Southern California has agreed to conserve enough water in Lake Mead to support upwards of 300,000 single family homes for a year under an agreement struck with the federal government.
The Biden Administration will pay the Imperial Irrigation District an estimated $77.6 million for conserving 100,000 acre-feet of water in the Colorado River this year, setting the stage for more than half a billion dollars in federal funds to be paid to the agency, the river’s largest user, to conserve far more through 2026.
The 10-year proposal aims to shield communities from a neurotoxin that can cause permanent damage to the brain and nervous system, especially in children.
Most U.S. cities would have to replace lead water pipes within 10 years under strict new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency as the Biden administration moves to reduce lead in drinking water and prevent public health crises like the ones in Flint, Mich., and Washington, D.C.
The Biden administration has set aside $310 million to expand a wastewater treatment in South Bay as part of an ongoing effort to tackle a cross-border pollution and sewage crisis.
The South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant was included in the emergency supplemental funding request at the request of a group of lawmakers led by Rep. Scott Peters last month.
Over the past century, the fossil fuel industry has made a habit of letting others clean up their messes. Today, the U.S. is dotted with millions of “orphaned wells,” crevices in the earth that companies once used to extract oil and subsequently abandoned once they were no longer considered profitable. But additional help appears to be on the way: This week, the Biden administration announced it would make nearly $660 million in funds from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law available to states to plug more of these polluting fissures.
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The Supreme Court on Monday appeared closely divided on whether to side with the Navajo Nation in the tribe’s high-stakes fight against the Biden administration and four states to protect its right to water from the drought-stricken Colorado River.
While the court could decide the case on narrow procedural grounds, some of the more moderate conservative justices questioned whether a ruling for the Navajo would obligate the federal government to build a vast network of pipelines and pumps to deliver water to the tribe or upset the delicate balance struck by the 40 million people who rely on the massive waterway that travels among seven states and Mexico.
State officials from across the Colorado River Basin seized on a single message as they gathered here to discuss the future of the struggling waterway last week: The river is in a state of emergency that will very soon reach a crisis for the 40 million people who rely on it, affecting agriculture and municipalities alike. But faced with doomsday projections from the Bureau of Reclamation about major reservoirs, officials agreed that harmony has not yet extended to how best to address the shortfalls triggered by more than two decades of drought, which have dramatically constricted both the river’s flows and water storage.
States in the Upper Colorado River Basin on Wednesday launched a $125 million program aimed at reducing reliance on the shirking waterway, although it remains to be seen how much water could actually be conserved. The Upper Colorado River Commission, which represents Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, released details on its Upper Basin System Conservation Pilot Program, which will pay users with rights to the river’s waters to temporarily forego their allocations.
he Hoopa Valley Tribe alleged in a lawsuit Monday that the federal government is violating its sovereignty and failing to collect money from California farms that rely on federally supplied water to pay for damages to tribal fisheries. The tribe, which has a reservation in northwest California, says in its lawsuit against the Biden administration that the Trinity River that it relies on for food and cultural purposes has been decimated by decades of the federal government diverting water
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
