With indications that water tables rose during winter rains, the Perris-based Eastern Municipal Water District’s Board of Directors Wednesday decided to lift some restrictions on outdoor water use.
“The time was right for us to act,” said EMWD Vice President David Slawson. “We sincerely appreciate our customers’ continued efforts during this unprecedented drought, and we look forward to making further adjustments as conditions continue to improve.”
New proposed permanent charges on treated water by the big seller of the commodity to Southern California could have an impact on Valley Center ranging from “significant to devastating,” according to local water chief Gary Arant.
San Diego County residents who have responded to Governor Jerry Brown’s mandates for cutting water use could find their water bills going up dramatically as a result as the supplier, the Metropolitan Water District (MWD, “The Met), thrashes around for a way to make up the money it is losing.
Even though San Diego water customers may be owed hundreds of millions of dollars by the region’s largest water supplier, it will be a long time before anyone sees a dime.
A judge ruled last year that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California charged too much to deliver water to San Diego from the Colorado River. The judge said Metropolitan owes the San Diego County Water Authority at least $243 million, including legal fees and interest.
Los Angeles County will consider new water-saving requirements for developers and look at tax options to pay for future drought planning under a pair of measures adopted Tuesday.
Over the objections of business and development groups, the Board of Supervisors voted to have county staff start drafting a “net zero” ordinance that would aim to ensure that new developments do not increase overall regional water demand.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
