Imperial Irrigation District general manager Kevin Kelley threatened to fire the public agency’s energy manager if he didn’t participate in the abrupt dismissal of five longtime IID employees who were ultimately replaced by the private consulting firm ZGlobal Inc., according to sworn testimony made public for the first time this week.
Ring the entry bell to Patrick Anderson and Les Olsen’s Fallbrook, California, garden, and the tall, redheaded Anderson is likely to greet you wearing teal-colored trousers and a melon orange shirt. His colorful persona, both inside and out, is only a hint of what’s to come. Anderson’s tour starts at the streetside garden he designed a few years ago. The gated driveway is flanked with angular planter beds stuccoed dusky sage green. The structure and geometry play off mass plantings with a limited plant palette. Still, each bed is filled with a dramatic combination of succulents and cacti.
When a contaminated aquifer in Orange County made U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s list of top-priority sites for “immediate, intense action,” the local water district was quick to highlight the announcement. But questions of political favoritism are swirling over Pruitt’s decision in December to prioritize cleaning the Orange County North Basin groundwater pollution plume beneath Anaheim and Fullerton using the federal Superfund program. Newly disclosed records show the action occurred soon after a meeting between Pruitt, the Orange County Water District and its lawyers that was arranged by conservative radio and television host Hugh Hewitt.
After serving on the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District board of directors for over 30 years and on the Metropolitan Water District more than 25, Glen Peterson announced he will retire at the end of the year. The 68-year-old Peterson became a leading expert on water issues in his three decades with water district. “Glen came to the LVMWD board to serve his community, but that service turned into something that became much larger and more significant than the daily operations of a local water agency,” said Dave Pedersen, the Las Virgenes general manager.
California leaders who represent the shrinking Salton Sea want the same kind of expedited action taken on restoring it as the Oroville spillway crisis had in 2017. After the spillway eroded millions of dollars were quickly allotted to fix the dam. A 10-year plan to restore California’s largest lake was adopted last year. Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia questioned the agencies in charge of the project Tuesday at an oversight hearing over why it’s behind schedule.
In 2012, the San Diego County Water Authority launched an unusual website to attack Southern California’s largest supplier of water, the Metropolitan Water District. The website, “MWD Facts,” featured information that was often superficially accurate — it usually came from Metropolitan’s own documents — but presented in a slanted or incomplete way. While it made a splash when it was first posted, the campaign never picked up much steam: Only 253 people followed the MWD Facts Twitter account, if that’s any indication of its popularity.
A project to protect Californians who live near the Salton Sea from deteriorating air quality could sink or swim based on the outcome of a June ballot measure. Proposition 68 would allow the state to borrow $4 billion through bonds to fund parks and environmental protection projects, including $200 million for a plan to preserve the rapidly shrinking Salton Sea. California’s largest lake has been evaporating since San Diego’s regional water agency stopped sending it water this year. Falling water levels increase the lake’s salinity and expose thousands of acres of dusty lakebed, which wind sweeps into nearby farming communities.
Tuesday morning, Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella), Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife will host a Salton Sea Oversight Hearing in order to ensure the successful implementation of the Salton Sea Management Plan. “In our efforts to mitigate the Salton Sea, it is paramount to bridge together the perspectives of local stakeholders with state agencies so that we can move forward with a game plan to guarantee the successful implementation of the Salton Sea Management Plan,” stated Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia.
To the editor: Your editorial, “California is dammed enough already,” raises some important points about improving our water future. The state faces a chronic problem that will only get worse with climate change: depleted groundwater supplies. Groundwater is the lifeline communities and farmers turn to in drought. The good news is there’s an untapped solution under our feet called groundwater recharge, which is much cheaper than building new surface reservoirs, has few environmental hurdles and can be implemented relatively quickly. There’s also three times more water storage capacity underground than in all of California’s surface reservoirs combined.
The front yard of the Point Loma home owned by Nina Ronstadt and Ken Klestinec once had a lush lawn and a cottage garden. But years of drought and limits on water use killed most of the plants. What was left, said Ronstadt via email, was “dried-up lawn and ugly dead landscaping.” She wanted to replace it with a meadow of drought-tolerant ground covers and a curving path, “but our 10-year-old daughter asked, ‘Where will I have a tea party?’ and ‘Where will our dog Cleo play ball?’” So, a circular patio area was added to the plan.
