Tag Archive for: Climate Change

San Diegans, How Much Would You Tax Yourself to Prevent Floods, Boost Water Quality?

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby David Garrick

San Diego officials plan to spend the next five months analyzing what size tax increase city voters would likely support in November 2022 to pay for projects that boost flood prevention and water quality.

The ballot measure would be the first opportunity for San Diegans to vote to raise taxes on themselves to tackle an estimated $6 billion infrastructure backlog that city officials began calling San Diego’s No. 1 challenge eight years ago.

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Colorado River Study Means It’s Time to Cut Water Use Now, Outside Experts Say

/in , , /by /Tucson.comby Tony Davis

Less water for the Central Arizona Project — but not zero water. Even more competition between farms and cities for dwindling Colorado River supplies than there is now.

More urgency to cut water use rather than wait for seven river basin states to approve new guidelines in 2025 for operating the river’s reservoirs.

That’s where Arizona and the Southwest are heading with water, say experts and environmental advocates following publication of a dire new academic study on the Colorado River’s future. The study warned that the river’s Upper and Lower basin states must sustain severe cuts in river water use to keep its reservoir system from collapsing due to lack of water.

That’s due to continued warming weather and other symptoms of human-caused climate change, the study said.
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Drought-Stricken West Holds Out For More Than Just Dry Snow

/in , , /by /AP Newsby Susan Montoya Bryan

It’s a picture-perfect scene — the snow-dusted Sandia Mountains providing a backdrop to the dormant willow and cottonwood trees lining the Rio Grande.

While the recent snow has provided a psychological salve to the pains of a persistent drought, it won’t go far in easing the exceptional conditions that have taken hold of New Mexico over the past year.

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Residents’ Climate Anecdotes to Inform San Diego Resilience Plan

/in , , /by /Utility Diveby Maria Rachal

The City of San Diego Planning Department is seeking public feedback as it develops a climate resilience plan focused on preparing for sea level rise, flooding and drought, extreme heat and wildfires — risks backed up by a climate change vulnerability assessment completed early last year. The Climate Resilient SD plan would build on the city’s Climate Action Plan released in 2015.

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Opinion: California’s Climate Change Future is Being Written – in its Waterways

/in , /by /The Sun (Central Valley)by Wayne Western

Much like COVID-19 is changing our election practices and day-to-day business operations, climate change could change your water rights, according to the State Water Resources Control Board.

In the past, I have eluded to the shift from historical facts used for analysis and forecasting to a fear-based guessing game that allows an unelected bureaucracy backed by a one-party-rule elected body to usurp your property rights.

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Opinion: California Needs a More Flexible Approach for Planning for Sea Level Rise Across the State

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Robert Lempert, David Behar

The state of California has changed its sea level rise guidance for state agencies and coastal communities, now advising in new “Principles for Aligned State Action” that Californians employ a single sea level rise target — plan for 3.5 feet by 2050 — as opposed to the more flexible approach the state used in the past. But this single sea level rise number does not represent the best available science and could make California less resilient to climate change.

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Landfalling Atmospheric Rivers Increase in First Quarter of Water Year 2021 Over 2020

/in , , /by /Water News Networkby Ed Joyce Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

A Scripps Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes report shows that more atmospheric rivers have made landfall over the U.S. West Coast in the first four months of Water Year 2021 compared to the previous period in 2020.

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San Diego Experiencing One of Driest Februaries in Nearly 170 years

/in , , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Gary Robbins

San Diego is experiencing one of the driest Februaries it has had in nearly 170 years due to weather patterns that are sending most winter storms into the Pacific Northwest and Northern California rather than allowing them to drop south, says the National Weather Service.

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Adaptation Can Compound Climate Change Impacts on Energy and Water

/in , /by /EOSby Kate Wheeling

In 2014, as California was in the midst of one of the worst droughts in its recorded history, Julia Szinai was working for an electric utility. The worst years of the drought were still ahead, but the impacts of the dry spell on California’s energy system were already clear to Szinai. As water levels dropped, so too did hydropower generation—an energy gap that was filled by fossil fuels.

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Opinion: An Independent Colorado River Aqueduct Could Be a Money Saver for San Diego

/in , , /by /Times of San Diego by Gary Croucher Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

There’s an old saying that those who don’t remember history are destined to repeat it.

And that certainly holds true when it comes to securing water for this semi-arid place we call home. Those who have been around here since the early 1990s remember when we relied on a single Los Angeles-based water agency to meet almost all of our water needs — and we paid for it with traumatic supply cuts that crippled our economy.

Thankfully, three decades of regional investments have changed San Diego’s story for the better. Planning and investments by the San Diego County Water Authority and our 24 local retail member agencies have produced and will continue to ensure one of the most reliable water supplies in California.

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