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The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California approved the design and installation for the first phase of upgrades to the monitoring system at Diamond Valley Lake.The MWD board vote July 12 appropriated $950,000 for the project.  MWD plans to upgrade the monitoring system in three stages. Stage 1 includes procurement and installation of 16 weir level sensors and 15 strong motion accelerographs and the preparation of procurement documents for 19 robotic total stations and for the automated data acquisition system. Diamond Valley Lake was completed in 2000 and has a maximum storage capacity of 810,000 acre-feet (260 billion gallons).

There are strong signs that we’re settling into a new culture when it comes to water use.

Coachella Valley Water District reports that its customers used 28.6 percent less water in July when compared to July 2013, the state’s comparison year. That reduction is more than 5 percentage points better than that seen in June and above the district’s cumulative average of 25.6 percent for the past 14 months. Meanwhile, Desert Water Agency – our region’s second largest after CVWD – reported a 22 percent usage cut in July, smaller than the 33 percent reduction in June but still near the agency’s cumulative water-savings of 27 percent since last summer.

Strong opposition in the Legislature has scuttled a bill that would have required agencies in California to release information about water use by businesses such as farms and golf courses.

With the bill’s demise in the Senate, water districts will be able to continue keeping confidential information about how much water businesses are using during the drought.

Assembly member Mark Stone, who backed the measure, said there weren’t enough supporters in the Senate to take up the bill for a vote.

Riverside’s utility hopes to make $3.5 million this year on a deal to sell water to a nearby water district. Last year, the city sold a small amount to customers of the Western Municipal Water District. Officials with Riverside Public Utilities and Western say the deal benefits both agencies’ customers by helping Riverside make up lost revenue and saving Western money. Under the pact, Riverside would sell up to 5,000 acre-feet of water to Western between September and February 2017. An acre-foot is about enough water to serve two households for a year.

San Diegans are blessed with miles of beautiful coast and beaches, but all of that may be vastly different in a little more than one human lifetime. Children born today may see a San Diego with six more feet of sea by the time they are 84. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps track of various climate scenarios, and the six-foot-rise projection is the more dire calculated. Despite San Diego’s climate action plan, few communities are making concrete plans to deal with a future with more water, thanks to melting ice at the poles.