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Governor’s Budget Targets Safe Drinking Water, Wildfires, Healthy Soils

/in , /by /Public Policy Institute of California (San Francisco)by Gokce Sencan and Henry McCann

Governor Newsom’s first proposed state budget, released earlier this month, addresses several critical water and natural resource management challenges. Here are highlights from his plans to mitigate problems with safe drinking water, improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildfires, and encourage healthy soils to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase drought resilience. The governor’s budget proposal revives last year’s failed legislative proposal to tap urban water customers, agricultural fertilizer users, and dairies to pay for safe drinking water projects in small, disadvantaged communities with water quality challenges.

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Gov. Newsom Proposes Tax On Drinking Water

/in , /by /10 News (San Diego)by Zac Self

Governor Gavin Newsom is proposing a tax on drinking water to help communities clean up contaminated water systems. The plan, according to the Sacramento Bee , is an attempt to revive an idea that didn’t pass the Legislature in 2018. An 2018 investigation showed that at least 360,000 Californians get water that doesn’t meet state standards, according to the Bee. Drinking water advocates praised the proposal while the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association said the state should dip into its massive surplus instating new taxes.

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San Diego Unified Likely To Tackle Lead In Drinking Water And Security Upgrades With New Bond Money This Summer

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Kristen Taketa

Voters delivered a solid endorsement of the San Diego Unified School District on Tuesday when they approved a $3.5 billion bond measure for the school system, the district’s largest ever bond measure and the third approved since 2008. About 62 percent of voters said yes to Measure YY, despite critical media coverage of the measure, opposition from watchdog groups and residents and “no” endorsements from multiple organizations, including the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, which only disapproved of one other school bond measure on Tuesday’s ballot.

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Local Elementary School Finds Lead in Water

/in , /by /FOX 5 San Diego

A San Diego elementary school is shutting off part of their drinking water supply due to unsafe lead levels, district officials announced Friday. Six water fixtures at Fletcher Elementary School, a K-5 school on Bobolink Way in the Linda Vista area, displayed higher lead levels than the district’s 5ppb safety limit during testing at the school. Most of the fixtures had lead levels under 10 parts per billion, but one — a cafeteria kitchen faucet — showed levels of about 45 parts per billion, nine times higher than the district’s limit and three times higher than the federal limit of 15 parts per billion.

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In a First, California Abolishes Compton’s Water District Board After Years of Dirty-Water Allegations

/in , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Angel Jennings

State officials on Wednesday removed the elected board and general manager of a water district that for years has been accused of serving brown, smelly water to its customers in Compton. With a 22-page decree, the State Water Resources Control Board abolished Sativa Los Angeles County Water District’s five-member board of directors and ousted its manager. In their place, the state appointed the county’s Department of Public Works to temporarily run the district while officials seek to merge the small district, which delivers water to about 1,600 homes, with a larger provider.

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Sick Of Paying $5 For Bottled Water? Tap App Will Find You A Drinking Fountain Instead

/in , /by /Forbesby Andria Cheng

The epiphany moment for Samuel Ian Rosen came when he found himself at an airport shelling out $5 for a bottle of Evian water. “Nobody up till now has built a Google Map for (drinking) water,” Rosen, a serial entrepreneur, said in an interview. “Finding water is inconvenient. When I go to Google Map and type ‘water fountain,’ there is nothing. We solve it by building Google Map for water….We are a search engine. We tell you where the water is.”

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New App Aims To Help You Stop Buying Bottled Water

/in , /by /Fox5 San Diegoby CNN Wire

A new startup called Tap has a bold ambition: convince people to stop buying plastic bottles of water. Tap launched an app Tuesday that displays nearby clean drinking water locations, from restaurants and retail stores to public water fountains, so you can refill your water bottle. It’s like Google Maps for clean drinking water.

 

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OPINION: WaterFix Opponents Say Project Will Harm California’s Poorest

/in , /by /Courthouse News Service (Pasadena)by Nick Cahill

STOCKTON, Calif. (CN) –With California trudging ahead with a contentious $16.7 billion water project, a cache of environmental and social concerns remain around its plan to replumb the source of drinking water for an estimated 25 million residents. Backed by the state’s largest urban and agricultural water suppliers, outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown wants to build two massive 30-mile-long tunnels and funnel water from California’s largest river directly to farms and cities to the south.

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Saving Troubled Water Systems Requires Flexible Solutions, Not Mandates

/in , /by /Water Deeply (New York)by Michael Kiparsky and Nell Green Nylen

During the hot summer months of 2014, East Porterville, Calif., became a poster child for vulnerable drinking water. Hundreds of shallow wells in this unincorporated Tulare County community ran dry in the midst of statewide drought. Some families had to wait years to have running water again, when their homes were finally connected to the city of Porterville’s municipal water supply. While East Porterville’s experience made headlines around the country, the serious drinking-water problems facing other communities across California are just beginning to receive much-needed attention.

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Bills To Create Drinking Water Fund Die In State Legislature

/in , /by /Valley Public Radioby Kerry Klein

California’s legislative session ended last week, and with it, the hopes for a statewide pool of money that would have supported drinking water projects. It was called the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund, and it would have been available for disadvantaged communities in need of water cleanup projects. The fund would have been sourced by fees on residential water bills and on some agricultural producers. But the two bills that set the framework for the fund died in the state assembly last week as California’s legislative deadline passed by.

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