You are now in San Diego County category.

Miguel Gasca is the newest member of the Rainbow Municipal Water District (RMWD) board. A 4-0 board vote Feb. 28 selected Gasca to fill the Division 3 seat vacated after Tory Walker moved to Murrieta and resigned from the board. Gasca will fill the remainder of Walker’s term, which expires in December 2018. “I’m glad to have the opportunity to serve the community,” said Gasca. “He’ll be a good addition to the board,” said Rainbow general manager Tom Kennedy.

After years of delays, California’s plans for the shrinking Salton Sea are finally starting to take shape. A $383 million plan released by the state’s Natural Resources Agency on Thursday lays out a schedule for building thousands of acres of ponds and wetlands that will cover up stretches of dusty lakebed and create habitat for birds as the lake recedes.

San Diego gets most of its water supply from far away. About a fifth of it comes from Northern California. Gov. Jerry Brown has big ideas for making sure Southern California can continue drinking water from its northern neighbor. He wants to build two 35-mile underground tunnels 150 feet underground to keep water flowing south. The price tag would be at least $17 billion. Once a big supporter of the plan, the San Diego County Water Authority is now among its biggest skeptic.

California Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration on Thursday proposed spending nearly $400 million over 10 years to slow the shrinking of the state’s largest lake just as it is expected to evaporate an accelerated pace. The plan involves building ponds on the northern and southern ends of the Salton Sea, a salty, desert lake that has suffered a string of environmental setbacks since the late 1970s. During its heyday of international speed boat races, it drew more visitors than Yosemite National Park and celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and the Beach Boys.

Some climate models are suggesting that El Niño may return later this year, but for now, the Pacific Ocean lingers in a neutral “La Nada” state, according to climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The latest map of sea level height data from the U.S./European Jason-3 satellite mission shows most of the ocean at neutral heights (green), except for a bulge of high sea level (red) centered along 20 degrees north latitude in the central and eastern Northern Hemisphere tropics, around Hawaii. This high sea level is caused by warm water.