The California State Senate passed Senate Bill 583, Wednesday, May 31, authored by Senator Steve Padilla (D-San Diego). The bill creates the Salton Sea Conservancy to unify the state’s efforts to expedite preservation project delivery, protect residents’ health, and foster ecological recovery in the area, according to a recent Padilla press release.
A bill in the state Assembly would make it harder for local water districts to leave their regional partnerships if they’re seeking cheaper water rates. That’s what two small, North County farming communities have been fighting to do for the last three years.
An algae bloom prompted city officials to post caution signs at its Lower Otay Reservoir.
The City of San Diego advises the public to not expose their skin to the water while the cautionary alert is in effect.
Two small farming communities want to bail on buying water in San Diego because it’s too expensive, but that means everyone else would have to pick up part of their tab.
As California continues to experience swings from one weather extreme to another, a majority of residents say they are increasingly concerned about the state’s changing climate, and some worry that weather impacts could force them to move in the future.
Nearly 70% of registered voters say they expect that volatile fluctuations between severe drought and periods of heavy rain and snow — what some call weather whiplash — will become more common in the future due to climate change, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
San Diego’s infamous Lake Hodges was reopened to the community after being closed since mid-2022 due to critical repair work of the Hodges Reservoir Dam.
The City of San Diego officials announced that Lake Hodges would reopen on Wednesday, May 31, but only on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from sunrise to sunset.
Last fall, before the epic, near-biblical rains of early 2023 pushed California’s historic drought off our collective radar, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced a pilot water-conservation program that sounded too good to be true.
According to the announcement, for just $24, single-family homeowners in the city would be able to track real-time water usage, detect leaks and create a water budget from a smartphone app using a Wi-Fi-enabled, easy-to-install Flume water-meter sensor.
An Assembly bill introduced late last week would require a countywide vote before two agricultural districts in north San Diego County could leave the San Diego County Water Authority.
Assembly Bill 530, introduced Thursday by Tasha Boerner Horvath of Encinitas, would amend California’s Water Authority Act, to require a majority vote in both the separating district and the county to complete a detachment.
In a historic consensus, California, alongside the six other states that rely on the Colorado River for survival, announced an agreement last week for a plan to cut back water usage over the next three years.
The proposal drafted by the three lower basin states – California, Arizona and Nevada – would cut water use from the river by at least 3 million acre-feet by the end of 2026 through conservation to prevent the river’s reservoirs from falling to critically low levels.
The Supreme Court’s landmark decision scaling back federal protections for many wetlands and streams has drawn criticism from scientists and environmental advocates, who say the gutting of safeguards will jeopardize water quality throughout the arid West.
California’s water regulators say the ruling will be harmful for protections nationwide, but the more stringent state protections of wetlands won’t be affected.
