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The recently expanded San Vicente Reservoir could become a backup source of electric power under a plan being considered by the San Diego County Water Authority and the City of San Diego. The agency and city, which owns the reservoir, are studying a 500-megawatt pumped-storage project — big enough to power a quarter million homes during periods of high electrical demand. An official request was issued Wednesday to utilities, developers and investors potentially interested in the project with response expected by Feb. 15.

Statewide water conservation has continued its trend of lagging behind last year’s efforts as numbers released by the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) today revealed that California urban water users saved 18.8 percent of the water it used in November compared to the baseline year of 2013, a figure that has been outpaced by 2015 figures for a fourth consecutive month. November’s savings are down from the 19.6 percent mark seen in October but slightly higher than the savings seen statewide in September (18.3 percent) and August (17.7 percent).

California water conservation took a slight step backward in November, officials announced Wednesday, possibly due in part to an unusually wet fall and months of successful conservation efforts. Californians used 18.8% less water this past November compared with November 2013, the benchmark year for state conservation measurements. In November 2015, residents statewide cut back usage 20.2% compared with 2013.

On a picturesque summer afternoon, West Basin Municipal Water District officials chose to woo regulators with a stroll by the beach in El Segundo, stopping to admire an unadulterated strip of California coastline.  “It is beautiful,” said Diane Gatza, West Basin’s water resources engineer. A few hours later, environmental advocates held a town hall two miles away in Manhattan Beach.

 

Surveyors plunged a pole into the Sierra Nevada snowpack on Tuesday and took the first manual measurement of the wet season, finding water content was about half of normal as California flirts with a possible sixth year of drought. Surveyors took the reading at 6,000 feet near Lake Tahoe as major cold and windy storms were expected to dump four to five feet of snow through Thursday in areas above 4,500 feet in Northern and central California, while mountain areas below that could get two to three feet, forecasters said.