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The San Diego County Water Authority is trying to become a player in the energy market. It’s not going very well.The agency’s biggest energy project is increasingly bogged down by a soaring price tag, relatively small returns and questions about whether it’s even needed. The project aims to address what’s become a major problem in the energy world: how to stop using fossil fuels without sacrificing reliability. Power generated from the sun, wind and water are better for the environment, but the sun doesn’t always shine, wind doesn’t always blow and hydroelectricity doesn’t work in a drought.

For decades, environmentalists have rhapsodized about the tranquil beauty of California’s deserts while battling fiercely with energy companies, the government and within their own ranks over what if any power production should occur on those sun-baked, wind-blown, geothermally active expanses of land. On Wednesday, U.S. Interior Department officials signed a blueprint that they touted as a finely tuned effort to balance conservation of California’s iconic desert landscapes with the state’s growing hunger for clean energy in the age of climate change.

Californians got their first dose of fall weather Tuesday as snow, rain and cooler temperatures gripped the state early this week.

Northern California experienced thunderstorms and showers that brought less than an inch of rain across Butte and Plumas counties Monday, while communities south of Lake Tahoe received a bit of snow early Tuesday. The precipitation is not enough to affect travel, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

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.”