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Eastern Municipal Water District’s (EMWD) Board of Directors on Wednesday urged Governor Jerry Brown and the State Water Resources Control Board (State Board) to declare an end the ongoing Drought State of Emergency and corresponding regulations. EMWD’s Board of Directors approved by a 4-0 vote a resolution requesting an end to the statewide drought emergency status due to the response of customers and drastically improved statewide water supply and snowpack conditions.

Snowfall from a series of blizzard-like storms that blanketed the Sierra Nevada last month deposited the equivalent of more than 5.7 trillion gallons of water along the rugged mountain range — enough water to fill California’s largest reservoir more than four times, according to recent analysis. In a study by the University of Colorado Boulder and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in La Cañada Flintridge, scientists concluded this month that recent snowfall had replenished more than a third of the state’s lingering “snow-water deficit.”

A five-year water rate increase was approved by the City Council Wednesday to fund Capital Improvement Projects and operational costs. According to a report from Director of Utilities Chris McKinney, the new water and wastewater rates will increase Water Fund revenue by 5.5 percent per year over the next five years. The adjusted rates will become effective March 1 and each year thereafter through 2021. The increases, according to the cost of service study, will cover the estimated $141.5 million in capital expenditures and $75 million in proposed bonds.

 

A document obtained by the Kansas City Star and the News Tribune could potentially bode well for two important, and unreasonably delayed, water projects in the Southland. One of those projects is the is the Huntington Beach desalination plant. The document, “purportedly leaked from the Trump administration indicates that the proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach is among 50 infrastructure projects nationwide that the president has designated as a priority,” the Register reported.

In the midst of what may be the wettest year on record in California, the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) last week January 26 declared an end to drought conditions in the region. Question is, will the State of California go along? Or does the State prefer to maintain a permanent “state of emergency”? Record-setting winter precipitation in the Northern Sierras, coupled with heavy local rainfall and a significant snowpack in the upper Colorado River basin, prompted the SDCWA action last week.