Many San Diego properties would have a lot more ‘ocean’ in their ‘oceanfront’ if climate predictions come true. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps track of various climate scenarios, and maps what areas would be affected.
California may be in its fifth year of drought, but on Tuesday, state water regulators effectively turned back the clock to 2013. Staff members of the State Water Resources Control Board announced that 343 of the state’s 411 water districts reported having enough water to meet their customers’ demands — even if the next three years are unusually dry. To blunt the impact of drought, the state required water providers to reduce their consumption compared to 2013 levels. Each provider was assigned a so-called conservation standard, which was expressed as a percentage.
The Metropolitan Water District‘s board of directors voted Tuesday to invest $6.76 million to develop a 1-megawatt solar power generating facility on six acres at the district’s Joseph Jensen Water Treatment Plant in Granada Hills. The solar installation is expected to produce 2.3 million kilowatt-hours of clean, renewable energy a year, enough to power about 325 homes, according to the MWD. As part of Tuesday’s action, Metropolitan’s board awarded a $4.88 million contract to Riverside-based Sol Construction Co. to construct the solar facility. Construction is slated to begin next month, with plans to start up the solar plant in late 2017.
More than two decades ago, the San Diego County Water Authority heard a clarion call from the region’s ratepayers – a call demanding better water supply reliability. A call to never again let our region – our communities, our friends, our neighbors, our businesses – be vulnerable to crippling water shortages, as when the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California cut water supplies to our region in 1991 by 31 percent for more than a year.
It is disheartening to see once credible environmental organizations calling for a “more of the same” approach – one that has so miserably failed for a quarter century – in a misguided attempt to help the imperiled delta smelt. Of course we must save them, but neither the public, nor the delta smelt, will benefit from a proposal built on fiction. Claims that the Projects have “sucked”, “trapped”, or made the Delta too salty thru “massive water diversions” are patently untrue.
Wildlife experts at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge have found alarming evidence that the salinity of the sea has reached a point where the fish are not breeding. Biologists noticed that among the dead fish washing up on the shores of the sea this summer, there were no small ones. They were all full-grown. This means the fish are not breeding. And there’s more bad news. Audobon California Policy Director Mike Lynes says the diminishing habitat is hurting the birds.
Scientists say they’ve seen disturbing new signs that the ailing Salton Sea is entering a dangerous phase. Biologists Chris Schoneman and Tom Anderson of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge say it appears reproduction might be stalling for a once-hardy fish species. Meanwhile, some birds that normally flock to the lake are nowhere to be found. Schoneman and Anderson say this could signal a long-anticipated tipping point in the ecosystem at California’s largest lake.
Some 600,000 residents of Tijuana and Rosarito Beach can expect to see their water deliveries shut off as soon as next weekend as a major aqueduct undergoes repairs.The shutdown, which could last from two to five days, will affect just less than one-third of the area’s 1.8 million water users living in 332colonias, or neighborhoods, across the western and southern parts of Tijuana and northern Rosarito Beach, according to the Baja California Public Service Commission, or CESPT.
Critics and a state lawmaker say they want more explanations on who’s paying for a proposed $16 billion water project backed by Gov. Jerry Brown, after a leading California water district said Brown’s administration was offering government funding to finish the planning for the two giant water tunnels.
San Diego’s two largest utilities are at odds over power, both literal and figurative.The San Diego County Water Authority hopes to save millions in coming years by generating hydroelectric power for itself and by buying electricity from sources other than San Diego Gas & Electric, the local power monopoly. The Water Authority, however, says SDG&E is standing in the way of its plans.The two agencies are, respectively, the region’s major suppliers of power and water. And their dispute echoes struggles both utilities are already having within their respective industries.
