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Growing up near Niagra Falls where water is plentiful hasn’t stopped Ramona resident Beth Prinz from becoming a conscientious water conservationist. Prinz first encountered caps on water use as a resident of Forest Falls, Calif., a small town of about 1,000 residents where she lived before moving to Ramona 20 years ago. During droughts, the local water district would turn off the taps for extended periods of the day, yet water would still flow to nearby Redlands residents, she said.

For nearly four years before federal and state environmental watchdogs descended on Camp Pendleton during a late June inspection, contractors had warned military leaders about apparently persistent problems with the base’s water system, according to newly released documents. Obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act, the records were generated between 2014 and mid-2017 by contractors hired to clean and inspect Camp Pendleton’s 34 water reservoirs. They buttress an Environmental Protection Agency summer survey of a much smaller portion of the sprawling base’s water system.

Water is a top priority in California, and Cuyamaca College is hoping to help young women tap into a career in the field, offering tips and information at a daylong symposium on Thursday. “Women in Water: Exploring Career Pathways” is expected to draw nearly 100 high school students and an equal number of water industry officials from throughout California as Cuyamaca aims to bolster the numbers of women in the water industry.

West Shores High School principal Richard Pimentel slips on a cowboy hat before stepping outside. It is a nod to fashion as a response to the region’s harsh desert sun. The school sits about halfway up the western side of California’s Salton Sea. Modern buildings, concrete patios and walkways and an artificial turf sports field stand in stark contrast to the desert community that surrounds the campus. Tumbleweed and sand are common fixtures of the town’s yards. “We are about 30 miles from anywhere,” Pimentel said.

Riverside County officials on Thursday unveiled a possible $400-million remedy for some of what ails the shrinking Salton Sea: record-high salinity levels, die-offs of fish, fewer birds and an immense “bathtub ring” of smelly playa prone to toxic dust storms. The so-called North Lake Vision proposed by Riverside County Supervisor Manuel Perez calls for creation of an in-lake barrier, or dam, on the north end of the sea that would be filled with enhanced flows from the White Water River to create what he described as “a 4,200-acre healthy lake within a much larger not-so-healthy one.”