You are now in San Diego County category.

The San Diego County Water Authority (CWA) board approved an increase in water rates for next year.

The CWA board action June 23 set the water rates and charges for calendar year 2017. The rates on a countywide basis will increase by 5.9 percent for treated water and 6.4 percent for untreated water. The new rates and charges will be effective Jan. 1, and the CWA’s member agencies have the option of absorbing the rate increases or passing on the additional cost to customers.

 

A $4.6 million penalty against the city of San Diego was proposed Tuesday by the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board for the city’s alleged failure to make sure construction sites did not prevent the pollution of local waterways.

The allegations cover the time period from 2010 to 2015 and affected water bodies stretching across city limits from the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon to the north, down to the Tijuana River Estuary to the south, according to water board officials.

California is in the midst of its worst drought in history. Across Southern California, this year’s El Nino provided no relief. Climate scientists believe that drought conditions may simply be the “new normal” for our region. How can our local communities meet their own needs and responsibilities without simply taking limited water supplies from each other?

Semi-arid and drought-prone Southern California can no longer rely on overdrawn ground water sources for more than a small fraction of local needs. Meanwhile, the region’s two main sources of imported water have become increasingly less reliable.

Los Angeles County is considering a controversial plan to spur housing development in rural unincorporated areas by allowing property owners to haul in drinking water if no other source is available.

If adopted, the initiative would make 42,677 parcels in the northern one-third of the county potentially eligible to construct as many as 3,680 single-family homes over the next two decades, officials said.

So, that “Godzilla” El Niño that had a “95 percent chance” of coming and was “too big to fail“? Yeah, it didn’t happen (at least not in SoCal).

What resulted, instead, was a cooling of the Pacific around the equator, which suggested that a La Niña may be approaching. This was unwelcomed news; while El Niño (usually) leads to a rainy winter season for SoCal, La Niña often means a drier winter for us. Seeing as how we never got the tons of rain that we were promised, the prospect of an La Niña was dispiriting.