Want to know how recycled water gets purified for drinking? The Padre Dam Municipal Water District has a new animated video that helps explain it. The two-minute video, “It’s A Big Deal,” details the district’s water purification program in an easy-to-understand way, said Allen Carlisle, CEO and general manager of Padre Dam. The pilot program is based in Santee and called the Advanced Water Purification Program. Last year, Padre Dam opened a demonstration plant to evaluate it. Padre Dam has now secured more than $10.5 million in grants for the first phase of its advanced water project.

More than 55,000 California residents get public water that’s tainted with unsafe levels of arsenic, according to the nonprofit advocacy organization Environmental Integrity Project. The chemical is a carcinogen that’s been linked to cancer, developmental difficulties, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. “The longer you are exposed, the more likely you are to suffer serious health effects,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project. “As is done now with private well users, really you ought to take steps to protect your family and try to avoid the water until its clean again.”

California is considering becoming the first state in the country to allow people to drink recycled sewer water. For years, the state has allowed this to go on indirectly, by permitting water utilities to put treated wastewater into reservoirs and groundwater, where it is diluted with other water sources. Now, the goal is to skip that step and and put the treated effluent straight into drinking water.

Cooling Pacific Ocean conditions that follow an El Nino and known to hinder winter storms from dousing California have weakened enough that forecasters “La Nina watch” Thursday. In wake of one the strongest El Ninos ever recorded, Pacific Ocean water temperatures are gradually returning to normal and there is only a 40 percent chance of a strong La Nina developing this winter, climate scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a monthly update.The update sparks optimism that El Nino’s drier sibling won’t materialize over drought-riddled California, despite NOAA scientists in May giving La Nina a 75 percent chance of developing.

Gov. Jerry Brown extended the nation’s most ambitious climate change law Thursday by another 10 years as California charts a new goal to reduce carbon pollution.The Democratic governor signed the legislation in a Los Angeles park amid opposition from the oil industry, business groups and Republicans. It expands on California’s landmark 2006 law, which set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The state is poised to meet or exceed that benchmark, with steps including restricting the carbon content of gasoline and diesel fuel, encouraging sales of zero-emission vehicles and imposing a tax on pollution, Brown said.