Wednesday will be a day of reckoning for California water wholesalers like Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District (MWD). They have to prove to the state that they have enough water to get through three more years of drought. If they don’t, they need to figure out how much they need to save. It’s a big change from the way the state was regulating water just a month ago. Let’s break it down.
San Diego imports 80 percent of its water, with the Colorado River supplying about 63 percent, and 20 percent coming from Sierra Nevada runoff funneled from northern California via the State Water Project. The remaining 17 percent comes from local sources – a mix of rainwater, groundwater, desalination and recycled water.
While these numbers vary from year to year, what hasn’t changed is the fact that San Diego has relied heavily on imported water for many decades. With climate change heralding warmer weather and prolonged droughts, this impacts the level of snowpack and river flow, which in turn threatens the region’s water security.
A federal judge Monday said he needed more information before he can determine if the government has erred in allowing Nestle to continuously withdraw millions of gallons of water annually from Strawberry Creek — 28 years after the company’s permit expired.
Judge Jesus G. Bernal asked both U.S. Forest Service attorney Andrew Smith and Matt Kenna, representing the environmentalist-plaintiffs, to provide briefs examining whether certain U.S. Forest Service regulations fall under the Federal Administrative Procedures Act, which proscribes how the federal government goes about its business.
The Salton Sea has gone from a midcentury vacation spot for movie stars to a post-apocalyptic desert with mounds of dead fish here, gurgling “mud pots” there, blasts from a military bombing range on the horizon and sulfuric stench everywhere.
The worst is yet to come. California’s largest lake (350 square miles) is about to be turned into a toxic dust bowl with potentially catastrophic health consequences for about 650,000 people who live in and around the sprawling drainage basin.
Southern California residents should prepare for what could be the worst wildfire season on record due to a persistent drought and much less rain from an El Niño that was weaker than expected, officials from a variety of agencies warned Monday.
“From our perspective, each and every day is fire season for us,” Los Angeles County Fire Department Chief Daryl Osby said. “El Niño? Bad news. El Niño did not occur in Southern California.” Typically the region gets between 16 to 18 inches of rain by this time of year. But so far it has gotten only 9 inches, Osby said.
Although recent rains have been a welcome sight in California, drought conditions continue to increase fire danger prompting Cal Fire to suspend burn permits in San Diego and Imperial counties.
This suspension takes effect immediately and bans all residential outdoor burning of landscape debris like branches and leaves. “San Diego lives with the threat of wildfire year round and it is critical that the public do their part to be extra fire safe when outdoors” said Cal Fire Chief Tony Mecham.
Last week, the San Diego County Water Authority priced a $340 million bond sale that will reduce the cost of financing vital water supply reliability projects over the next two decades.
When completed, the transaction will re-fund $340 million in long-term, fixed-rate bonds issued in 2008 and 2010, saving the water authority $63.2 million over the life of the refinanced bonds. Closing of the sale is expected in about two weeks.
The long-delayed and hotly contested Gregory Canyon Landfill doesn’t appear to be getting any closer to obtaining all of the permits still needed before construction of the dump south of state Route 76 near Pala could begin.
Work has yet to even begin on a permit needed from the county’s Air Pollution Control District because the new owners have yet to complete the necessary paperwork. Sovereign Capital Management Group, a San Diego-based private equity firm that took over the company last year, did however pay overdue fees last year with the intention of restarting the process.
The Godzilla of all El Niños is dead. And the big guy went out with a whimper, at least in Southern California.
On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center declared the much-anticipated – and miserably disappointing – El Niño of 2015-16 history. “There’s nothing left,” said Climate Prediction Center Deputy Director Mike Halpert. “Stick a fork in it, it’s done.”
Over a decade ago, Poseidon Water came to Orange County and began applying for permits to build a desalination plant in Huntington Beach to turn sea water into drinking water. The process stalled for years. The proposed plant would only produce about eight percent of Orange County’s water needs, would be nearly twice as expensive as other water, required a massive amount of energy and had numerous environmental impacts. To many decision-makers, it seemed like an option only worthy of consideration as a last resort; definitely not worth the billion-dollar plus price tag for ratepayers.
