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Thursday morning Valley Center Municipal Water District Gen. Manager Gary Arant issued a statement about the “hype” surrounding current speculations that the state may drop or cut back its drought requirements due to the higher than normal rainfall this year.

Arant’s statement:

“As is typically the case, there is a lot of premature hype and  information about the SWRCB (State Water Resources Control Board) further and relaxing or even dropping the Emergency Drought Regulations which may generate questions from the media or public.

One year ago Friday, Frank Gehrke hiked out to Phillips Station and stuck a tube onto a tuft of brownish-green grass. There was no snow, but Gehrke had quite an audience.

A gaggle of reporters and even Gov. Jerry Brown had assembled at the outpost 90 miles from Sacramento to watch Gehrke work and bear witness to the severity of California’s drought.What followed was a historic executive order from Brown that required a statewide 25% cut in urban water use and set in motion a fundamental rethinking about how Californians use the precious resource.

Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy company will soon be unable to farm alfalfa in its own parched country to feed its 170,000 cows. So it’s turning to an unlikely place to grow the water-chugging crop — the drought-stricken American Southwest.

Almarai Co. bought land in January that roughly doubled its holdings in California’s Palo Verde Valley, an area that enjoys first dibs on water from the Colorado River. The company also acquired a large tract near Vicksburg, Arizona, becoming a powerful economic force in a region that has fewer well-pumping restrictions than other parts of the state.

A desalination plant proposed near San Juan Creek could produce as much as 15 million gallons of drinking water daily and create a reliable source for South County-area reserves in the wake of an earthquake or drought, officials said.

South Coast Water District officials said plans for the $90 million plant – studied for more than a decade – are moving forward despite the fact the district would be the sole agency building it. The plant – with a 2019 opening date – would likely provide 75 percent of the district’s water needs, district general manager Andrew Brunhart said.