The Rainbow Municipal Water District board approved the district’s strategic plan at the Jan. 26 board meeting.
A 3-0 board vote, with Jack Griffiths abstaining and Bob Lucy having resigned prior to the meeting, adopted the strategic plan.
Last Sunday, I had a column that asked what I thought was a simple question: How much more development can our water supplies sustain?
I figured planners must be looking at this issue considering the drought and new groundwater legislation that requires a holistic attitude toward our basin as opposed to the “I got my straw, go get your own” way we’ve always done things.
Nope.
Even with about 58,000 new homes either in some phase of construction or approved to be built in and around Bakersfield, no one is looking at how all that new demand will affect our aquifer.
For Carrie Wassenaar, a modest single-story house for sale a half a mile from the Burbank-Bob Hope Airport had the landscaping she was looking for in a home: tidy green lawns front and back, and trees, including an iconic orange tree. The greenery virtually sealed the deal for the Wisconsin native before she ever stepped through the front door.
Today, the animation producer’s front yard is a part of the California water revolution.
Here at one of the snowiest places in the country, Ed Bischoff marveled at a view that had been absent for years.
A number of early winter storms, strengthened by El Niño conditions, had covered the northern Sierra Nevada in white. Fresh snow weighed down towering evergreens along Interstate 80. On local roads, street signs peeked out of snowbanks more than 7 feet high.
The winter rains finally arrived in Southern California, bringing drenching relief this week to a part of the nation suffering one of the worst droughts in history. But the El Niño storms brought something else as well: a reminder of lost opportunity, on display in this coastal city, as millions of gallons of storm water slipped down the usually dry Los Angeles River and out into San Pedro Bay.
After a year in which Californians cut water use by 25 percent, storm water has become the next front in what amounts to a fundamental restructuring of Southern California’s relationship with its intricate water network. More than 200 billion gallons of storm water, enough to supply 1.4 million households for a year, could be captured statewide — but instead end up spilling down sewers, drains and into the ocean, as was on display Thursday, in the hours after the rainfall had ended, at the spot where the Los Angeles River ends
Q: For water conservation and the environment, is it better to install artificial turf or drought-tolerant plants?
A: Think holistically. When choosing between artificial turf and drought-tolerant plants, consider multiple factors, including environmental sustainability.
The promised “second peak” of this year’s El Niño still hasn’t really shown up, and instead of prolonged torrential rains, Southern California has instead gotten some heavy winds and a freaky-hot February. Now, says the Associated Press, El Niño is “weakening ever so slightly.” The World Meteorological Organization says that, as far as El Niño goes, the phenomenon has passed its peak in terms of wind/temperature/pressure conditions. Yes, like an old racehorse, “It’s still strong, but it has reached a peak value and it’s starting its decline,” says a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma.
The investment company that bought the site of the proposed Gregory Canyon landfill in North County appears to be taking steps to clear the land.
Sovereign Capital has put up fencing and erected a sign along state Route 76 that reads, “Future Home – Gregory Canyon Landfill.”
For California, which has endured four years of extraordinary drought, the state’s wet season is off to an encouraging start.
High in California’s Sierra Nevada, the state’s mountainous spine, El Niño-driven storms have piled snow and the meltwater it represents to above-normal levels. At lower elevations, heavy rains are nudging the water in many depleted reservoirs back toward their historical averages.
An effort to renovate a small corner of the Salton Sea is moving forward near Calipatria at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.
The sea is in trouble, slowly evaporating as it’s water sources are being diverted.
If allowed to dry up completely the shrinking sea could damage the Coachella Valley’s desert environment, health and economy.
