Get ready to save the rain!  Solana Center, in partnership with the San Diego County Water Authority, will hold a rain barrel pick up event in El Cajon on November 4, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  at the Water Conservation Garden during the annual Autumn Fest.  East County residents can pre-order rain barrels (by Oct. 29) for pick up in El Cajon online at https://www.rainwatersolutions.com/products/solana-center. The Water Conservation Garden is located at Cuyamaca College, 12122 Cuyamaca College Dr W, El Cajon, CA 92019. The discounted 50-gallon rain barrels cost $90 (retail price is $129).

Today, more than 100 conservation and environmental justice advocates gathered at City Hall to urge the California State Lands Commission to take a reality check and defer action on an unnecessary, expensive, and irresponsible desalination plant. If approved by state and regional agencies, the desalination plant would drive up water bills, set back climate progress, and harm ocean wildlife. Despite widespread opposition, State Lands voted today to certify an environmental impact report and renew Poseidon’s lease to operate pipes under state beaches.

Development of water projects in California is hard enough without introducing ethnicity into the mix. Rarely, if ever, has a proposed water project been promoted as essential to meet the needs of a particular ethnic group, but that seems to be what some Latino advocacy organizations are claiming in support of a proposed seawater desalination plant in Huntington Beach. Unfortunately, these groups are neglecting the basic fact that Orange County residents and businesses are treated equally by their water suppliers.

San Diego’s battle against hepatitis A has focused new attention on a very old, very San Diego problem: feces. It’s a battle the region has repeatedly lost. Excrement from the canyons in Tijuana and from our own toilets and streets has bedeviled the region since western civilization took up roots here. Things had been looking up. Sewage spills are down ten-fold from 20 years ago. Litigious environmental lawyers who once haunted the city had moved on.

A bill from a San Diego legislator that requires public schools to test for lead in campus water systems, and notify parents if elevated levels are found, was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown Friday.

Assembly Bill 746, by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, stemmed from the discovery of excess lead in drinking water at schools in the San Diego Unified and San Ysidro school districts.