California has long known that its groundwater problem would reach crisis level. Now the crisis has indeed arrived, and as officials in Sacramento roll out rules in an effort to gradually balance water demand and supply, it’s easy to see why they waited for so long to take action.
Drought-weary Californians breathed a sigh of relief because another “March Miracle” series of storms soaked much of the northern half of the state. Sadly for the people of the Golden State, their relief is mostly misplaced. The state reported that the statewide snowpack is only 87 percent of normal and El Niño was mostly a disappointment. Farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley will receive only 5 percent of their allocation from the Central Valley Project this year. It looks like we are heading into the fifth year of a historic drought.
A battle is raging over one of the most fundamental aspects of San Diego County’s future: how folks get around.
Will commuters overwhelmingly continue to drive their cars to work, as they’ve done for decades? Or will lawmakers fashion a public transportation system — consisting largely of bus, trolley and train lines — that’s efficient and sexy enough to appeal to millennials and perhaps their parents?
San Diego public utility officials shut off customers’ water with no warning and have no specific policy outlining how to restart service or adjudicate complaints, local consumer advocates say. The city also piles on unnecessary fees and penalties — even adding years-old parking tickets and library fines to the balances due — before agreeing to restore water service, the Utility Consumers’ Action Network says.
Coachella Valley water agencies are again making the case that the state should ease its drought restrictions, especially for those here in the desert.
Officials argue that this region’s unique circumstances – the hot climate, a varying tourist season/year-round population mix that distorts actual per capita usage and access to groundwater as well as surface water sources – should be considered in the decision-making process rather than following a more one-size-fits-all approach statewide.
With the drought continuing in California despite El Niño, more and more homeowners are considering alternatives to thirsty lawns. But before pulling up the turf, consider your options and their advantages and disadvantages.
Grass typically uses about 60 gallons of water per week for every 10-by-10-foot area. That can add up in a hurry. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 30 to 60 percent of a household’s water usage goes toward landscape irrigation.
Thanks largely to conservation efforts, the San Diego County Water Authority’s latest water management plan envisions the region will use 14 percent less water in 2020 than originally forecast.
The latest draft of the 2015 Urban Water Management Plan was released for public review on Friday. It is available online. The water authority estimates that future water demands will be about 14 percent lower in 2020 and 15 percent lower in 2035 compared to projections in the 2010 plan.
The development of drought-resilient water resources and a sustained emphasis on water-use efficiency mean that San Diego County will continue to have a safe and reliable water supply for decades, according to the San Diego County Water Authority’s draft 2015 Urban Water Management Plan.
The draft plan — known as the 2015 UWMP based on when the updating process began — was released Friday for public review, starting a public comment period that will include a public hearing on May 26 during the regular meeting of the Water Authority Board of Directors.
Over a decade ago, Southern California water officials rushed to build or expand treatment plants so they could keep up with the demand for drinkable water. That cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Now demand for water has fallen dramatically. The treatment plants sit largely unused during parts of the year and officials are fighting over how to pay for some of them.
There are two kinds of water: treated water, which has been cleaned up for drinking; and raw water, which comes from a river or reservoir and is not yet fit for human consumption.
Southern California didn’t get the El Niño rains that other parts of the state did this year, and is still very much mired in a drought that’s dragged on for years. Now, fire officials with the US Forest Service are bracing for the effect that persistent dryness will have on this year’s summer wildfire season. The federal government will put out its official wildfire outlook in three days, but they’ve already said things aren’t looking so great for the region, says the Daily News.
