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Helix customers can water three days per week

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby By Karen Pearlman

Helix Water District customers can now go back to watering their lawns three days a week starting April 6.

The Helix Water Board voted unanimously Wednesday to halt the two-days-only watering in effect since June 2015, when the state mandated that water districts require their customers reduce use by up to 25 percent.

Helix customers may choose which three days to water, but still must limit outdoor irrigation with spray sprinklers to no more than 10 minutes per station per day. That 10-minute limit does not apply to drip irrigation systems, rotating nozzle sprinklers, gear rotor sprinklers and weather-based controllers.

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OPINION: Help Stop Increases in Water Rates

/in /by /Pomerado News by By Mark Weston Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority
Quoted: Mark Weston

The MWD board is scheduled to vote April 12 on a rate proposal that would increase the cost of treated water for our region in 2017 by 62 percent and increase the cost of untreated water by 12 percent. The district’s public relation’s spin is that the “average” cost increase for its entire service area is 4 percent — but that number doesn’t apply to the San Diego County Water Authority. MWD’s methodology increases San Diego County’s costs while lowering costs for Los Angeles, without any rational basis for doing so.

 

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Ventura County Supervisors Protest Water Rate Change, But Protest May be Moot

/in /by /Ventura County Star by By Kathleen Wilson

Ventura County supervisors are opposing a proposed rate change by the giant Metropolitan Water District, saying the measure would undermine conservation and is unconstitutional.

Metropolitan now bases rates for water treatment wholly on the volume purchased. The district’s board is set to act next week on separate charges to cover fixed costs of building, running and maintaining its plants.

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A Delta Tunnel Project’s Lofty Ambitions Have Been Scaled Back

/in /by /Los Angeles Times by By Bettina Boxall

Only a close look at the Middle River revealed anything amiss in this part of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Instead of flowing north toward San Francisco Bay, as nature intended, the Middle was headed south. On the other side of Bacon Island, the Old River was doing the same thing.

The backward flow of these two obscure channels is at the core of a proposal to build California’s biggest water project in decades: a $15-billion diversion and tunnel system in the delta, the ecologically failing hub of the state’s waterworks.

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Why Southern California May See Easier Water Conservation Goals Despite State Missing Target

/in /by /Los Angeles Daily News by By Steve Scauzillo

Despite record-low water savings in February, winter storms in Northern California filled reservoirs and returned the missing snowpack, easing the drought crisis and triggering softer water conservation targets, state water officials said Monday.

While many parts of the state may be headed into a fifth year of drought, the punch of El Niño that landed upstate will help Southern California communities.

 

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Californians Fall a Bit Short of Brown’s Call for 25% Cut in Water Use After 9 Months of Conservation

/in /by /Los Angeles Times by By Matt Stevens

After nine months of fervent conservation, drought-fatigued Californians narrowly missed meeting the water-savings target set by Gov. Jerry Brown a year ago.

Urban dwellers reduced their consumption by 23.9% between June and February, state regulators said Monday, just short of the 25% cut required under Brown’s executive order. Still, the conservation efforts saved about 368 billion gallons of water, or enough to supply nearly 6 million Californians for a year.

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County’s Drought Conservation Plummets

/in /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune by By Joshua Emerson Smith Quoted: Dana Friehauf

While El Niño has put a dent in California’s historic drought, conservation efforts by urban water users in the state have tapered off in recent months — a trend reflected in San Diego County.

Regulators announced Monday that residents and businesses didn’t meet Gov. Jerry Brown’s mandatory statewide conservation target of 25 percent — on both a monthly and cumulative basis. The customers failed significantly in February, the most recent month for verified data. It was by far the worst monthly showing since the program began last June.

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California Leaders Double Down on Dry

/in /by /The Orange County Register by By Joel Kotkin

The drought, if somewhat ameliorated by a passably wet winter in Northern California, reminds us that aridity defines the West. Our vulnerability is particularly marked here in Southern California, where the local rivers and springs could barely support a few hundred thousand residents, as opposed to the 20 million or so who live here. Bay Area, we’re talking about you, too, since about two-thirds of your drinking water is imported.

 

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VIDEO: Water Conservation Tips

/in /by /KUSI Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

The San Diego County Water Authority is offering a Free Program called “Watersmart Landscape Makeover Program”.  Listen in as Sharon Lowe, SDCWA, demonstrates some of the easy steps to convert you yard to drought friendly, using native plants and even how to make your own compost.

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Get ready for another summer of SoCal drought

/in /by /89.3 KPCC (Pasadena)by Sanden Totten

All of this means drought conditions will continue clobbering Southern California for the time being. That’s bad news for farmers like Chris Sayer of Petty Ranch in Ventura County. He grows citrus and avocado trees. Lately, the leaves on some plants have started going brown.

“A lot of these leaves look really stressed, you can see how the tips of them are all dried out,” Sayer explained as he walked past an avocado grove.

 

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