An effort to create commemorative Salton Sea license plates has been slow to take off.
Last year, the Greater Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau began working with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to sell the specialty plates.
The plates cost $50 to $98, depending on whether the driver wants to keep his old license number. A portion of the money would go to the Salton Sea Authority to benefit environmental restoration of the sea.
The first of a series of El Niño-related storms hit Southern California on Monday, drenching highways and soaking potentially unstable hillsides, authorities said.
Though there were only a few crashes reported on the freeways and no reports of significant flooding, cities along the Angeles National Forest foothills warned residents to begin preparing for a weeklong deluge that could lead to mud flows.
Projections of future water supplies and demand reveal a shortage of billions of gallons by 2040, a shortage that Orange County water managers say must be filled in the coming years.
More water is needed – or at least more money needs to be spent curtailing increases in demand.
To help figure out how to fill that shortfall, the Municipal Water District of Orange County is preparing a study that predicts how much water Mother Nature will supply in the coming decades and offers methods for determining which water supply projects – desalination plants, recycling facilities, water storage and many others – the county can build to bank and even supplement nature’s gifts.
A series of El Niño-related rainstorms and snowfall is expected to begin late Sunday night and could last all the way into next weekend.
There’s a 30% chance of rain between 10 p.m. Sunday and 4 a.m. Monday, and a 70% chance Monday morning, said Robbie Munroe, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, with the possibility of up to a half-inch of rain.
The strongest storm of the week is likely to hit Tuesday, Munroe said, bringing 1 to 2 inches of rain in foothill areas and up to 4 inches at higher elevations. Mountain areas above 6,000 feet could see up to 2 feet of snow.
We’ve talked a lot about desalination in recent years. We have examined the arguments for and against, and it can be compelling both ways.
Still, removing salt from sea water and using it to supplement California’s dwindling portfolio seems the only responsible thing to do.
Thanks to a billion-dollar experiment on the coast just north of San Diego, California and the rest of the nation will have evidence — one way or another — of the utility of desalination on a scale heretofore not seen in the Western Hemisphere.
This year’s drought has brought an unprecedented amount of attention to California’s water future, and with that debate, two different views about the solution. There is the view we can solve this problem by emphasizing a single approach, such as conserving more water or desalinating the Pacific Ocean. And there is the view that we have to take many actions on many fronts, an “all of the above” strategy, to truly remain reliable.
As the regional planner and long-time importer of water supplies for the six-county region, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is among those advancing a comprehensive approach to our water future.
