Pure Water Oceanside has been awarded a $9.9 million grant following a recommendation by the office of U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, it was announced Tuesday.
The funding will be awarded via the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART: Title XVI WIIN Water Reclamation and Reuse Projects funding, a statement from the city read. Oceanside is one of 25 applicants named for this funding.
On June 10, the city of San Diego implemented more stringent restrictions for all water customers, following a statewide order to conserve throughout California. We are calling on San Diegans to cut back their usage, not just because it’s the prudent thing to, but also to avoid more drastic measures that could come in the near future if we don’t take these new restrictions to heart.
Droughts are here to stay. That’s the warning from Santa Clara Valley Water as we continue to face a severe water shortage and uncertainty with regard to the upcoming winter months.
Rain or not, the message is to expect droughts to be a much more regular part of life, meaning conservation and preparation need to become lifelong habits as well.
California has warned a group of farmers and ranchers near the Oregon state line to stop diverting water from an area already wracked by extreme drought and a wildfire that killed tens of thousands of fish.
The State Water Resources Control Board issued a draft cease-and-desist order Friday to the Shasta Water Assn., warning it to stop taking water from the Shasta River watershed.
A new video illustrating the role and the value of groundwater has been released by the Vallecitos Water District.
“The Value of Water: Groundwater” was produced for World Water Week 2022 through a collaboration with the Vallecitos Water District, the California Department of Water Resources, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency WaterSense.
World Water Week is from August 23 through September 1. World Water Week is an annual event focusing on water issues hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute. It focuses on exploring new ways of managing water and addressing challenges facing agriculture, technology, biodiversity, and climate change. This year’s theme is “seeing the unseen, and the value of water.”
Vallecitos Public Information Representative Alicia Yerman, who produced the video, said the goal was to depict the 2022 World Water Week theme. DWR provided photography, and both DWR and EPA WaterSense experts advised on the video and reviewed it for accuracy.
“California’s groundwater basins are a critical part of the state’s water supply, especially during a severe drought like the one we’re currently experiencing,” said Paul Gosselin, Deputy Director of the Sustainable Groundwater Management office at the California DWR. “However, since groundwater is out of sight, it tends to be out of mind for most people. We appreciate Vallecitos Water District’s efforts to educate the public about this vital resource during World Water Week.”
“It’s so important for people to understand where their water comes from because it helps motivate them to value and use it wisely,” said Veronica Blette, EPA WaterSense program manager. “This new Vallecitos Water District video highlighting the hidden treasure of groundwater and other videos they have produced do a great job of showing why water is important and how people can preserve and protect it.”
Groundwater helps sustain California’s ecosystems, supports agriculture, fuels the economy, and reduces the impacts of drought and changing climate. Groundwater accounts for 40% of the state’s total annual water supply in normal years and almost 60% in drought years. DWR developed California’s Groundwater Live featuring the latest groundwater information, live statistics, and a series of interactive dashboards accessed through its website.
In 2019, VWD began using video to document the district’s workforce and infrastructure improvements on its social media platforms. The water district has also engaged the public with discussions of critically important water management issues. It has won multiple awards for its work. The Vallecitos Water District also offers live video of its board meetings and other public discussions on its YouTube channel.
(Editor’s note: The Vallecitos Water District is one of the San Diego County Water Authority’s 24 member agencies that deliver water across the metropolitan San Diego region.)
If you choose to design, implement and maintain a new water-saving landscape yourself, you can follow the Homeowner’s Guide to a WaterSmart Landscape to help you plan, prepare, and work through each step. Free classes and online videos can help.
The years-long drought and dwindling water supply are estimated to have left more than 531,000 acres of California farmlands unplanted without harvest this year — a 36% increase since August of last year.
The new estimates on acres farmed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reflect the struggles of some California farmers to procure water to irrigate their crops as major government water projects supplying their water remain thirsty as drought continues for a third year.
California had been a state for scarcely a decade and was home to fewer than 500,000 people when it was hammered in the winter of 1861-62 by the most powerful series of rainstorms in recorded history.
“This event, which was characterized by weeks-long sequences of winter storms, produced widespread catastrophic flooding across virtually all of California’s lowlands — transforming the interior Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys into a temporary but vast inland sea nearly 300 miles in length and inundating much of the now densely populated coastal plain in present-day Los Angeles and Orange counties.”
As the unprecedented drought continues to affect California and the San Diego region, homeowners can still balance the need to conserve water as efficiently as possible while preserving valuable landscaping, including trees. Trees can be maintained while following California’s water guidelines.
The Colorado River is the backbone of the West’s water supply. The river provides water to hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and 40 million people in seven U.S. states (California, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada) and northern Mexico. But overuse, a 23-year “megadrought” and aridification fueled by the climate crisis has left the river stretched far too thin.
