Staff at the state Water Commission, tasked with handing out $2.7 billion from a 2014 water bond, are still unwilling to fund a water recycling plant in the city of San Diego. Earlier this month, commission staff concluded that the recycling plant would have no public benefit.
The Equinox Project of the Center for Sustainable Energy has a pretty good idea of what comprises “quality of life,” having just released its 2018 San Diego Regional Quality of Life Dashboard reporting on 15 indicators of just that … quality of life. Available to everyone online, this is the ninth annual dashboard.
Before some members of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California voted this week to spend $11 billion on a new water project, several of them got a call from Gov. Jerry Brown urging them to support the project. For decades, Brown has been working to improve the north-south water delivery system created by his late father, Gov. Pat Brown. His solution is a pair of underground tunnels to help move water. Brett Barbre, a Metropolitan board member from Orange County who whipped votes in favor of the project, said it had support from about 52 percent of the board going into the weekend. That was enough to pass, but barely.
Less than fifteen miles from where Beyonce took the stage at the Coachella Music Festival, the Salton Sea is in crisis. As evaporation causes the sea’s shoreline to recede, more of the toxic chemical matter previously embedded in the water is being exposed and swept up into the atmosphere by desert winds.
Last fall, after years of study, the state’s largest water agency voted to spend $4 billion on a new project to bring water south from Northern California’s rivers. Other water agencies were supposed to help pay, but most backed out. On Tuesday, after a few weeks of scrambling, Metropolitan decided the project was worth nearly any price. Its board voted to spend $11 billion to save the project. For the extra billions of dollars, there’s no guarantee of more water.
The vast majority of Californians are fortunate enough to take access to clean drinking water for granted. However, the fact that some Californians in small, rural communities do not have this access is a travesty in this modern day and age. It can and must be fixed as an urgent state priority. Resolving this unacceptable situation will come at a high price.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti believes his city is poised for a “second Mulholland moment.” William Mulholland was responsible for the construction, over a century ago, of the 200-mile-long aqueduct to Owens Valley that helped drive L.A.’s growth. In a recent op-ed, Garcetti wrote, “we have launched a second opportunity to reimagine our water infrastructure.” But this time it will take place closer to home. The city announced a plan in 2015 to reduce imported water 50 percent by 2025 and produce half of the city’s water supply locally by 2035.
California’s drought-to-deluge cycle can mask the dangers Mother Nature can have in store. During one of the driest March-through-February time periods ever recorded in Southern California, an intense storm dumped so much rain on Montecito in January that mudflows slammed into entire rows of homes. Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed, and at least 21 people died.
There was not a cloud in sight on this winter morning as surfers rode the waves south of the U.S. border fence, off of Playas de Tijuana. Anna Lucía López Avedoy stood on the street above, focusing instead on the stream pouring from a storm drain, splashing down a small rocky cliff, trickling down the sand and finally into the Pacific Ocean.
Saying desalination will guarantee the drinking water supply for future generations of Baja California residents, Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid on Friday celebrated a groundbreaking ceremony for a desalination plant envisioned as the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
