Doug Thompson couldn’t believe what he’d just been told. His wife, a botanist, was advising a Coachella Valley country club on drought-resistant landscaping, and Thompson, who got to talking with the groundskeeper, asked how much water it takes to irrigate a golf course.
Even as she was going blind, my mom, ever the poet, delighted in sitting out among the palms and birds, and enjoying and visualizing the scene, as I irrigated my date gardens in the Coachella Valley.
In her 1997 poem, “Colorado Water,” she wrote:
The palm said, “My clover is cool around my bole, over my hidden roots.
My fronds clatter, crash
like waves in the far off sea.”
The Coachella Valley Water District board voted Tuesday to approve up to five years worth of potential rate hikes, including steep increases for small homeowners beginning July 1.
“It’s never a joy to increase rates… but I look across the (Coachella) valley and into Riverside and I think we’re competitive,” Director Peter Nelson said.
While a few customers objected by phone and Zoom before the vote, and 166 written protests against the increases were received, a whopping 64,906 written protests would have been needed to stop the vote per state law.
The Coachella Valley Water District is expected to vote Tuesday on a series of hikes that could sharply raise some residential and commercial customers’ monthly water bills over the next five years.
The proposed hikes would mean an average family that uses about 20 ccf per month could see their bill rise from $32 currently to $48 by 2026, according to agenda materials. A ccf, or one hundred cubic feet, equals is 748 gallons of water.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District recently took a key step in setting wide-ranging goals to address air pollution in the eastern Coachella Valley, leaving local residents and politicians cautiously optimistic for the health of communities that have suffered from poor air quality for years.
The new benchmarks, adopted on Dec. 4, come as part of the area’s draft community emissions reduction plan, which is the result of AB617, passed in 2017. In the eastern Coachella Valley, the program will look to reduce nitrogen oxides by 45%, diesel particulate matter by 77% and PM10 — particulate matter that is 10 micrometers or smaller — by 2.4 tons per year, all by 2030.
We represent a group of East Coachella Valley residents optimistic about the future of the Salton Sea and the surrounding communities. That is why we are working to ensure our communities see meaningful benefits from the sea’s restoration.
On Sept. 30, we sent a letter to state officials requesting that restoration projects coming out of the Salton Sea Management Program consider the potential impacts on nearby communities. We hope those officials will share in our vision of reforestation and green spaces around the Salton Sea, see the benefits of such projects in addressing the sea’s deteriorating environmental conditions, and act with the same urgency.
A new report by the U.S. Geological Survey shows that efforts by Coachella Valley Water District to replenish local aquifers in the Coachella Valley have been effective, leading to stable land surface elevations in most of the Coachella Valley. Areas with land subsidence identified in prior studies are now stable, uplifting, or experiencing substantial slowing of subsidence. CVWD partners with Coachella Water Authority, Desert Water Agency, Indio Water Authority, and Mission Springs Water District to manage groundwater in the Coachella Valley.
The Coachella Valley Water District broke ground Tuesday on a project that will connect the Westside Elementary School in Thermal to the water system that services much of the valley. Westside is the only school in its district relying solely on a well and has a history of water contamination.
The Coachella Valley Water District’s board of directors on Tuesday voted to approve a $376 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1. The budget notably will not include rate increases even though CVWD — which has a service area of roughly 1,000 square miles and includes about 108,000 homes and businesses — had planned to implement one this year. The new math comes after the water district ripped up its previously proposed budget in May due to the economic slowdown caused by the response to the coronavirus.
The Coachella Valley Water District has released a revised annual budget for fiscal 2021 that represents the hard economic realities of operating during the coronavirus pandemic.
The new budget, which is currently a staff proposal, proposes a $40 million decrease in spending compared to the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. It will be discussed at board of directors meetings on Monday and Tuesday.
“Though we have a tremendous pent-up demand for facilities repairs and upgrades, we have committed to imposing no rate increases in FY 2021,” the staff presentation about the updated budget proposal says. “Instead, we have cut operating expenses and are temporarily tapping into our emergency reserves.”
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
