm weather and no signs of needed rain returning will keep the fire danger elevated across Southern California through the start of November. November is expected to pick up where October ended with winds blowing over parts of Southern California. “While the peak of the Santa Ana wind event occurred on Wednesday morning, locally gusty winds can persist in the wind-prone areas of Southern California late this week,” according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Maggie Samuhel.

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Los Angeles Water Officials Cancel Settlement Meeting with San Diego County Water Authority

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Jeff McDonald Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

An offer last week by the San Diego County Water Authority board chairman to settle a host of litigation with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was not well received by water officials to the north. MWD leaders accused their San Diego counterparts of violating an agreement to negotiate in private and abruptly canceled a meeting previously scheduled for Tuesday. “We were surprised by the unilateral decision by the San Diego County Water Authority to make the proposal letter public as our ongoing discussions … were confidential and our agencies have an executed confidentiality agreement governing those discussions,” the MWD chairman wrote Monday.

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Pipeline 5 Upgrades Begin in Fallbrook

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

A $25.3 million Pipeline 5 relining project is under way in North County to improve the reliability of the San Diego region’s water delivery system. The project involves rehabilitating approximately 2.3 miles of one of the San Diego County Water Authority’s regional wholesale water pipelines in eight segments along a 9.5-mile stretch through the community of Fallbrook. Construction work will be done in phases and completed in summer 2019. When finished, the Pipeline 5 Relining Project will help extend the service life of this vital piece of infrastructure for more than 75 years. Generally, relining construction rehabilitates segments of pipelines based on their age and the need for improvements.

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Santa Ana Winds to Howl, Blowing Away Spooky Fog Before Halloween

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Alejandra Reyes-Velarde

Southern California is getting a taste of fall weather, with spooky dense fog early in the week and howling Santa Ana winds picking up just in time for Halloween. A low, dense fog blanketed much of Southern California on Monday morning, bringing cool weather from Los Angeles to San Diego. In the San Diego region, the widespread fog decreased visibility to less than a quarter-mile and prompted the National Weather Service to issue a hazardous-driving warning. The fog, caused by a shallow marine layer and a lack of wind, was less widespread in the Los Angeles area but was thick along the county’s coast.

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Embrace El Nino or Ignore it: Guess San Diego’s Rainfall

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Robert Krier

Lacking current polling data, it could be hard to determine if more people believe in El Niño or the Great Pumpkin. El Niño has fallen on hard times. Once considered a fairly reliable indicator of a wet winter in much of California, in recent years the periodic phenomenon has produced little rain and a growing number of doubters. And that puts participants in the Union-Tribune’s 17th annual Precipitation Prediction Contest, launching today, in a bit of a quandary. Should they maintain a sincere belief in El Niño, like Linus and the Great Pumpkin, or move on like Sally after she realized she had wasted Halloween night in the pumpkin patch? Because El Niño is coming. Again. Probably.

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Dry Lake Bed in Mojave Desert at Center of Water Debate

/in , /by /ABC 7 (Glendale, Calif.)by Leticia Juarez

Cadiz, a water supply company, wants to pump out and sell 50,000 acre-feet of water from an aquifer under the Mojave Desert. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is trying to stop them. “It’s those aquifers that keep the plant life growing which nourish the animals — the bighorn sheep and the desert tortoises,” the California Democrat said at a news conference at the Whitewater Preserve in Riverside County. Feinstein, along with Rep. Raul Ruiz and state Sen. Richard Roth, spoke out against the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project. The project aims to pump the aquifer and pipe water from it across the desert to sell to Southern California cities.

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4 Years After a Corruption Scandal, West Basin Water District Still Wrestling with Ethics

/in , /by /Daily Breeze (Torrance, Calif.)by David Rosenfeld

When Ronald Smith became ensnared in a corruption probe and resigned in disgrace from an obscure South Bay water agency, his board colleagues quickly vowed to impose changes to combat such ethical lapses. The Carson-based West Basin Municipal Water District, which has a $200 million budget and supplies imported water to 17 mostly South Bay cities, performed an audit, overhauled codes of conduct for board members and eliminated individual community outreach funds, the same pot of money that Smith used to steer $20,000 of public funds through a Torrance nonprofit to pay for personal expenses. But that was three years ago.

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