A southeast San Diego elementary charter school that discovered high levels of lead and vinyl chloride in its water plans to bring in a free mobile clinic to test kids for any possible lead exposure. The contamination was discovered after a therapy dog named “Star” would not drink the water. Charter school leaders say the 2-year-old black lab went to great lengths to alert them to the potential danger in the water.
The city’s $3 billion plan to recycle wastewater into drinking water took another step forward Wednesday when the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board approved a modified permit for the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant. City officials contend their “Pure Water” program will provide a sustainable source of potable water for a growing city with a dry climate. Backers estimate that recycling — purifying wastewater and mixing it in reservoirs with water from traditional sources — will account for one-third of the area’s supply by 2035.
California’s climate has long been dominated by cycles of intense dry conditions followed by heavy rain and snow. But never before in recorded history has the state seen such an extreme drought-to-deluge swing. Experts and state water officials say California is seeing more of these intense weather swings as temperatures warm, which has profound implications for the droughts and floods the state may face in the generations to come.
The Colorado River — which supplies about two-thirds of San Diego County’s drinkable water — on Tuesday was named the most endangered river in the U.S. by a leading conservation group. American Rivers’ annual report, published since 1984, ranks the 10 most threatened rivers nationwide. The group said it tries to spotlight rivers that are subject to influential policy decisions, not necessarily the most polluted. This year, it chose the lower portion of the Colorado River for greatest attention based on ongoing concerns about dwindling flows due to increasing water consumption and adverse impacts from global warming.
The San Diego Unified School District is planning to flush pipes with water at schools prior to the City of San Diego administering tests for lead. District officials say the practice will protect students, while water quality experts warn it could hide dangerous levels of the metal. The San Diego Unified School District began testing its schools’ water Tuesday after lab reports confirmed “higher than allowable” lead levels were found at one campus. Samples will be gathered at five campuses a day, Tuesday through Saturday, now through mid-June.
Local State Park officials are looking for further guidance from the governor on how to proceed with “rinse-off” showers at state beaches, which have been turned off since 2015. The showers were first turned off two summers ago when the State of California was in a period of severe drought. The showers were shut off to conserve water. In April, Gov. Jerry Brown’s office announced the state would lift its drought emergency for most of the state after a winter of record rain and snowfall that followed a five-year dry spell.
Aiming to greatly expand its use of recycled water, the University of California, Irvine is partnering with the Irvine Ranch Water District to convert the school’s central cooling plant to an environmentally friendly system that will conserve more than 50 million gallons of drinkable water per year. The central cooling plant is the hub of the air conditioning systems for 65 buildings at UC Irvine. Recycled water will replace the potable water used in its 4.5 million-gallon evaporative cooling tower, which utilizes a process that drops water through the air to lower its temperature to 39 degrees Fahrenheit.
At the San Diego County Water Authority, we scrutinize every dollar to make sure ratepayers get a good return on their investments in safe and reliable water supplies. But that isn’t the case everywhere – and it’s certainly not the case at the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Several steps removed form nearly 20 million residents it serves, MWD overcharged ratepayers $847 million more than the agency’s budgets said was needed from 2012-2015.
Treated water rates set by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California have doubled over the past decade, due in part to unrestrained fiscal practices at the agency. Ratepayers are about to be on the hook for a lot more unless MWD’s out-of-control spending can be stopped. The Los Angeles-based district is the nation’s largest water agency, serving nearly 20 million people across Southern California. In San Diego County, our reliance on MWD water has been reduced by more than half over the past few decades due to strategic investments in dough-resilient water supplies.
The March 14 board meeting of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California included the approval of three infrastructure rehabilitation projects at Lake Mathews. One project will rehabilitate the electrical distribution system at Lake Mathews, a second project will repair the Lake Mathews forebay and the third project will repair portions of the hydroelectric plant’s concrete structure. The projects are intended to address the aging infrastructure of Lake Mathews and to maintain reliable deliveries into MWD’s Central Pool.
