Public Affairs and Communications Manager for Las Virgenes Municipal Water District Mike McNutt speaks with WaterWorld Editor-in-Chief Mandy Crispin about how the California wildfires are affecting utilities.
Watch the video to gain perspective on what utilites are facing during the wildfires
During the more than 40 years I have resided in San Diego County, trash and sediment accumulation, along with toxic and wastewater contamination of the Tijuana River and our binational coastal waters, have been a persistent health concern for South San Diego and Tijuana residents. I have been actively involved in trying to bring attention to and address these issues since the 1990s, when I first represented the area in the state Legislature. As a full-time Imperial Beach resident since 2009, I long to see skilled surfers and frolicking families enjoy our beach waters again.
Residents in San Diego’s South Bay were left to deal with a strong odor after thousands of gallons of sewage spilled onto a roadway.
The International Boundary and Water Commission confirmed that about 20,000 gallons spilled onto Hollister Street on Monday afternoon.
It’s a summertime sequence that’s become all too familiar in California: Extreme heat forces air conditioners into overdrive, which pushes the state’s power grid to the brink.
In August 2020, a major heat event fueled by the climate crisis forced some of the state’s first rotating power outages in decades, as the ongoing transition to green energy lagged behind demand. Last September, Californians narrowly avoided blackouts as a record-breaking heat wave broiled almost every corner of the state for days.
For more than a week there’s been a beautiful waterfall spilling over Friant Dam.
That’s because Millerton Lake is full to the brim. A water volume of 1,650 cubic feet per second (CFS) is creating the water blanket.
My fellow Californians often remark that the weather in this state feels like it has been reduced to two seasons, both defined by natural disasters: In summer and fall, huge, intense wildfires rip their way across dry land, while winter and early spring bring intense atmospheric rivers with heavy rainfall, floods and landslides along with winds that take down trees.
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.
It’s Earth’s original disrupter — a recurring climate pattern so powerful that it can drive global average temperature to record highs, and generate both cliff-crumbling storms and crop-destroying droughts across the planet.
Now, after a long hiatus, El Niño is showing signs of a strong return in 2023.
“Old superlatives have been dusted off and new ones count to better describe the tragedy, damage, and trauma associated with the State’s latest ‘unusual’ weather experience.” DWR Bulletin 69-83, California High Water 1982-83, p.1
With the sun finally emerging recently after a cool, wet winter and early spring, the storms that may lie ahead next winter aren’t what most people want to think about. But meteorologists are forecasting that an El Niño year is probably coming, bringing more storms, and La Jolla and other coastal communities may need to brace for impact.
